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Momo knows that she’s smart.
She can’t help but feel like she’s bragging every time that thought crosses her mind, even though she knows that nobody around her was capable of hearing what she was thinking. She’s sure that there’s some Quirk out there that enabled the user to do that, but here in Yuuei, amongst her classmates, she was safe from any kind of telepathic abilities.
So, Momo is smart. She’s intelligent, quick-witted, and independent, but that doesn’t mean that she’s the strongest in her class.
And she’s far from being the best.
When she decided to be a hero, she knew that she was going to face some things that would make her want to give up. She knew that it would be hard, that it would completely rewire her brain and disrupt her way of life, that it would force her to become something even more polished and refined than she was raised to be.
But she never expected to feel like such a failure.
Her hero costume doesn’t protect much, so she usually limps away from training exercises covered in scrapes and bruises and whatever hastily-made clothes she pulls from her skin to hide herself away from the world. Her classmates don’t go easy on her, and she’s happy that they think of her as an equal. But the blows hurt both her and her pride in one strike, knocking her down a peg until she barely has a foot to stand on when it comes to her own wavering confidence.
This is just another one of those times.
A familiar voice shouts, “Get your head in the game, Ponytail!”
Momo flinches, but it’s too late to avoid the blur of motion racing towards her.
Her legs are swept from beneath her, and she hits the ground so hard that she feels her teeth rattle in her skull. She picks herself back up and barely manages to dodge a punch aimed straight for her face.
“I’m sorry, Bakugou,” she says, breathless. “I was thinking—”
Bakugou scoffs, interrupting her. “Whatever,” he says, settling back on his feet. He has his fists raised, ready to continue the fight. “If you don’t want to take this seriously, you can leave. I’ll find someone else to spar with me.”
Momo smiles, tight and strained. Her mouth tastes like blood — she must have bitten her tongue on the way down, the pain lost to the shock of the impact.
“I’m being serious,” Bakugou insists. He sounds slightly irritated now, but maybe Momo is just misreading things. She has a tendency to do that, even with all the lessons she received when she was younger that were supposed to teach her how to instantly gauge the mood of any room she walked into.
Bakugou continues, “Everybody has noticed how distracted you’ve been lately,” and then pauses, probably noticing the look on Momo’s face. “Well, not everyone, but I have. All you do is stare off into space.”
Momo’s smile falters, then fades away completely.
Bakugou sighs, hands on his hips as he shakes his head in what can only be disappointment. “Go to sleep,” he says. “Get some rest. I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”
He walks away without another word, leaving Momo alone on the training site, surrounded by fake buildings that do nothing but echo the sound of her own failures back at her — an incessant ringing in her ears.
Aizawa-sensei encouraged training after-hours, as long as nobody pushed themselves past the limit. Momo doesn’t know why Bakugou singled her out when he had plenty of closer friends that would surely be worth more of a challenge, but she never had either the guts or a reason to deny his demands that she spar with him, which usually led to both of them being bruised and battered, with Momo taking the brunt of the damage.
That being said, while Bakugou tended to be a harsh critic, he was never as frustrated as he seemed to be tonight — and Momo can’t help but feel that it’s her fault.
She knows that her classmate likes to push himself to the brink in an attempt to make himself stronger, and maybe fighting against Momo hasn’t been effective enough to justify spending time with her.
Momo frowns, rubbing at her shoulder — it’s sore from being clipped with a punch that she didn’t manage to fully dodge. She waits until Bakugou has fully disappeared from view, then starts towards the dorms with the weight of her anxiety pressing down on her chest.
She needs to be better than this.
Momo needs to be perfect.
She returns to her room and takes a hot shower, then wanders around her room while her hair dries. When she finally goes to sleep, she doesn’t dream of anything at all. Her only thought as she drifts into the darkness of her mind is that she needs to find a way to make her parents proud of her, needs to become something better than she already is.
By the time she wakes up, she already has a solution to her problem.
She’s always the most energetic when she wakes up — a fact that bewildered both her mother and her father. She ties back her hair, looks at her reflection, and comes up with a plan to completely reinvent herself.
Momo rushes through breakfast, barely managing to drink a cup of tea before she races into the main school building, absolutely buzzing with energy.
It’s a break day, so the halls are mostly empty, but the person she needs the most is exactly where she expected her to be: tinkering away on one of her machines, face smeared with grease and a metal wrench flashing in her hand as she gazes down at the mass of wires and spinning gears before her.
Momo watches her for a few moments, then calls out, “Hatsume, are you busy?”
“What?” Hatsume glances over her shoulder and shoves her goggles up in the same motion. Her eyes have always been a sight to behold, bright yellow with scopes in the center of them, and the full weight of her attention is like a physical weight on Momo’s shoulders. “Oh, Yaoyorozu! How are you doing?”
“Please,” Momo says. “Call me Yaomomo. All my friends do.” She tentatively steps further into the workshop, moving carefully to avoid crushing any fragile, discarded parts beneath her feet. “I was wondering if you could help me with something…?”
Hatsume grins at her, teeth bright white against the admittedly grimy surface of her skin. “Sure!” she says. “What’s the problem, girl? Costume malfunction?”
Momo laughs, if only because she’s pretty sure that was a joke. Her costume consisted of very little technical bits — very little anything at all, actually — so she has never really had to visit the support shop. “No, nothing like that,” she says. Her eyes widen slightly as she approaches Hatsume’s desk, gaze catching on the stacks of blueprints and schematics the girl has scattered around. “Did you design all of these yourself?”
“Yep!” Hatsume straightens up fully and sticks her wrench in her back pocket, wiping her dirty hands onto her equally dirty shirt. “Look as much as you want, but don’t touch! I’ve got everything where it needs to be.”
Momo’s hands hover over the surface of the desk, itching to disobey Hatsume’s instructions. She has always been thirsty for knowledge, born with an aching gap that no amount of encyclopedias or textbooks could fill, and right now the only thing she wants to do is bury herself in all these scribbled papers until she drowns under the weight of Hatsume’s sheer genius. Her eyes linger on sketches for weapons, support gear, prosthetics, and things that she can’t even put a name to, all of it intricately designed and horribly out of reach by Momo’s refusal to touch things that she has not been given permission to.
Hatsume sidles up beside her, grinning widely. “So, what do you need help with, Yaomomo?”
Right.
Momo came here for something, and it wasn’t to gawk senselessly at her fellow student’s ingenuity. She reluctantly tears her eyes away from the table, looks at Hatsume, and says, “I need you to teach me.”
Hatsume raises an eyebrow. “What could I teach you that you don’t already know?” she asks. “Aren’t you at the top of your class?”
“Well, yes,” Momo says, and tries not to sound too proud about it. She doesn’t want to make a wrong first impression — granted, she’s seen Hatsume before, but has never really had an in-depth face-to-face conversation with her. “But I’m not where I want to be. I need to learn how to make things that are better than what I can make now.” She hesitates, then asks, “Does that make sense?”
“It makes perfect sense,” Hatsume says. “The best people are the ones that are constantly trying to improve themselves! That’s what my teacher says, anyway.”
Momo feels relieved, and sends a silent thanks to the support course teacher.
“So, what things are you trying to learn how to make?” Hatsume asks. She sounds like she’s as interested in this conversation as Momo is desperate for it. “Are you, like, trying to figure out machinery in general, or are there specific parts that you need to get better at? I heard one of your classmates say that the only way you can use your Quirk is if you’re able to visualize all the components of what you want to make, and if that’s really how it works, you must be really smart.”
Momo feels her face flush with embarrassment, but it feels oddly gratifying to have her skills affirmed by an almost-stranger. “Thank you, Hatsume,” she says. “That’s exactly how it works. I can’t create anything if I don’t know what it’s made of.”
As she speaks, she visualizes one of her matryoshka dolls. Her mind forms around the simple shape of it, and she pulls up her sleeve as her skin begins to bulge outwards. She grasps the top of the doll’s head, the familiar hard surface almost comforting as she pulls it from her arm, and presents it to Hatsume with a small smile.
“I’ve been making these since I was young,” she explains, and feels a flutter in her chest as Hatsume reaches out and takes the doll from her hand, holding it with all the care that one would use to cradle a newborn baby. “It was the first design that I perfected.”
Hatsume rubs one of her hands on the side of her pants, then strokes the doll’s painted face with her now-clean fingers. “Wow,” she says, speaking in a breathless whisper. “You’re amazing, Yaomomo.”
Momo’s face goes warm. She can feel the heat spread across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, flaring over her skin until even the tips of her ears feel red-hot. She’s no stranger to being complimented, but to receive one from somebody that she admires and is seeking help from makes her feel like she’s at the top of the world.
“Thank you,” Momo repeats. “You’re amazing as well, Hatsume.”
Hatsume smiles, even though Momo is sure that she's used to receiving compliments, too. She’s a genius, after all. Momo has seen the things she creates, has watched her tighten screws and weld metal like creating things was as natural as breathing.
Momo wants to be just like her.
“Well, let’s get down to business!” Hatsume says, slipping the matryoshka doll into one of her many baggy pockets. “What’s your favorite weapon?”
Momo utters an unintelligent, “Huh?”
Hatsume’s grin widens, all shiny white teeth. “I figured that you’re looking for better weaponry, right?” she asks. “I mean, you’re training to be a hero, and you probably already know how to make defensive equipment — what you really need is to learn how to attack things, Yaomomo!”
She speaks with such enthusiasm, and her excitement is contagious. Momo feels her heart beat a little quicker, her blood flowing faster in her veins as she nods and smiles along to the words.
“Right,” Momo says. “That’s exactly what I need.”
Hatsume pumps a fist in the air. “Awesome!” she says, spinning on her heel and racing back to her workbench. She pulls out one of the blueprints and slaps it down on top of all the others. Pointing a triumphant finger at the neat pencil lines, she demands, “Come look at this!”
Momo hurries over like she’s being pulled by invisible reigns. “What is it?” she asks, even though she’s sure that she could figure it out by herself. Her curiosity is getting the best of her now that she’s actually inside of Hatsume’s workshop, surrounded by unmistakable talent, and her mind races as her eyes narrow on the small characters scribbled in the corner of the paper.
“This seems dangerous,” Momo says, more impressed than fearful. “Did you design it yourself?”
Hatsume beams with pride, hands on her hips as those perfect teeth make another appearance, her smile stretching wide across her grease-smudged face. “Yep!” she says. “This is an old design, but if we break it down to its components and you learn how it works -”
“Oh, I know how railguns work,” Momo says. Her home library was filled with books of all types and sizes, and she remembers poring over most of them as a child — she wasn’t allowed outside very often, especially not without supervision, so she spent a lot of time reading anything that she could get her hands on. Her memory is decent enough that she’s able to call upon all the intricacies of railguns: ranged weapons that relied on electromagnetic force instead of chemical propellants, capable of launching projectiles at dangerously high speeds.
Momo says those thoughts out loud, and Hatsume raises an eyebrow. “Well, what do you need me for, then?”
“I’ve never liked working alone,” Momo admits, feeling a little ridiculous. “Learning new things is always much more fun when you have company.”
Hatsume tilts her head for a second, like she’s considering those words, and then nods in agreement. “You’re right,” she declares, and sounds very serious as she says, “You’re gonna learn a lot of new things with me, Yaomomo. I hope you’re ready.”
Momo has never been more excited for anything in her entire life. “When can we get started?”
And from the way Hatsume smiles, she knows that she has said the right thing.
For the rest of the day, the workshop is filled with the clanging of metal, the excited chatter of voices, and Hatsume’s triumphant cheers when Momo gets the hang of something. Momo finds herself dripping with sweat and smeared with grease when they stop to take a break, but she has never felt as alive as she does right now, surrounded by sparking wires and feeling the ache that comes whenever she uses too much of her Quirk without replenishing her fat stores.
When she reluctantly mentions this, Hatsume digs up a box of snacks from a drawer and tosses several packs of chips and cookies at Momo, who catches them with a deftness trained from spending too much time around the boys in her class.
“You’re doing amazing, Yaomomo,” Hatsume praises, grinning proudly. “You’re such a fast learner!”
Momo manages a tired smile. “Thank you,” she murmurs, gratefully taking the water bottle that Hatsume throws at her next. Her fingers slip on the cool plastic, wet with the condensation beading on the surface. She presses it to her forehead first, then twists off the cap and takes a long drink, sighing in relief as her mind clears a little bit more.
She’s been hard at work for the past few hours, coached through improvement after improvement under Hatsume’s tutelage. The workshop is scattered with their inventions, from a collapsible, high-impact staff to drones capable of dropping payloads of stun grenades and smoke bombs, and she feels amazing. Her hair is a mess, her hands ache at every joint, and she has small burns littering almost every inch of exposed skin, but she feels like she could run for days without sleep on the high buzzing through her veins.
… And, for the first time in a while, she feels excited about what the next day will bring.
Momo has always been an optimistic person, but right now the grin stretching across her face is so wide that it hurts. It’s an unfamiliar feeling, and she can’t wait to show off her new repertoire of skills and knowledge — those two things always went hand-in-hand when it came to her — and, more than anything, she’s happy with the person she is right now.
In fact, she doesn’t think that she has ever felt happier.
“You’re smiling a lot,” Hatsume observes, and nudges her arm with a wrench. “What do you want to make next?”
Everything, Momo wants to say, giddy with excitement. This is what she was made for. She knew from the moment her Quirk manifested that she would be able to shape herself into something great, and those dreams came true a long time ago, but she’s a constant work in progress — always striving for perfection. Her entire life has been nothing but an upward climb, but she loves the challenge, relishes the burn that comes when she overextends herself.
“Let’s get back to work,” she says, straightening up even as her body groans with exhaustion. “There’s still so much to learn, and I want to improve as much as possible.”
Hatsume looks overjoyed. “That’s the spirit!”
They trot back to the work station together, poring over the blueprints of different machines, each one bigger and better than the last, and Momo can’t keep the smile from her face as engine oil coats her fingers and the air crackles with electricity.
No matter how hard she tries, she really can’t think of a more perfect life than this.