Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The new housekeeper had a son.

She brought him with her, sometimes. He looked like he was Momo’s age, with bright green eyes and a mess of curly hair. He also helped his mother with her tasks and talked about All Might with shining eyes and a wide smile. He smiled like that most of the time actually—especially when his mother looked at him—but sometimes when he looked away, that smile fell.

One of the books Momo had read in her father’s study said that probably meant he was sad.

The boy lifted his head slightly, to respond to something his mother had just said to him, and Momo ducked behind the door frame, out of sight. She was being stealthy today—she wanted to be a hero, and she’d read in one book that heroes sometimes had to be sneaky as well as strong. She couldn’t get discovered, or that would ruin her whole investigation.

She listened for a moment as the boy talked, his voice lilting excitedly over his words as he started talking about another pro hero, one Momo didn’t know about. She thought, if he had seen her, he would probably say so to his mother. He seemed to tell his mother almost anything, as long as she didn’t ask about his friends. He always avoided that topic, like he somehow didn’t have friends. Or maybe like he did have them, but he didn’t like them very much.

Either way, Momo thought she might like to be his friend.

Momo tiptoed away, a master of stealth already.

“Mother, who is the boy that comes with Midoriya-san sometimes?”

Momo already knew he was her son, obviously. He looked just like her, but with curly hair and freckles. What she was looking for was his name.

“Oh, that’s Izuku-kun,” her mother said, teacup poised delicately in the air to drink from later. Momo felt a little thrill go through her—her sneaky mission had been a success. “He’s her son.”

“Why does he come?” Momo asked. “Doesn’t he have friends he wants to see instead?”

“Oh, Momo, darling,” her mother sighed. “Izuku-kun—he doesn’t have a Quirk.”

Momo blinked at her mother, then looked away, trying to think of what the correlation between Quirks and friends were. She hadn’t read a book about that, so she wasn’t sure there was one. But that wasn’t right, her mother was very clearly trying to use his Quirklessness as an explanation for why he didn’t want to see his friends.

She was spared from asking. “He doesn’t have many friends, Momo, dear,” her mother explained, sipping at her tea immediately afterwards. “Midoriya-san brings him here so she can keep an eye on him, and Izuku-kun likes to come so that he can feel safe somewhere. Do you understand, dear? Don’t say any mean things to him, just because he doesn’t have something you do.”

“Yes, Mother. I understand,” Momo said. She wouldn’t say mean things to Izuku anyway. Unless he said mean things first, then maybe she would. But anybody that talked about All Might that much probably wasn’t bad.

She ate for a little while, before an idea occurred to her. She’d entertained the thought before, but now that she knew about Izuku’s situation, she thought it was probably be a good idea to ask for clarification first. “Mother, could I be friends with Izuku-kun?”

“Of course you can be friends with Izuku-kun, Momo, dear,” her mother said, smiling gently across the table. “Just be sure not to get in his mother’s hair.”

“Yes, Mother.”

Being friends with Izuku was a feat easier announced to her mother over the breakfast table than actually done, and Momo was learning that very quickly.

The first obstacle was Inko, his mother. Momo could not get in her hair. Momo had looked that expression up and found that it meant to be annoying to someone else, but that information was part of the problem! Momo didn’t even know Inko well enough to know what would annoy her, let alone how to avoid doing it!

The second obstacle was Momo’s nerves. She simply didn’t have the confidence the other children always exuded, and every opportunity she got to talk to Izuku-kun, she squeaked and ran away before either of them could say a word instead.

This making friends business was dreadful—that was a word her father used a lot. Momo loved the word dreadful; it fit well with most situations in her life, including this one.

Six months into trying to make friends with Izuku, and Momo had still made exactly zero progress. She was beginning to think she would have to give up forever. She got home from school one day and drifted into the gardens, feeling absolutely dreadful, and collapsed immediately on one of the stone benches, kicking her feet out to examine them. She’d even read a book on making friends, and here she was, dreadful and friendless instead. Well, that wasn’t necessarily true. She had friends at her school, though they preferred to play all the time instead of read, so Momo didn’t spend time with them so often.

But that wasn’t the point of the dreadfulness. The point was that she had yet to befriend Izuku, who apparently didn’t have friends at all, and that just wouldn’t do.

She was so lost in her dreadful thoughts that she didn’t notice anybody else was in the garden, until the bush across from her shifted curiously and a moment later, Izuku’s head popped around the corner. Momo squeaked in alarm, but she didn’t have anywhere to hide. Oh, this was really dreadful.

Izuku smiled when he saw her though, like maybe it wasn’t as dreadful as she was making it out to be, and then he crawled around the corner of the bush and sat down in the grass in front of her.

For some reason, this was finally the thing that shook Momo from her dreadful, six-month long stupor and made it possible for her to finally speak to Izuku. “Mother says that you shouldn’t sit on the grass. It stains your clothing.”

Izuku looked down at his shorts, as if bewildered. Then he looked back up at Momo, and beamed. “They look okay to me!”

Momo was hesitant, not sure how to proceed from here. “As long as you’re sure,” she finally said.

“I’m sure!” he chirped. He stood as he said it, and came to sit next to Momo on her bench instead. “I’m Izuku, by the way,” he said.

“I know who you are,” Momo said, unable to keep the little squeak out of her voice. “I’m Momo.”

“Momo-chan?” he repeated, tilting his head to the side. Momo nodded in affirmation. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Momo-chan!” He declared once she nodded, pumping one fist in the air excitedly. “I’ve been trying to talk to you forever!”

“Really?” Momo asked, staring at him quizzically.

He nodded. “Yeah! You always run away though. I thought that maybe you didn’t like me at first, but then I thought that maybe you were just shy. If you don’t like me though, I can…I can go away, I promise.”

Momo kicked her feet again. “No, that’s okay,” she said. “I was always trying to talk to you too. I’m dreadful at it.”

“Dreadful means really bad, doesn’t it?”

Momo stared at him, wide-eyed. She’d never met someone that knew what her favorite word meant that was also her age. “You know what dreadful means?”

“I do! I read it in this article once! It was a report on one of All Might’s fights, and they called the villain dreadful. That’s how I know!”

“That makes sense,” Momo said. “I know dreadful because my father says it.”

“Your father must be really smart.”

“He is!” Momo said, smiling as she did. Both of her parents were really smart.

“You must be really smart too!”

Momo blushed, turning her face away from his extremely bright smile. “W-well—”

“Do you want do your homework with me?” he asked, his eyes gleaming with hope. “That’s why I come out to the garden—Yaoyorozu-san told me that I could work out here, and it’s really pretty. So when I come here with my mom right after school I like to come to the garden and work on my homework. That’s what I was doing when you got here, actually! So, what do you say?”

Momo felt a burst of hope flaring to life in her chest. Maybe this meant they were friends? And she wasn’t dreadful at making them anymore? She thought that it did. “I would like to!” she agreed. “Let me get my books.”

“Okay!” Izuku said, and Momo went to get her books. When she got back, he was still in the garden, sitting on the grass again. She sat back on her concrete bench, and they got to work. Izuku was good at school too, and he didn’t laugh when Momo used big words. He even asked her for a bit of help on his reading homework, and never got mad that she knew things that he didn’t.

She was glad she wasn’t dreadful at making friends anymore.

Momo saw Izuku a lot more after that.

On days where the sun shone and no rain fell, they always met in the garden and did their homework together. Izuku was good at school too, just like Momo was, and he always seemed happy enough to help her if she had any questions about math or English. He was especially good at those subjects, while Momo always excelled at literature and science.

She asked him about it once.

“I dunno,” Izuku said. He was laying on his stomach in the grass, his legs kicking behind him. He’d been muttering his way through a math problem when she’d asked him why he was good at it—something else he seemed to do pretty often. His muttering was intriguing to Momo. It was like looking into his mind and seeing how it worked. He rolled over onto his back, exposing the grass stains on his white shirt that he always got no matter how many times Momo warned him, and tapped the end of his pencil to his chin. “I guess I’m just good with numbers?”

“What about the English, then?” she asked.

Izuku blushed a brilliant pink, before immediately hiding his face behind his arms. Momo giggled slightly like that, though she hid it behind her hand, like her mother said was the proper way to do things. Izuku rolled back over onto his stomach, burying his face in the grass as well as his arms. He muttered an answer somewhere in there.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“An All Might documentary!” he yelled, suddenly unfolding himself and flopping onto his back like a fish did when they got out of the water. Momo giggled again. “Mama helped me learn it so I could watch the documentary. Then I kept learning, because if I know English, then I can know about American heroes too! Did you know there’s an American hero with a flying Quirk?” He struck a pose, despite laying on his back, one fist held over his head, the other planted firmly on his waist. Momo giggled again, as the look in Izuku’s eyes changed from exuberant joy to quiet wistfulness. “It would be cool to have a flying Quirk, don’t you think?”

Momo’s giggles died down, turning into frowns as she looked down at her book. She was so…so dreadful at this, still, even after a month. How was she supposed to cheer up a friend? She’d read books on it, she should know.

“Izuku-kun?” she said, waiting until his green eyes snapped over to her and he sat up. “If you had a flying Quirk, how would you fight a villain with a Quirk that let them harden the air, or something like that? They could always stop you if you tried to fly away.”

Izuku’s eyes lit up ever-so-slightly as he started making up wild strategies. They weren’t as bright as they were before, but that was okay. A little bit was still something, after all.

“Hey, Momo-chan?”

Momo hummed to acknowledge that she’d heard him but didn’t look up from her book yet. Father didn’t always like for Momo to be in his study when he wasn’t there, so she had to make the most of it when she could. Which really just meant she had to read as much and as fast as she could, and then maybe read it all again when she snuck in here next.

“Can I ask you about your Quirk?”

Momo blinked and looked up. Izuku sat in front of her, gaze fixed on some point beyond her head, hands twisting in front of him like he was nervous. She sat up a little straighter, dropping her finger onto her place in the book. She hadn’t…expected Izuku to want to see her Quirk. Or talk about it. He just…he always seemed so sad whenever Quirks were brought up. “You want to know?” she asked.

“If—if that’s okay! I like to know about all Quirks! They’re all just so cool, you know? Kacchan always said it was creepy though, that I’d want to know about them even though I don’t have one. I don’t want you to think I’m creepy though, Momo-chan! A-actually, forget I asked at all!” He’d begun gesticulating wildly at some point doing his ramble, and Momo frowned, scooting a little closer to Izuku. “I’m sorry if you don’t want to hang out with me anymore, Momo-chan! I—”

Momo reached out and caught his wildly moving arms, cutting off his words. He stopped and stared at her instead, growing slightly pinker with each passing second. “Kacchan—is he your friend?”

Izuku bit his lip, suddenly looking somewhat hesitant. Eventually he nodded, and Momo only frowned even more. Friend…

She didn’t think friends were supposed to call you creepy. The book she’d read about making friends said that you should always be kind, even if you were being honest when someone hurt your feelings.

“Well, I don’t think it’s creepy to want to know something,” she declared, letting go of Izuku’s arms so she could roll up her sleeves. “My Quirk…probably won’t be as good as you think, though.”

“No way! Momo-chan is an awesome person, so she must have an awesome Quirk too!”

Momo blushed and ducked her head, letting one of her matryoshka dolls form under the skin of her arm before it fell out, complete with multiple layers and everything, with bright red paint on the outside. Izuku took it with both hands, eyes shining, expression almost blank with how much awe he was looking at it with. He cracked open the first layer of the matryoshka doll and blinked, his face splitting into a super wide grin when he noticed the smaller one inside it.

“Momo-chan, there’re smaller dolls inside the bigger dolls,” he said.

Momo giggled. “I know. I made it that way.”

“Wow,” he breathed, unfolding the next layer. “You can make these?”

“I can make something, as long as I know what it’s made of.” Momo scrunched up her face. “As long as it’s not too big, either. When I try making too big things sometimes I can’t finish them and then I feel really hungry afterwards.”

“Wow,” he said again, like he couldn’t say it enough. He looked at her, eyes bright and shining. “It really is an awesome Quirk!”

“You think so?”

“Definitely! The best I’ve seen!”

“Even better than All Might’s Quirk?”

Izuku hesitated, but then vehemently nodded his head. “Even better than All Might’s Quirk!”

“Wow,” Momo said, slapping a hand to either side of her face as she felt herself blushing. “That’s really nice.”

Izuku blushed too. “Can I…keep the…this?” He held up the doll.

Momo nodded, just as eagerly as he had earlier. “Of course!”

“Thanks,” he said, beaming at her. “Can I—can I maybe take notes on your Quirk too?”

Momo hid her laughter behind her hand as she erupted into giggles.

Suddenly, Izuku was even more a part of Momo’s life than he had been before. He came with his mother every time she came to clean (which was every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday). He came on other days sometimes too, without Inko, just so he could spend time with Momo.

Those days, Momo thought, were the best days.

Those were the days when Izuku talked her into crazy things, like climbing up one of the trees in their courtyard for no reason despite the fact that it would leave their clothes (and them) dirty and stained. They were also the days when he’d challenge her to races, but instead of running they’d just slide across freshly polished floors in their socks. They were the days when they’d try to sneak up on each other at various points in the house, because Momo told Izuku about the book she read that said stealth was important for heroes.

They were the days when Izuku and Momo would crowd around one of her father’s computers, pulling up clips of heroes fighting. Izuku liked to talk about their Quirks, and Momo found she liked to talk about them with him too.

They were the days when the snuck into father’s study, and Izuku found diagrams of random objects and challenged Momo to make them. It didn’t usually work out, but sometimes it did, and Izuku yelled and cheered. Afterwards, they always snuck into the kitchen, where Izuku made new snacks for her to try. Those didn’t usually work out either—Izuku had a wild imagination, and, apparently, malfunctioning tastebuds.

They were days when they did homework and read quietly next to one another, too, but there was something inherently special about these days. Something that came from the fact that Izuku wouldn’t have to leave to help his mother fold laundry or prepare dinner—not because he had to, but because he refused to not help. They were the days where the world was theirs for the taking.

They were the best days.

They had been friends for about a year when Momo saw one of the bruises for the first time. It was on Izuku’s arm, right below his elbow, and she only saw it because Izuku had rolled up his sleeves to wash his hands. He didn’t even realize his mistake until Momo grabbed his arm, yanking his hand out of the water gracelessly.

Izuku stiffened. “I—I tripped. I’m really clumsy. You know that.”

“Izuku-kun.”

Momo had gotten a closer look at his arm.

“R-really, Momo-chan! It’s just from falling on the ground a little roughly, that’s all!”

“Izuku,” she said, despite how improper it was to not use the honorific. This was serious. Her mother had mentioned not being mean to him because of his Quirklessness all those months ago, but this… “This is a burn mark.”

He deflated all at once, finally tugging his arm free from her grasp. He ran his own fingers over the edge of the mark. “I-It’s okay!” he said, offering Momo a bright smile, though his eyes watered slightly. “Kacchan—he just—he plays a little rough sometimes. It’s my fault, really! If I weren’t so—so—useless, I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t—”

Momo frowned. She still didn’t…she didn’t know! How was she supposed to comfort him? She knew she wanted to, but she didn’t know…

“You’re not useless,” she said.

Izuku flinched, his eyes falling on the ground. “Okay,” he whispered, raising his sleeve to wipe the first of the tears from his eyes.

Momo hesitated. Why was she still so dreadful at this?

“If Kacchan and I were to fight,” she said, very slowly, “how should I use my Quirk to beat him?”

Izuku sniffled, wiping at his eyes again. And then he took a deep breath. “You’d want to make something to disorient him, like a flashbang, or a…”

It wasn’t enough that time.

It wasn’t long after that when Izuku asked the question.

“Momo-chan?”

She hummed in acknowledgement.

“Are you my friend? Even though I don’t have a Quirk?”

Momo was quiet for a long moment. It had puzzled her, a year ago, when her mother had first said it. It had continued to puzzle her, as she got to know Izuku more and more.

It had puzzled her all the way until she’d seen that burn mark on his arm, and suddenly it was crystal clear. Other people sometimes didn’t like the people without Quirks. Izuku, because he didn’t have one, got picked on by the kids he went to school with. He got burned by them.

“Of course I am,” she whispered, because she felt like this should be between them. Their friendship was their own. It didn’t matter to her if Izuku didn’t have a Quirk, or if other people thought she was weird because she befriended him. Other people already thought she was weird, because she knew big words and got perfect scores on every test. Izuku had never judged her for being who she was. She simply refused to judge him for the same.  

Izuku beamed at her, and she smiled tentatively back.

Chapter Text

“Imagine this,” Izuku said. Momo looked up at him, marking her place in the history textbook she’d been writing, and blinked.

“Why are you sitting like that?” Momo asked, trying to hide her amusement as she did.

He shrugged. Well, as much as a person could shrug while sitting completely upside down, curls hanging off the edge of the couch with his feet thrown over the back of it. “I think best this way?”

“You think best upside down?” Momo clarified, unable to fight off the amused quirk to her lips. She should scold him for sitting like that, probably, but something about it was endearing to her. It was just so…Izuku.

“There’s science behind that, you know!” he said, lips lifting into a bright smile, one of those ones that she only ever saw when he hadn’t gone to school before coming here. He was as tight-lipped as ever about his experiences at school, but he was also as committed to wearing long sleeves no matter the season as he had always been. Momo could tell something was wrong, even if he wouldn’t say. Middle school was worse for him than primary school was.

Momo only wished there was more she could do to help him. If only he would just say it, out loud, what he went through. Her family’s lawyers would be more than capable of dragging his middle school through the ground, at the very least.

“I know,” she said, instead of anything she was thinking. “I’ve read some of it. It works off of the premise that increased blood flow to the brain would make it possible for neurons to fire faster.”

“Exactly!”

“Pray tell, why do you need increased blood flow to your brain today, Izuku-kun?”

“See, I was getting to that,” he said, right before somersaulting off the couch with a soft grunt. Momo hid another amused smile behind her hand as Izuku situated himself on the floor, crossing his legs beneath him and smiling up at her, though it was tinged with a touch of shyness that hadn’t been there before. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, then said, “It’s your birthday in a week! And I’ve got ideas for what we could do!”

Momo blinked, did calendar math, and realized he was right. It was the fifteenth of September, which meant, in roughly a week, it would indeed be her birthday.

Which caused her to realize something else.

“Oh, no,” she said softly.

Izuku paused, that familiar doubt creeping into his eyes. “Oh, no?” he repeated, questioningly.

“Oh, no!” Momo said, somewhat frantically. “It’s got nothing to do with you, I just realized something!”

“What…did you realize?”

Momo winced. “The Japanese Billboard Charts are coming up, and since my parents work so heavily in support, we always attend the promotional gala too, and—”

“It’s on your birthday this year, isn’t it?” Izuku finished, his eyes widening slightly as he realized.

“Yes,” Momo said, watching as Izuku’s face minutely fell. She was sure hers probably matched his, though, considering they’d spent their birthdays with each other since they’d met. It was silly, to get so worked up over something so small—she was about to be twelve in a week, for goodness’ sake—but she couldn’t help herself regardless. A birthday not only spent without her best friend, but also in the company of all those other kids, the ones that just never quite seemed to understand her? It seemed…dreadful.

Izuku, as per usual, recovered first, flashing her a bright smile. “It’s alright. We’ll just spend the day after together instead! I noticed a new bookstore was opening in town last time I went to observe a fight there and I went to check it out because I thought you would love it and it’s so cool in there but if you wanted to do something more, I don’t know, special? I’ll go with special. If you want to do something more special for your birthday, we could do that too, or anything really, or—”

“Izuku-kun,” Momo said, and his jaw snapped shut, a hand coming up to cover his mouth like he always did when he caught himself muttering. Momo frowned, reaching forward to seize his wrist and tug his hand down. “I have to ask Mother and Father, but…you could come with me, maybe? The galas are always very boring, but I can’t imagine they would be so bad with you there. Besides, there are all sorts of heroes in attendance every year. I know you would probably love to meet some of them.”

Izuku’s eyes brightened for all of one instant, bringing a smile to Momo’s face, before Izuku’s entire expression seemed to crash all at once as he turned in on himself. “O-oh,” he said, and he was stuttering again. It was never a good sign when he started stuttering. “I, um. Thank you, Momo-chan, I w-would like to, uh, go, but I just—I wouldn’t belong.”

“What do you mean you wouldn’t belong?” Momo asked. “You’re my best friend. Of course you would.”

Izuku shook his head vehemently. “I—I’m Quirkless, Momo-chan. It d-doesn’t bother y-you, somehow, b-but…”

Here they were again, at this cusp of something Momo never quite had the words for. She wanted to grab Izuku and shake him and tell him that it didn’t matter, that being Quirkless wasn’t something to be ashamed of, that it wasn’t even something he was in control of, that she didn’t care and nobody else should either.

But she couldn’t say any of that. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough, as long as he wore long sleeves in unseasonably warm weather.

“I’m going to help my mom with dinner,” Izuku announced suddenly, standing up and using one sleeve to wipe tears out of his eyes that Momo didn’t even realize were falling. He pulled his wrist gently out of her grip in the process, and she let him go. “It’s going to be great tonight, I promise.”

“Okay,” Momo said, watching him go.

She wished she had done more.

She should have done more.

The gala, like Momo had expected, turned out to be horribly boring. There were a few children there of similar age to her, though they were rarely of the same mind. She wished Izuku would have come, but whenever Momo had brought it up he’d just shaken his head no and insisted he couldn’t possibly go. Momo wouldn’t push him.

She only hoped she was making the right decision.

What was exciting, though, was the day after. Izuku and Inko showed up at the manor early in the morning, Izuku laughing and bouncing on his heels in a way that he hadn’t done in a week between the gala and whatever was happening with that Kacchan of his. He gripped Momo’s hands immediately as soon as he saw her—something that, inexplicably, made her face feel a little warmer than it ever used to.

“We’re going to the new bookstore!” Izuku exclaimed, raising their joined hands up into the air animatedly. “It has three stories, Momo-chan! Three!”

“Don’t get too excited, now,” Inko said, laying a gentle hand on her son’s head. She was fighting off a fond smile, though, as she looked at the two of them. “We have to get Yaoyorozu-chan back by one, remember?”

A delicate hand landed on Momo’s own shoulder, and she looked up at her mother, who also smiled softly. “Well, it’s not very proper,” she said, “but I suppose, if you must get Momo back a little later than that it would be alright.”

“Yes!” Izuku cheered, squeezing her hands as he did. “I have so much to show you, Momo-chan!”

Momo giggled, reflexively moving one of her hands to cover her mouth before she realized Izuku was still attached to the other end of it. She immediately flustered—if she hadn’t already been blushing, she certainly was now—and tried to let go of Izuku’s hand. He shot her one of his bright, patented smiles in response, but didn’t let go of her hand.

“My, my,” Mother said, covering her smile with a hand. “Thank you again for doing this, Midoriya-san. Are you sure you don’t want any reimbursement?”

“Oh, no, thank you,” Inko immediately said, waving away Mother’s concern easily. “I’m happy to do this. Alright, you two. Go ahead and get settled in the car, I’ll be there in a moment.”

Izuku beamed at her and immediately wasted no time, dropping one of her hands so that he could pull her towards the backseat of his mother’s simple four-door sedan. He held steadfastly onto the other hand, though, which was making Momo feel…It wasn’t bad, whatever it was, but it was weird. She’d held hands with Izuku a thousand times, after all.

Maybe she was coming down with something?

Izuku finally let go of her hand, but to her surprise, it was only so he could open the door for her.

“Oh?” Momo said, feeling her cheeks warm even more at that. She was most definitely coming down with something.

“Yeah!” Izuku said, curls bobbing enthusiastically in time with his head. “You know who Crimson Riot is, right?”

“I do,” Momo said, using the excuse to slide into the backseat of the car to hide her face. There was a lull in the conversation while Izuku followed, shutting the door behind them.

“He’s an older hero,” Izuku said, sounding breathless for no really good reason as he buckled his seatbelt. “I found these videos of him online, where he was doing interviews, you know? And he talks about this thing called chivalry all the time, right? And I’d heard the term before but I decided to look into it a little bit more and you know what I found? You know how in some of those really old books we find in your father’s study sometimes—those pre-Quirk ones, where all the guys wore top hats almost exclusively? Anyway, apparently chivalry was a thing back then too! Except it was slightly different! They’d open doors for other people and stuff and walk roadside when accompanying someone just to be nice. I thought I’d give it a shot!”

“Oh,” Momo said, as she buckled her seatbelt to hide her blush. Izuku wasn’t wrong, about any of that, except for one little detail.

All of that was usually done when a man was trying to court a woman, at least as far as Momo understood it.

She slapped her hands over her flaming cheeks as Inko sat down in the driver’s seat. She cast the two of them an amused look in the rearview mirror for a moment. “What are you two talking about back there?”

“Chivalry!” Izuku said without missing a beat. Then, predictably, because he was Izuku, he immediately launched into a very similar explanation to the one he’d given Momo a moment ago. Momo didn’t mind, though. How could she? There’d always been something fascinating about Izuku’s speech, about how precisely he could talk through his thought process. It was easy to listen to him talk, about anything and everything.

It was almost entrancing, though that was far from a new observation Momo had made.

They arrived at the bookstore after a thirty-minute drive. Izuku took Momo’s hand again, while Inko gave them both a small smile and reminded them to find her in the café inside the store at noon. Momo and Izuku roamed together, for a while, before Momo got particularly attached to one book about military history from different parts of the world with detailed schematics of weapons inside it. She got particularly stuck on one of a cannon—could she make those? She wasn’t sure she was big enough, and the design was more complicated than anything she’d attempted before, but if she could make one... Besides, a cannon would have a lot of practical uses for hero-work too, as far as she could tell.

Momo turned the page in the book she was nose-deep in and found another diagram, for a piece of archaic siege weaponry called the trebuchet…alright, so that one was definitely too big to make, but maybe she could make it piece by piece and assemble it? That would be a bit of a team effort though. She would probably need someone with some sort of strength-enhancing Quirk or size-enhancing Quirk to help assemble it.

“Momo-chan.”

Momo startled, then looked over at Izuku, who had just appeared beside her. There was something a little bit different about him, compared to his jubilant excitement from before. Something a little more…unsure. What would he have to be nervous about, though…?

“I got you, didn’t I?” he asked, a little bit of the nervousness fading out of his smile as he did.

“You got me,” Momo agreed, belatedly. “What does that make our score?”

“I’m winning, seven to five,” Izuku said, automatically. “It’s easy to sneak up on you when you’re reading books.”

Momo made a noise that was slightly undignified but appropriately indignant as she closed her books. “You villain. You only brought me here to increase your score, didn’t you?”

“Not exactly,” Izuku said, all of his nervousness from earlier suddenly returning, despite her joking with him. To her surprise, he gently tugged the book out of her hands and set it back on the shelf. “Will you…come with me? Please?”

Momo only nodded, both intrigued by his behavior and a little worried about him. She expected him to take them downstairs, back to Inko, maybe, but instead he took her up another flight, onto the third floor. He appeared to have a specific goal in mind, too, with how he ducked and weaved around shelves before finally finding what he was looking for. Then to Momo’s complete embarrassment he began to climb up the bookshelf, like an absolute heathen.

“Izuku-kun,” she hissed, reaching out to grab his ankle.

He looked back at her, flashing her one of those smiles that said get up come on follow me. “Trust me, it’s fine,” he said. He nodded back to the shelves. “Isn’t it suspicious they don’t have any books on them when all of the others do?”

Momo had to concede that point, at least, but still… “What if you topple the bookshelf?”

“That won’t happen,” he promised. Momo still wasn’t convinced, and clearly wasn’t, judging by the way Izuku’s face fell slightly. “I checked, Mo-chan. It’s welded to the floor. Very thoroughly.”

Mo-chan? That’s so unfair of him, to just bust out new nicknames when he wants me to do something…

“Fine,” Momo consented, though, and Izuku beamed. He finished his climb and Momo followed him, surprised when he pulled himself up onto a little ledge she hadn’t seen before. She followed him up, though he gave her a hand to get over the final lip of the ledge, and she found herself standing in a cozy lounge overlooking the rest of the store, though it was comprised almost entirely of beanbags and backless couches for some reason.

“Ta-da,” Izuku said, somewhat nervously, spreading an arm to show off the area.

“How did you find this place?” Momo asked, her voice brimming with undisguised awe. She never would have even seen it from the ground, let alone tried to get up here if she hadn’t.

“I saw the shelf-ladder,” Izuku said, smiling shyly at her, “and followed it up. The owner of the bookstore has a beetle mutation Quirk that gives her functioning wings. I asked her about it when I met her the first time. It’s actually a really fascinating Quirk with a lot of interesting implications behind it!” Momo smiled to herself—Izuku said that about all Quirks, though that wasn’t to say it made the observation any less true. “She designed this little area for other people with wings, because it can be uncomfortable to sit in regular chairs for a long time with them.”

Momo immediately glanced around again at that information, though this time it was a little more anxious and less awed. “We shouldn’t be up here, then, we don’t want to take any seats from anyone that needs them.”

“No one else is up here right now,” Izuku said, wrinkling his nose slightly as he thought about something. “And if we weren’t allowed to be here, the shelf ladder wouldn’t exist.”

Momo…supposed he had a point there.

“As long as you’re sure,” she said.

Izuku responded by smiling and sitting down on the floor. He wasn’t dangerously near the ledge, but he was close enough that he would have a good view of the bookshop below them. Momo tentatively sat next to him, and all of a sudden, his nervous energy increased tenfold. Momo was about to ask him what was bothering him, when he spoke on his own, voice soft.

“Happy birthday,” he said. “Belated birthday, anyway. I’m…sorry.”

“What do you have to be sorry for?”

“That I didn’t go with you yesterday. You wanted me to go with you, and you’ve done so much for me, and I was being a terrible friend by just saying no like that, and you’re my best friend in the world, Momo, and I care about you, and I just said no and refused to go like some—like some—”

“It’s okay,” Momo said, because he looked like he was about to cry. “It’s okay. Izuku-kun, those events are always terrible anyway. You probably wouldn’t have liked it. And the other kids—”

“I could’ve taken it,” Izuku said, shaking his head vehemently. He looked frustrated, now. “I deal with it every single day, I don’t know why I couldn’t just do it for you too—”

“It doesn’t matter what other people think, Izuku-kun.”

“Yes it does. It does matter.” Izuku sniffed, wiping at the angry tears falling out of his eyes. “It doesn’t matter to me, but they’d hurt you too for trying to be nice to me. I’ve seen it happen before, and I couldn’t—”

“Izuku-kun,” Momo said, as she realized what he was working towards here. “Are you saying that you didn’t want to go to the gala just because you wanted to protect me from what you thought the others would say about me? Is this—is this about being Quirkless?”

“It’s always about being Quirkless,” he said, his voice breaking slightly over the last word. “But no. No, I was just trying to—I was just protecting myself.”

“What do…what do you mean?”

“I just thought you’d hear what they said,” he said, looking away, “and I didn’t want you to agree. And it’s selfish, and stupid, because they’re always right—what they say about me, I mean. But you never cared, and I know that, and I…I shouldn’t assume you’d be like them. That you’ll ever be like them.”

Momo blinked back her own tears, and then flung her arms around his shoulders. “I don’t care, Izuku-kun,” she whispered. “I would never judge you for being the way you are. It doesn’t matter to me. It never will.”

“Okay,” Izuku said, with a bit of a sniffle.

Momo wasn’t sure if it really was, but she squeezed his shoulders a little tighter anyway and hoped for the best.

It only took a few minutes for Izuku to compose himself enough to lift one of her hands off of his shoulder and press something into it instead. Momo made a curious noise as she lifted her arms from his shoulders, turning the new object over in her hand. It immediately brought a smile to her face when she saw what it was—so Izuku, but also very her, too.

“Fat Gum has a Quirk a little bit like yours,” Izuku said, one finger on the bright yellow paint of the Fat Gum inspired matryoshka doll Momo held in her hand now. She cracked the first layer of the Fat Gum doll, revealing another inside of it. Her smile widened even more. “He doesn’t create anything, but he releases energy stored in his body’s fat reserves too, which is really similar to what you do. Which is why I had to get this for you as soon as I saw it.”

“Where did you see it?”

“One of those high-end craft stores that sells custom hero merchandise,” he said.

“And you got it for me yourself?” Momo asked, resealing the outermost layer as she looked back at Izuku’s face. He was still looking at the Fat Gum doll, but he looked up to meet her gaze for just a moment before looking away, his cheeks tinted pink with embarrassment.

“I did. I saved up my allowance for a while.”

“Thank you,” Momo said, hugging the tiny Fat Gum to her chest. “I love it.”

He blushed even harder, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment. “D-don’t mention it!”

They stayed there for as long as they could, only leaving at five minutes till noon, when they left to go meet Inko. Izuku challenged Momo to a race—which she did not accept, because racing in stores was not very proper at all. Not that her refusal mattered, since they ended up racing anyway, just with Momo scolding Izuku the entire way instead.

It was late December when it happened for the first time.

“Midoriya-san?” Momo said, more surprised than she should be to see her family’s housekeeper was working. In all fairness, her surprise was indeed justified—it had been years since the last time Inko had come here without her son, and as far as Momo knew, he wasn’t sick or anything, yet…he wasn’t here.

Inko grimaced like she knew what Momo was thinking, setting the snack tray down on Momo’s table. “He’s in the laundry room,” she said, voice low like it was a conspiracy. “He…doesn’t want you to see.”

“Is it bad?” Momo asked, instantly sitting up. “Is it…?”

“Not exactly,” Inko said, with a soft sigh and a shake of the head. “You…you should talk to him, Yaoyorozu-chan. Enjoy the snacks.”

She left the room then, and Momo considered. Her hand found the Fat Gum matryoshka that Izuku had given her without her even realizing it, and she popped it open, studying the smaller Fat Gum inside. She closed it again, huffed, and sat it aside.

It was pointless to pretend like she was considering doing anything other than going down to the laundry room to talk to him, so she might as well just go.

Sure enough, Izuku was in the laundry room, his back turned to Momo. Curiously, he’d pulled a chair up to the folding table and was using it as a desk, the motion of his shoulder rolling in time with his writing. She couldn’t make out the sound of his pencil scratching over the sound of the washers and dryers, though she’d seen him like this often enough to know it was there.

“Izuku-kun?” she called out, soft and hesitant.

He stiffened immediately, but didn’t turn to look at her. “I—I didn’t want you to see.”

“What happened?” she asked, drawing closer. “Did Kacchan…”

“Actually,” Izuku said, raising one hand, “I started this fight.”

Momo gasped softly as she saw the scrapes on his knuckles, drawing closer to inspect them further. She took his hand in hers first, examining his knuckles, and then lifted her eyes to his face.

“Your eye,” she whispered, her gaze sticking on the bruise around his left eye. It was a nasty one, dark and purpling.

Izuku grimaced. “I’m not proud,” he whispered, barely audible over the machines in the room. “I just—”

“What happened?” Momo whispered back.

“Tsubasa-kun,” he said, after a long exhale through his nose. “He’s a boy in my class. He happened to see I was texting you at lunch, and he said…”

“You can tell me.”

“He said only a fool or a—a—”

“You can tell me,” Momo repeated, voice soft.

Izuku shook his head. “No,” he said. “It was…bad. And completely wrong. You would never…with… But the point is that he said it, and he said it about you, and you—you’re so kind, and good, and one of the only people that ever—ever did anything nice for me.”

Momo blushed. “I—I’ve never done anything special! It’s mostly just you that’s helped me, and—” Abruptly, she realized she was still holding his hand and immediately released it. “I just mean, Izuku-kun, you’re all those things too. I wouldn’t be nearly as…confident, or anything, if it weren’t for you.”

He met her gaze, green eyes searching and searching for something. Momo couldn’t help but stare back, wondering what he’s looking for. Wondering if he found it, whatever it was.

Izuku looked away, cradling his own hand in his other now. “The other guy does look worse, though,” he said. “And I’m on suspension for three days.”

“Don’t pick fights in my honor anymore,” Momo said, pointing at him threateningly. She could feel she was still blushing, though, so the effect was somewhat ruined.

Izuku nodded, eyes wide, curls bobbing. “I won’t, I promise!”

“Good,” she said, clasping her hands in front of her. “That’s good. Oh! I want to try making a cannon, what do you think?”

“A cannon?” he asked, eyebrows lifting in wonder. “You think you can?”

“Probably not,” Momo said, after a moment of deliberation. “However, you only know if you try, yes?”

“You only know if you try,” Izuku agreed, popping up from his seat. “Let’s go to the garden! It’s nice out today, and there’s more space there anyway.” He pumped a fist in the air, then added, “You’re gonna make a cannon! I’m gonna be there for moral support.”

Momo tucked a giggle behind her hand. “Yes, let’s go to the garden.”

“After you,” Izuku said, giving her a sweeping bow like the butler often did, pointing in the direction of the door. Momo giggled again, heading towards the door. She heard Izuku follow behind her after a beat, his footsteps steady behind her and slightly to the side. When she got to the garden, though, she paused—looking back at Izuku. He blinked at her, clearly slightly surprised at the interruption.

She nudged a shoulder against his. “Thank you, though. For looking out for me, even though I wasn’t there.”

Izuku looked away, his sudden blush contrasting violently with the dark bruise on his eye. “Sure,” he said. “You—you would do the same.”

Momo gave him a small smile. “Well, I don’t think I would punch anyone. What were you thinking, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Izuku said, shuffling slightly. He rubbed the back of his neck—an all-too-familiar nervous tick of his. “I don’t really think I was thinking, if I’m honest.”

“We’ll have to work on that,” Momo said, reaching out to rap her knuckles softly against his head. It was a gesture that surprised her, not just because of the ease and familiarity with which she performed it, but also because she hadn’t meant to do that at all.

Momo froze. Why had she done it, if she didn’t mean to do it? How did…?

Izuku laughed softly, pushing her hand away from his head gently with one of his own. “I know, I know. I won’t do it again, Momo-chan. I promise. I don’t like that I did it in the first place, that I could—I could…That I was capable of being just like him. Heroes are supposed to protect people, not—not attack them.”

“That’s not true,” Momo said, and Izuku’s gaze whipped to her in surprise. “Heroes are supposed to attack people when those people are villains, and their actions are going to hurt others.”

Izuku’s expression shifted into one of frustration almost instantaneously. “Yeah, but—”

“You shouldn’t make a habit of it,” Momo said, voice soft. “But I think it was heroic of you to—to stand up for someone, all the same.”

Goodness, she was so embarrassed saying that. It didn’t make any sense, either, her embarrassment. What she said was true, after all!

“Th-thanks,” Izuku said, looking just as embarrassed outwardly as she felt inwardly. “B-but! There’s more to being a hero than beating people up!”

“Yes, there is,” Momo agreed with a small smile.

“Like making cannons?” Izuku said, one of his cheeks dimpling as he gave her a lopsided smile.

Momo’s heart fluttered at the sight of it, and for just a moment, she forgot how to speak. “Y-yes! Like making cannons.”

Izuku laughed and Momo looked away, taking a moment to compose herself as she recalled the various cannons she’d been researching. Whatever she’d been going through when she was around Izuku lately was so embarrassing. She just hoped it would stop, soon, or she didn’t know what she’d do. She simply couldn’t continue making a fool of herself all the time like this.

Momo took a deep breath, the feeling of the cannon bubbling under her skin. “Alright, I think I’ve got it,” she told Izuku.

Her first attempt at making a cannon proved to be an absolute failure, as her first attempts often did, but that was alright.

She had time to figure it out. They both did.

Chapter Text

“Midoriya-san?”

Inko hummed pleasantly at her name, indicating she was listening even as she continued to methodically wipe down the counters. Izuku wouldn’t be over until later—his class had gone on a field trip today, and therefore let out later than usual—so if Momo was going to ask this, now would be the time to do so.

“You have a degree, don’t you, Midoriya-san?”

Inko paused in her wiping, something invisible and heavy settling on her shoulders before she turned to look at Momo. Her face spoke of something wistful, nostalgic, maybe a little bit sad. “Why, who told you that, Yaoyorozu-chan?”

“I…overheard,” Momo admitted, somewhat sheepishly. “You were on the phone with someone the other day, and I heard you say that you never imagined doing this with your degree.”

Inko smiled softly at Momo, before returning to wiping the counter. “Doing your stealth training with that wild boy I call a son again, hm?”

Momo blushed in embarrassment. “I apologize, Midoriya-san! I never meant to invade your privacy I was just…”

“It’s alright to be curious, Yaoyorozu-chan,” Inko said, her voice pleasant and kind. “I, for one, will never discourage a child from asking a question.”

“I’m not a child,” Momo protested, almost immediately. “I’m thirteen.”

Inko laughed softly. “So you are. You’ll always be a child to me, though, Yaoyorozu-chan.” Inko shook out the rag she was wiping the counter with before rinsing it in the sink. To Momo’s surprise, Inko left the rag in the sink, though, crossing to the bar stool Momo sat on. She leaned across the counter, drawing a spare piece of paper and a pencil from Momo’s school supplies to her with her Quirk, where she began to sketch something out.

To be completely honest, Momo enjoyed talking to Inko. She was a kind, soothing woman, with soft eyes and a sharp mind. She’d told Momo once that she enjoyed company while she worked, and therefore, Momo could never bother her. She understood, too, what it was like to have heavy dreams crushing your shoulders, if only because she had Izuku as a son. So sometimes, when Izuku was gone and her parents were working, Momo would set up shop here, working on her homework while Inko worked quietly. Sometimes, they would have conversations like this one.

“I have an Associate’s Degree,” Inko explained as she sketched. “In fashion design. It had always been my dream, just like you and Izuku have always dreamed of being heroes. I even used to be a model, back in my day, believe it or not.” Momo could believe it, certainly. Inko was tired and often a little frazzled, and came to work almost exclusively in plain clothes with her hair tied back in a stern way and no makeup on, but she was very pretty, despite that. “I graduated college and went straight into my career, working up from just a desk assistant as I went. I even met Izuku’s father that way, you know, since the support company he worked for at the time would sometimes outsource the costume designs to us.”

“My parents work in hero support,” Momo said. “Surely they wouldn’t mind giving you a job in their company, doing what you want.”

“Dreams change, sweetheart,” Inko said, turning the page around so Momo could see the finished product. It was a hero costume for Momo herself, cute and stylish if a little silly, considering Momo would need more exposed skin than that for her Quirk, but done with impeccable skill all the same. Off to the side, Inko had written it should be red.

“Red?” Momo questioned.

“It would be a good color on you, with your hair being black,” Inko said. She gave Momo a wink. “Besides, red is Izuku’s favorite color.”

Momo blushed, a little more forcefully than she had when she was just embarrassed, though she didn’t quite understand why. “Thank you, Midoriya-san. It’s a beautiful design. I don’t see why you ever stopped.”

“I had Izuku to look out for,” Inko said, shrugging slightly as she did. “If only the world were as kind to the Quirkless as the Yaoyorozus are, everyone would be happier.”

“What do you mean?” Momo asked, tucking the drawing into one of her school folders and giving the woman her full attention.

“When he was little, I used to take Izuku to the daycare at my old job,” Inko said. “After his diagnosis, though, I received a mysterious demotion that meant I would no longer get childcare benefits. I tried suing, for a while, but unsurprisingly, a well-off fashion company has much better connections than a mother. The lawsuit turned into a bit of a financial drain, so I eventually had to abandon it. It was around that time that Izuku’s father left too.”

“Izuku-kun never talks about his father,” Momo noted.

“Izuku has no reason to talk about his father,” Inko said, something hard and distant in her voice. “He traveled a lot, even before he officially left. He makes all his child support payments on time, but other than that, we don’t hear from him much.”

“That’s awful,” Momo said. “You’re his family, I can’t believe he’d just leave you behind like that.”

“Some people view family different than others, I suppose,” Inko said, sighing softly. “Choose your men carefully, Yaoyorozu-chan—not all are as good as they seem.”

Momo was grateful Inko had her back turned, for all the blushing she was suddenly doing. “I’ll keep that in mind!”

Inko laughed, as if she were privy to Momo’s embarrassment anyway. “Well, dear, to answer your question about why I work here instead of designing costumes or something like that: I knew your parents through my work. When I explained my situation to them, they were more than happy to take me and Izuku on. I did consider joining their company instead and putting Izuku in daycare through them again, but, well…it didn’t feel right. I’d rather be there for Izuku instead, and they were kind enough to offer me this position, so I took them up on their offer. I don’t think any of us expected you and Izuku to end up such good friends, though.”

“I’m grateful we did,” Momo admitted, smiling softly as she did. “Izuku-kun is my best friend.”

There must have been something in the way she said it, because Inko immediately turned, giving Momo her Inko look. She usually reserved it for Izuku, in those moments where he was particularly mulish, but Momo was not immune to it either. She swallowed thickly, though did her best to hide it from Inko. “Out with it, Yaoyorozu-chan. Why are you really here with me today?”

Momo sighed. She wasn’t sure if she was just that obvious, or if Inko was that intuitive. “Well, it’s something Tanaka-san said to me today. It’s ridiculous, I don’t know why I’m so hung up over it.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Inko said, shaking her head slightly. “If it bothers you, it bothers you. There’s no such thing as something being ridiculous if it hurt your feelings.”

“Well,” Momo ventured, voice still hesitant. “I need to order new contacts, still, so I had to wear my glasses to class. Tanaka-san said that I finally looked the part of the bookish loser on the outside as well as the inside.”

There was a moment of silence while Inko seemed to consider what she wanted to say. These pauses weren’t uncommon for Inko, as familiar to Momo as the woman herself was. She claimed, in her past, she had a problem with talking too quickly and rambling nervously—a problem she had unwillingly passed along to her son—but she had been striving to break it now for reasons she hadn’t disclosed to Momo. Momo could guess, though, that as with most things Inko did, it had something to do with her son.

“One thing you will never be is a loser, Yaoyorozu-chan,” Inko said, nodding decisively along with her words as she did. She crossed over to the counter again, leaning her elbows against it and making eye contact with Momo. “Bookish, sure.” She tweaked Momo’s nose, startling a giggle out of her, though she hurried to cover it up. “But never a loser. Don’t forget that.”

In the background, a door opened and closed. Since it was the door by the kitchens, that most likely meant it was Izuku coming in. “Thank you, Midoriya-san,” Momo said. Inko beamed at her in return, straightening to return to her task just as Izuku shuffled into the kitchen, rubbing his arm up and down. There was a slightly vacant look to his eyes that Momo had grown to know all too well.

It had been one of those days.

“Izuku,” Inko said in greeting, though there was an edge of worry to her voice. Momo knew that all too well, too.

And Izuku—brave, strong, kind Izuku—somehow picked the pieces of himself up off the floor. A light came back into his eyes, even if it was dimmer than usual, and he pulled one of his Izuku smiles out of somewhere, one of the brightest, broadest, most beautiful smiles possible. “Hi, Mom,” he said. “How are you today?”

Momo could go a thousand lifetimes and never figure out exactly how he did that—how he managed to set so much hurt aside, how he managed to keep it to himself, how he always managed to get back up. It was, Momo thought, what made Izuku who he was. It was a kind of strength that so few people possessed.

Izuku turned to look at her then, too, his eyes lighting as his grin softened into something just for her. “You’re wearing your glasses!” he exclaimed, sounding so bright and cheerful Momo wouldn’t believe he was the same hollow and vacant boy that had shuffled into the kitchen a moment ago if she hadn’t seen it herself. “You look so pr-pr-pr—uh—ah—”

Inko laughed softly as Izuku slowly turned more and more red with his words. Momo, inexplicably, turned red with him. Inko patted him consolingly on the head. “She does look pretty with her glasses, doesn’t she, Izuku?”

Izuku’s face blanked out, looking not all that different from a blue-screening computer except a lot redder, until he eventually stammered out what was possibly the most stilted “yeah” Momo had ever heard. Immediately after that, he ran to the bathroom like a man on a mission.

Momo, as it happened, kind of wanted to do the same as soon as Inko turned a knowing gaze on her.

She’d been called pretty before, so why did it affect her so much when it was him?

One day, Izuku was late.

It wasn’t that Izuku had never been late before—sometimes his bus over to the Yaoyorozu Manor got delayed by this or that. Sometimes he ended up with so much work from school that he texted her with a thousand apologies to say he wouldn’t be there that day. Sometimes—even though everyone told him to stop doing it—he got distracted by a villain fight in the area and went to observe it. So Izuku was late often, but he always said something if he was going to be.

Momo couldn’t focus on her math, so she went to the kitchens, where she found Inko tidying up. “Midoriya-san?” she asked.

Inko, as warm and bright as her son, turned to Momo with a smile. “Yaoyorozu-chan! How are you doing?”

“I’m well, Midoriya-san,” Momo replied, somewhat hesitantly. She’d talked to Inko a thousand times before, but she still hesitated to bring this up, just in case everything was okay and Izuku’s phone had just died. Inko was a chronic worrier, though she did her best to mitigate it, and Momo didn’t want to contribute to her many troubles if she didn’t have to. “I was wondering if you knew where Izuku-kun was.”

Inko’s smile faltered. “He’s not with you?”

“No, Midoriya-san. I haven’t heard anything from him.”

“Oh, dear,” Inko said, checking her phone as she did. “Well, I’m sure he just got caught up with something at school. He’ll be here as soon as you know it.” She tried to keep her voice bright, but her worry bled through anyway.

“Of course,” Momo said. Neither of them mentioned that it had already been hour since school let out, and even if he was just busy with something else at school, he would have certainly been here by now.

She tried to go back to her homework, but she couldn’t do it. She could only worry.

She checked her phone, then checked it again. There was nothing there. She read a book, but couldn’t focus on it. She tried to practice with her Quirk, but it felt sluggish.

She checked her phone. Two and a half hours had passed now, and there was nothing.

Three hours in, she was debating finding Inko again when her phone rang on the cushion next to her. She barely checked the caller ID before she thrust it to her ear.

“Izuku-kun?” she asked, in lieu of answering with a typically greeting.

“Momo-chan, I’m sorry,” he said on the other end of the line. Momo immediately sat up. She’d known Izuku for seven years. She knew what he sounded like when he’d just gotten through crying.

“What happened?” she said, already standing in case she needed to throw on shoes and run to him herself. “Are you alright?”

There was a long, worrying pause, and then, very quietly, “I’m okay. I had a run-in with a villain. Actually, I had a run-in with a villain twice. It’s okay though. I was saved.”

Momo guffawed, even though it wasn’t very polite, and they were over the phone so he couldn’t see anyway. “Izuku-kun! Twice?”

“Uh…”

She sighed, massaging her temples. “I can’t believe you. You weren’t chasing after villain fights, were you?”

“I sort of was.”

“Izuku-kun.”

“Don’t worry about me, Momo-chan. I’m alright! Besides, I got a lot of interesting information about the villain’s Quirk.”

Momo sighed, but close and personal information about Quirks in a fight was more intriguing to her than she wanted to admit. “Are you going back to your place today instead of coming here?”

“That would probably be for the best, unfortunately. I mean, it is 6 p.m. There’s not much of the afternoon left anyway.”

Momo sighed again in response. He was right, of course, but she still wished she could see him in person anyway. “Yes, you need to rest. We can talk about that villain’s Quirk tomorrow, though?”

“Ah, uh…actually, tomorrow doesn’t work great for me. Maybe the day after?”

Momo frowned, but it wasn’t like Izuku had never been busy randomly before. Things came up sometimes, she knew that. “That should work with my schedule,” she said.

“Thanks, Momo-chan. You’re the best.”

Momo felt her face warm ever-so-slightly. “Flattery won’t get you anywhere here, Midoriya Izuku. Call your mother, she’s probably worried.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll call her. Seriously, though. Thanks.”

“Anytime,” Momo said. “I’m just glad your safe.”

“…Me too.”

It was only later, long after she’d gotten off the phone with him, that she saw the sludge villain attack on the news. She didn’t know who the boy he saved was, but she noticed they were wearing the same school uniform. He must know him, then, even if the people from his school are less than pleasant. The fact that Izuku ran into save him—whoever he was—made a lot more sense than it had before. When she saw that All Might saved them, though, she paused.

All Might had been Izuku’s favorite hero for years. If he had been saved by the man, there was no way he would have just forgotten to mention it to her. So, then, why didn’t he?

Izuku’s appearances gradually got more and more sparse after that. The worst part was that something was clearly bothering him—when he did come, he was always exhausted, falling asleep on her shoulder and staring off into space for long periods of time. And he wouldn’t tell her what it was that was bothering him, either.

She got an answer, in a roundabout way, when she rested her head against his arm one night in early December and found her head resting on solid muscle instead of the spindly stick arm that had been there the last eight or so years.

“Izuku-kun?” she questioned, lifting her head.

Next to her, he stiffened, his grip tightening on the history textbook he was reading. He glanced to her and away, reading the question in her expression. “I’ve been training,” he said. “To get into UA.”

“For how long?” Momo asked, squeezing his arm experimentally. It was a little rude, maybe, and Izuku stiffened, proving she definitely shouldn’t have done that. He really did have muscles now, though. And somewhat large ones, at that.

“A—a few months!” he squeaked out. “Eight months!”

Momo did mental math in her head, and didn’t like the answer she came up with. “Since the sludge villain?”

“Y-yeah. Since then.”

Momo stared for a long moment. There was so much she could say right now, so much she should say. “You…” she started, but stopped. “You know—”

“I know it’s dangerous,” he said. For a moment, he looked angry, but that was wrong. No, what she was looking at there was him overflowing with determination, more so than she had ever seen before. “To take the UA entrance exam, even while Quirkless, I mean. You—you don’t have to lecture me. But I have to at least try. I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t at least try to get into UA.”

A sort of tension that had never existed between them before that moment settled in the air. It was the sort of tension that begged a perfect resolution, the best words to say.

It was dangerous for Izuku to go into the entrance exam Quirkless, especially since support items weren’t allowed. He already knew that, though. Besides, Momo could never say that to him. She could never look him in the eyes and tell him he couldn’t be a hero because he was Quirkless, in more words or less. She had always believed he could be a hero because, in so many ways, he was already her hero.

Momo took a long, deep breath, then let it out, nice and slow. Midoriya Izuku was a force to be reckoned with, she knew this. She had always known this, ever since she first talked to him, with his bright smile and his fierce eyes, going out of his way to make her comfortable even though he thought she didn’t even like him.

“What have you been doing to train?” she asked.

Izuku blinked at her, staring at her like he was seeing her for the first time, his bright green eyes glimmering like he was on the verge of tears. Considering he so often was on the verge of tears, Momo wouldn’t exactly be surprised if that were the case. “Strength training.”

Well, the frankly impressive size of his biceps certainly made sense now.

“I want to show you some of the martial arts training I’ve been doing with a quarterstaff,” Momo said. “I…am not a professional, so I doubt you will catch on as quickly as you potentially could.”

“Momo-chan…”

“I also want to help you study!” Momo added, before he interrupted her. “We have been studying together, I mean, but I want to continue to do so. We—I want us to be in this together. We have two months to cram as much as we possibly can in, and I want to do that.”

He stared for another long, long moment. “You’re willing to help me that much? Even though I’m Quirkless?”

“Of course I am,” Momo said. “What sort of best friend would I be if I let you go into that exam anything less than perfectly prepared?”

Izuku gave her a smile—so bright yet somehow still watery—that made her heart flutter strangely in her chest. The next thing she knew, Izuku had pulled her into a hug, his arms wrapping tightly around her waist as he rested the side of his head against hers. An errant green curl tickled her nose slightly, and she smiled a small smile before burying it in Izuku’s shoulder. He smelled like pine trees and sweat, familiar even after all these years.

He smelled, Momo thought, like home.

“You’re the best,” Izuku whispered, right by her ear, and Momo felt her heart flutter again as her face warmed.

Then, suddenly, the epiphany.

Oh, she realized. Oh, that’s why.

Somewhere along the line—it was hard to say where or when, to pinpoint one specific moment—but somewhere…she had fallen for her best friend.

Chapter Text

It was, Momo realized, so much easier to offer to help train Izuku in martial arts of some sort before she realized what it really meant to do so.

In other words, it meant she had to fight him. The fighting itself wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Momo had never seen Izuku in short sleeves so often before, nor had she had to touch him so often while he was only wearing short sleeves before, nor had she seen him sweat-slicked before now, nor had she had to watch him run his fingers through his hair, nor—

Izuku knocked her feet out from under her again, spinning the staff she’d made him around like it was second nature. She let out a soft groan as she hit the ground, again, and resisted the urge to rub the sore spot on her lower back where she’d connected with the ground. Izuku made a soft sound of alarm as she fell, just as concerned as he always was.

And that was another thing. He was so amazing. He was no master with the staff or anything of the sort, given that he had little regard for proper technique (just as Momo suspected he would, before they started). Though she could easily beat him on most days, he was also unexpectedly crafty. She was beginning to suspect that nobody could think on their feet like how Izuku could, and on days like today, when she was already distracted, that didn’t bode well for her.

Izuku knelt next to her as she sat up, helping her with one hand in her own, pulling her forwards with another at her back to support her in case she fell back again. He furrowed his brow at her in concern, and Momo made the mistake of looking him directly in the eyes for a moment before she looked away, blushing furiously.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, his words tumbling out of his mouth in a steady stream. “I thought for sure you would dodge that—normally you do dodge that—but I don’t know what I was thinking going for a hit like that anyway. Do you feel alright, though? Do you need me to go get icepacks? Or bandages? Or both? I can—”

“I’m alright,” Momo said, deciding it was best to interrupt him before he got even more anxious about the whole thing, when it was her fault for not dodging the attack in the first place. “It may bruise, but it isn’t horrible.”

Izuku breathed out a long, relieved sigh, a bit of the panic in his eyes softening. “That’s good.” He dropped both of his hands, apparently satisfied that she wasn’t going to keel over at any particular moment and sat back on his haunches. Momo, for her part, tried not to miss the contact—and blushed even harder when she missed it anyway. Izuku gazed at her worryingly, the corners of his mouth turned down slightly in a frown. “What’s gotten into you?”

Momo sighed, tucking both her legs beneath her neatly so that she was sitting in a more proper way. They were in the ballroom of her manor—it was an antiquated room, certainly, and it was rarely used it—but it had a lot of space and was quite good for this. It had become their spot, over the last month, where they spent most of their time. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” Izuku said, his voice soft. He considered her, his green eyes glinting in the light. Under that gaze, it was almost as if he could see through Momo, could see exactly what was bothering her. Momo could only hope that wasn’t true. She still hadn’t decided what she was going to do about her—her crush, though that word felt to juvenile to really encompass what she felt for Izuku. Some days, she worked up the courage to just walk up to him and say it—she knew Izuku wouldn’t let it come between their friendship, even if he didn’t feel the same—but she lost the words to tell him as soon as they formed.

In some ways, she felt almost as if she wasn’t any different than when she’d first met Izuku—trying and failing to talk to him over and over again, all the while hoping maybe he would take the first step.

“Are you nervous about the entrance exam next week?” Izuku asked, when he was finished trying to diagnose her ailments with his eyes.

Momo let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, playing it off like a tired sigh. “Yes,” she said, because although her nerves over the upcoming entrance exam for recommended students wasn’t the cause for her distraction today, she was still nervous about them.

Izuku smiled softly at her, relaxing into a more comfortable sitting position. “You don’t need to worry, Momo-chan. You’re going to do great at the exam.”

“You don’t know that,” Momo said, avoiding eye contact as she so often did these days.

“I do,” Izuku insisted anyway, bobbing his head in affirmation with his words. It caused his curls to bob with him, and the gesture was just as adorable now as it had been when they were seven. “You’re Yaoyorozu Momo, and you’re the most amazing person I know. If UA doesn’t accept you, then they didn’t deserve you in the first place.”

Momo blushed so furiously that she slapped both hands over her cheeks, giving Izuku a half-hearted glare as she did. She ignored the fluttering of her heart in her chest at the words. “You can’t just say stuff like that,” she told him, tone reproachful. “My heart can’t take it.”

Izuku laughed softly. “Of course I can say it. It’s true, you know.” His own face started to turn a little red, though, and he looked away as well, suddenly becoming very interested in the floor. “’Course, you already know how I feel.” There was something in the way he said it that brought a question to the forefront of Momo’s mind, but before she could work the idea into words, Izuku had already moved on. He stood, dusting off his pants as he did, and offered Momo a hand up. She accepted it, even if it made her feel nervous and jittery inside, and stood across from Izuku, the dull ache of her back already fading to the background of her mind. “You ready to go again?”

Momo nodded, and they both fell into position across from each other.

Momo felt fairly confident about her scores on the recommended entrance exam. She’d done well on the written portion (she did well on every written portion of any test), and she’d come in first out of her group for the remedial testers. She’d say her shots of getting accepted were fair.

Still, when the letter came, she waited for Izuku. She was almost certain it was an acceptance letter, but they would open it together, regardless of what it was.

The day it came in the mail, Izuku came there directly after he got out of school, skirting right past his bemused mother in the entry hall to make a beeline right for her. She laughed when he skidded across the freshly polished floors in their hall, until he grabbed the hand that she hid her laugh behind and hauled her across the floors with him.

“Izuku-kun, stop!” Momo said, even though she was still laughing. “You’ll get us in trouble!”

“Don’t deny me this!” Izuku cried, bounding around her in excitement. “We’ve been waiting for this forever!”

“Alright, alright,” she conceded, producing the letter from behind her back. “Let’s open it in the ballroom.”

He raised an eyebrow incredulously. “The ballroom? For that itty bitty little envelope, there?”

“We’ve been waiting for this forever,” she reminded him. “Such a grand thing warrants a grand space, yes?”

Izuku grinned, pointing at her like she was the winning contestant on a game show. She hid another laugh, leading the way back to the ballroom now. Izuku, laughing the whole while, settled in the spot exactly in the middle of the room, sprawling out and patting the space next to him. Momo took it, though she sat much more dignified than the boy next to her.

She took one breath in, to steady herself, and then she opened the letter. A disk slid out and clattered to the floor, immediately projecting an image up into the air. Izuku clutched at her arm excitedly. “It’s Principal Nedzu,” he hissed.

“It is,” Momo observed, smiling faintly at the projection as he announced her acceptance into the hero course at UA. Izuku got tenser and tenser with excitement with each passing word, barely able to contain himself. It was no surprise that when the message finally ended, he was wrapping her in a hug that was both a lot tighter and a lot sturdier than it was a year ago. Momo tried not to feel too overwhelmed inside his embrace, but judging by how hot her face felt, she didn’t think she succeeded.

“You got in,” Izuku whispered excitedly in her ear.

“I know,” she whispered back.

“You’re going to be an amazing hero,” Izuku said, squeezing her once before letting her go.

“Thank you,” she said, somehow both relieved and incredibly sad that he wasn’t hugging her anymore. “Now we just have to get you into UA, hm?”

Izuku smiled sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck as he did. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, we do.”

“I don’t feel great about it,” Izuku confessed.

They were in the kitchen. Izuku, because he had to be, to help his mother with dinner. Momo was here because, truthfully, she had nowhere better to be. She had offered to help Izuku peel the potatoes he was working on, earlier, but he had just laughed and said he wasn’t letting her anywhere near a knife.

She would have argued the point, but she was self-aware enough to know that it was probably for the best.

“What do you mean?” Momo asked, watching as he deftly relieved the potato in his hand of its skin with practiced motions. He was intently focused on his work, but she knew it was only an excuse to avoid looking at her.

“I didn’t get any points,” he said.

Momo froze. “Not a single one?”

Izuku had already explained the basics of the exam to her—destroy robots, get points—but to go into the exam and not get a single point seemed…impossible.

“I panicked,” Izuku said, sighing. He sounded small and defeated, in that way that he always did when he mentioned the names the other kids would call him. “I did save someone, though, so I’m not completely dejected.”

Momo smiled to herself. It was just like him, to care about everyone but himself. “I’m sure that saving people must count for something,” she mused. “It is a hero course, after all.”

“Are you suggesting a secondary point system?”

“Yes,” she said. “It would make sense to judge candidates on multiple categories, such as their ability to work as a team, their strategic prowess, or their inclination towards helping others.”

He hummed, but otherwise didn’t respond. This was fine, since Momo was content to watch him work. There was something soothing, in watching the methodic motion of him at work.

“Momo-chan.”

Momo started out of her thoughts, turning a smile on Izuku. She noticed, out of the corner of her eye, that he had stopped peeling the potatoes. He held one in his hand, half skinned, the knife loose in his grip. “Yes?” she asked, flicking her gaze up to his face. He stared off into the middle distance, lost deep in his thoughts somewhere. She rested her hand on his shoulder lightly, just to bring him back.

Izuku’s gaze snapped to hers, and there was something electric in his eyes. “I need to tell you something,” he said, his voice even quieter than it had been before. “But I need you to keep it a secret.”

Momo’s heart constricted painfully in her chest. A secret? Was this what had been bothering him, for all these months? “Of course, I can keep it secret,” she murmured, subconsciously leaning in slightly as she did. As much as she’d theorized about what he was going to say about the last year, when he finally spoke about it, she realized, suddenly, that she still had no idea.

“I have a Quirk now,” he whispered. “I received it. From All Might.”

“What?”

It was a testament to her complete and utter surprise that she used such a simple expression at all.

“I—” Izuku started, but he clamped his jaw shut as the door to the kitchen was knocked open. Inko came through the other side, a plethora of pots and pans stacked in her arms. She paused when she saw them, gazing wide-eyed between the two of them.

She looked shocked enough that Momo immediately took stock of their positioning. She was standing right next to Izuku, practically pressed against him, leaning into his personal space to hear him better. Momo immediately took a step backwards, resisting the urge to straighten her blouse and clear her throat.

Inko recovered first, and well, plastering a bright smile over her face. “Yaoyorozu-chan, I didn’t know that you were in here. Oh, Izuku, I see you already started on those potatoes.”

“Ah, right,” Izuku said, and he jerked into motion, working on the potatoes again. Inko drifted further into the kitchen, setting the pans on the counter. Momo reached out to help her steady them—she wasn’t permitted near the knives, but she could be helpful in this way, at least. Inko, graciously, did not comment on the faintly pink tinge to either teenager’s cheeks as she set to work.

Momo waited until she was busy, standing over a pan of sizzling vegetables, before she placed a hand on Izuku’s arm, temporarily stilling his motions. He looked over to her, the question evident in his eyes, and she bit her lip, a little unsure. “Meet me in the ballroom after dinner to talk,” she said. He nodded, though he didn’t look particularly confident about his decision.

Momo made a hasty retreat after that, her mind reeling.

The ballroom door fell open, and then closed. Soft footsteps sounded on the ballroom floor, and then, hesitantly, Izuku sat down next to her.

“Hey,” he whispered. It felt like a night for whispering.

“Hello,” Momo responded, shifting so that she could face him.

He sat with his knees pulled all the way up, arms wrapped around his legs. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you,” he said, immediately, apparently not as unwilling to talk about it now that the cat was out of the bag, so to speak. “I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, actually. I tried to not tell anyone. I really, really tried. But I couldn’t not tell you. It’s you! You’re the only person that’s ever believed in me, and I couldn’t just not tell you, especially since—”

“Izuku-kun,” Momo interrupted, gently, pressing a finger to her lips. “Shh.”

“Sorry,” he murmured, pressing his face against his knees. “Gods, I’m so sorry. I should’ve just told you from the very beginning.”

Momo tilted her head in acknowledgement, but she would reserve her own judgement on that for later. “What did you mean when you said that you received a Quirk from All Might?”

“His Quirk,” Izuku said, slowly, like he was trying to think around a way to tell her something. This wasn’t going to be the full truth, then. “He can pass on his Quirk to someone else by giving them his DNA. He received it from someone else before then, and from someone else before that, and so on and so forth.”

“Quirks don’t work that way,” Momo said, shaking her head in disbelief. Not of Izuku—she knew that he wasn’t lying about this much at least. She was in disbelief of All Might, instead.

Izuku flinched. “I shattered my arm and both of my legs when I used it.”

“What?!”

“Shh, shh,” he said, making placating gestures with his hands. “The first time I used it at the entrance exam, I shattered my right arm and both of my legs. It’s real. I have a Quirk now.”

“That’s not possible,” Momo said, staying firm in her belief in this. There was a lot that they had learned about Quirks over the years. They were attached to a person’s genetic code, they couldn’t just be given to someone at will.

Izuku sighed, and held up his hand. “I’m not going to actually use it,” he said, “but you can feel it thrumming when it’s activated.”

Momo sighed and nodded. She supposed she owed him this at least.

He turned his hand over, and ever so slightly, it began to glow, humming with power. It was only there for a moment and then it was gone, but it was there.

“You really have a Quirk,” Momo whispered, taking his now normal hand in both of her own.

Izuku nodded. He looked like he was on the verge of tears. Knowing him, he probably was.

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you at first,” Momo whispered. “Let’s work on it, together, if you’ll let me help.” She wrapped her thumb around his significantly larger one and linking their hands. It was impulsive, and most likely sent her into a blushing storm, but she did not let go. “So that you don’t break all your bones every time you use your Quirk.”

Izuku’s hand tightened over her own as he grinned, like they were making a pact with one another. “Let’s do it,” he agreed.

Chapter Text

It was a little strange, Momo realized abruptly, that she had been best friends with Izuku for eight years and never once set foot inside his home that entire time. He’d only ever been in hers—tagging along when his mother came to work, or arriving on his own, to work on homework with Momo or teach her mother how to bake when Inko wasn’t available to help.

(Momo still remembered the first time he had done that. Her mother had become interested in English biscuits, and as was usual with her, that interest quickly turned to experimentation. However, she had about as much talent in the kitchen as Momo did, and had called Inko on her day off in sheer desperation. Izuku had answered the phone, and though his mother was out with one of her friends, he had come by anyway, gently coaching her mother on the importance of sugar and proper oven temperatures. The biscuits Izuku had made had turned out wonderful, even if the same could not be said of her mother’s. More amusing to Momo, however, was the fact that Izuku continued to happily help her mother bake several more times after that.)

“Oh, Yaoyorozu-chan,” Inko said, as soon as she opened the door. Inko was nervous, wringing her hands together in that same way that her son did. Momo could understand why she was nervous with aching clarity. No one was ever entirely comfortable having the daughter of their boss inside their home, no matter how friendly the relationship between the boss and the employee was. “Izuku told me you would be coming by today. Would you like to come inside?”

“Yes, thank you,” Momo said, ducking her chin into the soft knitting of her turtleneck to hide her embarrassment. It was February, one of those cold, unforgiving sort of days that gave everyone pink cheeks and tangled hair. Momo didn’t mind, necessarily—she had always preferred the cold, herself.

The apartment was…small. Smaller than Momo had expected, certainly. Surely her parents paid Inko enough to afford something bigger? Or, maybe, Momo realized, as she looked around at all the pictures of Izuku in varying ages tacked up on the walls, this place will always feel like home to her. It was a charmingly cozy space, with plants lining the window and soothing colors painted on the walls. Momo loved it at once, tempted to pick up and examine and learn every little knickknack lining the shelves that she would never find in her own home.

“Izuku is in his room, if you’d like to head on back,” Inko said, shutting the door behind Momo. “Or I can go and fetch him, if you like.”

“I don’t want to trouble you,” Momo said, clasping her hands in front of her and clenching them tightly, a nervous habit of her own. “I can—I can go myself.”

Inko smiled softly at her. “The bedrooms are through that door there,” she said, pointing it out. “You’ll know which one is his. Can I get you anything while you’re here?”

“No, thank you,” Momo said, burying herself even further in the collar of her turtleneck as she slid off her boots.

“Yaoyorozu-chan, I’d just like to say…” Inko trailed off, and Momo looked up expectantly. Inko seemed to blanch under her gaze and started blushing, the same way her son did—starting with the cheeks and working its way over her whole face from there. “Thank you!” Inko blurted. “For being such a good friend to my Izuku. It makes me so happy to see him happy.” She huffed, swiping at the corner of her eyes with a knuckle. “Oh, dear. I was so certain I wouldn’t cry too.”

Momo, who was rather used to Izuku’s tears, laid one hand on Inko’s shoulder, rubbing a gentle pattern with her thumb. “It’s alright, Midoriya-san,” she said. “Izuku-kun is an extraordinary friend. I consider myself lucky to know him.”

“Bless your heart,” Inko said, grabbing her hand and giving it a little squeeze. “You run on along now while I get dinner started. You let me know what’s in that letter, you hear? Izuku won’t let me near it.”

“Why not?” Momo asked, tilting her head in confusion. Izuku loved his mother more than anything. She couldn’t see him purposefully excluding her.

Inko huffed. “He doesn’t want me to see it at the same time he does because he says one Midoriya crying a river at a time is enough.”

“Ah,” Momo said, as the realization struck. She hid her laugh behind one hand. “That sounds more like him.”

“That boy,” Inko agreed, rolling her eyes fondly. Momo smiled at her again, traversing the small apartment to arrive at the door that Inko said led to the bedrooms. She stepped through it into a hallway and—ah. Izuku’s room was quite easy to spot, indeed. The first clue was the name tag, of course, but Momo would have known anyway going off the incessant muttering occurring within it. She’d arrived just in the nick of time, then. She knocked softly on the door, and the muttering stopped. A few moments like that, and Izuku opened the door, peeking out at her. For some reason, he didn’t open the door all the way even when he realized who was on the other side.

“I thought that was you,” he said. He sounded out of breath, most likely due to all the muttering Momo had heard emanating from the room earlier. “You have a distinctive knock.”

“Yes,” Momo said, tilting her head again to try and peer around Izuku. He quickly moved to block her view with his body. She quirked an amused eyebrow at him. “Am I not allowed to see?”

Izuku started blushing, in the very same way Inko had blushed earlier. Like mother like son. “It’s embarrassing,” he muttered.

“Is it covered in posters of All Might?” Momo asked.

There was an awkward pause while Izuku suddenly looked anywhere but at her face. “…It might be covered in posters of All Might.”

“Well, then you don’t need to be embarrassed, since I already know you well enough to predict that,” Momo said. Sound logic always won out with Izuku.

He sighed, then offered her a wobbly little smile, opening the door a little wider. “Come in, then.”

Momo did, unable to conceal the laugh that arose when she realized just how All Might themed the room really was. The man’s face was plastered in every corner, lining every shelf. There was even an All Might comforter, smiling at her from the bed in the corner. Izuku clutched at his hands, wringing them nervously as she looked around. There was something inherently Izuku about this room, despite All Might being everywhere. Everything smelled faintly of pine, but moreover, the room was obsessively neat and even—orderly in the way Izuku kept his things orderly even though he himself was hopeless—and clean underneath all of the various recreations of All Might’s face, too. She found she loved it, for all the same reasons she’d loved the rest of the apartment. It was lived in, it was personal, and it felt like Izuku’s home. “I like all the All Might merchandise,” she decided. “It wouldn’t be you if it wasn’t here.”

“Hush, you,” Izuku said, nudging her shoulder with his. She’d unlocked the full-face blush, though, which had been her primary objective.

“Well?” she asked, smiling as she did. “Where’s the letter?”

Izuku jerked, then flailed, then snagged it off the desk, holding it out for Momo to observe. “It feels heavy like mine did,” she noted, grinning at Izuku as she did.

“That doesn’t mean anything!” he protested. “They could send everyone the holograms!”

Momo raised an eyebrow. “I doubt even UA has the sort of budget necessary to sustain that and battle royale exam formats featuring combat robots on an annual schedule.”

He sighed. Sound logic always did win out with Izuku. “I guess. Here, give it over. I should open my own letter, right?”

Momo handed it over, but once it was in Izuku’s hands, he just stood and stared at it. She waited patiently for about a minute and a half. “If you’re not going to open it, give it here and I will,” she said, holding her hand out.

“No, I’m going to open it!” Izuku exclaimed, clutching the letter against his chest like she was going to take it from him by force. Which was fair—she was certainly considering it, if he didn’t hasten the process.

“Open it, then,” she said.

“I will, I will,” he said. Then he promptly stared at it some more.

This time, Momo lost patience thirty seconds in, and snatched the envelope out of Izuku’s hands. Before he could even make a sound of protest, she had the envelope torn open over his desk. A hologram appeared in front of them and it was—

“All Might?” Izuku spluttered, staggering forward and gripping his desk with white knuckles.

“Did he tell you he was teaching at UA this year?”

“No,” Izuku said, sounding completely and utterly betrayed. Momo hid her smile in her turtleneck.

All Might went on, going over the rescue point system (“I told you there was a secondary point-based system,” Momo told Izuku smugly. He punched her softly in the arm.). When he showed a clip of a girl with brown hair cut in a bob that tried to offer up some of her points for Izuku, Momo felt an unexpected and painful clenching in her chest.

“Is that the girl you saved?” Momo asked softly.

“Yeah,” Izuku said, staring wide-eyed at the projection of her on the hologram.

Momo looked at the girl and then back at Izuku, at the wide-eyed way he was staring at her as she spoke, like she’d hung the stars in the sky. She felt something distinctive and unpleasant unfurling in her gut, but she did the best to tamp it down. Jealousy wasn’t a good look on her, especially not after just observing one thing completely out of context.

Izuku clutched at her hand, interlacing their fingers together effortlessly and squeezing tightly, as if holding her hand was the most natural thing in the world. Her jealousy was alleviated with it, blowing away like leaves in the wind. “I got into UA,” he said, sounding like he didn’t believe it. “I got into the hero course at UA.”

Momo glanced at the hand clasped in hers, trying not to focus on the rough feel of Izuku’s callouses against the smooth skin on the back of her hand. “You did,” she said, but it sounded like her ears were stuffed with cotton. “We’re going to be in the hero course together.”

“We are,” Izuku said, beaming at her, with that smile that shone as bright as the sun itself.

“You’re going to be a great hero,” Momo said, meaning it with her entire heart.

He squeezed her hand, then let it go. “We both are.”

Momo’s heart fluttered painfully in her chest. Soon. She would have to find a way to tell him soon.

“I feel like the trick here is just using less of your Quirk,” Momo said, lifting her glasses off her face to rub some of the dryness out of her eyes. She sat the book about Quirks she was reading on her knees, then closed it in a moment of frustration, setting it aside.

On the floor, Izuku sighed. Momo put her glasses back over her eyes and glanced at him. He was sitting with his back up against the sofa Momo was sitting on, legs sprawled out in front of him, one ankle crossed over the other, scowling at his own book on Quirk theology. “Easier said than done. That’s what we were trying earlier.”

“I know,” Momo said, sighing dramatically. She slid off of the couch and sat next to Izuku, folding her legs beneath her and leaning against his shoulder slightly. They’d devoted the day to working on Izuku’s Quirk, but had made frustratingly minimal progress. After two hours of trying to accurately assess how much he could handle—impossible to really experiment with, when he could accidentally break his arm if he used too much (and he felt like everything was too much)—they’d turned to some of the books in her father’s study for a bit of wisdom instead.

Izuku set aside the book he was reading, though he kept his thumb hooked on the spine, and pulled out his phone. He tilted the screen slightly towards her automatically as he pulled up his messages. “All Might said to try five percent, but I don’t really know what five percent is.”

“He didn’t show you?”

“No, he showed me, it’s just—” He let out a defeated sound. “I don’t know. It’s weird. His five percent is still super strong—we were jogging with it, and he was still probably moving as fast as a car on a suburban street. It’s the same Quirk, but for some reason, it seems to work a little differently for the both of us. I just don’t have the focus I need to control it. I didn’t get anywhere with him either…”

“Maybe we’re all going about it the wrong way,” Momo theorized, tapping her chin in thought as she did. “All Might doesn’t use the Quirk in just one body-part, right?”

“Oh my gods,” Izuku breathed. He closed his book, then whipped his head around to look at her. “Oh my gods, Momo-chan. You’re right. He’s got to be using it in his whole body, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before, especially considering…well, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.” He looked around the sitting area, then back at her, then grinned. It was his determined grin, the one that meant he had an idea. “Let’s go to the garden.”

Momo smiled back at him, accepting the hands he offered to her to pull her to her feet. “It’s freezing outside.”

“Hopefully we won’t be out there for too long,” Izuku said.

And so it was that they ended up bundled up and standing across from each other in Momo’s family garden extremely close to the spot where they first met, snow drifting idly around them while the wind teased their hair. Momo bundled her scarf a little tighter around her face and put her hands back in her pockets, gazing at Izuku.

He took a deep breath, balling his hands up into fists and pulling them to his side, bending his knees as he fell into some sort of fighting stance that had no basis in actual technique (as per usual, with him). He closed his eyes, taking deep breaths.

“We don’t have to do this if you’re worried you’re going to break your arm,” Momo said.

“I’m not going to break my arm,” Izuku said, and when he opened his eyes, they glowed with an electric green Momo had never seen before. His skin began to glow faintly too, and then, finally, green lightning erupted from his skin, spreading outwards as it did.

“Wow,” Momo breathed, as she took in the sight of him. He looked like something out of a storybook instead of a person, some sort of storm god or brilliant, avenging angel. Quite honestly, she could probably stand there and stare at him all day with him looking like that, but they had come out here for a reason, and standing around wasn’t it. “Can you move, Izuku-kun?”

“I…don’t know,” he said, his whole body shaking, but he was somehow grinning at her anyway, bright and determined.

“Alright,” Momo said, taking her hands out of her pocket to settle into a defensive position. “Let’s try and spar while you’re like that.”

“No,” Izuku said, voice sounding forced. “I don’t have great control over this, I could hurt you.”

“I’ll be alright, I promise,” Momo said. “I trust you.”

“What?” Izuku squeaked, his Quirk dissipating out of existence with his shock. Momo giggled softly at his expression, hiding her expression in her scarf. “You…trust me? Why on earth would you trust me enough to fight you while using a power that breaks my bones?”

Momo sobered immediately, closing the distance between them with a few steps. She seized Izuku’s hands with her own—a gesture he was fine with initiating, but when Momo did it he turned into a tomato, which was honestly adorable—and gave them a squeeze. “I trust you, because you’re you, Izuku-kun. You’re the smartest person I know. You’re kind, caring, and have more determination in your pinkie than most fully grown men have in their own body. I lo-uh—” Momo cut herself off, cheeks flaming. Now was not the time. “I know you won’t hurt me. You would never hurt me. Alright?”

“A-alright,” he echoed faintly, and Momo hurriedly let go of his hands and stepped back. She fell back into her fighting stance as she did.

“Come at me this time,” she said. “I’ll be okay.” Izuku stared for a moment longer, face extremely red and extremely blank. Momo waited for a few moments for him to recover on his own, then called, “Izuku-kun?”

He made a strangled sound, slapping both his hands over his cheeks forcefully and then settling back into his fighting stance. “Okay! Okay, I’m—I’m firing it up.”

He closed his eyes again, breathing deeply, and then, quicker than he had before, he started to glow. The same green lightning flared outwards from him, reflecting off the light snow coating the yard. When he opened his eyes, they burned with the same electric green energy as before.

“Ready?” he asked.

Momo nodded.

Izuku lunged toward her—much faster than should really be possible—and Momo dodged with a half-aborted yelp escaping her lips. Izuku skidded, not able to control his body powered by his Quirk as it was, and then tumbled, his feet flying over his head. He crashed into the stone bench that had been behind Momo, breaking it, and then slid directly into the delicate, swan-shaped topiary behind that. Apparently, the swan was enough to stop him, if the groans emanating from the Izuku shaped hole were any indication.

Momo winced sympathetically, both for his injury and the fact that he’d just ruined Yamamoto’s—the stern, elderly fellow that had served as a butler to the Yaoyorozus for longer than Momo had been alive—favorite project.

As if thinking his name summoned him, the doors to the third floor balcony flew open with terminal velocity and Yamamoto himself appeared, locking gaze with Momo first and then the ruined topiary. He screeched in rage and distress.

“Crap, is that Yamamoto-san?” Izuku asked. Momo turned to look at him and found he’d already started climbing out of his swan-shaped grave. She offered him a hand, which he accepted readily.

“Seems like it is,” Momo said, trying hard to keep the amusement off of her face for Izuku’s sake.

Izuku groaned, letting go of her hand to flop dramatically back into the topiary he’d just crawled out of. “Save yourself, Momo-chan. Tell my mom I love her for me.”

“MIDORIYA IZUKUUUUUUUUUU!” Yamamoto shrieked from his balcony. “YOU ABSOLUTE HEATHEN! JUST YOU WAIT UNTIL I GET DOWN THERE!”

“I’m sorry, Izuku-kun, but heroes don’t leave people behind,” Momo said, reaching into the bush to grab his arm and haul him out of it. The sound of the balcony doors slamming above them echoed around the courtyard, and Izuku (now on his feet) and Momo looked at each other. They nodded.

“We should run,” Izuku said.

“We should most definitely run,” Momo agreed. She turned to the fallen bush swan, giving it a respectful bow. “Rest in peace.”

Izuku laughed and bowed too. “Rest in peace, Bush Swan-san, Stone Bench-san. I’m sorry for murdering you.” He reached out to grab Momo’s arm, face still alight with amusement. “Time to flee the crime scene, Momo-chan.”

“Indeed,” Momo agreed, laughing as Izuku dragged her away.

The whole thing reminded her of when they were seven and had recently met. Izuku was just as clumsy then as he was now, always breaking something or another that belonged to her parents (her parents didn’t mind, oddly enough, just laughed at Izuku’s antics and bought a replacement for whatever had been broken). Yamamoto was as Quirkless as Izuku was back then, but if Momo didn’t know that already she would have sworn he had some sort of Quirk that allowed him to detect whenever something in the house was broken, because he showed up without fail every single time. They ran from him without fail every single time, too.

As Momo ran and laughed, though, watching as Izuku’s curls bounced with every step in front of her, she could only hope that they would continue to do this, always.

“What’d you put in for your costume design?” Izuku asked. He was sitting in the couch for once, though he still sat like a heathen regardless, with one leg drawn up. Momo sat in the armchair across from him, reading a reference book and trying to copy the molecular structure of a rare metal alloy described in it with her Quirk.

Momo produced a metal block that didn’t look like the one in the picture, frowned, and added it to the reject pile she had going. “I didn’t put in much, just told them what I needed. Whatever support company they’re going to outsource to is going to know more about costume design and necessary items for a hero student than I will.”

Izuku frowned, scratching out something on his notebook. “I wouldn’t be so sure. Mom says some support companies try to cut corners wherever they can, so it might be better to be more specific rather than less.”

Momo hummed thoughtfully. “What are you putting in for yours, then?”

Izuku smiled and turned his notebook around for her. “It’s the base design my mom made for me, but I’ve added a few things at All Might’s behest, like some sort of armored padding in the suit, and bracers to better support my limbs while I’m learning. I decided to add a mouthguard meant to look like a smile, and I went ahead and requested basic medical supplies be installed in some of the pouches on the utility belt, though I want to leave some of them open in case I need to add something to them later. I added gloves too—All Might doesn’t wear them, but I always thought that was kind of silly, you know—if you’re going to be punching someone, you should probably get some sort of padding on your own knuckles. I think just wearing my own shoes will be fine, but I read that steel toes are pretty standard for heroes, so maybe I should request those too—”

“You should request them,” Momo said, decisively. “UA is paying for the suits, so you might as well get whatever you need.”

“Good idea!” Izuku said, jotting something down on his paper. “Mom made my utility belt red to match my shoes, so maybe I should request red boots with a steel toe? I think I will, actually. Now I just need to figure out what to do about the Quirk forms…”

“You haven’t figured out what to register your Quirk as yet?” Momo asked, somewhat surprised. “I thought you would have figured it out by the entrance exam.”

“No…” Izuku trailed off, sighing, and closed his notebook. “All Might said going with something vague would be best…you know, call it Super Strength and say it’s a muscle augmentation Quirk—which it is, in a way—and just dodge questions about it whenever I can in the future, but I feel like that’s…I don’t know, lame?”

Momo laughed softly. “It is quite lame. We could try to come up with a better name for it then run it by All Might, if you want?”

Izuku beamed at her, his eyes practically sparkling. “That would be amazing! You’re so clever there’s no way you couldn’t come up with something good, Momo-chan.”

“I have one condition,” Momo said, setting aside her own book so she could go sit with Izuku instead. “You have to help me redesign my costume for the form.”

“Done done done,” Izuku said, words tumbling out of his mouth in his excitement. “Is that even a question? I would love to help!”

“Alright,” Momo said laughing softly. “Let’s work on this, then, yes?”

“Alright!” Izuku agreed, pumping his fist in the air. “What are you thinking?”

Momo laughed softly. “Well…that light that surrounds you when you use it looks a little bit like lightning, so you could maybe give it some sort of name that plays off of a storm motif.”

“A storm motif…”

“Yes. More specifically, I was thinking…Inner Storm?”

Izuku seemed like he was considering it for a moment, and then he snorted and chuckled, grabbing at his sides at he did. “Inner Storm… Wow, that name sounds so awesome. I don’t think I’m anywhere near cool enough to be able to pull off having a Quirk name like that. Besides, there’s no really good way to explain why a storm Quirk would give me super speed and super strength.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Momo agreed, though she was a little put out by the rejection. She thought it was a great Quirk name, anyway. “You could always go with something similar to Super Strength, just with a dash of drama, like Enhance, or Power Up…”

“Power Up?” Izuku repeated, like he was trying it out. “That would sort of work with the lightning thing too, wouldn’t it? And…it feels right, with how my Quirk feels…yeah. Yeah! Thank you, Momo-chan!”

“Of course,” Momo said, flushing with pride at his gratitude. Izuku took his phone out of his pocket, presumably texting All Might to see what he thought of the Quirk name they’d come up with. A moment later, he tucked his phone away and turned fully to Momo.

“Alright, let’s talk about costume ideas. Hey, did my mom ever do a base sketch for you?”

“She did, and it was lovely, but…”

“But what?” Izuku asked, tilting his head to the side.

“Well, it wasn’t very practical!” Momo said, blushing as she did. “I need a lot of exposed skin to be able to use my Quirk effectively.”

Izuku made a strange noise, his face flooding with color, which only served to fluster Momo more too. They both covered their faces with their hands in synchronicity with one another. “Maybe you don’t!” Izuku finally shouted, though Momo still had her hands over her face and therefore couldn’t see him.

“What?” Momo shook her head, lowering her hands. “Of course I do! You know that larger creations have to come out of my back, and that it’s easier for me to create out of my chest over any other area of my skin.”

“Hear me out,” Izuku said, waving his arms around. “You, like, sparkle when you’re creating things, you know? So if you’re fighting someone and creating something, they’ll know it’s coming before you manage to create the thing you’re creating, which means they could counter it. But if you designed a costume where you’re mostly covered, but you can unzip certain parts of it as you’re about to make a creation, then you could do that. I’d say there’s probably no really good way to get around your back, so…what about a costume with an open back, or a cutout on the back, but that you can unzip or somehow detach the front of, right when you’re about to create something?”

“Hm,” Momo said, considering it. It could work, theoretically, and being able to cover more skin meant more of her was protected, and Izuku had made a really good point about disguising the visible tells that she was making something. “I would need some way to carry reference books so I could double check formulas I’m not as familiar with making.”

Izuku’s eyes sparkled. “Why not request some kind of digital technology you could save formulas too. You could have them read on a visor of some kind, which could save you time in the heat of battle if you need to double check something?”

“That’s a good idea,” Momo said. “I’ll request a way to carry reference books, anyway, in case the technology fails or gets broken mid combat, but you make an excellent point.”

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Izuku said, fishing out one of his notebooks and flipping through it until he got to the page he kept notes on Momo’s Quirk on. He sketched out a vaguely person like shape in a mostly blank corner. “You don’t tend to create things out of your legs as often as your arms or torso, so I’d request some kind of padded cargo pants that you can unzip the sides of for when you make creations. I’d get a utility belt with some sort of attachment function, for carrying the physical books around.” He sketched that, too, as he went, adding it across her hips. “You could also store food in here, for when you need more lipids for your Quirk in an emergency, and also smaller prep items that you could make, like flash bangs or smoke grenades—”

“I can’t imagine myself just tossing a smoke grenade at someone,” Momo said, laughing slightly as she did. “That seems more…backhanded than what I would consider myself capable of.”

Izuku grinned, sketching out a rough torso on his tiny mock-Momo. “Hey, now, don’t knock it until you try it, Momo-chan. So…I’d get some sort of tank top like thing here, I think. You could have it zip and unzip from both the top and the bottom for ease of access depending on if you’re creating something from your chest or your stomach, have a cut out in the back. People would be able to see you creating from your arms and your back, but…”

“I could always add a cloak,” Momo said, and Izuku blinked, then beamed at her.

“Yeah, you could! A cloak would be a great idea, honestly, since you wouldn’t be at a high risk of tearing it when you release your creations, but it would still conceal your skin enough that nobody would necessarily know you’re creating something there. That’s a great idea, actually!” Izuku finished off the sketch with a cloak, then turned it to show to Momo. “You should request steel-toed combat boots, too, and pick out colors for everything, but there you go! What do you think?”

“I adore it,” Momo said, already scratching out the vague information she’d written on her costume form to replace it with all of the specifics they’d just worked out. “And as for colors, I think I’ll request red steel-toed boots, too, like yours. What do you think?”

Izuku’s cheeks tinged pink as he gave Momo an almost shy smile. “I like it. Yeah. We’ll, uh, we’ll match!”

Momo smiled, requesting black cargo pants with zippers on the sides in addition to the red boots, specified red for the specialized tank top, and then red again for the cape. She hesitated on a color for the belt, though, and then again on the visor. Izuku, who had been watching her write the whole thing, tapped the belt. “Yellow?” he offered. “It would, uh, go good with red and black, I think.”

Momo’s gaze settled onto Izuku’s obnoxiously yellow backpack and felt herself smile, noting a preference for yellow down on both the belt and the tint of the visor, if possible. “Yellow would be lovely, I think.”

Izuku made a strange noise, and when Momo looked over at him, he was blushing violently. “Yeah,” he said, sounding odd while he said it. “Yellow and red. They’ll be good colors on you, I think.”

Momo immediately blushed just as violently to match. “Thank you, Izuku-kun. For everything.”

“Don’t, ah, don’t mention it! I’m happy to help! And you’ve been helping me so much too, it’s only fair!”

Momo smiled. “We help each other, don’t we? It’s what we do.”

“Yeah,” Izuku agreed, smiling in turn. “It’s what we do.”

Chapter Text

Momo hesitated outside the door to the 1-A classroom. There wasn’t a particular reason for her hesitation, other than that she was inexplicably nervous. It wasn’t school itself she was nervous for. More so…the fact that this was the first time, in her entire life, that Momo was going to be in a class with her best friend.

And that they had a very important secret to keep, on top of that.

There was a scuffing sound, and a slamming sound, and then Momo looked up, startled, into the green eyes of said best friend, though Izuku seemed incredibly frazzled for no discernible reason. He made eye contact with her, then opened his mouth. “I am here!” he declared, in high, heavily accented English.

The English was a curious choice, but Momo couldn’t say she minded. There was something adorable about the way Izuku spoke the language that wasn’t there when he spoke Japanese. Maybe it was the shy tilt to his words, come to think of it—the edges of uncertainty that weren’t there when he spoke Japanese, despite him being relatively fluent in English.

“Are you?” Momo asked, also in English, giving him a small smile. “What is the reason for this language?”

“Ahhh—” Izuku said, before spouting off a series of lyrics to a song in English too quickly for Momo to understand, before he ended with his hands on her shoulders and a semi-shouted, “Freak out!”

Momo giggled at his antics, bringing her hands up to rest them on his wrists. “You’re nervous?” she asked, in Japanese.

“More nervous than I think I’ve ever been in my entire life,” Izuku agreed, bobbing his head up and down enthusiastically. “Plus I left the house half an hour early because I know you, and I knew you were going to try to be super early, and then I ran here, and then an upperclassmen yelled at me for running in the halls so I power-walked through the rest of that hall but then started running again, but I got here in time—”

“In time for what?” Momo asked, mostly to force him to breathe by breaking up his tangent.

He sucked in a deep breath, then gave Momo a smile that was somehow both incredibly shy and incredibly bright. She stared at it, and then at him, at the bright glisten to his emerald green eyes. “Momo-chan gets nervous about new things,” Izuku said, like it was a fact (and, truthfully, it was). “So I wanted to get here in time to help. Did it work? Do you feel less nervous?”

Momo felt her heart swell. He was, honestly, the most amazing thing she had ever seen, willing to go to such lengths just to make her feel better because he knew her so well that he predicted her anxiety and wanted to help ease it. She tightened her grip on his wrists, giving them a squeeze, and Izuku’s smile somehow brightened a little more. “Thank you, Izuku-kun.”

He nodded, giving her shoulders a squeeze before he let go and took a step back. “It’s weird to think that we’re classmates now,” he said. “What are the odds we would end up in the same class, too?”

“I would say 50%, considering there are two hero classes, and two of us,” Momo said. Izuku turned to her with a smile and a handful of words on his lips, but before he got the chance, they were interrupted by another voice.

“Oh, hey!” Momo looked over Izuku’s shoulder to spot the boy that spoke. He had spiky red hair and equally spiky teeth, his hand raised in greeting. The girl at his side had equally striking looks, though of a much different variety considering her pink skin, her back sclera, and the two yellow horns situated in her neat pink curls. “Are you guys in Class 1-A too?”

Izuku immediately clammed up, his mouth snapping shut and his eyebrows drawing together as he stepped slightly closer to Momo. It was an odd sort of reaction, and Momo stared at him for a moment before she realized the boy was still waiting on a response. “Yes, actually,” she said, giving him a small, polite smile in greeting.

“Hey, that’s great!” the boy with the red hair said, though the tail end of his last word was cut off by Ashido leaping in front of him and grabbing both of Momo’s hands in her own.

“I’m Ashido Mina,” she said, shaking both hands up and down vigorously. Momo noticed her eyes were a brilliant golden color—quite pretty, honestly, if a bit odd to look at—and couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm. “I’m so excited! It’s a dream come true, being able to be in the hero course!” She let go of Momo’s hands only to grab onto Izuku’s and give them the same treatment. Izuku, in turn, turned bright red and emitted a high-pitched whine like a tea kettle when it was ready. Momo stifled a laugh at his expense.

“Kirishima Eijirou,” the red head said, giving Momo a small bow while the other two were occupied.

She returned it. “Yaoyorozu Momo.”

Ashido let go of Izuku’s hands, whipping her head around to Momo. “That is such a pretty name, oh my goodness!”

“Thank you,” Momo said, though she was, admittedly, a little confused at the praise.

“Sorry about her, man,” Kirishima said, punching Izuku heartily in the arm and grinning at him. “She can be a little overwhelming sometimes, I know.”

“It’s fine,” Izuku said, blinking out of his daze though he was still a little red in the face. He seemed relatively normal again as he smiled tentatively at Kirishima.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Ashido exclaimed, turning back to Izuku. “I interrupted you before you got a chance to introduce yourself!”

“O-oh,” Izuku said, sounding slightly subdued. “It’s Midoriya. Nice to, ah, nice to meet you both!”

Momo tilted her head to the side, curious about his lack of a first name in his introduction. “Izuku-kun?”

He flushed, if possible, even darker. “Yeah?”

Ashido gasped beside them, her eyes sparkling. “First name basis? Are you two dating?”

Kirishima laughed nervously as Momo began sporting a blush similar to the one Izuku was already wearing. “You can’t just go around asking people if they’re dating, Ashido-san.”

“We’re not!” Izuku blurted out, a little unnecessarily loud. “Just good friends! Great friends! Best friends! Childhood friends, even! But not dating!”

“We’re not dating,” Momo agreed, nodding along and hoping her own blush wasn’t too incriminating.

Ashido looked doubtful (and also, strangely, delighted), but before she could say anything further Izuku barreled on. “We should go in! Into the classroom! Yes!” He jerked, with his entire body, then jerked again, then threw open the door with a determined expression and marched inside. Momo caught a determined look from Ashido, and a sympathetic one from Kirishima, and then decided it was probably best she went into the classroom too.  

There were only two other people in there. Oddly enough, Momo knew both—not intimately, but in that elite teens, when they were elite children, were dragged to all the same events. One was Todoroki Shouto—youngest son of Endeavour, quiet and ill-mannered when he did speak. He was not, nor had he ever been, Momo’s favorite person in the world to talk to, though she’d never harbored any sort of ill-will towards him because of it.

The second person, and the more pleasing of the two, was Iida Tenya. Momo had actually always gotten along with the younger Iida brother—he was, like her, bookish and a little too smart for his own good—though maybe because of that she and him had never really clicked as anything more than friendly acquaintances.

What was odd, however, was the ferocity with which Iida focused his gaze on the four of them, passing straight over Ashido, Kirishima, and even Momo herself to land on Izuku—who made a strange garbled noise in his throat before he immediately started muttering about scary people from entrance exams. Momo cast her friend a concerned look, and then turned it on Iida (though she must admit he was acting oddly compared to the polite and unbearably upfront way he usually behaved). Certainly Izuku couldn’t be talking about Iida being scary…?

“I misjudged you!” Iida declared, power walking up to the front of the classroom where they all still stood like it was his sole mission in life. “You saw the true purpose of the entrance exam while I did not! I should not have assumed the things about you that I did, and for that I am truly sorry. Please accept my humble apologies.” All of this was accompanied with a deep bow, placed so that his final words were directed more to the floor than at Izuku.

“I-it’s okay,” Izuku said, after floundering for words for a good thirty seconds before that.

He was so unbearably awkward, but it was also quite possibly the most endearing thing Momo had ever seen. She resisted the urge to laugh, since she knew Izuku likely wouldn’t take it well if she did. “I didn’t realize you met Iida-san at the entrance exam.”

He flushed, waving his hand. “Oh, yeah, I mean we met, I didn’t know his name, though—or that you knew him? He, uh—” At this, Izuku snapped his gaze back to Iida, almost wide-eyed in how he regarded the other boy.

“I scolded him for muttering and also interrupting another student,” Iida said, adjusting his glasses. “And hello, Yaoyorozu-san. I didn’t realize you two knew each other as well.”

“I’m beginning to feel left out!” Ashido chirped, promptly inserting herself into the conversation. “Everyone knows everyone here! I’m Ashido Mina, by the way!”

“Iida Tenya,” Iida said, giving her a bow as well. Kirishima also introduced himself, and Iida turned back to Izuku. “Sorry, but I didn’t catch your name!”

“O-oh. It’s Midoriya. Izuku. Midoriya Izuku, that’s my name.”

So unbearably, adorably awkward.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you!” Iida said, and Izuku shifted and fidgeted, looking like he was one second away from a full-blown panic attack.

Momo decided she would spare Izuku from continuing the conversation. It was the least she could do for him as payment for helping her earlier, after all. “There’s a seating chart,” she said, nudging him with one elbow and then pointing out where it was taped to the whiteboard.

“A seating chart,” Izuku said, with more reverence than a seating chart deserved. He was off like a shot to the seating chart before Iida or anyone else could say anything more. Momo shot the other three an apologetic smile before following after Izuku, standing by his side as she examined it. Iida continued a conversation with Ashido and Kirishima behind them, so she didn’t feel too bad about cutting and running.

“We’re actually sitting relatively close together,” Momo said, humming appreciatively as she caught sight of their names.

“Just one person between us,” Izuku agreed, eying the square that said Mineta Minoru like he was contemplating if their future teacher would notice if he sat in it instead. Momo hid a fond smile at the thought, scanning the seating chart for some of the other names. Todoroki was right next to her, Ashido on the other side of the room—

“The name Bakugou Katsuki sounds familiar to me,” Momo said, as she caught the name in front of Izuku in the seating chart.

“D-does it?” Izuku said, his voice rising unnecessarily to a squeak instead.

Momo gave him a suspicious look. “Do you know him?”

“Uh—”

“Izuku-kun.”

“I know him a little bit…?”

“You know him a little bit,” Momo echoed, completely flat. A thought occurred to her a moment later, and she paled. “Did you go to school with him? Does he know you’re…?”

She trailed off as Izuku raised a finger to his lips, then looked around the classroom. It was as good as an affirmative for her, though—this Bakugou Katsuki was someone he knew before he received his Quirk, and also someone from his old school, where he was bullied (though, she supposed that last one was more of a suspicion than anything else, since Izuku had taken to hiding physical evidence of his treatment from her whenever he could…). She would have to watch him, then.

“Let’s just…not talk about it for now, yeah?” Izuku said. He cast a glance in the direction of the other three still talking when he said it.

Momo sighed, having to concede he was right. Here was not a good place to bring any of this up, where anyone could overhear. Especially Todoroki. Nobody knew Todoroki well, but everyone knew his single-minded determination, his drive to succeed, his willingness to go to any lengths to become a hero…

With that thought, Momo stopped abruptly by Izuku’s desk instead, adjusting her bag on her shoulder and smiling at her friend. Todoroki was too close to her desk, after all, and could overhear any of their conversation. Maybe it was paranoia, but Momo thought it best to be at least somewhat wary of him, at least for now. Izuku cast her a curious glance, though, and with a small smile she effortlessly redirected the conversation. “It’s strange to finally be in class with you, after all these years.”

Izuku huffed slightly, his eyes cast skywards in thought, and then he rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah…It is strange, isn’t it? We’ve studied together for years but never actually been classmates.”

“It’s somewhat disheartening to know course material is the same regardless of if it’s a public or private school,” Momo agreed. The door opened behind her, but she paid it no mind. Class wasn’t due to start for another twenty minutes, anyway.

“I think it’s the teachers that are different, honestly,” Izuku said. “Or, well, they’re supposed to be. I don’t know if your teachers actually were any—”

“Deku,” a voice said, right next to them, thick and intense. It was a voice that immediately sat Momo on edge, and she turned, almost instinctually, towards the owner of the voice with a straight back.

He was about Momo’s height, with blond hair and piercing red eyes. There was a scowl carved permanently into his features, even if he weren’t already wearing one on his face right now. It took her a moment to recognize him, but once she did, she did. His name was familiar to her because he was the same student that had been involved in the sludge villain attack with Izuku ten months ago. What was it he’d just said, though? Deku…?

“H-hey, Kacchan,” Izuku said. As soon as the words left his mouth, he slapped a hand over it, turning to Momo with wide, almost fearful eyes.

Momo’s blood ran ice cold. She froze with it, froze as solidly as she would have if Todoroki used his Quirk on her. She almost wished he had, if only because it would mean she had some level of certainty she wouldn’t do anything that might warrant an expulsion on her first day of class. “Kacchan?” she echoed, low and dangerous. She’d heard the name Kacchan before—years ago, when Izuku still talked about even a fraction of the things he went through in school—and she had sworn back then what she would do to him if she ever met him, as she was patching up burns on Izuku’s arm for him, as she was looking at the bruises—

“Momo!” Izuku warned, holding his hand out, palm up. A silent request for her to stop. And she would, normally, but he—

Bakugou’s eyes flicked over her, as if sizing her up for a fight. At the end of his assessment, he scoffed. Momo hadn’t thought herself capable of feeling the all-encompassing sort of white-hot rage that led to people fist-fighting others in the streets before, yet here she was, feeling it anyway. “I don’t know what you did to cheat your way into UA,” he said to Izuku, “but whatever it was—it’s not going to hold up.”

“I didn’t cheat,” Izuku said, voice a little fainter than it should be.

“Tch. Whatever.” Bakugou looked around then, his eyes landing somewhere behind their heads. Momo was bewildered for all of one moment before she felt a chill in the air around them. Another moment, and she found herself looking up into mismatched cerulean and grey eyes. The temperature drop suddenly made sense, now.

Todoroki looked from her, to Izuku, until finally his gaze landed on Bakugou and stayed there for much longer than was strictly necessary. Bakugou’s expression only grew angrier and angrier the longer the moment lasted, and tipped over the edge to furious when Todoroki took a step closer to him, and then another. He stopped directly in front of Bakugou, gaze piercing.

“You’re in my way.” Todoroki’s voice was cold, ice cold—much colder and much lower than Momo remembered it being, though she supposed that was what five years and puberty could do to a teenage boy.

“Hah?” Bakugou said, reacting to the ice with heat, and anger.

“You,” Todoroki said, slowly, like he was talking to a child, “are in my way.”

Bakugou stood his ground. Todoroki stood his ground. Momo felt Izuku’s fingers tightening around her sleeve—she hadn’t even noticed him grabbing it—as they both watched the scene playing out before them.

“Go around, you half and half bastard,” Bakugou said, voice dripping with venom.

“No.”

“Hah?”

“I said, no,” Todoroki said. “Move out of the way. It’s easier.”

“Fuck you!” Bakugou yelled, and across the room, Iida’s head snapped around like a whip. Iida descended on Bakugou like a thousand bats straight out of hell immediately after that, chopping one hand through the air and lecturing him on classroom etiquette and appropriate language. Todoroki stood apathetically by, until, at some point mid-lecture Bakugou moved enough out of the way that he could pass through. He did so quietly, making his way to the classroom door with his hands tucked into his pockets and his eyes fixed on the floor.

Momo came back to herself somewhat, shooting one last glare Bakugou’s direction before she turned to Izuku instead. Izuku was watching the door with a quiet intensity, practically vibrating with how intense his focus was. It was an expression Momo had seen on him…very few times.

“Izuku-kun?” she prompted.

He hummed, but didn’t look away from the door. “That was a save.”

“Pardon?”

“What that guy just did,” Izuku said, turning back to Momo. He blinked owlishly a few times. “It was a save.”

“I suppose it was,” Momo agreed, thinking back to it. He’d bypassed Izuku and Momo without standing in their space and telling them to move, after all. He had plenty of room to do the same with Bakugou, if he had wanted to—but, no. Todoroki had instigated that conflict on purpose, hadn’t he?

Izuku hummed again, his eyes flicking over to the door one more time before he looked back at Momo, smiling easily (if somewhat nervously) as if none of that had just happened. “Well, your desk is back here then, Momo-chan. You’re lucky, everyone usually fights over the corner seat in the back by the windows.”

Momo followed him as he led her away. “Why is it of significance to you? Todoroki-san’s actions, I mean, not the location of my desk.”

“Todoroki-san…” Izuku echoed, blinking thoughtfully. “Wait, Todoroki Enji? Endeavour?”

Momo tilted her head curiously. “You can’t tell me you only just now realized. That was Todoroki Shouto. Endeavour’s son.”

This was usually the part where Izuku would hum with excitement, where he would start spouting off facts about Endeavour (even though neither of them had ever cared much for the man, as far as hero-worship went. He wasn’t what they strove to be, to put it simply, and that was that), but Izuku seemed distracted instead, glancing towards the door again and then the back of the classroom. His brows furrowed, and unable to stop her curiosity, Momo followed Izuku’s gaze. He was looking at Todoroki’s desk, though she couldn’t say why he was looking at it so intently until she noticed it too—so fine she would have missed it herself if Izuku hadn’t caught it first.

There was a thin layer of frost on the edge of the desk.

“Momo-chan,” Izuku whispered. It suddenly felt like the appropriate time for whispers, for secrets, for their language of meaningful glances and quiet words. Momo met his gaze, yet somehow was still a little surprised by the ferocity she found there. “I want to be his friend.”

He said it in such a way that begged Momo to understand something, something that was just out of her grasp. She thought it had something to do with the “save” Todoroki had executed earlier—though she would certainly argue they had been fine dealing with Bakugou on their own—with the ice crawling across his desk. She missed it, though, whatever he was trying to say between his words. And it frustrated her, because she rarely missed things, especially when it came to Izuku. “It would be unwise,” she said instead, hesitant. “He’s very intelligent. He’s very driven.”

He’ll find out your secret went unsaid, but judging by the way Izuku flinched slightly, he heard it anyway. A moment later he shook his head, though, resolute. Stubborn, just as Izuku always had been. “I want to be his friend,” he repeated, just as determined, just as fierce.

That time, Momo heard him.

He knew to step in, Izuku told her, with the gleam of his eyes and the tilt of his head. He had an emotional response with his Quirk prior to stepping in.

Momo remembered the way she’d watched Izuku when she was a child. The way she’d read the sad tilt to his brow, the way his smiles drooped when Inko looked away. She remembered her urge to befriend him. She remembered where it came from—a sense of loneliness, dreadful and all-encompassing, and, beyond that, a sense that maybe he would understand. “Alright,” she said instead, dipping her chin in acknowledgement as she did. “We’ll befriend him, then.”

Izuku beamed.

“’Scuse me,” a voice said from somewhere below them. It was a heavy voice, full of lisps and undeniably belonging to a teenage boy, and both Momo and Izuku blinked at each other and then down at the boy standing below them. He was—he was very short. Incredibly short. Momo hadn’t thought that people their age could come that short, yet here this boy was, with short legs and arms and a series of purple balls standing on his head and functioning as hair. He had wide eyes and an overbite, and he was peering at them in a way that made Momo almost uncomfortable with their intensity.

“Oh,” Izuku said, after an awkwardly long pause where they all just stared at each other. “We’re, uh, still blocking the aisle, aren’t we? We’ll just—” This was punctuated by a gentle tug on Momo’s sleeve, and Momo followed, backing up with Izuku until they’d cleared Seat 19 completely and were standing at her own instead. The boy watched them as they retreated, something almost hungry about his gaze. She couldn’t put her finger on why exactly it made her so uncomfortable, though.

At least, she couldn’t put her finger on it until Izuku awkwardly shuffled himself slightly in front of her, breaking the boy’s gaze from her, and she realized with no small amount of discomfort that it had been because he was staring at her chest.

“I’m Midoriya,” Izuku said, trying for a friendly smile. “Mineta-kun, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” the boy said, setting his stuff down at the desk in front of Momo’s. His gaze flicked off of Midoriya then, and back to her, though it didn’t quite reach her face.

Izuku shuffled again. “I sit in Seat 18,” Izuku added. It occurred to Momo, all of a sudden, that this was the smoothest she’d seen Izuku interact with someone that wasn’t her all day. “Right in front of you.”

“That’s cool, man,” Mineta said, his gaze flickering away from Momo and landing once again on Izuku. “I got lots to learn from you, apparently.”

Izuku looked vaguely offended at the words, though Momo, once again, couldn’t quite understand why. Maybe she had a good deal to learn about social interactions herself, if she was missing so many cues for them.

It occurred to her that she’d never introduced herself to Mineta either, but just as she was about to, she was interrupted by a loud, “It’s you!” from the front of the classroom.

The entire class, which seemed to be mostly full at this point, turned to look at the sound. It was a girl with chestnut brown hair and round, chocolate-colored eyes. There was a blush staining her cheeks and a bright smile on her face, a smile that only got brighter as she beelined towards Izuku. Momo wondered about that for a moment until her facial recognition skills set in and she realized this was the girl from Izuku’s acceptance video.

“O-oh!” Izuku exclaimed as she drew closer. He was already starting to blush with embarrassment, which only got worse when she grabbed one of his hands with both of her own. Something stirred uncomfortably in Momo’s gut at the sight—at the blushing, the hand-holding…

“I never got the chance to thank you at the entrance exam!” the girl said. “You saved my life!”

“You don’t have to thank me, really!” Izuku said, a bit too loudly. He went to flail his arms, realized one was occupied with the girl’s hands and the other was occupied with Momo’s sleeve, and promptly let go of Momo to cover his face with one hand instead. “Really I should thank you, for offering to give me your points and all that, but really—”

“You know about that?” Her smile fell slightly as she asked it, but she didn’t seem too bothered by it. A moment later, she gasped. “Oh, I’m so sorry! I don’t even know your name—”

“If you’re here to make friends, you can get out now.”

Everyone jumped slightly and quieted at the gruff voice, and Momo looked towards the front of the classroom. Considering that voice sounded as if it belonged to an adult male, she expected to find their homeroom teacher entering the classroom. Instead she saw Todoroki slinking in, casting a curious glance to the floor. When she followed his gaze she found…a yellow sleeping bag.

The sleeping bag stood, unzipping, and there was a sudden mad dash in the room as everyone that had been standing unfroze and made for their seats, Momo included. The man that emerged from the sleeping bag was not at all what she had expected for a teacher at a school as prestigious as UA, with shaggy black hair and a scruffy beard and bloodshot eyes. His black jumpsuit was as bedraggled as the rest of him, twisted around his body at odd angles.

He pushed his sleeve up and checked his watch. “It took you eight seconds to quiet down. That’s not very rational.” He lifted his gaze from his watch and settled it on all of them, heavy and piercing. “I’m Aizawa Shouta. I’ll be your homeroom teacher this year.” He rooted around in his sleeping bag for a moment longer, and produced what appeared to be a UA gym uniform. “Put these on and meet me on the training grounds in twenty minutes. Locker rooms are on the first floor.” His face split into a rather alarming sort of grin, and Momo felt herself swallow reflexively. “Don’t be late.”

With that, he trudged out of the classroom, and the whole class moved to grab their uniforms, wrapped up in plastic wrap at the front of the classroom.

Momo’s gaze landed on Bakugou Katsuki as she grabbed hers. He didn’t seem to notice, just continued to impatiently search through the pile of uniforms. She wondered why they were going to the training grounds instead of their orientation, but she couldn’t find it in herself to complain, regardless.

After all, if they were going to the training grounds…that might mean she’d have a school-sanctioned excuse to make him pay for all that he’d done to her best friend over the years.

Chapter Text

Ashido sprang on Momo the second they turned down the hall for the girls’ locker rooms, attaching herself to Momo’s arm and refusing to let go. “Spill!” she shouted, giving Momo a shake.

Momo blinked in surprise. This was different than her usual experience with girls her own age—ordinarily, they tended to give her a bit of a wide berth since she was more likely to talk about the chemical makeup of various metal alloys than she was actual makeup—but she supposed the girls here didn’t know that yet. And they were fellow hero students—they were bound to be smart in their own right. “Pardon?”

“Spill!” Ashido repeated, still clinging to Momo’s arm. “C’mon, what’s the deal with you and the Midoriya guy?”

“Midoriya?” the girl that had been saved by Izuku at the entrance exam asked, looking over her shoulder at Momo. She tilted her head curiously. “Is that the name of the green-haired boy you were talking to?”

“Oh. Yes,” Momo said, glad for the distraction from Ashido’s question. “His name is Midoriya Izuku. I’m afraid we didn’t catch your name earlier, though.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, perking up slightly. “I’m Uraraka Ochako.” She looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then let out an embarrassed heh and rubbed the back of her neck. “I met Midoriya-kun at the entrance exam, by the way.”

“I’m aware,” Momo said. “Oh, I’m Yaoyorozu Momo. Izuku-kun and I watched his acceptance video together. They played a video of you offering him your points—that’s how he knew about that, too.”

“Ah,” Uraraka said, the pink in her cheeks deepening. “Gosh, that’s embarrassing.”

“You watched his acceptance video together?” Ashido exclaimed, giving Momo’s arm a wiggle.

Momo felt a bit of a blush coming on, and did her best to ignore it. “We really are just friends, as he said earlier.”

“Is that what you want to be?” Ashido asked. It felt as if she was boring directly into Momo’s soul with her gaze, making Momo feel strangely small in her own skin.

“Leave her be—kero,” another one of the girls said—croaked? She gripped one of Ashido’s pink hands in her own large ones and pried it off of Momo, giving Momo a wide-eyed stare. She had long green hair, tied up in a bow at the end, and a strangely blank face that helped Momo place her Quirk quickly even if the kero hadn’t already given it away. It was a frog mutation, and considering the versatility amongst frogs in general, Izuku was going to have a field day analyzing it later. “Yaoyorozu-chan is clearly uncomfortable.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” another girl said, opening the door for all of them. She had short purple-black hair and dark eyes and long, dangling earlobes shaped like aux cords at the end. “Are you related to the Yaoyorozus that work in support by any chance?”

Momo honestly hadn’t expected anyone to recognize her family name—usually people didn’t—but she supposed she should have expected as much from hero hopefuls. “They’re my parents.”

“Sick.” The girl nodded decisively, then gave Momo a lopsided grin before pointing at herself with her thumb. “It’s Jirou Kyouka.”

Momo smiled. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jirou-san.”

“So polite,” Jirou teased, following Momo into the room and letting the door fall shut behind them. Momo didn’t mind the teasing, though—this time, she could tell, it was good-natured.

“That reminds me!” Ashido exclaimed, spinning around with her shirt half-unbuttoned and looking directly at Momo. “Your name is so cute! Would you mind if I gave you a nickname?”

Momo blinked, then tilted her head consideringly. She hadn’t been given a nickname before, really—well, that wasn’t true. Izuku called her Mo-chan, sometimes, but usually only when he wanted something. She doubted Ashido was asking to give her any sort of mean or rude nickname, though, so… “I suppose that would be alright. What is it you have in mind?”

“What about…Yaomomo?” Ashido asked, propping one finger on her chin as she did.

“Ooh,” the invisible girl cooed. “That’s adorable.”

Momo smiled and pulled on the jacket of her sports uniform, zipping it up. “That would be alright if you wanted to call me that, Ashido-san.”

Ashido cheered, shucking her shirt in the process, and the rest of them continued changing.

“What do you think this Quirk test is going to be?” the invisible girl asked, once she’d gotten her own shirt on and zipped up.

“Hm, I dunno,” Uraraka said, voice thoughtful.

“I’d suspect some sort of fitness test—kero.”

“It sounds like it would be fun, whatever it is,” Ashido said.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Jirou said. She was the first to finish dressing, and sat on a bench near Momo to put on her gym shoes. “Oh, well, maybe I would be sure, if I wasn’t me. If it’s a fitness test, it’s probably going to benefit flashier, physical Quirks better.”

“What is your Quirk?” Momo asked, sitting next to Jirou. “If you don’t mind me asking, that is. I noticed you seem to have aux cords at the end of your ears, which could have a lot of potential implications.”

Jirou gave a small laugh, focusing on tying her shoe. “I don’t mind. It’s called Earphone Jack. Essentially, it’s a hearing enhancer, but I can also move them around.” Jirou lifted one earphone jack and jabbed it towards Momo for emphasis. It was a curious thing to see an ear attachment moving without her head also turning. “If I plug into a speaker, though, I can project a sound out, like my heartbeat. Got the idea from Present Mic, actually.” She blushed ever-so-slightly, and Momo smiled as she finished off tying her shoe. Momo knew what it was like to have a favorite hero, after all—though hers, admittedly, was Fat Gum instead (and had been, since she was twelve). “What’s your Quirk, Yaomomo?”

Momo hummed. “My Quirk is Creation. It allows me to convert my body’s lipids into other materials, assuming, of course, that I know the chemical makeup of those materials.”

Jirou blinked at her. “That sounds hella hard to use.”

Momo ducked her head to hide her pleased smile. “I wouldn’t call it easy, but I suspect I may have a bit of a knack for it, due to my Quirk.”

More accurately, Izuku suspected that. Quirks were multifaceted and complex and deeply rooted in one’s genealogy, and as a result, people often had some sort of instinctual knowledge about the base functions of their Quirk. (“People with Quirks that work off of blood consumption, for instance, are reported to have some sort of urge to drink blood when their Quirk manifests instead of discovering it by accident, for instance,” Izuku had explained cheerily one night. He’d looked a bit frazzled, with his hair running in a thousand different directions and his eyes darting endlessly across the page of his notebook. “You probably have some sort of instinctual knowledge about molecular structure that makes it easier for you to grasp these concepts without needing to know every minor detail about cell walls and atomic bonds.”)

Ashido finished putting on her shoes and stood, and with that, they were all ready. They made their way out of the dressing rooms and part of the way down the hall before they ran into a group of boys leaving their own locker room. Momo was pleased to see that Izuku was amongst them, along with Kirishima, a boy with a tail, and another boy with six arms.

“Hey!” Ashido said, waving at the group of four. Kirishima and the boy with the tail waved back (Kirishima added his own, “Hey!”) while their six-armed companion merely nodded in greeting. With that, the two groups fused into one. Momo wasn’t sure which one of them had done most of the shuffling, but she quickly found herself standing by Izuku’s side.

“About Kacchan,” Izuku started, voice quiet as he looked everywhere but into Momo’s eyes.

“Midoriya-kun!” Uraraka shouted, coming up on Momo’s other side. Momo sighed inwardly at the interruption.

“Oh, h-hi!” Izuku said, jumping slightly when she appeared. “I guess, uh, I guess Momo-chan told you my name, huh?”

“Yeah!” Uraraka exclaimed. She clenched her hands into fists at her sides. “I really did want to say thank you, for what you did. Seriously!” Izuku opened his mouth, and she held up her hand to stop him. Momo noticed five neat, pink-ish pads on her fingers. “Just say you’re welcome, and don’t protest it, really!”

“Oh, ah…” Izuku said, his awkwardness persevering. He was turning pinker by the second the longer the conversation carried on. Momo really ought to feel bad for finding his embarrassment so endearing, but…his embarrassment was incredibly endearing. “You—you’re welcome…?”

Uraraka nodded once, decisively, like that settled everything. “I’m Uraraka Ochako, by the way.”

“It’s, ah, nice to—it’s good to meet you!”

She gave him a bright smile, and, hesitantly, Izuku smiled back.

That twinge of jealousy had found its way back into Momo’s heart. It wasn’t completely misguided, she didn’t think—all the signs were there, all the blushes and shy smiles and hesitant looks that indicated crushes—but this wasn’t the place to be jealous. Izuku was more important to her than that.

Besides, this was UA. Momo could do without the distraction of something like—like romance, anyway! It was fine, really. Better, actually.

“Hey,” Izuku said, his calloused, knobby fingers finding her wrist and giving it a gentle squeeze. He pulled her gaze to him, concern pooling in the green of his eyes. He knew her so well, honestly. Or maybe this was just a skill exclusive to Izuku—the ability to look at a person and pick them apart, one emotion at a time. He had done the same to Todoroki earlier, after all. “You okay?”

Momo sighed. “I’m fine,” she said. “A bit nervous, is all.”

Izuku didn’t believe her, she knew he didn’t, but he nodded after a moment anyway. “Me too,” he said, before he gave her his hero smile, bright and reassuring. “You’re going to do great, no matter what this test of Aizawa-sensei’s is.”

“Thank you,” Momo murmured softly. “You as well, you know.”

“I’m not so sure,” Izuku said, shifting awkwardly as he did.

“Just keep your Quirk at 5%, and you’ll be okay,” she reminded him gently.

“Hrrgh,” Izuku responded, rather intelligently. He cast his eyes up to the sky, looking rather miserable. At a loss for words, Momo reversed the action he had performed earlier, and gave his wrist a squeeze.

They arrived at the field a moment later, Aizawa and three more boys, including both Bakugou and Todoroki and another with a bird head, waiting for them. The rest of their classmates trickled in behind them, and Aizawa checked something off on his clipboard. Somehow, Momo thought he was keeping track of how long it took them to arrive. Maybe that was part of his tests, too?

“Now,” Aizawa said. “You need to know what your starting line is. Bakugou.” Bakugou stepped forward, eying the softball Aizawa dropped into his hand for a moment. “How far could you throw that in middle school?”

Bakugou shrugged. “67 meters, I think.”

“Try throwing it with your Quirk.”

Bakugou, apparently, did need to be told twice, as he wound up his arm, launching the ball far away from him with a well-timed explosion. “DIE!”

How…uncouth.

There was a moment of thick silence as they waited for the result, which came in the form of a soft beep from Aizawa’s tracker (Momo would like to get her hands on that technology, if she could…having some sort of tracking tech would be good for hero work). He turned the screen around to show them.

“Only 75 meters?” the blond boy next to her said. “That’s kind of lame.”

“705.2 meters,” Izuku corrected quietly, causing the blond boy to pale. “Easy mistake,” he added, and their classmate seemed to relax slightly, blinking owlishly at Izuku, who was resolutely avoiding eye contact.

Momo smiled. He was awkward, but still helpful at his core.

“It is 705.2 meters,” Aizawa added, voice carefully casual, not indicating any sort of derision or callousness towards the blond, though his eyes lingered on Izuku for just a moment. “You’re going to complete seven fitness tests that you likely did in your P.E. classes in middle school. The only difference being that in these, you will be allowed to use your Quirk however you wish to complete them. The public school system insists on not letting you use your Quirks for these in the interest of fairness, but that simply isn’t logical. Here at UA, we have more freedom on these things.”

“This does sound like fun,” Ashido said, quietly, but Aizawa still heard her.

“Fun? You think this is fun? How about this, then—the person that comes in last place will be deemed to have no potential and will be expelled.” Momo felt a wave of fear work its way through the class. She suspected the threat was a lie of some sort, meant to encourage them to try their best, but the look in Aizawa’s eyes was piercing all the same. Even she felt a little uneasy about her future looking at it. “Being a hero isn’t fun. It’s work—it’s hard work—where you hold other people’s lives in your hands every day.” A moment passed, where the class shrank back slightly, Aizawa staring them down. The tension broke as he glanced down at his keyboard, apparently deciding the conversation was done. “Now, for the fifty-meter dash. Aoyama, Ashido. You’re up first.”

Aoyama, a blond with an odd belt on, moved up to the starting line along with Ashido, and Aizawa called out marks to them. Conversation began again somewhere amongst them, and Izuku shifted a little closer to Momo. “Say,” he said, voice hesitant and a little shaky, “if this whole hero thing doesn’t work out because I’m expelled at the end of today, do you think your parents will hire me as a secondary housekeeper?”

Momo laughed softly, ducking behind one of her hands. “I’m sure it’s just some sort of ruse, Izuku-kun. He’s probably not going to expel anybody.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Izuku said, raising an eyebrow at her. “He looks like the sort of hobo that takes his job very seriously.”

Momo slapped his arm. “Don’t say things like that. You’ll get us in trouble.”

He grinned sharply at her. “Getting us in trouble is my specialty, though.”

Aizawa called up the next pair—Asui and Iida, it seemed they were going in seat order—as Aoyama and Ashido returned to the class, Ashido with a cheer and Aoyama with a hair-flip and a wink. Momo blinked, fighting a small smile—they were certainly eccentric, these classmates of theirs.

“Hey,” the same boy from earlier—the one that had misread Bakugou’s results—said, tilting his head towards the two of them. Momo turned towards him intuitively—out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that Izuku copied the movement almost exactly. Judging by the way the boy tilted his head oddly, a smile curving his lips, he noticed it too. “I’m Kaminari Denki.”

“Yaoyorozu Momo,” Momo supplied.

“Midoriya Izuku,” Izuku said, glancing away, half-distracted as Aizawa changed out the pairs again. This time it was Uraraka and the boy with the tail, Ojirou. Uraraka was tapping all of her clothes, and Izuku’s fingers were twitching in a way that indicated he wanted to write something down.

“Thanks for earlier, Midoriya-kun,” Kaminari said, and Izuku whipped his head around at the speed of light, face already turning pink.

“You don’t need to thank me!” he exclaimed, hands twitching up to wave through the air. “Really it’s okay! I just know it can be embarrassing sometimes to read things wrong or go left when someone says right or—”

“Kaminari, Kirishima.”

Kaminari laughed, bumping Izuku with his fist as he passed by. “It’s cool, man, really.” He took his place at the starting line, joking with Kirishima about beating him as he did, golden eyes gleaming with mirth. Aizawa shot another odd look Izuku’s way before he turned to countdown for the other two.

Momo filed that info away for later.

“Hey, Momo-chan…”

Momo hummed, looking back at Izuku, and laughed when she saw his face. She knew that look. “Are we making friends with Kaminari-san as well?”

Izuku turned even more pink, but didn’t back down. “Yes, please,” he said, a little faintly. He seemed to think for a moment, though, then said, “After we make friends with Todoroki-kun, though.”

“Alright,” Momo said, amused by his antics. She looked in Todoroki’s direction at the words, almost unbidden. To her, he seemed stiff and apathetic, completely uninterested, just as he always did.

“He looks sad to me,” Izuku said, almost as if reading her thoughts. She looked back at him and he shrugged, almost apologetically.

Aizawa called up the next pair, and Momo made her friend a small notebook and a pencil when he started muttering about one of them—Satou—who seemed to need to consume sugar to use his Quirk. He was so engrossed in his analysis that he forgot to thank Momo until well after the next two pairs had gone.

“Todoroki, Hagakure.” Momo watched Todoroki in particular as he approached the starting line, noticing Izuku next to her doing the same thing. Todoroki, if he noticed them, paid no mind, his eyes glancing over the crowd until they landed on Bakugou. He continued to stare him down, irritating the blond more and more until Aizawa called for them to start and he looked away only to shoot across the finish line in a matter of seconds on a wave of ice.

Momo observed how irritated Bakugou was, though, and admitted that Todoroki might be onto something.

“Bakugou, Midoriya,” Aizawa called.

“Remember to keep it at 5%,” Momo murmured softly.

“I’ll do my best,” Izuku said gravely, walking up to the starting line.

Aizawa began to count down as Izuku softly glowed before green light flared around him. Aizawa gave him one of those indecipherable looks again, then called for a start. Bakugou and Izuku sprang off the finish line at the same time, keeping perfect pace with one another as Bakugou propelled himself with explosions from his palms, and Izuku ran with green sparks trailing behind him.

Everything was fine until Midoriya crossed the finish line, and Bakugou turned to him, his reaction vicious and immediate. “Deku! What the hell was that?”

“J-just my Quirk, Kacchan—”

Sparks crackled across his palms, and just like that, Momo was tensing, scrambling for something she could create to help in this situation. The next thing she knew, Aizawa flicked out the scarf he was wearing, wrapping around Bakugou’s arms and torso, completely stalling his movement. The small explosions in Bakugou’s palms petered out of existence shortly after that too. “What the hell—” Bakugou started.

“Enough,” Aizawa said, voice rough. His previously black eyes had flared to a bright demonic red, his hair and his scarf now floating loosely around his head. She caught a glimpse of yellow goggles, looped loosely around his neck, which triggered something vaguely in the back of her memory. “You will not attack another student, understood?”

Bakugou grumbled out an affirmative. Aizawa let him go, and both he and Izuku made their way back to the rest of the class. Bakugou didn’t look their way once he was back in the crowd of students, who all shuffled around him.

“Eraserhead,” Izuku murmured, breaking her out of her Bakugou-hating reverie. He fished the notebook she’d given him earlier out of his pocket and immediately began writing something furiously. “He’s Eraserhead! I can’t believe he’s Eraserhead…it took me so long…but the goggles, and the capture weapon…even the jumpsuit is the same, though he’s not wearing his tactical knife…”

Ah, so that was why Aizawa looked familiar. She could see it now too, now that Izuku had pointed it out—The Erasure Hero: Eraserhead, an underground hero, with the ability to erase the Quirks of others. They’d stumbled upon him by accident when they were kids; underground heroes stayed out of the media, so it was difficult to find clips of him. Izuku had taken a shine to Eraserhead, though, since he practically fought Quirkless and still had one of the highest case resolution rates of all heroes. (“If he ranked in the Japanese Billboard Charts, which underground heroes don’t, he would be in the ninth spot at least based on his case resolution rate alone, and that doesn’t account for whatever popularity he may have had as a limelight hero,” Izuku, at nine years old, had said. That had been a rough day for him, Momo remembered—he’d had that hollow look in his eyes when he’d arrived, but finding that one shaky phone video of an Eraserhead fight and the subsequent research they’d both done had returned a bit of a shine to them. For that, Momo supposed, she owed her homeroom teacher at least a small amount of gratitude.)

It was slightly troubling, though, to see how little Izuku really cared about the fact that Bakugou had almost attacked him. It was desensitization, at it’s finest, and it only served to make Momo angrier. She might have always suspected the bullying was a regular occurrence, but she’d still always held out hope that it wasn’t.

“Mineta, Yaoyorozu,” Aizawa called, like the whole situation with Bakugou and Izuku hadn’t just happened. Momo accepted, though, walking up to the starting line, her chosen creation already bubbling to life beneath the skin on her stomach. She unzipped her shirt as Aizawa began the countdown, pulling out the scooter she’d made and unfolding it. She felt several eyes on her all at once, but she took a page out of Todoroki’s book, making aggressive eye contact with Bakugou and only Bakugou right up until the point she looked away to zip efficiently down the marked fifty meters.

She beat Bakugou’s time, too, which was the real success.

Mineta finished his dash significantly later than she did, openly ogling her torso in a way that made her hyper-aware of the fact that she hadn’t zipped her jacket up yet—which she did now—though she felt her face heat in both embarrassment and anger when she heard a quiet, “Is this heaven?” from him.

Uncomfortable, Momo returned to her spot next to Izuku. She blinked when she saw him, though, because he’d gone from furiously scribbling to silently fuming, the notebook tucked back in his pocket and his arms crossed over his chest. She’d seen him truly angry so few times it was immediately alarming, and she had no idea what could have set it off, either. “Izuku-kun?”

He seemed to force himself to relax slightly at the sound of his name, turning slightly towards here. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, his voice gentle and reassuring. It was his hero voice, and its presence here was even more disturbing.

“If you’re sure,” Momo said, albeit hesitantly.

Izuku only nodded. They transitioned to the other fitness tests after that, but Izuku had an impenetrable laser-intense focus after that, studying everyone with sharp eyes when he wasn’t performing tests himself. He kept his arms folded across his chest, and Momo swore there were certain moments his eyes almost glowed when the light hit them just right. It wasn’t hard to notice that their classmates had started putting some distance between Izuku and themselves due to the almost menacingly intense aura he was putting off all of a sudden.

Momo was certainly concerned.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Momo asked him quietly, after she’d intercepted the fifth suspicious look from their teacher and the tenth angry glare directed in Izuku’s direction from Bakugou.

“Positive,” Izuku said cheerily, even as he clutched the grip strength measurer tight enough to actually damage it—Momo was sure he’d gone slightly over the 5% limit they’d set, which wasn’t a good sign.

Well, the tests continued regardless. To Momo’s delight, Todoroki kept up the game of antagonizing Bakugou whilst beating his scores and Momo did the same—Bakugou, in turn, started doing the same to them. At some point she noticed the three of them were getting their own suspicious looks from Aizawa along with Izuku, but she couldn’t bring herself to mind much.

It was after Momo did the same thing—aggressive eye contact with Bakugou—while pulling a cannon out of her stomach to fire a softball during the last test that Aizawa seemed to finally reach his limit. He read off her score (842 meters, another win) and then sighed. “Alright, enough. Yaoyorozu, Todoroki, Bakugou, Midoriya. What is the problem?”

The rest of the class shuffled awkwardly, and for the first time, Momo realized they’d all mostly stopped chatting with one another several tests ago. She made somewhat startled eye contact with Todoroki—they had become allies in this, after all, despite never actually discussing anything—but neither of them seemed willing to offer any sort of explanation.

“Three attempts at sexual harassment in the last sixteen minutes, sir,” Izuku said, voice quiet but steely. Momo turned to look at him, surprised.

“Excuse me?” Aizawa said, as a ripple of shock went through the entire class.

“Three attempted sexual harassment in the last sixteen minutes, sir,” Izuku repeated, but louder, lifting his head slightly as he did. “Sexual harassment, as defined by Section 7, subsection C of the UA student handbook, includes both uncomfortable sexual speech and nonconsensual touching. According to Subsection D, attempts warrant demerits. Following three, a student should be placed on a probational period, and following five, the student should be removed from UA all together, assuming all attempts are properly documented and reported, in accordance to the administration’s no tolerance policy.” His eyes flashed that toxic green color again, as he made direct eye contact with Aizawa, fearless and determined. He held up one finger. “It began during the fifty-meter dash, when Mineta-kun attempted to grope Yaoyorozu-chan at their take-off point.” He added a finger. “It continued, during the seated toe-touch, when Mineta-kun made a suggestion about an explicit sexual activity that Jirou-san could use her Quirk for.”

“What?” Mineta cried out. “This isn’t fair!”

A ripple of noise went through the class, their classmates glancing at each other before away again. “I thought I was the only one that heard that,” Jirou said, voice quiet, but still audible. She looked a little embarrassed by it, as well.

“I heard as well,” Shouji added, with a stoic nod.

Izuku added a finger. “The third was during the grip strength test, where Mineta-kun compared Shouji-kun to a character trope from hentai—that one, I believe, would count as Quirk discrimination as well as inappropriate sexual language and conduct, according to the definition for Quirk discrimination listed in Section 8 of UA’s student handbook.”

The whole class seemed to be holding their breath as Izuku finished, but he stood strong, three fingers still held aloft. “I’m willing to fill out witness reports,” Izuku continued, after the silence stretched on longer and longer, “if Yaoyorozu-chan, Jirou-san, and Shouji-kun would like to file reports. Regardless, I would like to fill out my own official statement on my personal discomfort due to the comments, which is permitted according to Section 7, Subsection E. I apologize for disrupting class.”

Izuku lowered his hand, though he continued gazing resolutely at Aizawa. Momo stared at him—along with everyone else, though her staring was different. She’d known Izuku for years at this point, yet somehow had never seen anything quite like this—an Izuku made up of sharp edges and cutting logic and resolute determination. She’d always known he was smart, that wasn’t the issue. She’d never seen him wield his intelligence like a weapon.

It…was a good look on Izuku, so to speak.

At the end of this staring contest, Aizawa blinked. “Okay. See me after class to fill out your report. Yaoyorozu, Jirou, Shouji—if you would like to fill out reports as well, the same goes. They will be reviewed by the faculty if you do.”

There was another moment of silence, broken only when Mineta quietly wailed. “What? No way! They don’t even have any proof!”

“Their statements of discomfort will serve as proof, if they issue them,” Aizawa said, completely flat, and that was the end of that, even as Mineta broke out into sobs. “Yaoyorozu, Todoroki, Bakugou. Would you like to air your grievances as well, or are you finished with your petty competition?”

Izuku blinked, looking up at Momo with wide, surprised eyes—he’d been so focused on his mission against Mineta (speaking of, when had he had the time to read and memorize the student handbook? Momo would have to ask him later, she supposed) that he likeky hadn’t even noticed the hostility between the three of them. One look at Todoroki and Bakugou and the quiet rage emanating off of the two of them, and Momo realized they would probably be of no help in this situation.

Frankly, looking back on everything, she was a little ashamed to admit that she’d gotten so caught up in her…competition. Wasn’t that akin to stooping to Bakugou’s level?

“No, sir,” she said, voice even. “I believe we are done. I apologize for disrupting class as well.”

Aizawa seemed to accept that answer, though he turned a glare on Todoroki and Bakugou as well until they both spoke their own (begrudging) apologies for the disruption. Aizawa made a displeased humming noise, turning to his tablet for a moment. Not long after that, a screen projecting their cumulative totals appeared.

“Your petty competition wasn’t for nothing, it seems,” he said, giving the three of them a pointed look. Momo had earned the first spot, while Todoroki had obtained the second and Bakugou the third. Somewhat to Momo’s surprise—not that she didn’t have faith in her friend, but she knew his Quirk was knew and he was still struggling with it—she observed that Izuku had obtained fifth place. Momo scanned the rest of the list, noting that it was actually Mineta who had ended up in last place. Had tensions not already been high following Izuku’s debunking, she might have felt a bit of pity towards the boy.

Aizawa allowed the bawling to continue for about thirty seconds before he clicked the screen off. “The expulsion threat was simply a logical ruse, to encourage you all to do your best. You are all safe…for now.” He let those words settle on their shoulders for a moment, then said, “If you don’t have business with me, go ahead and change and head back to the classroom.”

Next to her, Izuku straightened his shoulders and stood still, even as the others moved on. She noticed Shouji hesitating for a moment before he ultimately decided to stay too, and Jirou didn’t move at all, though she did start nervously tapping the ends of her earphone jacks together. Once all their other classmates had cleared, not without a lot of sidelong glances thrown their way (including glares from Mineta), Aizawa approached them with his tablet and an impressive sigh.

“Alright,” he said. “Who wants to start? Not you, though, Midoriya. I have something I need to speak with you about privately.”

That…wasn’t good. Momo cast a nervous glance Izuku’s way, but he carefully avoided meeting her gaze.

“I’ll begin,” Shouji offered. “I would like to provide witness testimony for Jirou, as well.”

Aizawa nodded, and Shouji explained his own Mineta encounter in detail, and then Jirou’s. Aizawa silently recorded it all, face carefully blank, but Momo could see a burning fire in his eyes. Once Shouji was finished, Aizawa nodded, sending him off. Jirou went next, albeit a bit nervously. Momo couldn’t help but cover her mouth in disgust when she heard that Mineta had apparently told her that her earphone jacks would be great for “jerking a guy off”—his words, Jirou said, not hers.

“Be honest with me when you answer this question,” Aizawa said. “Were you going to report this incident, if Midoriya hadn’t said anything?”

Jirou shifted even more, clearly uncomfortable. “…No,” she eventually said. “I wasn’t.”

“Why not?”

“It just…doesn’t usually go anywhere, you know?”

Aizawa’s expression finally did crack at that, darkening like storm clouds rolling in on the horizon. “I understand,” he said eventually, and after a few more questions and answers from Jirou, he sent her on her way.

That meant it was Momo’s turn, then. “I must admit,” she said, when Aizawa turned to her, “that I did not notice the groping attempt myself.” That made her very uneasy, to think she would have missed something of that nature. Honestly, if someone other than Izuku had pointed it out, she might be inclined to believe they had been mistaken. “I did, however, notice that Mineta was ogling me on multiple occasions, and that, definitely, made me uncomfortable. Following the fifty-meter dash, he said Is this heaven? while staring at my chest. I don’t know if it counts, but…I wanted to speak-up, regardless.”

“We’ll take it into consideration, at least,” Aizawa said, evenly, and with that, he sent Momo on her way.

She cast a look over her shoulder and Izuku gave her thumbs up as she retreated. She noticed his hand was shaking as he held it up, but…she’d done all that she could, at least for now.

“Yaomomo!” Ashido exclaimed, as soon as Momo walked into the classroom.

“Hello,” Momo said, because there were eighteen pairs of eyes suddenly on her.

“That was really brave, Yaomomo-chan—kero,” Tsuyu said.

“Has Midoriya-kun always been like that?” Iida asked, with a bit of wonder in his voice.

“I hope Aizawa-sensei wasn’t too hard on you,” Jirou said, tapping her earphone jacks together again. “Or on Midoriya, for that matter.”

“Why did you do it?” Mineta wailed.

“I think it would probably be for the best if we didn’t discuss any of these matters,” Momo said, striving for some semblance of control over the situation. “What happened has happened, all we can do now is move forward.” She paused for a moment, then somewhat nervously added, “The situation is in Aizawa-sensei’s hands now.”

“Ah, that makes perfect sense!” Iida said, wildly gesticulating in Momo’s direction. “We are terribly sorry for troubling you, Yaoyorozu-san!”

“It’s alright,” Momo said, trying to cast an Izuku-worthy reassuring smile their direction. She pointedly did not look at Mineta. “Your concern is appreciated, of course.”

Several of her classmates made noises of agreement as Momo made her way to her seat in the back, where she once again did her best to ignore Mineta. She turned slightly to Todoroki instead, as the rest of the class continued to chatter. She noticed most everyone was giving Mineta a wide berth. Well, as wide as they could, sitting in their assigned seats.

“Why did you do it?” she asked Todoroki, careful to keep her voice low so Mineta didn’t hear.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Todoroki said, vacant.

Momo sighed. This…was exactly why she’d never talked to Todoroki much before. If he wasn’t going to talk there was no sense in pushing him, though, so she set about pretending to organize her materials for class. Mineta tried to talk to another one of their classmates—the one with the head of a crow and the shadow Quirk—Tokoyami, maybe? He just sighed and closed his eyes, either disinterested in general or disinterested in Mineta specifically.

It took a surprisingly short amount of time for the door to fall open again, and the whole class quieted once as nineteen pairs of eyes snapped onto Izuku. He shifted uncomfortably under their weight, but didn’t waver. He seemed to panic, though, when his gaze landed on Kirishima.

“I did it because it was right!” he said. “Not because of some personal vendetta. I don’t hate you, Mineta-kun. I wanted to give you the opportunity to change first. That’s, ah. That’s all.” He shrank in on himself then, pulling his shoulders up to his ears and staring fixedly at his boots. Everyone else watched him, though no one else seemed willing to talk. The door opened again a few moments later, and Aizawa shuffled inside with a sigh.

“Problem Class,” he said, and several of them, including Momo, blinked in surprise at the name. “None of you are being expelled. Mineta, you’re going to receive one warning for your behavior today, since the events happened consecutively without warnings in between. You will serve an after school detention with Nedzu after class to talk about further consequences.” Mineta must have opened his mouth to speak, because his glare intensified. “Do not complain. Midoriya, Mineta. Switch seats, please.”

“Wh-why are we switching seats?” Mineta asked. He was quivering in his seat, either with fear or something else.

“Because it would be irrational to leave you seated next to Yaoyorozu,” Aizawa said, already shimmying inside of his sleeping bag. “Just do it, and before your English lesson starts.”

With that, Mineta scrambled out of his seat, grabbing all of his things and plopping down again in Izuku’s old one. Izuku crossed the classroom finally, taking his new seat. He rapped softly on Momo’s desk before he sat though, and gave her a soft smile.

Momo smiled back immediately, relieved, because that was the first real smile he’d let out all day. It meant everything was okay, and that was enough.

Besides, it looked like he’d stolen Mineta’s seat from him like he’d clearly wanted to do at the beginning of the day, after all.

Chapter Text

“He wanted to ask about my Quirk,” Izuku said.

They were in the garden—the garden had always been their place—and it seemed important to Momo that they were here yet again, after their first day of hero school together. Both of them were still in their uniforms, though Izuku had taken off his blazer and left it sitting somewhere inside. He laid on the bench next to her, with his curls tickling his thighs, eyes closed. The sunlight highlighted each of his freckles prettily, and Momo was valiantly resisting the urge to touch them.

That was another new thing.

“What did he say about it?” she asked.

The corners of Izuku’s lips twitched up into a tiny smile. “He wanted to know how I suddenly had control of my Quirk. He didn’t even know that I’m a late bloomer, did you know?”

“Really?” Momo’s fingers twitched with the sudden urge to touch Izuku’s hair, so she folded them into fists in her lap. “Shouldn’t that be in your student file?”

“Our student files apparently only have our name, Quirk, Quirk description, birthday, and relevant health information,” Izuku said. “I ended up getting it out, though—that I was a late bloomer, and I didn’t get my Quirk until the day of the entrance exam. I don’t think Aizawa-sensei knew what to think.” Izuku giggled slightly at that.

“And what did he do, after that?”

“Not much, really,” Izuku said. “I told him you helped me figure it out afterwards, though, just so you know. He might keep an eye on you from now on.”

Momo sighed. “I suspect he’ll already have an eye on me, after the tests today.”

Izuku shifted, sitting up and rotating so he was facing Momo. He tucked his ankles under one another—like a hooligan, he always set like a hooligan—and tilted his head curiously at her. The sun lit up his eyes, showing off the tiny flecks of barely-there gold in them. “What was that about, by the way? Why did Aizawa-sensei call you, Todoroki-kun, and Kacchan out? I was so focused on Mineta-kun I didn’t even notice anything, I guess.”

“It’s—” Momo started, then sighed. “Well, Todoroki-san and I were antagonizing Bakugou-san. I believe that’s the best way to put it.”

“You and Todoroki-kun…?” Izuku scrunched his face up, clearly confused. “You were antagonizing Kacchan? How?”

“We were both…challenging him, in a sense of the word. Every time we completed one of the tests.”

Izuku blinked, looking completely lost and befuddled. “Why?”

“Why?” Momo asked, raising an eyebrow. “After everything you did to Mineta-san today, just for making others uncomfortable, and you’re asking why I felt the need to antagonize Bakugou-san?”

Izuku’s eyes strayed to the side. “That’s different.”

“It’s not different,” Momo insisted. “Why would it be different, Izuku-kun? Give me one good reason.”

“Kacchan is—” Izuku stopped, his eyes dropping down to the bench beneath them. “It doesn’t matter, what Kacchan does. I’m…”

Momo waited for him to finish, then raised her other brow, feeling all of her anger from the day boiling over. “What were you going to say, Izuku? That it doesn’t matter what Kacchan does, because he’s only hurting you?”

“I’m not hurting,” Izuku said. “I’m used to it.”

“That’s the point, Izuku.” Momo stood, starting to pace slightly to channel her energy into something. “If Bakugou-san almost attacked me after I beat him in the fifty-yard dash, what would you have done?”

“I—”

“You don’t need to answer, because you already did it,” Momo said. “You did it to Mineta, because he almost hurt me.” She paused, looking at him, really looking at him, and something else occurred to her. “You know. You know that Bakugou is wrong. That’s why you called Todoroki-san’s interruption a save. Because you needed saving, and he did it.”

“Not me,” Izuku mumbled. “That was about you, not me.”

“No,” Momo said. “No. That was about you. If Todoroki-san was saving anyone there, it wasn’t me.”

“So what?” Izuku said, a bit of anger creeping into his voice. “It doesn’t matter, Momo! What do you think is going to happen? You don’t get it. You never have.”

“What don’t I get? What? Tell me.”

“You’re the only person that cares!” Izuku yelled, throwing his hands up. “Just you! You, and my mom, and your parents. And Yamamoto-san. That’s it, Momo. That’s everyone. Nobody else gives a shit about the Quirkless. They never will.” He scrubbed one hand through his hair. “What do you want me to do? Walk up to Aizawa-sensei and tell him Kacchan bullied me for years? I don’t know what would be worse—being listened to or not. Do you know why? If he listens to me now, if someone listens to me now, then that means what everyone but the people in this house have said to me my entire life is true—you have to have a Quirk to matter.”

“Izuku…”

“Leave it alone, Momo,” Izuku said, his voice cracking with the promise of tears. He placed one hand over his eyes, though, so if he was crying they were hidden from her view. “Leave Kacchan alone. I can’t—I can’t find out the answer to that question.”

Momo stared at him for a long moment. She had no idea this was as deep as it went, that Izuku’s self-worth was really this low. And that was truly foolish of her—to think that he only had bad days and not that, for him, it was bad all the time, and some days he was just better at hiding it than others.

“Why did you accept it?” she found herself asking. “All Might’s Quirk. Why did you agree to take it, if you felt like this?”

“What would you have done?” Izuku asked, his voice barely a whisper. “If the one thing you’ve wanted most in your entire life fell in your lap. Would you have said no?”

“I suppose not,” Momo said, after a moment of quiet consideration.

“I just wanted a chance,” Izuku whispered. “I still do. I just want to be normal.”

“You’re not normal,” Momo said. Izuku made a soft sound, and she backtracked. “You’re not normal, Izuku. You’re extraordinary. You always have been.”

Izuku was quiet for a long, long time before he stood. He looked at her for a long moment before turning away, putting both hands in his pockets. “Don’t say things like that,” he said softly, hiding his eyes behind his fringe.

“Why not? It’s true.”

Izuku didn’t answer, just folded his shoulders into his ears and headed inside.

Momo left extra early for school the next morning, so that she would, hopefully, have time to do this before Izuku arrived.

She felt like a horrible friend, but…despite what Izuku had asked of her, she couldn’t stand to just standby while her best friend suffered, especially not if he was willing to go to any lengths to help her.

So, she steeled herself, putting up all her armor around her heart, and she went to war at the teacher’s lounge. She raised one hand to knock, but the door swung open before she could. She found herself face to face with an extremely tall, extremely thin man with wild blond hair and an ill-fitting suit. She flushed in embarrassment at the awkwardness of the situation in general and lowered her hand. “Oh, pardon me,” she said, because he must be staff of some sort if he’s loitering around here. “I was looking for Aizawa-sensei.”

“I’m afraid he’s not around,” the man said. “Is it something one of us could help you with, instead?”

“It is…something of a personal matter, about a friend of mine. I would rather not advertise it to everyone.”

“Ah,” the man said. He turned back towards the staffroom. “Does anyone know where Aizawa-kun is, at the moment? I believe one of his students is looking for him.”

“One of his students?” a feminine voice called from inside, lilting and almost teasing. “He still has some of those?”

“Ha, ha, ha!” Momo recognized that voice, at least, as the Voice Hero: Present Mic. She’d grown up with Izuku, after all. There was no such thing as growing up with Izuku and not listening to a radio show run by a pro hero with him, after all. “You know that’s just a logical ruse. He’ll eventually re-enroll most of his listeners, at least.”

“Hey,” the blond man interrupted. “Do either of you know where Aizawa-kun is?”

“’Fraid not,” the female voice said. She appeared in the doorway of the frame a moment later, and Momo almost instinctually averted her gaze from years of being told to do so by her mother whenever Midnight made the news. Momo had known she taught at UA, but it was still somewhat of a surprise to see her here. “Oh, Yaoyorozu Momo, right? You’re one of the recommended students to the hero course this year.”

“Ah. That is correct,” Momo said, shifting slightly under the attention. It was a habit she had picked up from Izuku years ago and hadn’t quite succeeded in breaking.

“Yaoyorozu Momo?” the blond man repeated, sounding startled. A moment later, his deeply set eyes widened. “Didn’t you say you were here for personal matters about a friend?”

Momo eyed him curiously. He wasn’t acting suspicious, per se, just odd. It was almost like he recognized her name, from more than just the recommended list. It was possible, of course, since her parents were quite popular in hero support. “I did say that.”

“You could wait for Aizawa in here, if you’d like,” Midnight said, popping her hip and gesturing with one hand to the teacher’s lounge. “Or we could take a message, if you would prefer. I can swear we wouldn’t look at it.”

“Thank you,” Momo said. “That would be great. I think I will wait for a bit, and if he doesn’t come around, pass him the note?”

“Feel free to,” Midnight said, giving Momo a gentle smile. She stepped back from the door and the blond man opened it wider. Momo stepped inside somewhat awkwardly, looking at the spray of desks and couches. Cementoss and Ectoplasm were both in here as well, sitting near one another and talking. Momo couldn’t help but think Izuku would probably swoon, at seeing this many heroes in one place. Though Izuku did hang out with All Might now, so, maybe not.

Midnight sauntered off, either back to her desk or off to the coffee machine in the corner, and Momo was left with the tall blond man. She swore he looked familiar in a distant way, but she couldn’t place him. Then again, though, she had met a lot of heroes over the years, and it was easy for them to fade into obscurity in her mind. Surely a man this tall and this blond would stand out more than that, though?

“Pardon me for asking this,” the man in question said, his voice low, “but were you here to say something about young Midoriya?”

Momo felt her eyes widen. “How did you…” She gasped softly as a realization came to her—the height, the blond hair, the blue eyes, his presence at UA, the fact that he both seemed to recognize her name and knew Izuku…but it couldn’t be… “All Might?” she whispered.

Now it was his turn to widen his eyes at her before he chuckled softly and looked away. “Wow, you put that together fast. You really are just as bright as young Midoriya said.”

Momo felt herself blush, both at the praise from All Might of all people, and also the fact that Izuku was apparently talking about her to All Might. “It’s nothing impressive, really.” She covered the blush on her cheeks with both hands, another habit she’d picked up from Izuku. “But you—why are you…like this?”

“Ah,” All Might said. He coughed the next second, raising a handkerchief to his mouth to cover it as he did. It was an oddly polite and almost cute gesture to see on someone Momo knew was actually capable of defeating even the most nefarious villains in one punch. Something about the duality of his person reminded her of Izuku, actually. It was in how they were both soft, but they were both also made of steel. “Maybe we should go somewhere a little more private?”

Momo deliberated for a moment. Going somewhere else meant that she would miss Aizawa if he came, probably, but…Izuku trusted All Might. She trusted him too—he was the number one hero in the country, after all—and since Izuku had his Quirk, maybe he really ought to know, anyway? It wasn’t as if Izuku would tell him that he was bullied, considering what he said last night.

It still felt like a massive breach of Izuku’s trust, though.

(Because, in all honesty, it was. If Izuku knew she was here right now, he would probably never forgive her. But she had to do this. She wanted to be a hero, she couldn’t just turn a blind eye. Not anymore.)

“Yes, please,” Momo said, nodding politely. All Might smiled. It was odd, to see that sort of smile on the Symbol of Peace’s face, even as different-looking as his face was from usual. It wasn’t that small smiles didn’t suit him, just that Momo had gotten so used to seeing the brilliant, blinding ones that they were strange.

All Might led her to a room next to the teacher’s lounge. It was labeled as a student-teacher conference room, and had two pea-green couches facing off with one another. “Would you like tea or anything, young Yaoyorozu?” All Might asked.

Momo perked up slightly at the mention of tea. “What sort of tea?” she asked.

“I only have green tea here, unfortunately,” he said.

Well, tea was still tea. “I would like a cup, thank you.”

He nodded, and set about making cups for them both. “It’s actually convenient that I ran into you,” he said, while he worked. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you since young Midoriya informed me he told you the truth about our Quirk.”

“I suppose that’s to be expected,” Momo said, resisting the urge to fidget. “Do you…disapprove of my knowing about it?”

All Might let out a little bark of laughter. “Not at all, young Yaoyorozu. It’s important to me that young Midoriya has friends on his side. It does put you in some measure of danger though, which is what I wanted to talk to you about. However, considering how close you and young Midoriya seem to be—from what he’s told me, anyway—it seems to me like you would most likely have been in that danger anyway, with or without knowing about the truth of his Quirk.”

“What sort of danger is that?” Momo asked warily.

“My Quirk has enemies that come with it,” All Might said, turning around with their teacups in hand. He took the couch across from her, and dejectedly sipped at his tea. “I can say with utmost certainty that I’ve eradicated nearly all of them, but those that are left over will most likely transfer their vendettas to young Midoriya. Besides, even if he weren’t to inherit my enemies, he will have a very powerful Quirk one day, and will likely make his own. Just as you will, I’m sure.”

“It’s important to watch each other’s backs, then,” Momo said. “That was always our plan.”

All Might chuckled. “Yes, I suppose it was. That’s not what I meant, though, young Yaoyorozu. It’s important to watch each other’s backs, but it’s also important to be aware that you will both always be an acute weakness for the other, especially now that you know the truth behind his Quirk.” He leaned forward slightly, the bright blue of his eyes boring into hers as he did. “In other words, someday, there might be a villain out there that tries to torture you to get information about him. I’m not trying to scare you, young Yaoyorozu, but I want you both to be prepared.”

“I understand,” Momo said, clenching the hem of her skirt tightly in one fist. “That’s always the risk of being a hero with known connections, correct?”

“Yes,” All Might said sadly. “It is.” He sipped his tea contemplatively, then seemed to jolt. “Oh! You asked me about this form, didn’t you?” Momo nodded. “It’s from an injury I received several years back. My muscle form is akin to how people will suck in their stomach at the pool.”

Momo nodded, even though that didn’t make any sense. It must have to be some factor of his original Quirk or the one he passed on to Izuku that he didn’t know about before now.

“I see,” she said instead. “Is that why you are unwell, too? I noticed the handkerchief.”

“Ah, yes,” he said. “That would be correct. Some of my internal organs were damaged and subsequently removed during the attack.”

“Oh,” Momo said, now vaguely alarmed. “I’m very sorry to hear that. How do you keep up with hero work?” A moment after she asked that, another thought occurred to her. “Is that why you passed your Quirk along to Izuku-kun? You aren’t able to keep going like this?”

“It is part of the reason,” All Might said, smiling softly. “I was due for a successor soon anyway—it is, after all, why I was teaching at UA in the first place—but it’s also true that my time as a hero gets shorter and shorter every single day.”

“How long do you have as a hero?” Momo asked. She reconsidered her question a moment later—it was very forward, and therefore very rude. “If you don’t mind me asking, anyway.”

All Might laughed softly. It was a ghost of the sound that it was in his other form, but there was something inherently All Might about it too. “It’s fine, young Yaoyorozu. Curiosity is a good thing.” He paused, as if collecting his thoughts, and sipped his tea. “I have about three hours, on a good day.”

“Oh,” Momo said, folding her skirt anxiously between her fingers. “That’s not long at all.”

All Might sighed, his eyes sad. “No,” he agreed. “No, it certainly isn’t.”

A moment of silence passed between them, while Momo considered the hem of her skirt like it was incredibly interesting. On the one hand, Izuku trusted All Might. If she had to tell any of the teachers about the fact that Bakugou once bullied him, All Might would probably be best—he and Izuku had a bond and a relationship, and All Might cared about him. He would want to help. However, Izuku might want All Might to be the last teacher to know for that very reason, too—he viewed his past bullying as a weakness, Momo knew he did, and the last person in the world he would want to think of him as weak was All Might. But All Might was All Might. The two of them had grown up seeing him on TV, admiring him, admiring his work. He wouldn’t think any less of Izuku if he knew. He might even know better than anyone else, considering he knew that Izuku was really and truly Quirkless before he received his Quirk.

And in that way, wasn’t All Might really the only person that Momo could tell that would disprove Izuku’s theory that a teacher would only care about him know because he had a strong Quirk? All Might knew he was Quirkless, and All Might cared about him beforehand because of that, not in spite of it. It wouldn’t matter to him that Izuku had a powerful Quirk now, because to All Might, Izuku just had his Quirk.

“I need to tell you something,” Momo said.

All Might blinked in surprise, thoughts clearing out of the blue pools of his eyes as he did. “What is it?”

“The thing I came here to tell Aizawa-sensei,” Momo said. “I need to tell it to you instead, okay?”

All Might looked a little wary, but he nodded. “You said that it was about young Midoriya, yes?”

“Yes,” Momo said. She took a deep breath, steeling herself. She had to remember what Izuku had done yesterday, the bravery he’d shown. He might have only dressed down a pervert, but he had only done so because he wanted to help the others that were being targeted. And Momo knew that had to be hard for him. She knew what he’d been through, what it meant for him to go through a teacher. “Please don’t accuse me of lying or anything like that. I don’t…really have proof.” She looked up, meeting the electric blue of All Might’s eyes. “I met Izuku-kun when I was six-years-old. I’ve known him over half of my life. I know that Bakugou Katsuki used to bully him. I don’t know for sure if it continued, but…I think that it did.” All Might blinked, his face written in the image of surprise, but Momo marched onwards. “You know that he was Quirkless before, All Might, so I can only tell you. Izuku-kun doesn’t want me to say anything. He doesn’t even know that I’m here. But it wouldn’t be very heroic if I just stood by and let him suffer.”

“Bakugou Katsuki…?” All Might echoed hesitantly, once Momo had trailed off. “I thought that the two were…friends.”

“No,” Momo said, shaking her head. “Izuku-kun and I are friends. Bakugou-san has never been kind to Izuku, I know that much at least. I don’t know if you know what it’s like to be Quirkless, All Might—” All Might flinched, almost imperceptibly. “—but it is not easy. And I am not lying to you.”

All Might fell silent, tracing one finger across the rim of his cup, before he sipped it. “How did you say the two of you met, young Yaoyorozu?”

Momo let out a deep breath of air. “His mother works for my family, as our housekeeper. She got the job because Izuku-kun wasn’t being treated well by other children in the daycare at her old work. Additionally, they cut her health benefits once he was…diagnosed.” Momo pleated her skirt between her fingers again, readying herself before she looked up at All Might again. “She’s got a degree in fashion design, you know, and she’s working as a housekeeper, because it was the only job she could find that would let her keep Izuku-kun with her, and that wouldn’t discriminate against her just for having a Quirkless son. Izuku-kun and I have basically been friends since then.” Momo looked down again, and forced herself to let go of her skirt. “Believe me, All Might. Please.”

“I believe you, young Yaoyorozu,” he said gravely. “How could I not? I must admit, though…I don’t know what exactly you intend for me to do with this information.”

“Just…keep an eye on things, please?” Momo said. “This is all I can do right now, but at least it’s something. Izuku-kun would not…like it, if he knew that I was here talking to you right now.” Momo sipped at her tea, which was surprisingly good. “I just don’t want him to get hurt anymore.”

“I understand,” All Might said after a long moment. “Do you want me to inform Aizawa as well, or…?”

“Maybe,” Momo said, letting out another breath. “Only if you have to, for some reason, though.” She’d certainly broken Izuku’s trust enough for one day.

“Alright,” All Might said, giving her a reassuring smile. He stood after a moment, and Momo stood too, understanding this as a dismissal. “You better get to class, young Yaoyorozu.” He winked at her, and a bit more of his All Might-ness shone through despite his skinny form. It was almost surprising to her, just how comfortable it made her fee. “You’ll be seeing me later today, but don’t tell any of your friends that. You’ve given me a lot to think about here.”

He gently squeezed her shoulder, and then opened the door for her to leave.

Chapter Text

Izuku was waiting for her outside of the classroom. He held a bag in his hands, fiddling with it nervously as he waited on her to approach. Momo felt a sinking feeling in her gut—this, she knew, was a tell of Izuku’s. He was feeling guilty about their fight, and he had bought her something to make up for it. Most likely the thing he’d bought was food from a local bakery, sweet and sugary, and high on fats that she could convert into objects later.

And Momo, in turn, had just betrayed his trust.

“Momo-chan,” Izuku called softly as she approached. He thrust the paper bag out in front of him, holding it out for her. She accepted it guiltily, because there was really no way to say no to Izuku. She opened it up to observe the contents, her stomach churning when she caught sight of the blueberry muffins. They were her favorite, and she really didn’t deserve them right now.

“I’m sorry for snapping at you last night,” Izuku said, his voice soft. Momo forced herself to meet his gaze, his searching green eyes, glistening in the light. He looked so guilty. He did. “I just wanted you to know where I was coming from. I shouldn’t have walked off like I did.”

Momo let out a soft sigh, crumpling the bag closed. “It’s alright,” she said. “I wasn’t mad at you. I’m not mad at you.”

“Are you sure?” Izuku asked. “Because I would understand if you were mad at me, you know. I—”

“Ooh, look at you two!” Ashido chirped, as she passed them on her way to the classroom. “Do you two always start out mornings with a gift?”

Izuku turned bright crimson. Momo felt her own cheeks heating up, but she didn’t even have the heart to tell Ashido it wasn’t like that between them this time. What she’d done to Izuku was a massive breach of his trust, and it felt…wrong, somehow. To act like that hadn’t happened, even in small ways.

“It’s not like that, Ashido-san,” Izuku said, something almost mournful in his tone.

Whatever it was that was in his tone caused Ashido to give it up, at least. She muttered an apology before heading inside, and Izuku turned his full attention on Momo again. “You’re not okay,” he decided, giving her a long, appraising look. “It’s fine to just tell me, Momo-chan. If I hurt your feelings. I—”

“It’s not that, Izuku-kun,” Momo said, screwing her eyes shut as she did. “I’m not mad at you. I…” She trailed off, not sure how she should tell him it was all her fault, that she was acting weird not because she was mad at him, but because she had broken his trust, his feelings. She felt like she had made the right choice, but it was going to hurt him either way. It was just a matter of what kind of hurt he was going to be on the receiving end of. “It’s really nothing, Izuku-kun. You don’t need to worry about me.”

She opened her eyes, unsurprised to find that Izuku was still searching her face desperately for clues. She tried for a smile, as reassuring as she could make it, and she watched Izuku’s expression soften a bit. “Alright,” he eventually conceded, awkwardly shuffling his backpack strap further up his shoulder. “We should go inside, Mo-chan. Before we’re late.”

Momo breathed out a sigh through her nose quietly so Izuku wouldn’t hear and nodded, following when he turned to head inside. They made it to their desks in a comfortable silence and settled in. It wasn’t long before Izuku spun around in his seat, nor was it surprising that he did so. What was mildly surprising, though was that he didn’t talk to her.

“Good morning, Todoroki-kun,” Izuku said. Momo eyed him curiously. She knew they’d discussed befriending Todoroki, but she hadn’t expected Izuku to act on it so quickly. Honestly, she’d expected him to be too nervous to talk to Todoroki for a lot longer than just a day—ah. He was shaking slightly, wasn’t he?

Todoroki also looked surprised at being addressed, but he schooled his features into a careful mask of neutrality before Momo could be sure she’d seen the surprise there at all. “Good morning.”

“Can I ask you something?” Izuku asked, fidgeting with his fingers. “It’s kind of a personal question.”

Momo noticed Todoroki tensing in his seat as the air temperature around them dropping slightly. All the same, though, he said, “Go ahead.”

Todoroki had always had a problem with personal questions. Momo remembered that much.

“Is your mother—” Todoroki, if possible, tensed even more. “—the former hero, Fractal?”

All of the tensity went out of Todoroki’s body at the same time that the air suddenly warmed again. Momo shuddered at the temperature change as she looked first at Izuku and then at Todoroki. Todoroki was more relaxed than she’d probably ever seen him, almost soft, actually. “Nobody knows that,” he said slowly. Momo could tell he was being very careful to keep his voice neutral.

“Sorry!” Izuku immediately squeaked. “It’s just—I recognized your ice, yesterday, and I thought it looked like a familiar mechanism. I actually only stumbled on archived footage of Fractal on accident when I was looking for a different ice hero—she left the scene before I was even born—but you probably know that, uh, considering—but I actually quite liked Fractal a lot, she seemed really reassuring and kind and—”

Momo watched Todoroki’s face as Izuku continued to talk, at the way he cycled through wariness to curiosity, more expressive in this single instant than she’d ever seen him before. Momo huffed out a quiet laugh, though—if anyone could forcibly drag someone like Todoroki Shouto out of his shell, it would be Izuku.

“I didn’t realize your mother was also a pro hero,” she interjected softly, mostly just to interrupt Izuku before cycled too far into his anxieties. She knew he appreciated a clear head when it came to these things.

“It’s as I said. Nobody knows.” Todoroki shrugged slightly, as if that was the end of that, though his eyes sharpened as his gaze flicked between them. He ultimately settled on Izuku, who shifted slightly under the weight of Todoroki’s stare, but mostly held strong. “Actually, Midoriya, I’m curious about your Quirk too. What is it?”

Momo felt her body stiffen reflexively before she forced herself to relax. It was as she feared: Todoroki was perceptive, cuttingly so, and it seemed he’d immediately noticed the similarities between Izuku’s Quirk and All Might’s. He wouldn’t ask Izuku about it now, otherwise. They weren’t friends by any stretch of the imagination, but she knew him well enough to know that much.

“It’s called, uh, Power Up,” Izuku said, a little too swiftly. “It’s a standard strength-enhancing Quirk.”

Todoroki’s eyes narrowed slightly. Likely, he’d caught onto Izuku’s nervousness, and had some idea of what it meant. Was there anyway she could curb his suspicion? Anything she could say or do, maybe—“I’ll say,” Momo said. “Yamamoto-san will never forgive you for what you did to his topiaries with your Quirk.”

Distraction, via a charming anecdote that would most likely shift Todoroki’s suspicions towards her relationship with Izuku instead of Izuku himself, at least for the moment. Momo was glad to see that it had worked; Todoroki was looking at her now, cool and calculating, instead of at Izuku.

“Ah, yeah,” Izuku agreed, shooting her a grateful glance and a shy smile. “He still hasn’t gotten me back for that, which is terrifying.”

“Yamamoto-san prefers to strike at inopportune moments,” Momo agreed lightly. “Once you feel all safe and warm.”

“A menace of the underground, that man,” Izuku agreed.

“The absolute worst,” Momo added. “He could give even the most dastardly villains a run for their money, if he wanted to.”

“That he could.”

“Yaoyorozu,” Todoroki cut in quietly. Both of them looked at him expectantly, though he seemed unbothered by their attention. “How do you know Midoriya?”

“We’re childhood friends,” Momo said simply. It wasn’t her place to divulge that Inko worked for them. Besides, leading Todoroki around the truth of Izuku’s Quirk would be best done in a series of vagaries right now. Izuku had obviously seen that much himself, considering his response to Todoroki’s initial question.

“I see,” Todoroki said. Before the conversation could continue any further, Aizawa opened the door and stepped inside, beginning their morning classes.

Momo, for her part, did her best to ignore the spike of guilt she felt whenever she looked at the back of Izuku’s head.

“You know what, Momo-chan, I think you were right,” Izuku said. It was testament to how distracted he was that he didn’t even stop to gush about the fact that Lunch Rush himself was serving him rice.

“Right about what?” Momo asked, as she got her own helping of rice dumped on her plate.

“He is really smart. Todoroki-kun, I mean. I feel like he’s suspicious of something too, though I don’t know what, exactly.”

“If I had to guess,” Momo ventured, as they walked into the cafeteria, “he’s trying to work out if you have some sort of connection to the hero industry.” She spotted an empty table and made her way towards it. “He probably noticed your Quirk is similar to someone else’s, too.”

Izuku made a thoughtful hum as he sat down, keeping his voice quiet. “I get why it’s important to avoid it, but…aren’t people going to notice they’re…similar anyway?”

“The more people learn about you and your background, though, the closer they’ll get to the truth,” Momo reminded him.

Izuku winced. “Yeah, that is a problem. I’m a little worried about Kacchan in particular.”

Momo flinched at the name, then did her best to hide it by eating quickly. She swallowed and gave Izuku a considering look. “Do you have any plans for—”

“Yaomomo-chan! Midoriya-kun!”

Momo broke off immediately, looking up as Uraraka and Iida approached them. Uraraka had quite the knack for interrupting them, it seemed. Iida was a bit of a surprise, following after Uraraka as he was, but Momo dipped her head to them both anyway. “Hello, Uraraka-san, Iida-san.”

Iida straightened up, sliding his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he did. “Hello, Yaoyorozu-san. We were wondering if we might be able to join you two for lunch.”

“O-oh!” Izuku exclaimed across from Momo. “Uh, both—both of us?”

Iida and Uraraka both cast him curious looks. Momo couldn’t reach across the table to touch him, so she tapped him lightly with her foot instead. He looked at her, some of the tension easing out of his expression as he did. Momo looked away quickly to nod to Iida and Uraraka. “Of course. Feel free.”

Iida and Uraraka took that as their cue to take the seats next to Momo and Izuku, respectively. Momo tried to stamp down on the bit of jealousy she felt, seeing Uraraka sitting happily next to him. It was literally the worst possible moment to get jealous, too—with Izuku staring down at his food almost forlornly and barely acknowledging anyone.

“Hey, Yaomomo-chan, I wanted to ask you something,” Uraraka said. Momo paused in her eating, then nearly choked on a laugh when Izuku’s head whipped up and he flipped it around to stare at Uraraka. Uraraka startled in surprise, jerking back and away from him at the sudden intensity of his expression. Even Momo didn’t know what this was about, if she was being honest—Izuku’s eccentricities were one of the few things about him that remained unknown to her.

“Yaomomo-chan?” he repeated. “Did you call her Yaomomo-chan?”

“Oh, uh, yes?” Uraraka said, blinking in surprise at Izuku.

Izuku, in turn, immediately let out an overly dramatic groan, his head dropping onto the table. Momo scrambled to pull his tray away from him before he face-planted in it. She knew he would, too, if she left it where it was. He was just like that. “Unbelievable,” he muttered into the table. “It’s unbelievable.”

Momo couldn’t help the small giggle that escaped her as she finally caught up to what his problem was. Uraraka and Iida exchanged confused glances.

“Ah, Midoriya-kun—” Iida started.

“It’s such a cute nickname,” Izuku bemoaned.

“Oh,” Uraraka said, drawing out the oh. She smiled, patting Izuku on his shoulder. “You’re jealous of the nickname!”

“I am jealous,” he said. “Jealous because I didn’t think of it first. Curse my six-year-old self.”

“You two have known each other since you were six?” Iida asked.

“We have,” Momo said, since Izuku was occupied with his bout of self-loathing.

“We can give you one too, you know!” Uraraka said, still patting Izuku on the shoulder. “Other than Deku, that is. That’s what Bakugou called you the other day, wasn’t it?”

Izuku’s shoulders stiffened at the same time Momo felt her own do the same. She set her bowl down with a little clink.

“Yeah,” Izuku said, straightening his spine and dislodging Uraraka’s hand from his shoulder along the way. “He called me Deku. It means worthless—it’s a thing he says to be mean.”

The general mood of the table plummeted at that. Momo clenched a fist at her side, heart pounding loudly in her ears. She was reminded, yet again, of her conversation from earlier.

“Oh,” Uraraka said, voice soft. “I thought he meant it like dekiru—you know, you can do it!” She laughed softly, rubbing the back of her neck in embarrassment. “In hindsight that doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s okay, though! We’ll come up with a new nickname for you. Maybe we’ll even find a way to make it match Yaomomo-chan’s!”

Izuku blinked. “Who’s we?”

“Don’t know!” Uraraka said. “Me and anyone, I guess! Ooh, I’ll ask Ashido-chan. She’s the one that gave Yaomomo-chan her name, you know?”

Izuku seemed to take a moment to process this, and then he turned faintly pink. “I—I really don’t need a new nickname, Uraraka-san! I was just bemoaning the fact that I didn’t come up with the nickname for Momo-chan, not that I don’t have one myself or anything of the—”

“Shh,” Uraraka said, stopping his incoming ramble by pressing a finger against his lips. Izuku turned bright red in time with Momo’s jealousy rearing its ugly head again, and then Uraraka moved her finger, giving Izuku a bright smile instead. “We’re giving you a nickname, and that’s the end of that.”

“O-okay,” Izuku said. “Yeah. That’s—yeah.”

Momo wrestled her heart back into place and forced herself to calm down. It was just a second. That was all. And it wasn’t like she wished she had been the one to touch his lips instead, either.

“I was actually gonna ask you how you knew Midoriya-kun, Yaomomo-chan,” Uraraka asked.

“Ah,” Momo said, using the word as an opportunity to rein the rest of her ugly feelings in. “We’re childhood friends.”

“Oh,” Iida said, sounding distinctly bewildered. “I thought you were dating one another. My apologies.”

Momo felt her face immediately heat up. Across from her Izuku’s face did the same, and she hurriedly avoided any and all eye contact with him.

“No!” Izuku blurted out, then quieter: “I mean, uh, no. We’re not dating. My mom actually works for the Yaoyorozu family.”

“Ah!” Iida said. “That certainly explains your connection. What is it your mother does for the Yaoyorozus?”

“She’s their housekeeper,” Izuku said simply. Momo gave him a somewhat surprised look. She hadn’t thought he would want to discuss it, considering she knew it was one of the many points of his life for which he’d been bullied in the past. But maybe that wasn’t giving Izuku enough credit—he was strong and he was brave, and loved his mother more than anything. There was no way he would view her with anything less than pride.

“Oh, I see!” Uraraka said. “That half of the table—” She gestured at Momo and Iida with a teasing smile. “—is the rich kid half of the table.”

Iida spluttered as Momo sipped her tea. She’d gotten used to being pegged as rich immediately a long time ago. “How did you know?” Iida asked.

“Dunno!” Uraraka said, beaming at him. Or beaming because she was right, maybe. “You just act like you come from money, Iida-kun!”

“It’s true,” Momo said. She knew Izuku would appreciate having the conversation shifted off of him. “Iida-san does come from money.”

“It’s not something I like to brag about,” Iida said, with the tone of someone that was about to brag, “but have either of you ever heard of the Turbo Hero: Ingenium?”

“Yes!” Izuku said, and then he was off like a shot. Momo smiled softly as she watched him talk, arms waving about him animatedly, eyes alight with awe and love as he spoke. Momo sipped her tea, accidentally making eye contact with Uraraka over Izuku’s head. She shared Momo’s expression—fond, despite not knowing Izuku for that long, and full of friendship. She gave Momo a knowing look a moment later, and then a soft smile.

Momo blinked deliberately, surprised, and then she returned the smile. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but…she didn’t think it was anything bad.

“I still can’t believe that All Might is teaching us,” Uraraka said conversationally, as they walked back to the locker rooms with the suits containing their hero costumes in hand.

“It’s kinda crazy,” Jirou agreed. “I wonder what sort of teacher he’ll be.”

Hopefully a good one, Momo thought. There was no promise that he would have to step in for Izuku today, but if there was any class where Bakugou was going to act up, it was probably going to be in a class where he was allowed to resort to violence to resolve his personal issues.

“He’s the Number One hero, guys,” Ashido said, turning around and walking backwards so she could look at all of them while she talked. “Who cares if he’s a good teacher or not? He’s awesome.”

Momo laughed softly at that, hiding her mouth behind her hand. Ashido sounded like Izuku right now, which was certainly nostalgic.

Hagakure got to the door first and held it open for everyone else. Momo nodded to her in thanks as she passed, then set her suitcase down on a bench by her locker. She popped it open, a strange thrill of nerves and excitement going through her as she did.

There was a tank top—red like she’d requested—folded up in the top part of the case. She pulled it out, surprised to realize it was actually a full shirt, without any cutouts or anything. It didn’t even have zippers like she suggested, just…magnets? Momo pulled a flap up from the shirt and watched as the magnets pulled it back down again. Honestly…that was ingenious. She immediately checked the black cargo pants they’d given her and found that they worked the same way, with magnetized openings on the sides for when she did create things out of her legs. There was a pair of red boots in there as well, along with the belt she’d requested and a simple red cloak. She found the visor tucked into a specially made spot in her case. There was a port where she would have to load schematics from a computer, and a button to click through them. Momo fiddled with it for a moment, eying the tiny display in the corner. The support lab had taken the initiative to load a few simple things already, which she appreciated. They’d also included the reference books she’d requested in her case as well. They also magnetized, just to the back of her belt, which was a clever idea.

Momo set to dressing herself as quickly as she could. Her costume was actually relatively easy to put on, despite its many parts. Everything fit well too, which would certainly save time for some people in costuming. She took a moment to make a matryoshka doll to test out the magnets once she was suited up and was pleased to note that they were actually extremely functional—expanding as she created, and then retracting back to their original position once her creation was complete.

“You look like a complete badass,” Jirou said. Momo started slightly at her voice, then smiled at her as she sat to pull on the boots—which were the finishing touch.

“Thank you,” Momo said. “Izuku-kun helped me design it. He’s got a very good eye for this sort of thing.”

“Does he?” Jirou said, wiggling her earphone jacks slightly. “I’m pretty happy with everything I got from the support company, but maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get ideas from other people too.”

“I find brainstorming to be very helpful,” Momo agreed. The boots fit well too, though they were a little heavier than she’d expected with the steel toe.

“Do you think Midoriya-kun would have anything to say about my costume?” Uraraka asked. Momo turned to her, and she blushed, rubbing the back of her neck with her hand. “It’s a lot tighter than I expected.”

“Actually, having a tight costume is beneficial to most heroes,” Momo said. She knocked the toes of her boots together, pleased by the clanking noise they made. “Having fewer grabbable parts is almost always a good thing. In fact, unless you have some reason for it, avoiding things like capes and cloaks is always good. Especially for heroes looking to specialize in close-quarters-combat or rescue.”

“Why rescue?” Uraraka asked, blinking.

“Rescue heroes will sometimes have to fit themselves into tiny spaces, and it’s easier to move around if you don’t have spare fabric getting caught on anything.” She looked up at Uraraka, suddenly nervous. This was always the part where everyone that wasn’t Izuku got a little less friendly with her, after all. The part where she never quite fit in because nobody liked being picked apart in one way or another. Momo had always been curious about the world, though, and in turn, curious about the people she met. “Forgive me for assuming you were interested in rescue work, Uraraka-san. I just thought it made sense, given your Quirk.”

Uraraka blinked once and Momo braced herself. She was not expecting Uraraka to then beam at her. “No, you’re totally right! I love rescue heroes. My Quirk is well-suited to it too!”

“You and I will probably end up working together a lot,” Jirou said. She pulled a mirror out of her locker and a red pencil of some sort, and then started drawing a shape under her left eye. “I’ll find people trapped in the rubble, and you’ll use your Quirk to get them out.”

“I would love that,” Uraraka said. She held out her fist.

Jirou grinned, then paused in her eyeliner drawing for a moment to bump it. “Rock on.”

“Count me in on that rescue hero gig, too—kero,” Asui said. “I’ll just be in water though.”

“Aw, Tsuyu-chan, you look so cute in your costume,” Hagakure said. The pair of gloves that indicated her presence wiggled excitedly. “Very frog-like!”

“Thanks—kero.”

“Yaomomo definitely looks the coolest,” Ashido chimed in, pulling her tan vest on with a dramatic little jerk. “I wish Izuku-kun helped design my costume too, if it ended up looking sweet like that.”

“That reminds me, Ashido-chan!” Uraraka chirped, spinning around with a helmet in her hands. “We need to come up with a nickname for Midoriya-kun like Yaomomo-chan’s.”

“Ooh,” Ashido trilled, tugging on a boot. “We do.” She got her boot on and paused for a moment, thinking, before snapping once. “We’ll call him Midorizu!”

“That’s perfect!” Uraraka agreed. “Yaomomo and Midorizu—the power couple of UA.”

Momo flushed immediately. “We’re not—”

“Power couples can be platonic—kero,” Asui said. “And you and Midoriya-chan are at least a platonic power couple.”

“She’s got you there, Yaomomo,” Jirou agreed with a laugh.

Momo blushed furiously and redid the laces on her boots to hide her red cheeks from the others. Ashido caught on and laughed anyway, though, so it was ultimately all for naught.

Thankfully, Momo’s blush had gone down before they left the locker rooms. They started down the hall towards the grounds they were meant to head down and bumped into a group of boys in front of them. Momo couldn’t help but beam when she realized Izuku was amongst them. He returned the grin, both of them shuffling through the crowd until they were standing by one another.

“Momo-chan,” Izuku said, his voice full of delight. He stomped one foot down next to hers, and Momo laughed as she noticed it too. “We have the exact same shoes.”

“We do!” Momo agreed. “Do you think that means our costumes were sourced from the same company?”

“I think so,” Izuku said. He looked down at himself, then squinted at Momo. “They look kind of like they were designed by the same company to me.”

Momo took the opportunity to better observe Izuku’s costume. His was also similar to the design they’d submitted—a dark green jumpsuit that clung to his muscles in an appealing way, white gloves, black kneepads and elbow pads, a red belt around his waist that was the exact same shade of red as Momo’s cloak and shirt. He had a mouthguard looped around his neck too, which brought a smile to Momo’s lips. She nudged it gently, pushing it up over his nose and mouth. “You’re supposed to wear it, you know.”

“Hey!” he said, his voice slightly muffled through the mouthguard, which he promptly pulled down again. He reached up and flipped Momo’s visor up onto her forehead in retaliation.

“Hey, you two,” Kirishima said, hooking his right arm on Momo’s shoulders and his left one on Izuku’s. Both of them recoiled from him slightly whilst wearing matching blushes. This was mostly because he had neglected to add a shirt to his hero costume entirely, and partly because of what he said next. “Flirt later. For now, we’ve got class to get to.”

“We—we weren’t—ah—no flirting—that was not—”

“Sure, man,” Kirishima said, patting Izuku on top of the head. “Whatever you say.”

Izuku spluttered, but didn’t attempt words again. Momo didn’t attempt them at all, though, so she wasn’t really one to talk. Kirishima kept his arms around them both as he essentially walked them to class, an easy smile on his face the whole while.

Momo’s classmates were all…very different from the classmates she’d had before. Maybe that was because they were all aspiring heroes? Were aspiring heroes simply…automatically strange?

Those were questions for later, she supposed. They’d arrived at their destination, and Kirishima dropped his arms from around their shoulders. Momo clocked where Bakugou was standing instantly and surreptitiously positioned herself between him and Izuku.

“Well, well, look at you,” All Might said, his voice booming across the street they were standing on. “They say clothes make the pros, and you all certainly look like pros. Are you ready to get started, you bunch of newbies?”

Momo straightened her shoulders, feeling Izuku do the same next to her. She watched intently as All Might pulled out notecards to explain the rules of the exercise. He wasn’t acting odd towards Izuku or her in any way, which had admittedly been a fear of hers after she talked to him that morning. She would count it as a win, at least for now.

All Might finished his explanation of the rules. Iida’s hand shot up almost immediately, and All Might nodded to him. “Sir! Why are the partners randomly assigned? Does that really stimulate a work environment?”

“If you think about it,” Izuku said, before All Might could answer, “pros team-up on the scene of a crime all the time, and have little time to prepare to battle together before they have to fight.”

“That’s our Midorizu!” Ashido exclaimed, pumping her fist at him across the way. “Always prepared to hit us with his smarts!”

“Mi-Midorizu?” Izuku questioned, surprised.

“Ah, I see!” Iida said. “Forgive me, sir!”

“No sweat,” All Might said, shooting Iida a thumbs up. “Time to draw lots.”

He called the class up one by one to draw lots for their teams. Momo tried not to be too disappointed when Izuku drew the same team as Uraraka, of all people. She drew last, her fist clenching tightly around the ball with a C on it. She cast a glance towards her supposed partner. Mineta was already looking at her, expression vacant. Yesterday still felt too soon.

Momo felt the soft fabric of Izuku’s gloved fingers on her wrist and did her best to cast him a reassuring look. She would be okay. She was a professional, and she could and would work with anyone.

“Now for the first team matchup!” All Might called. He thrust his hands into two boxes of his own. “We have Team A as the heroes—” Izuku’s lips twitched up into an eager smile. “—and Team D as the villains!”

Team D.

Which had Iida on it…and Bakugou.

“Those two teams will wait here to await further instructions,” All Might said. “The rest of you can head up to the observation room.”

Momo looked first at Izuku, though he did his best to avoid her gaze. She looked next at All Might, just for an instant, before she had to go. All Might met her gaze, giving her a nod. It was barely there, but it was there all the same.

She would have to trust him. Trust him, and hope for the best.

Chapter Text

“Are you doing okay, Yaomomo?” Jirou asked, as they settled into the observation room.

He was subtle about it, but Momo still noticed how All Might turned one ear slightly towards her. She supposed it was good to see that their talk from earlier was sticking with him, though she shifted slightly under his attention anyway, uncomfortable still with the action she had taken. Nothing was going on in the battle trial at the moment—Izuku and Uraraka were standing outside of the building, the schematics for the building stretched out in front of them as they planned their strategy.

“I’m alright,” she said.

Jirou gave her a long look, dark eyes knowing as they gleamed in the shadows of the observation room. “You’re worried for Midorizu, right?”

Momo felt her lips quirk at the nickname. “You’re calling him that now as well?”

Jirou barked out a laugh. “It’s a good name. Ashido knows how to pick them.”

“That she does,” Momo said. It was a good nickname, much better than Deku (though that was an admittedly low bar). She, however, would probably always prefer the taste of Izuku’s given name on her tongue.

“You guys seem like really good friends.”

“We are,” Momo said, feeling the all-too-familiar ache of guilt in her chest at the admission. She pushed it aside as quickly as it welled up, though. It was time to focus, and Izuku and Uraraka were about to start.

When the start was called, Izuku and Uraraka immediately headed into the building. Momo double-checked All Might’s posture, since he was the only one that could hear what they were saying. He didn’t seem any different, standing with his hands on his hips and his chest puffed out, classically All Might and not even a little tense. She supposed that was a good sign, but All Might was also a seasoned hero. He would have had to learn to hide his distress along the way of his career. Momo shifted her attention to Iida and Bakugou instead, watching as they seemed to have some sort of fight—Bakugou leaving the room the bomb was in, the door slamming shut behind him as he went.

That was a poor strategy—if anyone on their team should roam it was Iida. Bakugou’s Quirk was far more suited for defense than Iida’s, but Iida at least was making the best of it—he was taking measures to remove all floatable items from the room. That would only counter Uraraka’s Quirk, though, and not Izuku’s. Unless the strategy was too have Bakugou delay Izuku, since they could fight on similar scales…

Momo shook her head. She was thinking about this far too logically. This wasn’t strategy of any sort, this was most likely Bakugou seeking Izuku out. Targeting him, just like he had always done.

Momo tightened her arms where they were folded across her chest, turning her gaze towards Izuku and Uraraka again. He was leading himself and Uraraka through the halls of what looked like the third or fourth floor now, checking around corners for potential threats. She tracked Bakugou on the camera he was on and found that he was alarmingly close to where Izuku and Uraraka were.

“Do you think Bakugou’s looking to attack them?” Jirou asked.

Momo nodded, forcing herself to relax her posture somewhat. “He is most likely going after Izuku-kun.”

“That doesn’t seem like a great idea.” Jirou scrunched up her face slightly, which Momo recognized as a thinking face of some sort. “It would be a good idea, if Bakugou had a Quirk similar to mine, but his isn’t great for finding people, or performing combat in close quarters.”

“It’s not,” Momo agreed.

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Bakugou rounded the corner and spotted Uraraka and Izuku. He let off an explosion immediately—it looked like Izuku might have shouted a warning, but if he did, it wasn’t as quick as he was—and Izuku leapt, covering Uraraka and taking the blast himself. Momo felt her heart clench in her chest as Izuku straightened, an angry red starburst burn blooming across his face.

“Woah, he burned Midoriya,” Kaminari observed, his tone tense. “He’s really embracing that villain role, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, he did,” Kirishima agreed. “That’s not very manly.”

All Might tensed slightly now, his fingers tightening around the microphone before he loosened them again. “Minor injuries are sometimes unavoidable in these challenges. As long as young Bakugou does not resort to excessive force, there is no reason to step in.”

Momo breathed deeply, closing her eyes for a second so she could calm her nerves. Right, he was right. Just because Izuku and Bakugou had a history, it didn’t mean that this was bullying, that this was anything special. This was a training exercise at the best hero school in the country. People were going to get injured sometimes.

On screen, Uraraka scrambled away just as Bakugou lunged at Izuku. Izuku stood strong, though, grabbing Bakugou’s extended arm and ramming his shoulder into his sternum before flipping him over Izuku’s head, using his momentum against him. Bakugou landed hard enough to bounce, once, all of his air most likely whooshing out of his lungs. Momo watched a different camera, where it showed Uraraka continuing to run—they were splitting up too, then, which was a good strategy in theory. She still didn’t want to see Izuku stand and fight Bakugou, though, because…

“That was a really sweet move on Midoriya’s part,” Kirishima commented.

“Yeah, it’s like Midorizu knew exactly what Bakugou was going to do!” Ashido added.

Izuku whipped out his capture tape, attempting to wrap it around Bakugou. Bakugou countered him, though, and Izuku apparently decided to enact Plan Y for Yamomoto, as they called it, and run for the hills. Bakugou ran after him, Uraraka completely forgotten. She made her way through the halls quickly, looking for the bomb and subsequently Iida. As soon as she found him, she pressed one hand to her ear, most likely communicating something over comms.

Izuku received her message—most likely that she’d found the bomb—right before she blew her cover by laughing. Izuku ducked out from the corner he was hiding behind to face Bakugou dead on, his capture tape pulled taut between his hands and poised for use. Bakugou spun, one arm raised. He raised his other hand to his grenade shaped gauntlet, pulling out a—a…pin…

“Young Bakugou!” All Might roared suddenly, his thumb mashing the button for the mic much harder than was strictly necessary. “Do not use that attack indoors, you’ll kill him!”

Momo held her breath, her heart fluttering anxiously in her chest. He wouldn’t, not even Bakugou would—

Bakugou said something, then pulled the pin the rest of the way out of his gauntlet. An explosion flared out of it, bigger than anything Bakugou had been able to make before, and hurtling straight towards Izuku. It looked like Izuku dodged by using his Quirk to blast open a hole in the side of the building and flee, but Momo couldn’t be sure over the flames obscuring the camera.

The background around her faded to white noise, and Momo became overly aware of her heart pounding in her ears. A panic attack—she was probably having a panic attack. All Might had said that Bakugou’s attack could—no, would—kill Izuku, and she couldn’t see him, she couldn’t tell if he was alright—

“STOP THE MATCH!” All Might roared, bringing his fist down on a red button. Alarms flared throughout the building and the observation room, interrupting Iida’s and Uraraka’s game of cat and mouse and Momo’s panic attack all in one go. She felt fingers wrap around her wrist and then a soft tug, and she looked over to Jirou sharply, who pointed.

“He’s outside of the building,” Jirou murmured, just loud enough for Momo to hear her over the blaring alarms in the observation room. Distantly, Momo noticed the door slamming open as All Might left, but her eyes were glued on a screen where Izuku was climbing to his hands and knees just outside of the building. He flopped back down once he tried to put weight on one of his legs, so something was clearly not right, but he was alive. He was alive.

All Might appeared on screen a moment later, crouching down and placing a hand on Izuku’s shoulder as he spoke to him.

“What I would give to hear that conversation,” Kaminari said. There were a few assenting murmurs, but Momo only watched intently, trying to discern what was wrong with Izuku. She noticed Bakugou coming out of the building a moment later, looking irritated and gesturing at something. All Might straightened to speak to him. Behind All Might, Izuku had given up on trying to stand by himself, just watching on in silence.

Izuku looked shocked, at first. And then, an exchange of words between All Might and Bakugou, and Izuku’s gaze stuck to All Might, realization dawning on his face. After realization became betrayal, just for an instant, and Momo knew. Whatever All Might and Bakugou were saying, it had tipped Izuku off that she told.

Iida and Uraraka came out of the building a few moments later, while All Might was still talking to Bakugou. He broke off to say something to them, and they nodded furiously, each of them rushing to Izuku’s side and hooking one of his arms over their shoulders. They hauled him to his feet afterwards, heading out of the battle arena and towards the exit. Izuku limped between them, his ankle twisted in an odd direction. He’d probably either twisted it or broken it in his landing, or maybe he’d broken it when he broke the wall to jump, with his Quirk.

Momo watched Izuku fretfully until he disappeared from the scene, then turned back to look at All Might, where he was still talking to Bakugou. It was almost impossible to tell what they were saying, though All Might dropped a heavy hand onto Bakugou’s shoulder at one point. Bakugou shrugged the hand off, and All Might seemed to sigh, putting his hands back on his hips as he kept talking.

The door to the observational room slid open, a long, tired sight accompanying it. Everyone turned in unison to look as their homeroom teacher slunk inside. There was a moment of silence where they all watched each other. “Problem Class,” Aizawa finally greeted them. “Don’t complain, and come with me. We’re going to do gear tests instead. It will put you behind a little bit, since you won’t have any battle experience prior to your rescue training, but obviously it’s needed.”

Several members of the class looked close to grumbling, but seemed to think better of it as Aizawa turned on his heel and marched them out of the room. Momo cast one look back at the screen with All Might and Bakugou on it and then followed the rest of her class out, fiddling with the magnets on the sides of her pants as she walked. She noticed that Jirou was walking next to her, but she didn’t speak to her, just followed silently behind Aizawa.

She appreciated the gesture all the same, though. Jirou seemed to be a wonderful person—snarky, definitely snarky, but no less wonderful for that reason. Though, Momo could most likely say that about nearly all of her classmates. People didn’t get into a hero school for no reason. She stuck by Jirou’s side as they settled into the gym, listening as Aizawa detailed the gear tests they were supposed to do in place of the cancelled battle trials. It was relatively straightforward—use their Quirks, use their gear, and if they noticed any problems, alert him. It was a logical way to test their limits, though Momo suspected that Aizawa had to leave another class to teach them while All Might talked to Bakugou. Or did whatever he was doing with Bakugou, for that matter.

Momo set to it when Aizawa let them all go forth with their tests. She forced the events of earlier out of her mind, focusing instead on her Quirk. She messed with the visor for a moment, checking to see how quickly she could pull something up and close it out. The answer was quickly, which was unsurprising. She tested various objects next—for small objects, she needed to open the panels of her outfit herself to free them. She would probably have had to catch them in her hands anyway, so it wasn’t that inconvenient. She tested making different metals, too, just to make sure they wouldn’t interfere with the magnets. Truthfully, it was possible, but it also wasn’t much of a hindrance at all. If a magnet did get caught on the edge of an item, it was simple to remove it and keep going.

Momo may ask for them to sew a strip into her tank top to keep it on without the magnets, though. If she had to fight someone with a magnet Quirk (or just a very powerful magnet), they could easily steal her shirt. She didn’t know why they really would, but after meeting Mineta, she wasn’t interested in continuing to put her faith in people to not be scummy if they could help it.

“Yaomomo-chan.”

Momo whipped her head around, startled, surprised to find herself looking at Uraraka. She immediately looked around for someone else, but—

“He’s not here,” Uraraka said, shaking her head. “Midorizu-kun passed out after Recovery Girl healed him.”

“Oh,” Momo said, the words only distantly reaching her. “Is he alright?”

Uraraka gave her a soft smile. “He’s okay. The burns on his face were only first-degree, and they healed without any scarring. He just landed poorly and broke his ankle, but Recovery Girl was able to heal it with no problem too.”

Momo breathed out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “Good. That’s good. What were All Might and Bakugou-san speaking of?”

Uraraka’s smile fell slightly. “I shouldn’t say. I didn’t catch all of it anyway, and I wouldn’t want to spread rumors about something I heard out of context.”

“Ah, that makes sense,” Momo said, trying not to feel the loss of a chance at information too keenly. It was fair, honestly—Uraraka should not report anything she overheard, even to Momo, who already knew some of the context Uraraka was probably looking for.

Uraraka gave Momo an almost sad smile. “Good luck with your gear tests, Yaomomo-chan.”

“Thank you, you as well,” Momo said. As soon as Uraraka was gone, she bent over, letting a thick insulating blanket burst out of her back. That would be good for fighting on a team with or against Kaminari, probably. The magnet system worked perfectly.

She tried not to think about Izuku.

It was at the very end of the day, when Momo was getting ready to head to the infirmary to see Izuku herself when Izuku appeared at the end of the hall, his head hung low and his hands shoved into his pockets. He lifted his head, almost like he sensed Momo there, and met her gaze dead-on. He didn’t look hurt, surprisingly, just…sad.

Behind Momo, the door opened and closed.

“Woah, Midoriya!” Kaminari shouted, though Momo didn’t turn to look at him.

“Midorizu-kun!” Uraraka cheered. “It’s good to see you up and walking around again.”

Izuku lifted his gaze slightly, focusing on a point behind Momo’s shoulder. He lifted one hand out of his pocket, giving them both a small wave and an obviously faked smile. “It’s good to see you all, too,” he said, voice softer than it was last time he’d seen them. His gaze shifted ever-so-slightly to Momo, and Kaminari and Uraraka fell quiet.

“Well, we have to go pick up notebooks,” Kaminari said, walking past Momo. She noticed him elbowing Uraraka as he went, since Uraraka was still dithering like she wanted to say something.

Izuku, ever perceptive, tilted his head towards Uraraka, giving her a slightly more genuine smile than he had before. “Thanks again for helping me to Recovery Girl’s office earlier, Uraraka-san.” Then, even softer, “Nothing that happened was your fault.”

Uraraka relaxed marginally, finally following Kaminari down the hall. She cast them a smile and a wave over her shoulder, though. “It was no problem, Midorizu-kun! I’ll see you later, okay?”

She caught up to Kaminari and they left together, their footsteps echoing down the hall as they walked. Izuku’s gaze snapped up to hers as he waited on them to retreat, and then fell again once they were gone. Momo held her breath, sure of what this was about but waiting anxiously all the same.

“You approached the classroom from the direction of the staff rooms today,” Izuku said, still not quite meeting her eyes, “not the direction of the main entrance.”

Momo closed her eyes. “I did.”

Izuku was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was broken. “You told All Might, didn’t you? About the bullying?”

“Did he say something to you about it?”

“No,” Izuku said, his voice firm, but sorrowful. “All Might didn’t break your faith. He just mentioned mine and Kacchan’s history when he was talking to him. As far as All Might knows, we’re friends with a competitive streak. I made sure of that.”

“Izuku—”

“I understand, Momo,” he said, and Momo finally looked at him, at the quiet acceptance in his eyes. “You did what you thought was right. Interfering in something when you don’t necessarily have to is the essence of being a hero, right?”

“Don’t say that so bitterly,” Momo said. “I was only trying to help.”

“I know,” he said, breaking their eye contact and walking past her and towards the door for Class A. “I’m not mad at you, not really. I just—” He broke off, the fragment of a sentence drifting into the air and settling between them. “We were a team, before. Even when we disagreed.” He looked over his shoulder at her, green eyes bright with the tears that weren’t falling. “I just wish you hadn’t gone behind my back.”

Momo’s heart swelled and then broke, and she took one step towards Izuku. “What did you want me to do? Tell you I was disobeying your wishes, and telling the teachers anyway? You only would have stopped me. At least now, All Might knew to stop the fight between you and Bakugou-san. At least he had the proper information to act, to prevent you from getting hurt even worse than you already were.”

“Momo,” Izuku said, like it was a warning. Momo froze, because she’d never heard that tone in his voice before. “Maybe you’re right about all of that, but it’s not the point. The point is that I didn’t want you to say anything, and you did. And then I found out about it because everything crashed and burned, not because you told me you did it in the first place.”

There was a moment of silence that stretched between them and then snapped as tears she didn’t know she’d formed spilled out of her eyes. It was true, obviously true, when he put it that way. A betrayal, straightforward and plain, and to make matters worse, she had betrayed Izuku. Izuku, who had never really trusted anyone before. Izuku, who had trusted her enough to know the truth of his Quirk, who had trusted her not to tell others about his past.

“I’m sorry,” Momo said.

It wasn’t enough.

“I won’t say it’s okay,” Izuku said, looking away from her. “But you’re still my best friend. You’ll always be my best friend.”

He opened the door and stepped inside, leaving Momo behind in the quiet of the hallway.

Chapter Text

Izuku went home at the end of the day. He walked alone to the train station, shoulders slightly hunched and his movements stiff, and Momo watched him go quietly. It wasn’t her place to interrupt him. It wasn’t her place to chase after him.

“Is everything alright?” Uraraka asked, stopping next to Momo as she did. Iida was with her, and he adjusted his glasses as he looked over Uraraka’s head at her, concern plain on his face.

“Everything is fine,” Momo said, offering both of them a reassuring smile. It was as reassuring as she could possibly make it, in any case.

The fact that her parents’ manor felt lonelier than it had in years that night was nobody’s business but her own.

“You have an important task ahead of you today.”

The mood in the classroom dropped collectively, everyone brimming with some amount of dread—another Quirk test, a repeat of their disastrous battle trials from the day before, anything felt possible.

“You need to choose your Class Representative,” Aizawa finished.

The room immediately erupted into bright cheers. Several of Momo’s classmates jumped up, offering themselves as candidates, including Kirishima, Kaminari, Ashido… Even Bakugou chimed in, requesting the role, though Momo was fairly certain that was unlikely to happen.

In front of her, Izuku was quiet, distant. He rolled his pencil across his fingers until the end tapped against the top of his desk, and then rolled it back. He didn’t seem to even really be paying attention.

Momo wondered…

“Everyone!” Iida called, rising from his seat forcefully, one arm raised and ready to chop. To his credit, everyone quieted down, all eyes turning to him. “Class Representative is a very important and time-honored duty! We need to make sure that the person chosen is fit for the job, somebody that we can all trust and look up to. It’s for that reason that we should all choose our class representative, by voting and the power of democracy.”

“Wouldn’t most people just vote for themselves?” Kirishima asked, raising his hand like Iida was a teacher. “I mean, we barely know each other.”

“Yes, and that’s precisely why anyone that gets more than one vote would be perfectly suited to the job! If someone were to receive more than one vote, the vote they gave themself, it would be a testament to that person’s skill and talent, for having earned the trust of another so quickly. It makes the most sense. Sensei, don’t you agree?”

“Do what you want,” Aizawa said, climbing into his yellow sleeping bag as he did. Momo wondered where he’d gotten it from, considering he hadn’t had it when he came in, as far as she could tell. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought he had a Quirk like her own. “As long as you choose someone by the end of homeroom, it doesn’t matter to me how you do it.” Then, with an air of finality, he zipped up his sleeping bag and promptly lounged against the corner of the room, eyes already shut.

“Well, what do you all say?” Iida said, turning back towards the class. “Shall we vote?”

“Sure!” Ashido said, pumping one fist in the air. “It’ll be fun at the very least!”

“I’m curious to see if it’ll work,” Kaminari added, raising one eyebrow as he did.

“Let’s do it then!” Iida said. “Everyone, write your vote down on a slip of paper then fold it in half, so that they remain anonymous until counting.”

Ahead of her, Izuku quietly tore a strip of paper off of a page in one of his notebooks, his pencil skittering across his fingers again. So he was listening, then, he just didn’t care about Class Representative. Momo wouldn’t necessarily be surprised if that was the case—Izuku had always been anxious about people in general, and though being Class Representative would be a wonderful mark on any aspiring hero’s record, it would be a lot of people work. It would require networking, talking to people, being available to help and assist classmates whenever someone needed it…and all of those were things that Izuku would feel pressured by.

But at the same time, Momo simply couldn’t imagine writing down any other name but his. He was kind and caring. He was far shyer now than he had been when they were kids, but he had a way about drawing people out of their shells, about inspiring them, forcing them to do their best in everything they did. He was intelligent and talented, and Momo knew that his grades were exceptional as well. She had been a class representative before, back in middle school, and she wanted to be one again, now, but…

Momo produced a scrap of paper with her Quirk, pulling it out of her wrist easily. She didn’t make a pencil, though, since those tended to consume slightly more lipids, instead fetching one out of her pencil pouch. She hesitated for just a moment, her pencil hovering over the piece of paper. It would be against his wishes, since he didn’t volunteer himself. She’d already gone against his wishes once, and their friendship was fragile right now. Would doing this break it? Was she willing to take that risk? No, she couldn’t think like that.

Momo took a deep breath, and wrote out the characters for Izuku’s name. She folded the paper neatly and tightly afterwards, concealing the name inside from view. She hoped that it wasn’t going too far. She also hoped that he didn’t find out.

Iida came by not long after that, carrying an emptied out pencil pouch for people to put their votes inside. Momo placed hers last, eying the slightly crinkled notebook paper at the top that probably belonged to Izuku.

She wondered who he would vote for, if not himself. Uraraka, maybe? He did seem to like her, after all. It wouldn’t be surprising if he had. Or maybe he had voted for Iida. She sensed that Izuku had some measure of respect for the other boy, now that time had passed and their initial hiccup at the entrance exam was over. Admittedly, Iida also wouldn’t be a bad choice, considering his abilities to organize the others.

Iida set to counting the votes, showing each paper to the entire class for honesty’s sake as he did. Uraraka offered to help, and kept a tally next to everyone’s names as Iida listed them off. There was one vote for Kaminari, then one for Bakugou, then one for Asui. Aoyama, Ashido, Ojirou, Kirishima, Kouda, Satou, Sero, Tokoyami, Hagakure, and Mineta also all ended up with one vote each, which meant the remaining seven votes were split up between—

“I got four votes?” Izuku slammed his hands on his desk as he stood, some of his curls standing on end. He looked frazzled and distraught, but all of his usual energy he’d been lacking all day before that moment had returned to him. “What?”

“Who voted for the nerd?” Bakugou demanded, turning in his seat to glare at the majority of the class.

“Like anyone was actually going to vote for you,” Kaminari said, shooting Bakugou a teasing look. “You’re way too aggressive, man.”

“Hey!” Bakugou shouted, redirecting his yelling towards Kaminari.

“I got three votes,” Momo said softly, staring at the board. Assuming Izuku had voted for himself, that left Shouji, Jirou, Uraraka, Iida, and Todoroki as the only people that hadn’t voted for themselves, besides her. And of those five, three of them had chosen her to lead them. But why would any of them vote for her? No, it didn’t make sense. Shouji and Jirou had most likely voted for Izuku due to the Mineta situation from the first day. Todoroki had most likely voted for him too, which meant—

No, that wasn’t it either. Iida and Uraraka had to have voted for Izuku, there was no other explanation. But then, did that mean…

Had Izuku actually voted for her? But why would he do that after everything she’d done?

“I guess that settles it, then,” Iida said, adjusting his glasses as he looked at the board. “Midoriya-kun is our undisputed first place winner. I say we go ahead and instate Yaoyorozu-san as Vice Representative, thoughts?”

“Yeah, I’m good with that,” Kirishima said, a few others also chiming in with agreement. “Man, Midoriya! I should have thought of that honestly. You’ll be a great class representative, bro!”

Izuku’s shoulders stiffened ever-so-slightly.

The bell rang for lunch, and Izuku had packed up his stuff and bolted from the classroom before Momo had a chance to say a word.

Momo was no stranger to Izuku’s anxiety attacks.

It was what she thought about as she walked towards the lunchroom by herself, her fingers folded in front of her and her mind racing. Izuku was having one now, though it was impossible for her to know where he’d gone to have it. Any other time, she probably would have tried to find him and help him herself. She doubted that was her place right now, though, with everything going on.

She couldn’t help but worry, though.

“Yaomomo, hey.”

Momo jumped slightly, looking towards Jirou as she did. She was so out of it lately, honestly. She hadn’t even noticed the other girl approaching. “Jirou-san, hello. How are you?”

“Nothing to complain about here,” Jirou said, twirling an earphone jack idly around one finger. Her other arm was crossed over her chest. “Congrats on getting vice rep, though. I’m not surprised other people voted for you too.”

“You were one of my votes?” Momo asked, feeling her eyebrows lifting in surprise at the revelation. She hadn’t been expecting Jirou, but it did make sense, now that she was considering it. She was beginning to think of the other girl as a friend. Maybe that was the basis on which she voted for Momo, if she felt the same.

“Yeah, sure,” Jirou said, half of her mouth curling into a smirk. “I’ll admit I did think about voting for Midorizu, but he didn’t really seem like he wanted it. But you’re clearly smart and level-headed, so I thought you would be a good choice, too.”

“You didn’t want the job for yourself?”

“Nah,” Jirou said, blowing out her cheeks slightly as she did. “Well, I mean, I did. But Iida was right, you know? Leadership isn’t really something just anyone can do right off the bat. Besides, it’s not really my style. You and Midorizu have it, though, if any of us do.”

“I see,” Momo said, considering Jirou in a new light now. She wasn’t a selfish sort, it seemed, which was unsurprising amongst fellow hero hopefuls. It was still refreshing to see, however, even if it wasn’t exactly a shocking development. “That’s very mature of you.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t really say so,” Jirou said, shifting so she could place both hands on the back of her neck. She seemed embarrassed, oddly enough. “Especially since Todoroki, Shouji, Uraraka, and Iida apparently all did the same.”

“I can’t help but wonder who they voted for,” Momo mused.

“Hard to say,” Jirou said. “If I had to guess, I would say Shouji is probably your other vote, though, alongside your own.”

“Oh, I didn’t vote for myself,” Momo said, as she fell in line with Jirou to get food. “I was one of Izuku-kun’s four, I’m afraid.”

“Huh,” Jirou said, her earphone jacks curling slightly in some kind of amusement. “Well, I guess I should have seen that coming. You two are attached at the hip and everything. Where is he, by the way?”

“I don’t know,” Momo confessed, shifting awkwardly at Jirou’s statement. Attached at the hip. And after all she’d done… “He ran off on his own when the bell rang.”

“Ah,” Jirou said, somewhat awkwardly. The awkwardness was warranted—Momo would probably feel awkward herself, upon sensing a conversation was turning towards advising someone else on their relationship with another. It was always a difficult thing to traverse, but especially so when you didn’t know a person well. It didn’t help, either, that there was a lot about Izuku that Momo couldn’t ever hope to explain to others.

Their conversation was saved by them ordering their food and then finding a table to eat at afterwards. Momo was pleasantly surprised when Jirou followed her to where she ate with Iida and Uraraka, but that surprise turned slightly sour when she noticed Izuku wasn’t there. He was most likely off having a panic attack on his own then, and there was nothing Momo could do about it. Izuku was right, she should have just told him, even if he was mad at her for a little bit. Things could be so different now if only she’d been honest about her intentions to start with…

“Yaomomo-chan!” Uraraka said in greeting, raising one hand to wave at her as she did. “Midorizu-kun isn’t with you?”

“He ran off, supposedly,” Jirou said, setting her tray next to Uraraka’s and then sitting down. Momo took the seat next to Iida’s, content to let Jirou explain Izuku’s whereabouts to them. “Speaking of him, though, did you two vote for him?”

Uraraka spat out her drink while Iida nervously pushed his glasses up his nose. Leave it to Jirou to be blunt, Momo supposed.

“I did, yes,” Iida said. “Midoriya-kun has exhibited a lot of strong leadership skills, and clearly looks out for and cares for others. Additionally, he is not afraid to enforce rules when rules need to be enforced, which is a valuable skill amongst any aspiring leader.”

“He’s very good at strategizing too!” Uraraka added. “I know nobody else heard it, but working on a team with him during combat training yesterday was amazing. He’s so good at coming up with plays, it was like working with an actual pro.”

“I’ll take it that’s a yes, then,” Jirou said, picking up a bit of her rice with her chopsticks. “I wonder who his last vote was then—Shouji, or Todoroki.”

“Oh, so you voted for Yaoyorozu-san?” Iida said.

“Yeah. I did consider Midoriya too, though, don’t get me wrong. You’re all right about him being leader material, especially with what he did to the grape boy on the first day. Being a class rep just doesn’t really seem like his thing, though.”

“Yeah, he is a bit nervous at times,” Uraraka said, with a light giggle. She looked at Momo, smiling brightly as she did. “You’re both going to do amazing, though! It worked out that you’re really good friends, too. It’s like it was meant to be.”

“I agree,” Iida said. “We couldn’t have picked two better leaders amongst our peers.”

“Hey, now,” Jirou said lightly, leaning up against Uraraka’s shoulder. “We’re right here, you know.”

Uraraka laughed again, pushing up against herself. “Yeah, Iida-kun! Just because we all know those two are the best it doesn’t mean you have to say it to our faces.”

“I didn’t mean—” Iida started, his cheeks going red, but he was interrupted by a blaring alarm before he could finish.

Jirou winced immediately, covering her ears with both of her hands. Uraraka turned slightly, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder with one pinkie raised. Momo looked around, noticing all of the people around them climbing to their feet. “Pardon me,” she said, grabbing the wrist of the person that had been standing next to her as they tried to run away too. “What does that alarm mean?”

“It means an intruder got onto UA’s grounds!” he said, tugging his arm out of her grasp. She let him go easily. “That’s never happened before, even in my three years here!”

An intruder…?

“Yaoyorozu-san,” Iida said, dropping a hand onto her shoulder. “We better go as well.”

“Of course,” Momo said, following him, Uraraka, and Jirou as they all made their way out of the cafeteria.

Izuku. Izuku was on his own somewhere.

No, she couldn’t worry about that, not right now. First there was this obstacle to overcome—everyone pushing against each other, fighting to get through. Momo got jostled by a stranger again, this time an elbow in the ribs, and she cried out. She was knocked again, and again, trying desperately to stay with the others but getting separated anyway.

There was a crackle and a hiss, and suddenly a thin layer of frost was spreading over everyone, trapping them in place. Everyone paused in their shoving to investigate the ice instead, relatively harmless as it was, just barely latching onto the soles of their shoes. Momo looked, craning her neck to see over the rest of the crowd until she spotted Todoroki’s two-toned hair. He exhaled deeply as she made eye contact with him, frost leaving with his breath.

“Everyone!”

Izuku?

“Please stay calm!” Izuku shouted. Momo spotted him now, standing next to Todoroki. He was quivering, either from the nerves or the cold, she wasn’t sure. “We need to get out of the cafeteria, and whatever it is, we have to trust the teachers to take care of it.”

“It’s just the media!” another voice—Iida—called out. He’d somehow gotten carried all the way over to the windows. “We are in no danger! Please proceed through the entryway in a calm and orderly fashion!”

The panic ebbed, everyone looking out the windows themselves, looking for the media and other things. Momo pushed backwards through the crowd, weaving and dodging people much easier now that they weren’t panicking, until she got to Izuku. He was in the middle of a conversation with Todoroki when she arrived, but he turned to look at her as she approached, his face wide and expressive.

Momo felt like there wasn’t really anything she could say that was good enough to break this tension that had settled between them since yesterday. There was no perfect way to apologize for what she had done to him, but that was alright. They would always be best friends.

“Are you alright?” Momo asked.

Izuku’s gaze softened. “I’m fine. Sorry if I worried you.”

“It’s okay,” Momo said. “I’m just glad to see that you were here and safe.”

“I feel the same!” Izuku said, his hands coming up to wave somewhat awkwardly in front of him.

It was Izuku, completely normal again. Before Momo could respond, though, Todoroki spoke.

“Midoriya.” He turned slightly away from Momo to look at him. “The ice was a good call. You stepping down as class representative would be a disgrace to yourself and those that voted for you.”

With no further preamble, he turned and walked away, sparing Momo only a brief nod as he passed her to go towards the exit, the rest of the crowd moving in that direction now too. Momo looked back at Izuku, as he nervously settled a palm on the back of his neck.

“Were you with Todoroki-san the entire time?”

“Ah, not really,” Izuku said. “He found me a little bit before the alarm went off. I think it was by chance, mostly.”

“You wanted to step down as class representative, though?”

“Well, yes. It’s a lot of pressure and everything, and…well. You know how I am with pressure.”

Momo looked over her shoulder, watching as Todoroki turned a corner and disappeared. She supposed that answered the question of who Izuku’s last voter was, though, since she doubted Todoroki would care otherwise. She looked back at Izuku. “Are you going to step down?”

“Do you want me to?”

Momo blinked. “Pardon?”

“If I stepped down, you would be class representative,” Izuku said. “It’s something you would be better at, and something I know you want. It’s why I voted for you. I didn’t just write your name down because we’re friends.”

“Why did you write my name down?” Momo asked, folding her hands in front of her nervously. “I thought for sure you wouldn’t, after what happened yesterday.”

“Mm,” Izuku hummed, unsure, as he clasped the back of his neck again. “Yesterday…you made a good call. You did what you thought was best, and it played out in your favor.” He looked down, his eyebrows drawing together as he did. “I think that’s a sign that you deserve it more than I do.”

Oh, him. He was altruistic to a fault. He always had been.

“Izuku-kun, keep the position. Todoroki-san is right, you got four votes for a reason. We’ll lead the class together.” She looked down herself, feeling her cheeks heat up slightly at the words. “As long as that’s something you’re okay with, that is.”

“Of course, Momo-chan.” He met her gaze, something catching and hanging there between them, and then slowly extended his fist for her to bump. She sighed lightly at the improperness of it but knocked her knuckles against his anyway, feeling tears collecting a bit in her eyes as she did. It was a small consolation that Izuku seemed to be in that same boat as well. “It’s like I said yesterday. We’ll always be best friends.”

“That we will,” Momo said, lowering her hand again. “I really am sorry for betraying you.”

“And I’m sorry too, for how I acted,” he said.

“There’s no need to apologize.” Izuku opened his mouth to protest, but before he could, someone bumped into him as they walked past, they apologized as they continued walking, though, painting a contrast with the behavior of the crowds earlier.

“We should probably go, Class Representative,” Momo said.

“We probably should,” Izuku agreed.

They walked back in silence. It wasn’t perfect, not yet, but they would be back to normal one day.

Chapter Text

“Form a line to get on the bus!” Momo called out, as she stood off to the side with Izuku.

“Any old order is fine!” Izuku added, flapping his arms in a gesture reminiscent of Iida. “Just—yep. Get on there. You guys are doing great!”

“You’re doing great too, bro!” Kirishima called out, giving them a thumbs up. He sidled into line between a laughing Sero and Kaminari. Kaminari, feigning distress, said, “No ditching!”

“My heart’s beating so fast,” Izuku said, pressing a palm flat to his chest and breathing out an exasperated sigh. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“Telling people to form a line to get on a bus, or going to perform mysterious rescue training?” Momo asked.

“Both,” Izuku said. “It’s both.”

“I think you’ll find that you get used to it,” Momo said. The rest of their classmates had finished lining up for the bus, so she tugged on his sleeve gently and led him to the back so they could join the line. He followed her. “I hope that you will, in any case!”

“Everyone does seem really nice about it,” Izuku said. “I still have nightmares about the packet of duties Aizawa-sensei gave me yesterday, though.”

Momo had also seen the packet, and had received a similar one, thanks to her being vice representative. She could admit that it was daunting in size—packed with scheduled events. Most worrying was a meeting they would have to attend with the other class representatives next week. It was only worrying because of its proximity and the socialization aspect, nothing more serious than that.

Ahead of them, Satou got on the bus. Momo followed him, Izuku bringing up the rear behind her. There were a few seats open still, but Momo settled for sitting in the side seats, with Asui on one side, because there were two open seats next to each other there. Unsurprisingly, Izuku sat next to her.

“I’m so excited,” Kaminari said across from them, fidgeting in his seat next to Sero dramatically. “Our first real training exercise—I can’t wait!”

“For some of us, it’s our second training exercise,” Sero reminded him, his grin sharp.

“Only, like, four people though,” Kaminari countered. “They don’t count.”

“Hey!” Uraraka said, from where she was seated next to Jirou. “I like to think I count, mister!”

Kaminari’s response was interrupted by Aizawa climbing aboard and the hiss of the doors as they closed behind him. Momo glanced at Izuku next to her and away again quickly, folding her hands in her lap to keep them from doing anything stupid, like reaching out to take his hand. It felt so awkward—to feel the effects of her feelings in full force again while still knowing that now more than ever he wasn’t likely to return them.

She was excited for the training, though. Rescue—she was very interested in practicing that.

She had to stop worrying about Izuku.

It was impossible to know where he was, but he wasn’t here with her, and for that reason, she couldn’t let herself think about him. She had to focus her worry on the villains, and Kaminari and Jirou. She had to be here for them—all the way here—and so she couldn’t afford to be distracted about Izuku’s whereabouts.

She hoped that he was safe. None of these villains were particularly impressive, so she felt it was fair to probably assume the same of the villains spread out in the other zones, but the wrong zone or a lack of allies could prove fatal for any of her classmates. Think, she had to think. Right now, Kaminari was doing most of the work, with her and Jirou only occasionally picking off the people that got close enough to them with the weapons Momo had made for them.

She could make the insulation blanket she had practiced the other day. In fact she was already working on it in the back of her mind, but slower than she necessarily had to. It was a good plan, she felt—if she and Jirou got under the blanket, then they would be safe from his Quirk, which meant he could let it all out if he wanted to. The only downside was that it might leave Kaminari vulnerable, especially if anyone else here was able to resist his Quirk.

She couldn’t think of any better options.

Momo grit her teeth, increasing the pace at which she created the insulation blanket. They would have to go with this. They’d already been going at this with the villains in the mountain zone for a while. If they didn’t hurry, they wouldn’t be able to help any of their other classmates. It was possible, too, that Kaminari might be able to call for help, if somebody was able to incapacitate whoever was jamming the signal. That was invaluable.

“Kaminari-san, release everything you have in a moment!” Momo warned him, as she finished the blanket. “Jirou-san and I will be fine, I promise!”

“Yaomomo, what—”

Momo finished the insulation blanket, letting it burst from her back. The magnets from her costume snapped neatly back into place after it was released, and she crouched as it fell over her and Jirou. It was impossible to know what was going on out there, aside from what she could hear—Kaminari shouted a voltage, there was a sizzle of electricity frying bodies, and then nothing, nothing…

“Yay!” she heard Kaminari say, his voice off, and Momo hesitantly lifted the edge of the blanket to peer out.

Around them, villains laid in convulsing piles, twitching from the electricity in their bodies. Kaminari stood in the middle of the carnage, smoke drifting around him, with both thumbs in the air and a bit of drool dribbling down his chin.

“Oh, no,” Jirou said, covering her mouth with her hand. “He’s gone idiot mode.”

It had worked, though. They were going to be okay.

Somebody grabbed Kaminari from behind.

Momo shouted, the insulation blanket thrown off of her and a weapon pulled out of her arm before she could think twice. She wasn’t sure how she was going to rescue Kaminari, just that she was, but before she could do anything, the villain held his hand up to Kaminari’s head in a threatening way.

“Stop it right there, little lady,” he said, “or the idiot gets it. That was a nice trick with the insulation blanket, but unfortunately for you, us electric types are resistant to each other.”

“Damn it, Kaminari,” Jirou muttered.

This wasn’t good. If this was happening to them, then the others…they could be in danger too. They likely were in danger too. Izuku was—

She cut that thought off abruptly, not giving it time to grow. She couldn’t. Not now.

“Alright, this is how things are going to go,” the villain said. “You two aren’t going to try any funny business, and in return, I won’t kill your friend here. Sound good? Good. See, I’ve got a job to do here, and I’m not about to let a bunch of pissant hero course students keep me from doing it.”

“You electric types irritate me,” Jirou said suddenly, and Momo spared her a sharp glance. One of her earphone jacks was behind her back, creeping slowly down towards the speakers she wore in her boots. Was she…stalling? Momo thought she was, and if she was stalling, that meant she had some sort of plan. “Do you even realize how much of a demand there is for Quirks like yours? Why even bother with being a villain when you could get a job doing literally anything else?”

“I said don’t move!” he roared, and his hand got dangerously close to Kaminari’s head again.

Jirou froze, and Momo’s heart pounded desperately in her chest. That hadn’t worked, and she didn’t exactly have any ideas either. Kaminari was right in front of them. There had to be something they could do to help their classmate, and yet…

A gunshot sounded through the facility, and then another, and another.

“Oh, shit,” the villain said, looking like he was contemplating dropping Kaminari.

Somebody else had arrived to save them, instead.

Izuku was being carried out of the USJ on a stretcher. He was conscious, somehow, but when Momo tried to go to him, she was stopped by a firm grasp on her arm. Jirou.

“Jirou-san—” Momo started. She had to explain to her, she had to tell her, she needed to get over there, she needed to see him.

“I know,” Jirou said, tugging on her arm again, pulling her backwards this time. “Yaomomo, I know, but you can’t go to him right now.”

“He’s on a stretcher, Jirou-san,” Momo said, like it explained everything. In a way, it did.

“I know. But you have to let him go.”

Momo didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one bit, but she allowed it anyway. Deep down, she knew Jirou was right. There was nothing Momo could do for Izuku right now except watch. She spotted something white, and turned. It was Todoroki. She had heard enough whispers and murmurs from those that hadn’t been teleported away from the central plaza to know that he had been in the main fight with Bakugou and Kirishima. She didn’t know either of them particularly well, but Todoroki…she knew him.

Alright. There was nothing she could for Izuku right now except watch, so she might as well get whatever answers she could.

“Hey!” Jirou barked, surprised, as Momo changed directions. Jirou tried to stop her with a hand on her arm again, but Momo ignored it. When Jirou clung to her arm, digging her heels into the ground, Momo decided she would just drag her along too. “Yaomomo, what are you doing? Where are you even going?”

In lieu of answering the other girl, Momo just fixed her eyes on her target and went, carving a path through the other students in the way. It was almost as if they sensed her mood. “Todoroki-san,” Momo said, as soon as she was close enough to be heard without having to raise her voice. Todoroki’s gaze snapped towards her, the ever-present intensity in his eyes sharpening even further. “Why is Izuku on a stretcher?”

Todoroki blinked. “I’m not responsible for him being on the stretcher,” he said, taking a step back. If Momo didn’t know him better, she would almost say he was afraid.

“Answer the question, Todoroki-san,” Momo said, barreling forward, Jirou still in tow.

“I told him to leave, but he insisted on saving All Might,” Todoroki said, his eyes narrowing as he did. “He broke his legs with his Quirk.”

“He broke his legs with his Quirk,” Momo repeated, unable to keep the frustration out of her voice. He should be past the point where he was breaking his legs with his Quirk. And she thought she knew why he’d resorted to such a measure anyway, considering All Might’s time limit. Likely, he really had needed Izuku to save him.

“I swear it’s the truth,” Todoroki said, holding his hands up in a placating gesture.

“Of course it’s the truth,” Momo said, turning abruptly away from Todoroki. She’d gotten what she needed, after all. Oh! She should probably thank him for assisting her, though. “Thank you, Todoroki-san.” She bowed politely, then made her way off again. Jirou followed her, though she didn’t cling to her arm this time, instead trailing after her looking amused. As to why she looked amused, Momo had no idea. “I swear I’m going to kill that boy.”

Momo was surprised both by the fact that she said that out loud and by the fact that she felt she meant it. She’d bypassed worry and frustration and gone straight for anger. Perhaps, anger was just the only thing she could allow herself to feel right now. Otherwise, she would surely be crying.

“I can believe you,” Jirou said, laughing, of all things. “Todoroki looked like he was going to piss himself in fear.”

Momo paused, giving Jirou a curious look. “Excuse me?”

Jirou laughed so hard at that she caused herself to double over, clutching at her stomach. “He looked terrified of you, Yaomomo. Oh my god. Not that I blame him, you were pretty scary back there, but also, that was amazing.”

“I was scary?” Momo asked, not sure of what part of that interaction constituted as scary. Or why Jirou thought Todoroki looked scared at all—to her, he had just looked like himself.

“You,” Jirou said, wiping laughing tears out of her eyes and looping her arm through Momo’s, “were positively terrifying. You’re my hero now. No take-backs.”

“Oh,” Momo said, feeling herself blushing a little at the praise. “Thank you, Jirou-san. That’s kind to say.”

She was glad for Jirou, at the very least. She did not think she had it in her to watch Izuku being carted off to the hospital on her own.

All of them were gathered in the sitting room, minus one notable participant.

It was late. Yamamoto and Inko’s “shifts” had both ended an hour and a half ago, and yet both had stayed. Inko was sitting in an armchair, her ankles crossed and her back straight and tense. There was a box of tissues balanced in her lap. Used tissues she had collected into a bag beside her, neat and tidy. Her cell phone rested on the chair of the arm beside her, face up so that everyone could see when a notification blinked through. Izuku was texting updates occasionally, apparently—he had to give his police statement after Recovery Girl healed him, and it was dragging on longer than it should. Inko had offered to pick him up when he was done, but all of them had put their foot down on that—everyone in this room didn’t want her to drive in the state she was in, and Izuku was fine with taking the train.

Yamamoto shifted, dusting another shelf he had already dusted and humming in a contemplative way when his rag came up dustless. He was an anxious man and perhaps always had been, and so no one told him to stop even though he was no longer being paid to work. They understand he needed something for his hands to do. In contrast to Yamamoto, her father wore his anxiety in stillness, sitting like a king in his armchair and calmly flipping pages to a book on finances he’d picked up recently. The only sign he was nervous at all, actually, was the fact that he kept periodically flicking out an ornate pocket watch to check the time when not much time had passed at all.

Momo and her mother sat quietly together, hands clasped between them. Izuku was also texting updates to her phone, but they included information about All Might and his condition and their shared Quirk, so Momo was not checking them in front of the others. The last one she’d glimpsed when she snuck off to the bathroom a few minutes ago had been grim. All Might’s time limit had been reduced yet again, more than likely, and he already couldn’t maintain his hero form for longer than a few hours at a time.

“Did you hear that?” Momo’s mother asked.

“Hear what?” three people said at once.

That time, they all heard it. It was a door shutting, somewhere in the house, a scuffling sound of sorts that could perhaps be someone taking off their shoes or setting down their bag.

“It’s coming from the kitchen side door,” Inko said. “He has a key, so he probably just let himself in like usual.”

“Ah, yes,” her father said. “We did indeed give the boy a key to that door.”

And with no further preamble or discussion, those that had been sitting stood and those that had been standing moved, and together they essentially rushed the kitchen.

Momo got there first, just as he was rounding the corner to leave and make his way towards the sitting room. She more or less tackled him in a hug, arms around his shoulders and face pressed into the side of his head. He made a noise of surprise before settling his arms around her hesitantly.

She had not expected to cry. He’d been fine, really—there was no need to cry over it. That was what she had been telling herself. That was what she had thought she believed.

“Hey,” Izuku said, his voice a lullaby, luring her to peace if not sleep. “Don’t cry. Momo, don’t cry.”

“You were right there with the main villains,” she said, her voice catching in embarrassing spots over her tears. “What am I supposed to do, if not cry? You could have died.”

She felt him press his face into her shoulder, and considering how wet her shirt felt, she doubted she was the only one crying. “I know.”

“I’m so glad you didn’t,” Momo whispered.

Slightly, ever-so-slightly, his arms tightened around her. “I’m glad you didn’t, too.”

She cried harder. Unsurprisingly, he did too, tears staining both of their shoulders, sobs tearing both of their throats. She couldn’t even bring herself to care about their audience—it was most definitely unsightly and unladylike, to look like this, and yet, she couldn’t care.

They could have both died today. It was something she had always known. Heroes had to risk their lives; it was their job description. But before that moment, it had never felt particularly real.

Chapter Text

“I am still surprised that they’re allowing the Sports Festival to continue,” Momo said, as she stretched in the garden behind her house. Because they had been doing this for just over a year now, they knew better than to stand anywhere remotely close to Yamamoto’s topiaries while they trained.

“It’s a sign of strength,” Izuku said, as he lifted his arms over his head. His expression was far away, which was good, because Momo definitely spent longer than she should have looking at the way his muscles interacted with one another underneath his shirt.

“I understand that,” Momo said, “but it’s also very controversial. Student lives were just at risk in a training exercise a few weeks prior—the media is going to tear UA apart for choosing to hold another event with a high chance for security risks. If it doesn’t go well…”

“But if it does go well, the media trying to tear them down won’t have a leg to stand on,” Izuku argued. “If UA perseveres and succeeds, it’ll be a sign that they can adapt to crises and overcome them. It would effectively take the wind out of the critics’ sails, because they wouldn’t have any evidence to back up their complaints.”

Momo didn’t respond, instead taking in the planes of his face. Worry creased his brow, and she thought she knew what it was. Or at least, she knew what had caused it. “What did All Might want to talk to you about at lunch?” she asked him instead.

Izuku was quiet for a long time, using a change in his stretching position as an excuse to stall for longer while he chewed on his words. “He wants me to win the Sports Festival.”

Momo tilted her head to the side. “That can’t be all.”

“What do you mean?” Izuku asked, finally looking at her to blink in surprise like a deer caught in the headlights.

“You seem worried about something, that’s all,” Momo said. “And you have seemed worried about it—whatever it is—since you came back from lunch earlier. I doubt that it’s just the prospect of winning the Sports Festival itself that’s bothering you, since you and everyone else was already planning to do that anyway.”

Izuku sighed and shifted his stretching position again. “You can read me so well, you know.”

“And you can read me just as well,” Momo quipped, nudging his shoulder with hers. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

“He wants me to be the next Symbol of Peace,” Izuku said, the words tumbling out of him like the time they spent queued up in his mind caused them to run faster when allowed to escape. “And I shouldn’t mind, really. That was always the idea, you know? He wasn’t passing his Quirk onto me because he wanted me to be an average hero that does an okay job of saving people.”

“But it’s a lot of pressure,” Momo surmised quickly. “Especially right after your first encounter with villains.”

And he had been in the fight in the main plaza too, where the worst of the villains had been. She didn’t know the exact details—the wounds were still fresh, and neither of them had been particularly willing to unpack everything they went through yet—but she knew that his experiences must have been terrifying. She was still a touch upset with him for his recklessness, but she knew that he wouldn’t have broken his legs with his Quirk if he didn’t feel like he had to.

“It’s a lot of pressure,” Izuku agreed. “I’m not sure I can live up to his expectations, and that’s terrifying.”

Momo wasn’t sure there was anything she could really say to comfort him, but she knew that she had to try, at the very least. “Pretend like the pressure isn’t there, then,” she said. “You never spoke to All Might. You’re not trying to become the Symbol of Peace in the Sports Festival. You’re just a first year heroics student, and you’re going to do your best to win the Sports Festival. Not because you have to, but because you want to.”

He took a sharp breath in through his nose, the tiniest of smiles curving his lips upward. “Thanks,” he said. “I think I needed to hear that.”

“Did it really help?” Momo asked, unable to keep the edge of skepticism out of her voice.

“I think so,” Izuku said. It wasn’t the most confident answer he could have given, and Momo was worried he might be keeping something to himself. Before she could press him on it, though, he said. “I think I’m stretched. Should we start sparring?”

She let it go. There were some gaps that couldn’t be bridged, after all.

“Yes,” she said. “Let’s spar.”

The waiting room given to Class A prior to the start of the Sports Festival was filled with a nervous atmosphere. There was some chatter—a few people, Ashido included, were airing their grievances about the loss of their uniforms and their gear that the plain sports outfits entailed—but even that was rife with anxiety, the kind of talking that people did when they were afraid to exist in silence.

They all knew what was riding on the Sports Festival. Opportunity. The golden goose egg of heroics, their one chance to prove themselves. If they didn’t stand out this year, it would be harder to stand out the next. Harder still in their last.

They all wanted to win.

The door opened. Whatever chatter had been going on before petered out into nothing, and everyone turned to look at the newcomer. There was only one person it could be, though. Only one person that wasn’t here with the rest of the class.

Todoroki brought a chill with him as he walked inside. Whatever Todoroki they had been attending classes with was not the Todoroki that they got today. This Todoroki was as cold as an arctic wind, determined to get where he was going regardless of who he had to blow over to get there.

Momo had been seeing it in undertones since the beginning. She was not surprised by whose name Todoroki called.

“Midoriya.”

He drew the attention of the room, everyone turning to look at him as one when he spoke. Izuku, already tense, already carrying the weight of All Might’s legacy on his shoulders, stood to meet Todoroki like he had been expecting this, too.

“What’s up, Todoroki-kun?” he asked, deceptively casual, his voice not wavering despite the way he clenches his fists so tightly at his sides that he leaves half-moon imprints of his nails in the palms of his flesh.  Momo noticed them, but she refused to intervene, merely tilting her head back to look at Todoroki as well.

“Objectively speaking, I think it’s fair to say that of the two of us, I’m stronger.”

There was an immediate outcry from several people in the room. Kirishima’s voice carried best over everyone’s, though, so his words were the ones she heard. “Woah! What’s going on here?”

Izuku didn’t join in on the protests, however, just drew his eyebrows together. “No, I agree. You’re definitely the strongest out of all of us here.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on yourself, man?” Kirishima asked, standing now and resting a hand on Todoroki’s shoulder. “And on us?”

Todoroki shook Kirishima’s hand off so quickly it was like he’d been burned. “You’re free to forget why you’re here if that’s what you want to do, but we’re competitors. This isn’t sociability bootcamp, this is an arms’ race. And I, for one, didn’t come here to make friends.”

“Geez,” Kirishima muttered, but Todoroki had already moved on, turning back to Izuku.

“I’m not asking you to explain why,” he said, “but whatever the reason is, I know you have All Might in your corner. And if that’s true—and it is—then that means you and I are rivals. We were never meant to be friends, we were meant to fight each other for the top, tooth and nail. You, backed by the Number One Hero. Me, by Number Two. And for that reason, I want you to know that I will surpass you.”

So, he had caught on to Izuku’s connection to All Might just as Momo had feared he would. And he had responded…exactly as she thought he might have eventually responded, too.

“Dude,” Kirishima said, affronted. “You can’t say stuff like that—”

“I understand,” Izuku interrupted. “If this is your gauntlet, I’ll pick it up. You want to declare war on me? Fine. Consider this my declaration—you might beat me, yeah, but I’ll do everything in my power to make it challenging for you. How does that sound? Competitive enough for you?”

This wasn’t right. It didn’t feel right. This wasn’t the same Izuku that had insisted on befriending him no matter what. Was this…?

“Fine,” Todoroki said, his voice rupturing the tense silence that hung between them. He turned away as soon as he said the word, his shoulders stiff and his eyes fixed forward.

Izuku’s hands were shaking.

They weren’t more than an arms’ length away, and yet suddenly they felt farther than that. Momo felt like she was missing an important piece of the puzzle that was Midoriya Izuku. He was upset, legitimately upset, and she could see this but still had no idea to reach out to him.

Without meaning to, Momo glanced over at Bakugou, watching the display from a corner of the room, his eyes narrowed and his arms crossed in front of his chest.

Suddenly, Momo understood.

This was the part of Izuku that hid under long sleeves in the summer, the part that started fist fights with boys that said mean things about his friends, the part that didn’t come home when he had a bad day at school.

And it was this part that refused to lose a friend.

Just like that, it was so simple to see what she had to do.

Stay.

“Congratulations,” Momo said, as soon as she found Izuku.

It was later than she would have liked. Seventeenth wasn’t necessarily bad, but it was lower than she had hoped it would be. She’d been at a disadvantage in the final round, just as a lot of people had been, and she couldn’t think of a good way to use her Quirk to cross the minefield significantly quicker than she would have otherwise.

The most important thing, anyway, was that seventeenth was good enough to qualify for the next round. And for now, that second round needed to be her primary concern.

“Momo-chan, I’m freaking out,” Izuku said, turning and promptly grabbing her shoulders.

She laughed softly. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one concerned with the second round. “The next one is usually a team exercise, correct?”

“That’s what I’m freaking out about,” he said, wilting in front of her like a plant left too long in the sun. “Oh, gods, Momo-chan…I got first place…without even using a Quirk…they’re going to be out for my blood…”

“Worry less,” Momo said, patting his arm in encouragement. She decided to ignore the comment about him not using his Quirk for the time being, but she would be lying if she said she wasn’t curious how he might have pulled that off. “Besides, if anyone wants your blood they better have an incredible strategy, to outsmart both of us.”

“What?” Izuku said, his head snapping up. “You want to team up with me?”

Momo smiled a little shyly, avoiding looking directly at his bright, green eyes. “Of course I do,” she said. “Consider it an act of self-preservation. As the person that won the first round, allying oneself with you is an optimal strategy to guarantee victory. Additionally, when given the option to chose who you work with, is it not best to select the people that you have the most experience and success working with?”

Izuku continued looking at her, appearing suspiciously close to tears. “I could kiss you right now,” he declared.

He clearly hadn’t thought through his words before he spoke them, and their matching, deep-tinted blushes proved it.

“I’m so—”

“Deku-kun!” Uraraka shouted, somewhere next to them. Momo had never been more grateful to see Uraraka in her life, since her arrival gave Momo a much-needed moment to compose herself.

(He said he could kiss her. He said he could kiss her! Did he mean to say that, or was it just the nerves getting to him? If he meant it, then did that mean—)

“Ur-uraraka-san!” Izuku said, greeting her at an unnecessarily loud volume, his hands dropping from Momo’s shoulders. “I-I’m glad to see you made it, too!”

“Thank you! Congratulations on first place!”

“Ahh, th-thanks!”

“Congratulations to you, too, Yaomomo-chan!” Uraraka added, seizing Momo’s arm in her enthusiasm. “It was so cool when you made those canons to fight against those robots! You took out those zero-pointers like they were nothing!”

“Ah, thank you,” Momo said, inclining her head politely to Uraraka. “I’m not surprised to see that you made it through as well. You’re very capable.” And frighteningly determined.

Uraraka punched the air in time with Momo’s inner observation of her determination, punctuating the point perfectly. “Anyway, I’m excited for this next round! What do you guys think it’ll be?”

“And that’s everyone!” Midnight announced as they cut off the gates for the obstacle race. “Congratulations to the forty-two of you, for proceeding to the next round!”

Uraraka bounced on the balls of her feet as Midnight explained the rules of the cavalry battle. Izuku looked worse and worse the longer the explanation continued, and honestly…Momo didn’t feel much better. Ten million points meant that they would be hard pressed to find teammates, and doing this with just the two of them meant that they would be at an extreme disadvantage.

“Well!” Uraraka chirped, as soon as Midnight finished. “We should ask Iida-kun if he wants to be our fourth person!”

Momo stared. On the other side of Uraraka, Izuku stared too, though he looked considerably closer to tears than Momo did. “You want to team up with us?” Izuku asked, his voice cracking on the us as he struggled to hold back tears. “Even though everyone’s going to be out for our blood?”

“Of course!” Uraraka said, squeezing both of their arms before letting go. “Friends should team up with friends! Besides, you two on a team together? I would like to avoid going up against that if possible, you know?”

“Uraraka-san,” Izuku said, swiping at the tears falling from his eyes with his palms. Uraraka looked vaguely concerned, but Momo offered her a reassuring smile. This was just how Izuku was. It was best to let him have his moment and then go from there. “Thank you so much.”

He did not say that he could kiss her, Momo noted, with no small amount of guilty, childish satisfaction.

“Of course, Midoriya-kun,” Uraraka said, smiling brightly at him. “I’m happy to help!”

“It looks like Todoroki-san nabbed Iida-san, though,” Momo observed, as she noticed the two boys standing next to each other across the way. Kaminari was with them, too, which spelled trouble. She’d seen exactly what Kaminari could do at the USJ.

“That’s okay, we can just ask—”

“TEN MILLION!”

All three of them jumped at the voice, but Izuku, unlike Uraraka and Momo, was given no option to recover before a pink head was in his face. “You have to take me on your team!” she declared, chuckling in a way that Momo would hazard to describe as deranged. “This is perfect! All eyes will be on you!”

“Hey, you’re that one girl with all the gadgets,” Uraraka observed.

Momo eyed the girl, noting that she did indeed have a lot of gadgets. Perhaps Uraraka had run into her earlier in the obstacle race?

“And look at you!” the girl continued, completely ignoring Uraraka. “You’re so muscular. Yes, yes, you’re perfect!” She let out another one of those dreadful chuckles.

Well, this is fantastic, Momo thought with no small amount of spite. Even more romantic competition.

She found the part of her brain that was responsible for that thought and kicked it until it couldn’t move anymore. Izuku was her best friend. She would not let her stupid crush ruin that.

Izuku said he could kiss her earlier, though.

She tracked down the part of her brain responsible for that thought and kicked it until it couldn’t get back up again, too.

“Um…” Izuku said, his face incredibly red. “I don’t—I don’t know—I didn’t catch your, um, name.”

“It’s Hatsume!” she declared, still just as much in his personal space as she had been before. “Hatsume Mei! I’m from the support course!”

“Oh!” Izuku said, apparently latching onto this information like it was a lifeline to lead him out of the turbulent waters of social anxiety. “That explains your gear. Did you make all of these yourself?”

“Yes, yes! These are my babies. Ooh, I see one in particular has caught your eye? Does it remind you of a familiar hero?”

“I don’t know if I like this,” Uraraka muttered next to Momo.

Momo had to agree. This girl was a little…intense, and obviously not incredibly inclined to teamwork compatibility. Not to mention, she was still inside Izuku’s personal space.

“Momo-chan,” Izuku said, and Momo immediately straightened. She knew that look. It was the look that always predated terrible ideas. This was going to be interesting, at least. “I have a plan. Are you three in?”

Momo nodded along with Uraraka. Hatsume let out a chuckle of affirmation, and the four of them formed a huddle.

“Momo-chan and Uraraka-san, you two will be the flanks. I’ll be the front horse—of the four of us, I’m probably the heaviest—” Momo had seen his muscle definition, and knew for sure that this was true. “—and also probably the strongest. Hatsume-san, you’ll be the rider. Use your Quirk to keep an eye out for incoming threats. Momo-chan and Uraraka-san, stay on the defensive. As for your babies, Hatsume-san, they’re going to be imperative for playing keep-away.”

“So we’re moving defensively,” Momo surmised. “Keeping out of range from others, keeping our points, and not moving to take other teams’ headbands. That is probably for the best, considering a plethora of our peers are going to come directly for the ten million.”

“This is going to work so well!” Uraraka exclaimed.

And it did. As predicted, everyone came for them, ready to wage war on the headband tied around Hatsume’s forehead. Momo kept them away with expertly timed whacks from staffs she produced. If they got too close, Uraraka kept them at bay by sending them floating. Izuku’s natural speed and strength helped, too—he could keep them away from the others almost as well as Hatsume’s jetpacks could.

Then, in the last five minutes, they found themselves cornered by Todoroki’s team. Hatsume’s flying devices had malfunctioned at some point, they’d only narrowly avoided electrocution thanks to an insulated blanket Momo hurriedly crafted, and they lost the headband to Iida’s Recipro Burst.

Worst of all, Momo was out of ideas for how to get it back.

“Momo-chan,” Izuku said, and there was something hard and forceful in his voice that meant that he was not giving up. He would never give up. “Did you ever figure out those flash grenades?”

“No,” Momo gritted out, biting her cheek. She’d been working on them for a while, but to no avail. “I’m missing something in the chemical makeup.”

“Of a flash grenade?” Hatsume said, her voice lilting upwards with delight. “If I tell you, can you make one for Ten Million?”

Momo guessed she meant Izuku. “Yes.”

Hatsume rattled it off, surprisingly quickly and accurately, and Momo started producing them from her arm. She wasn’t entirely sure if they would work, even with Hatsume rattling off a few missing ingredients that Momo hadn’t thought to include herself. “What’s your plan?”

“Throw it,” Izuku said. “Blind him. Hatsume-san, grab as many of those headbands around his neck as you can. Approach him from the left. He’s not using half of his Quirk, for some reason.”

“Got it,” Hatsume said, and carried by Izuku’s speed, they were in front of Todoroki’s team in a matter of a few seconds. Hatsume reached out, from the left, like discussed, as Todoroki raised an arm to defend. Flames flickered to life over his arm, which was not supposed to happen.

“Shit!”

Suddenly, there was wind cutting through the flames, wind coming from Izuku’s hand, from his Quirk. He’d shifted himself to do this, which meant he was holding Hatsume up with entirely one arm. And, more importantly, he was holding her up fine.

Hatsume recovered, snatched at three of the five bands around Todoroki’s neck and pulled, just as the timer went off for the event.

They didn’t get the ten million points, but they’d gotten enough.

As Izuku started crying, Momo noticed the look of complete and total animosity that Todoroki gave him from across the field, and she felt a tingle of danger lick at her spine.

They’d been relatively friendly with him up to this point, but it was foolish to think that Todoroki was a friend. He was a rival, just like everyone else was, and that same danger she’d noticed in him on their first day—that same bit of poison that had caused her to encourage Izuku to stay away from him in the first place—that was still there.

And more importantly, it seemed that Todoroki had a score he wanted to settle with Izuku specifically.