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Ochako had never once enjoyed seeing people’s blood spilled.
Whether they were a hero or villain, if someone was in pain, sometimes she swore she could feel it too. That’s why she always used her quirk solely for good. She refused to harm anyone with it.
Despite her resolve, though, there were times when mistakes happened out on the field. They were never intentional, just miscalculations or distractions that caused her quirk to slip up.
And Ochako liked to think she was a pretty well-trained hero student, especially after her experience fighting in the war, so messing up sometimes was okay. It wasn’t ideal, obviously, but she was only human, as long as her mistakes didn’t get anybody hurt, then it was no big deal. And they never did anyway…
…Except for once.
It was internship season for class 2a, and Ochako had decided to go with Kamui Woods this time around. She figured his ability to control his surroundings with his quirk would be a good skill for her to learn for her own.
And she’d made a good choice as the internship had gone perfectly — Ochako loved making improvements to her skill set — until the third day.
They were on patrol with a few other people from Kamui’s hero agency when a band of villains burst out the doors of a nearby bank. There were about seven, each holding one or two bags of money and trying to get away using their quirks.
It was standard procedure from there. Chase the villains, capture them, return the money. That was all she had to do.
That was all she had to do.
The beginning of the fight was normal, she was doing her best to help out and keep the crowd contained. That was until something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. And turning to look revealed that one of the robbers had slipped out somehow and was making a break for it.
And Ochako, being a hero in training, couldn’t let that happen. So after quickly sweeping her eyes over the area to make sure nobody was already going after the escapee, they weren’t, she took off after him.
She learned pretty quickly that the guy’s quirk had something to do with making his body heavy. He was using it to crush things in his path and scare the civilians away. Fortunately, though, it slowed him down, so she was able to catch up to him after they’d only gone about one street away from the bank.
Now, Ochako prided herself in being stronger than most people assumed her to be. Being a girl in a hero society mainly run by men wasn’t the easiest, after all. But she was also smart enough to know that she couldn’t take every battle. And the guy in front of her? She definitely couldn’t defeat him physically. He was like twice her size.
It was a good thing her quirk didn’t force her to fight hand-to-hand.
During the chase, Ochako had made sure to not let the man be aware of her following him, so once she got close enough, she could reach out and tap him before he got the chance to realize what was going on.
It was once he was in the air though, that things began to not go as planned.
Typically, Ochako didn’t go on missions alone. Most pro heroes didn’t for that matter. It was safer, and especially since she was still a student, there were always at least two people with her.
But this wasn’t a pre-planned mission created by UA. And it just so happened that she ended up being alone. Which, she would admit, could have been prevented if she had grabbed someone to come with her, but there wasn’t much time to do such a thing when the thief was getting away.
So when Ochako’s quirk began to falter under the strength of the criminal’s quirk, there was nobody there to stop things from going out of control.
See, one thing Ochako hadn’t taken into account in her rush to catch the man was how their quirks may clash. Her quirk being zero gravity used against someone who has a heavy quirk, may lead to some complications.
And it did. It definitely did.
Once she realized the man was fighting against her quirk to be back on the ground, Ochako upped the intensity, trying to keep him in the air long enough to lead him out of the secluded corner they were in and back to the main street. Then at least she could get some backup.
But as soon as she’d started doing that, the man increased the intensity of his own quirk to match.
Ochako grit her teeth and focused on the feeling of the pads of her fingers pressing together. She didn’t know just how strong the guy’s quirk was, but if she could only keep him in the air then it would be okay. It would be fine.
Their stalemate lasted for about thirty more seconds. Ochako was sweating by this point, and she was beginning to worry about how much longer she could keep things up. When suddenly, she began to feel less resistance as the criminal floated higher in the air.
Heaving a sigh of relief, Ochako let up on her quirk, not needing to have as much intensity anymore. But then, when she’d let up her guard just a little bit, she felt all the previous strength from the criminal’s quirk come back three times stronger.
Ochako yelped in surprise and instinctively let go of her quirk as a loud crash came less than a second later. There was so much force behind it that a small dust cloud had formed.
Coughing and using her hand to swat away the debris, she tentatively approached where the thief probably was, pushing away her nausea. Despite her disadvantage, if worse came to worse, she was ready to fight the guy to make sure he didn’t get away.
Before the dust had fully even cleared though, it hit her. A scent of blood so strong it made her stomach ache.
Instantly, fear took a place in her chest. She hadn’t been particularly studying the ground, but she didn’t think she’d seen anything that could have punctured the villain.
Ochako quickly continued over, dust having cleared by now, and gazed down at the scene.
The man was lying unconscious in a crater of his own creation, blood seeping out of his thigh. Ochako gulped, shakily leaning closer as if magnetized to get a better look. It seemed the guy had had an uncovered knife fastened around his thigh, and with the momentum and angle of the fall, it had pierced his skin. She was a little relieved the wound wasn’t fatal as she began moving to treat the wound — her quirk was too exhausted to use it to bring them both out of there immediately.
As she reached for the knife though, a sudden, overwhelming urge came over her whole body.
She wanted to taste the blood.
Ochako physically flinched after the thought passed over her. That was weird. Why would she drink someone’s blood? She’d never done that before, and yet the urge was so strong her mouth was beginning to water. It reminded her of…
She needed to focus. This guy was bleeding out and needed medical attention. Whatever just happened was probably just a fluke. She was fine.
Still, her internal reassurances didn’t stop her hands from shaking as she reached to remove the knife. The urge wasn’t going away. But she needed it to, now. If she paused to think about what was going on, she may never stop.
In one swift motion, Ochako removed the knife and began first-aid as quickly as she could. Once all the blood was gone, she would probably stop feeling like this.
But after the knife was gone and the blood began pouring out of the wound even faster, the urge got more intense. It was nearly unbearable now, and Ochako started to panic a little. She didn’t know how much longer she could be near the wound like this. She needed to find a way to stop this feeling.
It seemed, the moment that thought crossed her head, a solution provided itself.
…Would it be so wrong just to taste it?
Ochako slapped a hand over her mouth despite not having said anything. She couldn’t do that! She’d never drunk any kind of blood before, why would she… Why…
Pushing away some memories that had begun to worm their way into her head, she faced the man again. It wasn’t so wrong to drink blood, was it? She… Himiko… had done the same thing and Ochako didn’t think she was wrong . Not at all.
So maybe if she just… tasted a little that had already left the wound. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? If it had already left the body then it couldn’t be used anymore, so it wasn’t like she was stealing his blood.
With a deep breath to steel her resolve, Ochako wiped a finger across the stream of blood running down the criminal’s leg and pushed it in her mouth. She braced for it to be disgusting, for it to make her sick or something.
That didn’t happen though. It was… good? It wasn’t particularly delicious, but it scratched that itch she had, and it felt amazing. It was like a large rock was lifted off her chest and she could finally think clearly now. The urge had gone away, but she wasn’t completely averse to drinking more. She had partially assumed that once the feeling had gone away she would be disgusted with her actions and would never want to be near any blood again. But instead, she just felt pretty neutral. It was nice, actually, to feel so carefree on such a topic.
But she could think about all that later. Now that her crisis was over, she needed to help the man in front of her and return to the group.
And so, after applying basic first-aid to the criminal, she returned with heavy footsteps to the bank.
—
Ochako’s ponderings as to why she wanted to drink that blood so badly were mainly pushed to the side as her internship occupied most of her time. It was only once everyone had returned to UA that she was forced to face some answers.
“Hey, Ochako, have your teeth gotten sharper?”
Ochako looked at Tsu confusedly. They had been laughing over something that had happened at her internship when the frog girl paused and asked that question.
“That’s impossible, teeth don’t just get sharper, Tsu,” Ochako laughed, if only to keep herself from looking visibly freaked out. She ran her tongue over her teeth quickly, nearly flinching back when she almost drew blood.
There was no way. She hadn’t done anything to her mouth, had she? Why would she suddenly have sharper teeth?
After a few minutes of making light conversation and pretending she wasn’t going insane — which probably didn’t work — Ochako excused herself and nearly bolted to the bathroom mirrors. And to her horror, when she opened her mouth, she found that she’d grown fangs .
Ochako’s vision began to swim. When did this even happen? And why? How? Fangs don’t just grow in overnight, and especially not naturally .
She looked up into the mirror one more time to make sure she wasn’t just going crazy and nearly fainted at what she saw. It wasn’t just her mouth that was changed, her hair was too. Her hair was lighter . It was still brown, but it wasn’t nearly as dark anymore.
Ochako was beginning to feel dizzy as she tried to process all this information. Why was she changing like this? How was it even possible? What was going on ?
The bathroom was beginning to feel far too stuffy to bear any longer, and Ochako didn’t think she could possibly see her friends right now, so she ran. Out of the bathroom, out of the dorms, and off campus. She ran until she couldn’t recognize her surroundings anymore. Only then could she finally breathe clearly. Even then, it was difficult as she was slowly coming to a conclusion as to why this all was happening.
The lighter hair… the fangs… the blood… it was all pointing to one thing. One thing Ochako was desperately wishing it wasn’t.
When Himiko had given her all her blood…
Without realizing it, Ochako had been walking in a certain direction. It was only when the smell of blood hit her nose that she looked up and realized she was at the end of an alleyway. Looking down, she jumped when she saw a crumpled body. It looked like the result of a violent mugging. The woman seemed to have stopped breathing by that point, and all Ochako could do was stare at the blood pouring from her stomach. The urge from before was back, but she’d barely even noticed. It felt normal to her. Natural even.
She was Ochako Uraraka, she knew that for sure. But after Himiko had given her all her blood, she now knew there would always be a part of Himiko Toga that she carried inside her.