Work Text:
Ochako always had a bit of a savior complex. Even when she was little, all she wanted to do was be helpful. To take the burden's that weighed so heavily on the shoulders of the people she loved most and make them disappear.
And with her quirk, she should have been able to.
Growing up, she quickly learned her that the superhuman society she lived in wasn't really all that super. It was often cruel. It extended kindness only to those it deemed deserving. Those with quirks. The quirkless were left to struggle.
Society was even crueler to those who were lucky enough to have a quirk, but were born with the wrong kind. Mutation quirks, disgusting quirks, deceitful quirks, dangerous quirks. Those quirks weren't celebrated; they were demonized. Even by heroes who were supposed to help everyone.
But they didn't.
No, most heroes only helped in places where the press could eat up their heroic acts and regurgitate them to the masses on the nightly news. To pad their ranking on the Hero Charts. The news didn't care about the people in country, so neither did the heroes. The media didn't care about poor people unless it was getting a press pass to cover some ritzy charity gala where funds were arbitrarily raised for the less fortunate. Rural Japan was left to fend for itself.
Ochako was one of the lucky ones. She had the right kind of quirk. The good kind. A quirk that could be used to help pull her failing family business out of crippling debt. But people weren't allowed to use their quirks without a license. And hero licenses came with the least restrictions on quirk use.
It felt like a scheme.
All part of the greater plot to incite people to become heroes or become someone who believed that they could rely on them. Wait for a hero to save them even though she and everyone in her community knew they weren't coming.
Ochako wasn't allowed to use her quirk to help. Couldn't lift construction equipment of the ground when her father's equipment broke. Zero Gravity wasn't for building houses and buildings. It was for fighting villains. For throwing people in jail.
That never felt like helping to her.
Ochako wasn't even allowed to use her quirk to help her friend.
Himiko, a pretty girl in the year ahead of her in school, had taken a liking to her. Disclosed to her in confidence one day during their blossoming friendship that she had a transformation quirk that made her crave other people's blood.
Ochako didn't think twice when she held out her wrist for her to bite, watching in awe as the beautiful girl transformed.
Brown hair tumbled from Himiko's scalp, eclipsing her signature pale blonde buns. Ochako's own brown eyes blinked back at her. Had her cheeks always been so round? So rosy? Ochako stared in awe for a moment, before her mimicked face began to melt. Until all of her features splattered on the floor, revealing Himiko underneath.
It was a cool quirk, but their peers didn't think so.
"Blood sucking, vampire freak!"
A couple of boys had Himiko pinned to a locker, while a girl screamed in her face. Calling her names for asking to drink her boyfriend's blood. Himiko rolled her golden eyes at her attackers. Unafraid but clearly bothered.
"It was just a question, okay? You all need to chill out."
"You don't go around asking to drink someone's boyfriend's blood!"
A wicked grin split Himiko's face. One that made her eyes glint. A look Ochako only ever saw right before Himiko's filter decided that a thought was too funny, to scathing to keep inside.
"Why?" Himiko asked, her fangs glinted under the harsh fluorescent lights.
"You scared he'll find out he's got a blood kink and he'll leave you for me?"
Before the other girl could uncoil her cocked fist into Himiko's defenseless face, Ochako's five gravity canceling fingers poked into her ribs. Ochako sprang out from under the girl's now floating body, her outstretched hands smacking against the arms of the boys who had Himiko pinned. The three students bobbed uselessly in the air. Ochako grabbed Himiko's hand, rushing her down the hall while Himiko cackled at the sight of her attacker's greening faces.
Ochako was the only one who got in trouble that day. Only one day of after school detention for unauthorized quirk use on school grounds, but still. The people who attacked Himiko didn't even get a talking to. Apparently, the school principal thought spewing their lunch as they dangled above the school hallways was more than enough punishment.
Himiko skipped school a lot after that. For months, Ochako didn't see her in the halls. But one day after the final bell, she was there by the exit waiting for Ochako.
"Come on, I have some new friends I want you to meet."
Himiko's new friends were mostly older boys. And one lady—Big Sis Mange. Himiko insisted that they treated her like a sister, even though they were kind of rowdy and grungy. Even though they were supposedly everything that society had told Ochako she should fear.
She didn't. She knew enough not to judge a book by its cover. Instead, it was her—a prim and proper looking school girl—that they all eyed suspiciously.
"Who's the normie?" a man asked through lips so chapped that they might crackle off and break.
"This is Ochako-chan."
Himiko took her gravity-erasing hand and twirled her like a spinning top.
"Isn't she cute?"
"Super cute!" a man with a bag over his head shouted in agreement before immediately contradicting himself. "No, she's ugly!"
"Who gives a fuck?” another man, this one with a face marred by burns and held together by visible sutures, groaned. "Why is she here?"
"She's one of us!"
"You think this . . . cupcake . . . is one of us?" a fourth man questioned, this one having a heteromorph quirk that gave him lizard-like features.
"Give her a chance, Spinner. I say we see what this cupcake can do."
A masked man tossed her a marble, but as the glass orb hit the height of its parabola, it burst open to reveal a large boulder plummeting towards her and Himiko.
Ochako quickly shoved Himiko behind her, protecting the older girl behind her smaller frame. She lifted her hands, ten fingers wide and ready, bracing herself for the impact.
The moment the rock scraped her skin, it became weightless. Hovering above her head in a glow of soft pink.
"Himiko! Are you okay?"
Her stomach squeezed, nausea tickling her throat, but she swallowed dryly to check on her friend, who was beaming at her from the ground.
"See, didn't I tell you Ochako-chan was super strong! She's perfect!"
Ochako preened at the praise. Strong. Perfect. She'd never been called those things before.
She pulled Himiko to her feet and looked at people observing her. Their suspicion melted into a neutrality. Something the bordered on respect.
Apparently, she passed their test.
"Do you want your rock back?" Ochako asked the masked man.
"Sure, kid."
At the snap of his fingers, the rock was swapped with a marble. The instant decrease of weight made her stomach flip so abruptly that she almost regurgitated her lunch. But she forced down the bile, pressed her fingers together, and let the marble fall back into to her open palm. She presented the shiny orb to the masked man.
He waved his gloved at her offering.
"You know what, keep it, kid. Just snap your fingers if you ever need a boulder. You're the only one strong enough here to actually use it."
Use it.
The little blue marble stared back at her, glimmering with possibilities. Possibilities where rocks weren't just objects to lift, but also to drop. Like weapons.
After school, Himiko always picked her up and took her to see her friends. Their friends. As long as Ochako was home by dinner, her parents were too busy working to try to break even to notice her absence.
But her friends were always glad to see her.
They hung out in a closed bar, which felt very adult. A misty man made her mocktails that were so tasty she couldn't help but swing her feet that were too far off the ground to touch anyway.
These strange people weren't so strange. Not to Ochako. As days passed into months, they became a fixture in Ochako's life and she in theirs. They accepted her like another little sister.
Dabi helped her with her homework. Shigaraki and Spinner let play video games while Big Sis braided her hair. Jin and Himiko waltzed around the bar whenever they could actually get the jukebox to work. Mr. Compress kept capturing increasingly heavier objects in his marbles so that she could train her weight limit.
They all encouraged her to get stronger. They didn't even tease her too much when she barfed. And when they did, it was all in good fun and it always followed up with a drink to rinse her mouth and a snack to refill her empty stomach.
Most importantly, they talked with her about the world. How it hurt them. How it casted them aside.
And while Ochako never experienced what they had, her heart ached for them. She was poor, but she was loved. Tolerated by society because of her looks, disposition, and quirk. It wasn't their fault that they weren't dealt similar cards.
"Don't be so sad Ochako-chan. It'll make your blood taste sour."
Himiko's hands pinched Ochako's cheeks, stretching them into a smile.
"Besides, it's not going to be like this forever."
When she released Ochako's cheeks, the smile remained. Himiko rewarded her with a gentle head pat.
"We're going to fix it."
Ochako cocked her head, brow furrowing and lip jutting out in a pout. Morphing the smile into a look of confusion.
"How?"
"Destroy it and make a better world,” Shigaraki responded, eyes still glued to the TV that displayed the game he and Spinner were playing.
"Oh, like a demo and rebuild?"
The room stilled, the video game paused. All eyes turned towards her. Their attention, undivided.
"I get it," Ochako continued. "Sometimes you've got to gut a place to make it habitable."
"How old are you, Ochako?" Big Sis asked.
"Fourteen."
"Just a baby!" Jin exclaimed, words muffled by the mask that kept his fractured self whole. "Old hag!"
Himiko giggled, always tickled by Jin's dueling personalities.
"She's about to finish middle school!"
"Is that so?" Mr. Compress asked, finger resting on his masked chin in thought. "How do you feel about going to hero school, Ochako?"
"Eh?" Ochako squeaked, a little offended by the question. Hurt to think they thought she admired heroes after all the hours they spent discussing the problems with this hero society.
It felt like a test.
"I mean, I'm not really interested in being a hero. Besides, even if I was, there's no way my parents could afford the tuition."
"Forget the tuition,” Shigaraki barked, wild eyes locking onto hers.
Eyes shining with dreamy, slightly crazed look that made her skin prickle with excitement.
"If you got in, you could see how they train the future child soldiers. Learn all their secrets. You could be our eyes on the inside."
Himiko leapt into the air like a cheerleader, whooping as if their team had just scored a goal.
"Oooh, yes! Ochako, you would make the perfect, little spy!"
"Why not you, Himiko?" Ochako asked while Himiko twirled around the room with glee. "Your quirk is perfect for spying."
"She's a fucking delinquent."
Dabi's voice cut off Himiko's sing-song reply, like a needle scraping against a spinning record. But it didn't stop Himiko from dancing.
"Any decent hero school would see all of her demerits and throw her application in the trash before she even got to the entrance exam."
"No one would expect Cupcake."
Ochako rolled her eyes at Spinner's nickname. It managed to stick despite all of her protests.
"All bright eyed and cheery. It’s perfect. You could be our undercover agent." Spinner said, like it was a fact.
That she was perfect for this role.
Perfect.
They all looked at her, eyes speaking the unspoken. Pleading with her to offer herself to their cause.
Her friends never pushed her to do anything, or even officially join whatever club this was. They firmly believed in people following their own paths, and if their paths so happened to cross and lead to the same goal, they were happy for her to come along.
They had always recognized her strength and smarts. They never seemed to mind that she hung around. But they never really seemed to need her. Not like they did now.
Her brave new friends and were enough to envision a world beyond heroes. They were willing to risk it all so that they could create a world that they truly wanted.
Maybe she could be brave, too?
"So, on my high school selection form, what hero schools should I put down?"
Shigaraki's lips split into a bleeding smile.
"The only one that matters: U.A."
⋆˙⟡♡⟡˙⋆
On her first day of U.A., Ochako finally understood what Himiko meant when she gushed about love at first sight. She finally understood when her eyes first found Bakugou Katsuki.
He was as beautiful as his mouth was foul.
A sight of defiant glory, sitting there with his feet kicked up on the desk, seat rocking onto the back two legs of the chair, and screaming at some boy who reprimanded him about manners and rules while doing the robot.
"Somei, huh? So you must think you're better than me? I'm going to enjoy tearing you new one."
Ochako giggled before taking the empty seat next to him, which made his screaming pause for just a moment.
"You laughin' at me, Round Face?"
Red eyes clashed with hers, trying to intimidate, trying to read her. A smile tickled her lips, her cheeks burning under the scrutiny in a way they hadn't ever burned before.
"There is nothing funny about threatening a fellow student!" Iida Tenya, their future Class Representative, lectured, fogging up his glasses with frustrated huffs.
She regretfully pried her eyes from the dazzling rubies next to her to address this fuddy-duddy who was radiating way too much hall monitor energy than what was acceptable for 7 A.M.
"What, they didn't teach you rich kids comedy at Somei?" Ochako asked. Voice polite, but eyes cold.
Bakugou acknowledged her joke with an explosive laugh. Her heart squeezed at the sound.
While his laughter was music to her ears, her rigid, stick in the mud classmate didn't seem to enjoy the tune.
"Are you sure you both are in the right place? You're not acting very heroic!"
Ochako's eyeballs barely resisted the temptation to circle their sockets in a lazy roll. Instead, she batted her lashes, feigning sweetness, and rested a cheek on her palm. Knowing that the elbow on her desk would further push this rule follower towards a full-blow meltdown before the warning bell rang.
"This is Class 1-A, right?" Ochako questioned, innocent and big eyed.
"Well, yes—"
Bakugou didn't give the manners police a chance to respond. Sparking fingers clenched into fists. He shifted in his seat, letting the momentum propel his chair onto all four legs with a loud thud. One palm smacked against the desk, catching his careening body before springing him forward to invade Iida’s space.
"I deserve to be here more than any other extra in this fucking room. I got first on the entrance exam."
“I got third,” Ochako piped up from behind the display of dominance. Both boys broke their starting contest to find her balancing a pencil in mid-air. She touched her finger tips together, snatching the falling object out of the air, brandishing the dull graphite side like a weapon.
"What about you, Glasses?" she asked, sweet smirk still plastered on her face.
"I placed . . . sixth."
Sweat started forming on his temple, little droplets decorating the skin beneath cropped, midnight blue hair.
"Well I'll be damned," Bakugou said with a dangerous smirk.
Red eyes met hers again as he leaned back into his seat. Deciding that she was more interesting than continuing to mess with the rule follower. He cocked his head, blonde spikes bouncing with the motion, towards their startled classmate.
"Looks like they did teach comedy at Somei after all."
After that first meeting, wherever she went, she seemed to find herself staring back at a pair of ruby reds. They gleamed, impressed by her performance during the Quirk Apprehension test. Sparkling with excitement when they past each other in the Heroes v. Villains challenge, both of them too preoccupied with the idea of taking out their own personal target, to turn and fight each other.
In turn, she seemingly scanned every room for him. Feet dragging her to fill the empty spot beside him. Wanting to bask in his grumpy glow.
Ochako couldn't help it. She was enamored of him. Totally and utterly smitten.
Bakugou lived his life by one tenant: Be the best.
He chased the goal wholeheartedly. Bruised and burned his body in the pursuit of greatness. Explored the depths of his powers on the endless pursuit to make a simple explosion quirk so versatile that he might as well have had a stock pile of quirks at his disposal.
He didn't follow the unwritten rule for people with destructive quirks: disarm and reassure the public with a smile before blasting a villain in the face. No, Bakugou blasted first and screamed at civilians for standing in the fall out zone.
Even though he was a straight A student, people treated him like he was a derelict just because he wasn't afraid to lob a string of creative curses at anyone in his way to the top.
While people overlooked Ochako, they over-analyzed Bakugou. Always waiting for the boy to use his power to destroy rather than defend.
Her heart ached for Bakugou just like it did her other friends. Every time he ran up against the boundaries of what was acceptable behavior for a hero-in-training, she watched him grit his teeth and bare the punishment. Too proud to change his attitude, but too focused to see that there was another path other than professional heroics.
Her soft spot grew for him grew into a bottomless black hole the day they fought each other in the Sports Festival.
Bakugou swung at her with sparking palms, never for a moment underestimating her because of her size or disposition. He didn't hold back his fire power, detonating explosion after explosion right at her, even as the crowd boo'ed him. Condemning him for daring to fight her with respect, all while she was the one fighting dirty.
Ochako's quirk wasn't flashy but it had just as much potential for lethality as his. It wasn't just good for saving. Not when anything she could get five finger tips on could become a dangerous weapon.
The idiots in the crowd were too busy sharpening their pitch forks to run Bakugou out of Kansai and straight to Tartarus to notice that she was steadily collecting his shrapnel in a mass above him. Planning to bury him beneath a stadium's worth of rubble to force his submission by knock out.
Bakugou saw right through her.
As she touched her finger pads together, he turned his palm to the sky, braced his wrist, disintegrating her ammunition with out violent explosion. Even the largest chunks of concrete reduced to nothing but pebbles.
Still, Ochako rushed him as they rained down, hoping the recoil would leave him defenseless. She touched her finger tips to her stomach, making herself weightless the moment she lunged at him. Sending herself flying through the air, hands stretched wide and ready to strike.
But when she slapped all five fingers to Bakugou's chest, he latched onto her hand. Squeezing her fingers in his sweaty grasp and pulling her to his chest with a sharp yank with one arm while his free hand set off an explosion behind them. Rocketing their weightless bodies back in the direction she came and straight out of bounds.
The moment her back crossed the threshold of the boundary line, he swung her around with a final blast. Swapping their positions so that his back bore the brunt of their crash into the stadium wall, not hers. Securing his victory while keeping her safe from unnecessary harm.
"Uraraka was out of bounds first! Bakugou wins!"
The moment the crowd boo'ed his well-deserved victory, Ochako finally understood that this society would always see the worst in Bakugou. Even though he was a beautiful boy from an upper-middle class family with a flashy quirk. No matter how great he was, no matter how many people he saved, society would always view him as threat.
So she needed to free him.
⋆˙⟡♡⟡˙⋆
No one suspected that Ochako was the one who orchestrated Bakugou's kidnapping. Or that she was the one who leaked the location of their training camp to her friends from her burner phone. How could they when she put on the performance of a life time by "fighting" with Himiko?
They didn't even grow suspicious of her at the hospital when she told her meddling classmates not to go after Bakugou.
"He'd feel humiliated if you all were the ones to save him."
And she meant it.
Bakugou was hers to save.
Now that he was safe with her friends, Ochako didn't want to let him go. She wanted him to understand that this world would never understand him or any of them. That it would always try to muzzle him and dampen his firepower, until years of thankless service snuffed out his fire completely.
Ochako hoped he'd want to stay. For himself. For her.
But Bakugou just wasn't getting it.
He met her friends with exploding fists s as soon as Jin released him from his restraints.
"I like to win. I want to win like All Might! No matter what anyone says, that'll never change."
"Even me?"
Nine sets of shocked eyes locked onto her as she stepped out from behind the plume of smoke and into the fray. Exposing herself as the U.A. traitor.
Surprise flickered across Bakugou's face before it tried to scrunch itself in disgust. But his features resisted, too impressed with her deceit to be repulsed.
"So you're the mole."
"I am, but, please, Bakugou, just listen—"
"I'm done listening!" he screamed, hands firing off miniature fireworks to let off some of his mounting frustration.
"All I've been doing is listening to your freaky friends whine about how much society hates them. Now you think I'll give a shit about your bullshit, sob story about how hard it was to grow up poor? Grow the fuck up."
Ochako shook her head, hot frustrated tears blurring her vision, but never falling.
"That society hates you too, you know!"
His palms stopped sparking at her words. Gawking at her emotional display.
"The whole crowd boo'ed you because you fought me fair and square! Our own teachers muzzled you because you called out Todoroki for throwing his fight against you!"
"As if I care what anyone thinks about me."
His words came out in an unconvincing mumble, that frankly pissed Ochako off even more. Spurring her to keep shouting until Katsuki understood his worth and how much he stood to lose.
"Well, I care!"
Her foot stomped into the tile, sending a wave of glowing, anti-gravity through the bar. Causing everyone's feet to lift off the ground while she poured her heart out.
"They shouldn't get to treat you like that just because you refuse to play by their rules! It wasn't enough for them to brainwash us into worshipping heroes, and recruit us to be a child solider? But now that you've bought in, they want to beat everything that makes you special out you, too?!"
Something in the hard, outer crust layer of Bakugou's façade cracked. Barely noticeable, but Ochako saw something vulnerable flash, before it was wiped away by the slightly trembling hand Bakugou dragged down his face.
"Why the fuck am I here, Cheeks?" Bakugou asked, voice more tired than mad.
"Why me? If you wanted to make the heroes look bad, wouldn't it have been smarter to recruit and corrupt some goody-two-shoes like Deku?"
His question hovered in the air, floating just like they were, somewhere between the dingy bar floor and the ceiling.
"You're the best there is, Bakugou."
She kicked her legs like a frog, as if she was swimming through the air over to him.
"You're going to be Number One no matter what, right?"
Ochako asked rhetorically while performing a mid-air breast stroke, each stroke bringing her closer to him.
She knew his answer. His goals. What drove him to be greatness.
"You should at least get to be Number One on your own terms, surrounded by people who actually appreciate you."
Ochako expected him to scoff at her outstretched hand. Tell her to fuck off. Fire off an explosion in her face. Instead, his gaze trailed up her hand to meet her eyes. His head bobbed in a short, determined nod, eyes locked on hers. He reached out for her hand.
"Oka—"
Before their fingers could interlock, the brick wall beside them shattered from a mighty "SMASH!"
The force ripped them apart, flinging their weightless bodies in opposite directions. The impact of the far wall ball of the bar causing her to release her quirk.
Ochako's feet hadn't even found the ground by the time she was locked in a branch of Kamui Woods' Lacquered Chain Prison.
All Might stood before them in all of his heroic glory. His famous smile bent into a disappointed frown, directed right at Ochako.
If All Might was lecturing her, Ochako certainly did not hear it over the sound of her own retching. And it wasn't from her spontaneous quirk evolution.
Black sludge bubbled from her throat and spewed from her mouth. The Gloop Warp devoured her and spit her out in somewhere in Kamino Ward.
Ochako couldn't even find it in herself to be disgusted by the intrusive quirk. She was too busy looking for Bakugou. Her heart finally settling when his body erupted from a mass of black sludge, coughing and spitting mad.
Shigaraki's "master" must have summoned them.
All Ochako knew about him was that he was a man with many quirks, and he could give and take quirks as he pleased.
Himiko told her never to accept a quirk from him. That it wasn't a gift, but a curse. That too many quirks broke people's brains. That he was just here to support their goals, and otherwise, their friends interacted with him as little as possible.
Watching him battle with All Might, she finally understood why. He was ruthless. Uncaring. Forcibly activating the quirks of her injured friends like they were nothing more than pawns in a chess match.
Pawns.
That's all any of them were. Her friends, her classmates, Bakugou, the powers at be on either side of this sick society just viewed them all as disposable playing pieces to advance their agendas.
Ochako was tried of playing their game.
She slapped at the metal rod that topped the chain link beside her, fishing out the now weightless top rail, shaking it loose from the mess of mesh and wires. Pole in hand, she took off in a sprint just as an ice wall formed just outside the blast zone.
The unmistakable firing of Iida's leg engines compelled hers to move faster. The sound of feet scraping along the ice luge at 100 miles per hour prompted her to abandon her sprint, stab one end the pole directly into the ground, and leap.
The metal rod curled with her weight, bending like the rubber band on a sling-shot. Ochako held onto the top of the bar, tucked her chest, and kicked her legs above her head. Just as the pole straightened itself out, she gave herself a final push off of it and then canceled out her own gravity. Her weightless body taking flight, a projectile that zoomed right past Deku, Iida, and Kirishima.
"Come!"
"Bakugou!"
All eyes were on her, but as always, she only had eyes for Bakugou.
An earth shattering blast fired off from the ground below, violently shooting Bakugou through the air.
Ochako and Kirishima's cries clashed in the night sky, two sets of arms open and beckoning for Bakugou. One offering a safety, the other offering salvation.
The choice was Bakugou's.
With one more explosion, Bakugou rocketed right passed Kirishima's outstretched hand and slammed directly into Ochako's embrace.
Once again, Bakugou was weightless. Bathed in Zero Gravity, stripped of the crushing weight of expectation, he was free to fly however he chose.
And to Ochako's delight, he chose to fly off with her.