Chapter Text
Izuku would have sighed as he surrendered his backpack to the man in the yellow vest if he weren’t vibrating with anticipation. His first true college hockey game. He had followed the sport for years. His backpack sporting the face of the player with the most goals in history carried only a small fraction of the notebooks he had tracking this specific team. UA. Just knowing he had unlimited access to the very same rink where the infamous All Might had started his career made him practically vibrate. He was pulled from his thoughts by his backpack being pushed back at him with a tired “bring a smaller bag next time”.
Izuku flashed the man a blinding grin as he bounced into the arena. Although he had seen the towering seats before him on his orientation tour, he was still frozen in awe. There was All Might’s signed jersey to the left and there was a trophy won years ago and there-
“Pardon me,” a girl carrying a rolled up banner nearly as tall as herself brushed past him. Izuku stifled a squeak.
“I am so sorry! Please let me help you!” Izuku attempted to push up the side of the banner dragging on the floor but only succeeded in tripping himself. With a light huff, the girl put the banner down to offer Izuku a hand.
“Calm down…,” she tilted her head causing her black bangs to fall into her eyes, “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
Izuku turned into a tomato as he took the offered hand, “I’m Izuku Midoriya, first year mechanical engineer and computer scientist!”
“I’m Momo Yaoyorozu, please call me Momo. I’m also a first year student. Please excuse my bluntness, but why are you here so early if you are a first year?”
Izuku chuckled and pulled on the straps of his backpack. He knew that showing up an hour early was what the self proclaimed ‘Rink Rats’ (in reference to the head coach who everyone called Professor Rat) did to decorate the arena.
“I’m just a really big fan of the game. Why are you here?”
“My friend Iida’s brother was in the Rink Rats and wanted someone to make sure they didn’t fall apart when he graduated. Iida refuses to take part in such ‘crude and unsportsmanlike behavior’ so I offered,” Momo explained as she neatly rerolled the banner so that it was more compact than it had been before.
Izuku’s grin widened into 1000 Watts, “Could I help you guys?”
Momo gave a small smile of her own, “The more the merrier. Could you please take the other side of the banner?”
Izuku went back to vibrating as he lifted one side of the banner and followed Momo (who was now navigating the arena backwards!) into the student section. The next 30 minutes passed in a flash between learning names that Izuku forgot in the next hour and learning the layout of the arena from dashing between the sides to retrieve materials. Momo was the calm in the eye of the storm as the clearly tipsy crowd of upperclassmen began to throw tape to each other and place bets.
“Did you hear #1 is out of the goal?”
“About damn time. He had more holes than swiss cheese.”
“I heard the new guy’s a freshman though! How can that be an improvement?”
“Anything has to be better than-”
“Hey! A lot of the team is new this year,” Izuku finally joined the conversation. The upperclassmen who had been busy trying to hit each other in the head with a roll of ducktape paused to look at the newcomer.
“How’d ya know that, Broccoli?” an older student asked with a raised brow.
Izuku stepped up onto a bench so he could see the student he was speaking with, “The roster is publicly available. I-I’d be more than happy to share it with you if you’d like to see it!”
“That’s actually… really useful, Broccoli. Hand me your phone.”
When Izuku got his phone back, he found it was open to a ‘Rink Rats TM’ group chat. He beamed as he added the links to the roster to the chat.
The upperclassman ruffled his hair, “Welcome to the Rink Rats, kid.”