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Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Present day

I was exhausted. Two dangerous villains escaped from police custody this morning, and my agency was the first one to get the call for help to find and apprehend them. Ochako was able to help with the search, hovering above the area where they were last spotted to try and get a good view from the air, but it also was a clear signal to them that they were being hunted. They lashed out, breaking into a warehouse and collapsing it before tearing through another part of the city to take hostages. While Ochako stayed behind to make sure that nobody was under the rubble, I pushed ahead, determined not to let them get away. Between using Smoke and Blackwhip, I managed to stop them from taking hostages, but capturing them was another story. The fight took the better part of an afternoon, and while I was able to eventually keep them subdued, I got a lot of nasty scrapes and cuts to show for it. So yeah, I was definitely exhausted.

At least I had a cozy bed to look forward to. Some of my old UA classmates told me I was making a mistake to put in living quarters inside my hero agency. They didn’t want my work life and my personal life to get too mixed together. But I’ve never been good at keeping that balance to begin with, and living somewhere else wouldn’t stop me from taking work home with me. Besides, heroes don’t exactly keep normal hours, do they?

Walking through the employee entrance, I made my way to the elevator and pushed the button for the 20th floor, holding my pointer finger against the print reader so that it would give me access to the private residential floor. One story above my main office, this was for me and my partners, and our guests, exclusively—no sidekicks, no support staff. The doors closed, and I felt the elevator cab rise up from the ground floor.

As I closed my eyes, I felt a pair of hands across my chest and gentle pressure on my back as someone grabbed onto me. I could feel short hair brush against the back of my neck. A familiar voice whispered in my ear.

“Hi, Izuku. Are you happy to see me?”

Himiko Toga. I hadn’t even noticed her following me into the elevator. “H-Himiko? What are you doing here?”

She let go of my chest, swinging around me to stand in front of the door, flashing a toothy grin. Himiko had long since traded her schoolgirl-type outfit for office attire—a navy blue pencil skirt and matching blazer with a white blouse. “My mission ended yesterday, Izuku. Don’t you remember? And I never got another assignment, so…” She gently tugged my mask, pulling my face closer to hers. “…I was wondering if you wanted to try out that thing you and I were talking about before bed.”

“You mean…tonight? I mean, I’m kinda tired. I had a really nasty fight.”

“Aww, are you sure? I might make you feel better. And you know how much I love when you’re all cut up. Besides—” Himiko grabbed the back of my neck and pulled herself up, her eyes meeting mine. “—Ochako is already waiting for both of us.”

I could feel my face go red. “Well…I think I might still have a little bit left in me?” I tried to be smooth, but I’m sure I sounded as much like a dork as I ever did.

The doors opened and Himiko jumped off of me, her arms stretched out with delight. “Yay! I hoped you’d say that.” She flashed me another smile, her eyebrows raised and her tone hushed again. “See you soon.” She puckered her lips and blew me a kiss before sticking out her tongue at me and walking down the hall, disappearing into her room. I was still blushing. Me, Himiko, and Ochako tonight? I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been thinking about it for ages.

Oh, I guess I should explain how the three of us got to this point…

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Seven years before the present

“A diversion program?”

It was my own fault that I got captured, but I couldn’t help myself. Most of the rest of the villains were able to get away from the raid on the UA training camp, but I got distracted. Izuku and Ochako just looked so cute all beat up. I had my eyes locked on them, and so when Tsuyu wrapped her tongue around me, I was totally unable to react. Before I knew it, I and the other captured villains were in containment chambers. The police kept me in a separate room, away from Muscular, Moonfish, and Mustard. I don’t know how long I was in there for, but eventually, two cops came in and sat down across from me. They told me I was eligible for a villain diversion program. I didn’t even know that that was a thing that existed.

“What does that even mean?”

“It means you’re getting another chance.” One of the officers had a file open. My picture was stapled to the front. It was an old picture of me, but I was grinning.

“The government is trialling a program for villains who they feel can be rehabilitated.” The other cop stood up, pacing. “Right now, you’d be looking at a minimum of five years in prison, possibly more. But you’re young. Your psychological profile is apparently promising for the program.”

He took a piece of paper out of the file and slid it across the table for me to read. My hands were chained to the chair, so I leaned my head in. “So what do I have to do?”

“You agree to participate and spend a year in the program, followed by two years on probation. If you go three years without offending again, they’ll expunge your criminal record. There wouldn’t even be anything stopping you from enrolling in a post-high school hero course.”

“Of course, if you do reoffend…” the other cop cut in. He acted like he was the one in charge. “You’ll be charged and tried not just for that crime, but for all of the ones you’ve committed before now. It seems like an easy choice to me, but we can’t make it for you.”

I stared at that paper for a long time. The outline of the program called for six months in group housing with intensive rehabilitation sessions, then another six months in a halfway house, and then two years of probation on my own. Until then, I hadn’t known anything but running from people who thought I was weird. Who thought all the things I loved were disgusting. I just wanted to live my own life, in my own way. I wondered, was this going to give me a chance to do that? I didn’t trust hero society. Back then, I certainly never thought of joining it. But it beat five years in prison.

“So…just three years then? And I’m out on my own after just one?” I shifted as far forward as my chains allowed me. “Fine. I’m in. Where do I sign?”

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Seven years before the present

After the raid on the Paranormal Liberation Front hideout and the mass escape from the Tartarus prison complex, everybody knew that we wouldn’t be able to avoid fighting just because we were students. Between all of the pro heroes that had retired, killed, or arrested for aiding or sympathizing with the PLF, it was going to fall on everyone else to keep society safe. As soon as we were healed and recovered, we would be back on the front lines.

Principal Nezu apparently led a group of UA staff to compile a dossier on the most dangerous known villains, providing a booklet to all of the students for us to study so that we could know what we were facing. Leafing through the pages, it reminded me of Izuku. He was always taking detailed notes on our quirks, our strengths and weaknesses. I’m sure he did the same for villains as well. I wonder if he had a hand in making these? Or maybe I was just being a girl with a crush and seeing everything in relation to him.

As I flipped through, I saw a dossier with a picture of a girl with dirty blonde hair, straight-cut bangs, and two messy buns. She had a wide, toothy grin. I read the entry:

NAME: Himiko Toga

DATE OF BIRTH: 7 August

QUIRK: Transform

QUIRK DETAILS: Ingesting the blood of another person allows her to transform into their likeness. The volume of blood ingested is believed to correspond to the length of time for which she can remain transformed. It is currently unknown whether transformation enables her to use the quirks of the other person.

COMBAT STYLE: Armed melee combat; favors bladed weapons

CURRENT STATUS: Captured, enrolled in diversion program; scheduled for probationary release in August of this year

Himiko Toga. I remembered her. She tried to cut me while we were all at our forest training camp. I was scared of her then, and I’m glad Tsuyu was able to get her restrained. Still, the first thing she said to me…

“You sure are cute!”

Yeah, she said it while pointing her knife at me, but there was something in her eyes. A bit obsessive, maybe, but not evil. I had seen evil people. I knew that wasn’t what I saw. And she was in a diversion program? So that meant she was trying to get away from being a villain? I kept turning the pages, reading up on more villains, but every so often, I’d flip back to her page. Himiko Toga. I wanted to know more about her.

I must have fallen asleep reading through the dossiers, because I woke up still sitting at my desk, my cheek pressed against Toga’s page in the booklet. Sunlight streamed through the window. I turned and saw a note slid under my door. Picking it up and opening it, before I even looked at the signature at the bottom, I knew the handwriting. It was Izuku.

Dear Uraraka,

Thank you for everything. I don’t feel like I should be keeping a secret from everyone in Class 1A, so I’m leaving a letter.

My quirk…is a power that All Might passed onto me. It’s a special power—Shigaraki and All For One are trying to go after me to seize it. Before that happens, I must leave.

I felt tears running down my cheeks. “Idiot.” The word came out short and sharp under my breath. How could someone so smart and so hardworking do something so dumb? He had to know that we would protect him, right? But deep down, I knew that wasn’t the only thing tugging at my heart. I was an idiot, too. I loved Izuku just as much then as I do now, and I had for a while. I knew I did. And I didn’t say anything.

I went into the hallway and heard my classmates’ voices. “You got a note too?” “This is crazy!” “He really just left?” “He must be in danger!”

The word "danger" echoed in my head. My stomach felt as if it had turned to ice. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing Izuku. Not before I could tell him how I felt. I just had to. I wasn’t going to allow anything to hold me back any longer. I pressed the note against my chest, still in tears, and promised myself: I’ll make sure we find you, Izuku. I’ll make sure we bring you back. I’ll make sure you’re safe. And then, I’ll make sure I tell you everything about how I feel.

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Seven years before the present

I hadn’t wanted the others to worry about me. I didn’t want them to be in danger. I just wanted to be left alone—and still, they all went out to look for me, to bring me back. Every single one. I tried to push them away. I had tried to fight back. But I was exhausted from constant fighting to bring escaped villains back into captivity, and my classmates wore me down. Physically—with the exception of Kacchan, they all used their quirks as much as they could to stop me from fighting and to bring me back to UA—but also emotionally. Everybody in Class 1-A told me about the memories they had with me, the times when I helped them or made them feel welcome and cared for. Slowly and steadily, it all weighed on me how much a part of everyone’s lives I was, and how much they felt they had lost when I left. Kacchan’s apology to me for having bullied me growing up was what finally broke me. I couldn’t resist anymore. I couldn’t stay away from my friends, the people I cared about. In tears, I collapsed to the ground, all of the emotion washing over me. Kacchan caught me as the rest of Class 1-A swarmed around me.

I hadn’t realized that UA had been converted into a civilian shelter until they brought me back. The people gathered there were not happy to see me. They thought I was a danger, that I would be a magnet for Shigaraki and the other villains. Of course, they were right. I couldn’t blame them. But it still cut to my core. I left my home at UA to protect everyone from danger, and my classmates brought me back, only for the people at UA to tell me that I was endangering them. I was on the verge of breaking down all over again. Then Ochako stepped in front of me, as if to put herself between me and the crowd, before floating above them with a megaphone. She urged them to look at me not as a hero, but as a person who needed to be saved just like anyone else. She pleaded with them to let me stay, and the crowd relented. I was so emotionally spent; tears flowed down my face again as my classmates led me inside along with some of the people I had saved who were now sheltering with us.

I didn’t even have the strength to protest as a group of Class 1-A boys hauled me off to the baths to clean me after so much time on the streets. My exhaustion hit me like a weight, and I fell asleep on the couch in the common area…but it was not a restful sleep. I had nightmares of crawling through the rubble, of Shigaraki’s decay disintegrating the ground around me, of All for One reaching out, mockingly saying to me, “This time, it’s your turn.” His hand extended towards my face, seeking to wrestle away One for All, was etched in my mind as I bolted awake and shot Blackwhip in front of me.

“Good morning, Izuku.” Ochako was sitting in front of me, smiling softly. I wiped the shocked expression off of my face and pulled Blackwhip back under control.

“What time is it?”

“It’s still early, maybe 4 AM?” She yawned, triggering a yawn from me as well.

“Where are the others?”

“I told them I’d watch you while you slept here.” She glanced down sheepishly. “I didn’t want to carry you back to your room without talking to you first.”

“Oh yeah…” I glanced around. “I guess I did fall asleep on the couch, huh?” I laughed nervously, a fig leaf over how exhausted I still was.

The two of us walked back up to my room, and I opened the door. It felt a mix of comforting and unsettling to be back here, surrounded by all of my All Might posters and figures and other knick-knacks. Of course I felt at home in my own space, but there was also a painful irony at being surrounded by pictures of the man—my idol and mentor—once the Symbol of Peace, now relegated to watching this new, terrible war from the sidelines, feeding me bento boxes while I had run around the city desperately trying to stop chaos from spreading.

“Can I stay with you?” Ochako looked away from me, and her voice was weak. “You know…to make sure you’re okay.”

Even at that moment, I knew that wasn’t the only reason. “I, uh–” I must have looked so nervous. “Of course you can! The others would understand, right?”

“Yeah.” She held her hands in front of her, staring at the floor. “And actually, I wanted to tell you something, too.”

I sat on the bed; Ochako knelt down next to it.

“I…” Ochako squirmed. “I know this is probably the worst possible time to say this, but…I really like you, Izuku.” Even in the low light, I could see that her face was beet red. “Even walking into the entrance exam, I knew you were special. You were always so hardworking, and you pushed me to be the best hero I can be. So I…” I could hear her voice breaking. “When you left that note and said you were leaving UA…I was worried I would never see you again.” What little moonlight there was streaming in through the curtains caught the tears running down her face. “And I don’t want to lose you. So…when this is all over…I want to spend more time with you, Izuku. I want to be with you.”

I can’t imagine how panicked Ochako must have been in the two or three seconds I sat in silence. The truth is that I was just emotionally overwhelmed with the past 24 hours, but she must have thought that I was about to say no.

“Ochako…” I reached out and lifted her chin up. “This isn’t the worst time at all. And I know there’s nothing we can do until this war is over, but…I like you too. You stood up for me and believed in me. You’ve always showed how much you cared about me. And yes, when this is over, I’d love to spend more time with you.”

I watched a smile spread across her face. “Izuku…”

She wrapped her arms around me. Still exhausted, we both fell asleep, her embracing me. To know that Ochako cared for me like that calmed my restless mind. For at least a few hours, we could both forget about the war and chaos outside of UA’s walls.

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Six years before the present

The war upended everything. To their credit, the staff at the rehabilitation center tried to keep us as sheltered from the news as possible, and we were pretty insulated from the fighting, but we still heard bits and pieces. I knew there was fighting going on, that a lot of people were sheltering in hero schools, and that All for One had gotten free, but I didn’t know much else. I thought about Jin and the others. I wondered if they were okay. I thought, maybe at least if he was captured, he could have gotten the same second chance I had gotten?

The fighting also meant that the original plan of six months of rehabilitation and six months in a halfway house wasn’t feasible anymore. After all, how could we reintegrate into normal society when there was no normal society to speak of? We were trying to rebuild our own lives at the same time as…well, everybody. So instead of six months to transition, we just spent that time at the rehabilitation center. That was probably the best option. The center was pretty nice, all told: we were at a compound in the Japanese countryside. All of us had our own little cabins, and we had one-on-one time with counselors to work through the issues that had made us disillusioned with society. And honestly, I probably needed the extra time. I had a lot to untangle: between my obsessive love tendencies, my history of being shamed for my quirk, and my inability to separate affection from violence…I definitely had a lot to work on.

My case workers were nice. We spent hours each day talking, and little by little, they helped me see a new perspective on my life and the people around me. They didn’t try to change who I was or how I acted. They just wanted me to see the world a little differently. They told me that there was nothing bad or strange about my quirk, and that my desire to become like the people I loved wasn’t anything to hide or be ashamed of. I was skeptical that any good would come out of this program for me, but they surprised me—and I surprised myself.

Still, missing out on the transitional housing was a big problem. The idea that we would all just be thrown back into this chaotic world after a year isolated from it…that would’ve been a crazy idea before the war, and it was even crazier after it. And I get it—there was no halfway house to go to. Even with the war ending months before I got out, there was so much reconstruction to be done. Places like hospitals, schools, apartments, power plants…those all had higher priority than a halfway house for ex-villains. But after all of this therapy and rehabilitation, for the government to basically say, “Okay, you’re on your own now, good luck!” Well, that felt like being let down by society all over again.

I wasn’t looking forward to my last day. I didn’t know what was waiting for me. I didn’t even know how I was going to get home. We were in the forest, away from everything, and I just walked outside the gate when I was released fully expecting that I would just have to walk and walk until I found a bus stop. Instead, as the gate opened, I saw a small blue car parked outside, and a girl in a t-shirt and jean shorts was sitting on the hood. She had short brown hair that gently curved to frame her face, with two blush circles on her cheeks. Her. From the training camp where I got captured. My mouth sat open, my lips making a small O. I couldn’t believe who I was seeing.

“Toga-chan?” She looked at me and smiled. “Do you want a ride?”

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Six years before the present

“Why are you…what are you doing here?” I could hear the shock in Himiko’s voice.

“I thought you might want someone to take you home.” It was true. The more I had read about her, the more my heart ached for her. Her parents had shunned her for her quirk, trying to suppress her urges because they found it repulsive. When it eventually came out, it came out all at once. She stabbed a classmate she was in love with and was found in the hallway licking at his bloody wounds. After that, she disappeared, and everyone in her life who had known her wanted nothing more to do with her. I wondered what she would have been like if she was accepted for who she was. What if she had been given an outlet for her urges, a way for her to express her feelings and be herself without being shamed? So I had hoped, with all my heart, that the diversion program could be the next-closest thing for her.

“How did you know I would be here?” Himiko was clutching her few possessions, a suitcase and a backpack. She wore a blue skirt, but instead of her signature beige sweater with a blue tar flap and red scarf, she had a simple white t-shirt with a cartoon cell phone on it, a giant envelope-with-heart emoji on the screen.

“I asked one of the officers about you. He said they cancelled the halfway house part of your program and that you’d be here.” I held my hand out. “Want me to carry something for you?”

She stood there for a second, as if her brain couldn’t process that anyone would even think to ask her that, before sliding her backpack off her shoulder and handing it to me. A couple of acrylic charms hung off of the zipper pulls: a heart on one side and a pair of crossed knives on the other. I opened the hatchback and set her backpack down; she put her luggage alongside it as I walked to the driver’s side door and got in. Himiko opened the passenger door and slid in opposite me.

“So, uh…where’s home for you?” I hadn’t really thought this part through, had I?

“Here, let me type it in for you.” Himiko held out her hand. She glanced at me without turning her head, almost as if she was holding part of herself back. Like she wanted to look at me, but something was keeping her from doing so. “There. That should give you directions.”

I set the phone on the dashboard mount. I wasn’t used to borrowing my parents’ tiny car. They had just gotten it recently, and only after saving up a bunch for it. Honestly, it’s amazing that they were able to get anything at all since the war, but I guess it was a boon for my father’s construction business. I set off with her, turning around and heading back up the narrow rural road until it widened, then met a larger one before merging onto the highway. The whole while, Himiko sat staring at the dashboard in front of her. I debated whether to say something or not, but I didn’t know if that’s what she wanted or needed.

“Ochako-chan…” Himiko finally spoke up as we drove towards the city. “…I’m sorry I tried to cut you.”

I would have looked at her if I wasn’t driving, but I hope she could see me smile and hear it in my voice. “That’s really sweet of you, Toga-chan.” I shifted into the right lane to pass a slower bus. “I won’t lie, I was really scared. But I know you’re trying hard to be a good person. So it’s okay. I forgive you.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the corner of her mouth turn upwards into a smile. “I’m really glad you’re driving me home,” she said. “I can’t wait for—” Himiko interrupted herself, stopping as if she was holding something back. “I’ve never had someone other than family come to my house.”

I shifted back to the left and took the exit that my phone directed me to. As we got back onto the surface streets, the roads got worse, as did the buildings on either side. There were construction barriers along the side of the road, which people had clearly pushed out of the way so that they were no longer blocking the way forward. This neighborhood looked like it hadn’t seen any improvement at all since the war. One house on the street looked even worse than the others—not just in disrepair, but as if it was looted or vandalized. Sure enough, when I parked in front of it, I saw my phone’s navigation replaced with a notification: Destination Reached.

“Toga-chan…” I turned to her. The smile on her face was gone. “Are you sure this is the place?”

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Six years before the present

It was unmistakably my house, but I could hardly recognize it. Like all the other houses on the street, the windows were all broken out, and the paint was flaked. There were pockmarks in the walls, damage from…something; I don’t know what. But my house looked worse. People splattered red paint on the door and front wall; it looked like they filled water balloons with it and threw them at the front of the building. My parents were nowhere to be seen. I had no clue what happened to them. Were they dead? Maybe they were in a shelter somewhere? Or maybe they left the country entirely? It didn’t matter. They weren’t here.

“We don’t have to stay, Toga-chan…” Ochako looked concerned. If I weren’t so shell-shocked, there would have been something sweet about that. Nobody ever showed that they cared about me like this. Not even in the League of Villains. But my brain just couldn’t process that right now.

“I have to go in.” I opened the car door. I don’t know why I felt this need, but I did. Maybe I needed to know what happened to my parents. Maybe I had some distant hope that this was just a random vandal and didn’t have anything to do with me. Maybe it was that I just didn’t have anywhere else to go. I have no idea. All I know is that my feet carried me forward before I could stop them.

The front door swung open with absolutely no effort. Somebody must have dismantled the locking mechanism, or forced it open. Or maybe it had just decayed over the course of the war. I guess anything is possible, but given how the front looked from the outside, it looked like people forced their way through. Everything in the entryway was either destroyed or stolen. A thick layer of dust covered whatever was left behind. They left the pictures on the walls behind, but they shattered the glass. Tokens of the only happy memories I had, and people destroyed them.

“Toga-chan, wait—” I could hear Ochako call out from behind me, but I ran forward, looking for my room. And then I saw it: a door, my door, with the words “DEMON GIRL” painted in crimson red letters on the front. My feet stopped, but my hand kept on moving, turning the handle. “Toga-chan!” Ochako wanted me to stop, but my body wouldn’t let me. It was as if it was a compulsion. I just kept going.

I swung the door open, and I was stunned. All of the decorations in my room—my toys, my wall posters, anything that gave color and charm to this space—had been pulled down. Everything soft, like plushies and pillows, was torn up and slashed; everything else was snapped and shattered. They put everything into a pile in the center and covered it in red paint. As if my things were too cursed to even be worthy of stealing. The walls now just had graffiti on them. “VAMPIRE FREAK.” “MONSTER CHILD.” “PSYCHO.” “CRAZY BITCH.” “GET OUT.” “DIE!”

“Toga-chan…I am so sorry.” Ochako hadn’t wanted me to see this, and neither did I. But still…I had to see it for myself. And I felt destroyed. Like my new life was over before it began. My childhood was miserable. My classmates thought I was insane, and maybe I was…but their words cut me. “Your smile is so creepy, Toga.” “What’s with all the blood stuff, you freak?” “Ew, gross, the weird girl wants to talk to me? Go away!” It never got better. My parents told me to stop, to try and “be normal.” They didn’t understand what my normal was. They hated their weird daughter. This room was the only safe place I had. It was the only place where I could be me—and it was gone. No, worse than gone: it was turned into a terrible reminder of how much everyone hated me. How much people wanted me to disappear, to stop being me.

I hung my head as my tears ran down my cheeks and fell to the floor. “What do I do?” I don’t know whether I asked that to Ochako specifically or just to the universe in general. I was desperate for everything to just be over. I had nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Nobody to rely on. This really was the end for me.

And then, I felt a pair of hands wrap around me from behind. Ochako pressed her chest against my back and put her cheek on my shoulder. “I’ll help you, Toga-chan,” she said after a few seconds of silence, her warmth radiating onto me.

I turned around, staring at her with teary red eyes. “Uraraka…”

“I would offer to let you stay with me, but UA is still a boarding school, and they might not let you live in my dorm. But…” Ochako grabbed my shoulders and looked me in the eyes. “…I’ll ask my parents to let you stay with them. It’s not much, but with me living at UA, my old room is empty. And I’ll come to see you on weekends. And my dad works in construction, so I’ll ask him to try and fix this into a place where you can live.”

For the second time in as many minutes, I was stunned—but completely in the opposite direction. I was on the edge, and Ochako pulled me back. She held out a hand for me when the world tried to push me away, yet again, one last time.

“You would do that for me?” I said through tears.

Still grabbing my shoulders, Ochako tilted her head and smiled. “Of course, Toga-chan.”

Impossibly, I felt a faint smile come back to my face. As we stood in the ruins of what was once my bedroom, I pulled Ochako to me, put my head on her shoulder, and cried almost two decades’ worth of tears.

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Six years before the present

“Don’t you always get strawberry bubble tea, Ochako?” I watched as she pressed the order button at the bubble tea kiosk for matcha.

“Well, I’m always stealing sips of yours anyway, and…now the flavor of matcha reminds me of you.” I could see her blush.

“R-really?” I felt myself blushing too. “Well, in that case…”

Turning back to my order kiosk, I punched in Ochako’s usual: strawberry milk tea, regular ice, regular pearls, and a little bit of extra sugar. After a short wait, our orders were ready, and we headed back out to wander the shopping street.

“Izuku…I need your help with something.”

It was too early in the autumn for the leaves on trees to change color, but the temperature was cooler and the air less humid. Ochako and I turned onto a narrow street, each of us holding our bubble tea. The shops down there were quieter, mostly selling antique wares. There wasn’t much foot traffic. Aside from the shopkeepers behind their stalls, it was just the two of us.

“Of course, Ochako-chan.” I pulled my straw away from my lips, giving her my full attention.

“Do you remember the training camp? That girl with the blonde hair and messy buns? Himiko Toga?”

I nodded. Her. How could I forget? She tried to cut us, and if it weren’t for Tsuyu’s quick thinking, she would have done it.

“Well…she just got out of a diversion program a couple of months ago.”

I blinked. “Diversion program?” I hadn’t even known that there was such a thing.

“Yeah. The government wants to rehabilitate some villains.” She looked at the ground. “Anyway, when Toga got released, I went to meet her and take her back to her house…but…”

Ochako told me the story: Toga’s house in ruins, her room filled with all kinds of hateful graffiti and all of her belongings destroyed. I was shocked. I had no idea.

“…so I want to help her. She’s staying with my family until she can find her own place.” Ochako stirred her bubble tea, the pearls swirling at the bottom.” Since my dad is in construction, I told her that he could help fix her old house, but she told me a couple of days ago that she doesn’t want to move back there.”

“She doesn’t?”

“Well, she thinks the people in the neighborhood are the ones who tore up her room, so she doesn’t want to live next to them.”

Of course—how could I be so stupid? How could I not have seen? If it were me, I wouldn’t have moved back. In fact, this wasn’t all that different from when I was brought back to UA and all of the refugees initially demanded that I leave. Where would I have been if they hadn’t changed their minds? If Ochako hadn’t stood up for me?

“So my dad is going to try to find an apartment someplace else to fix up for her, but…” Ochako closed her eyes, as if she was envisioning something. “…I need somebody else to help me fix the inside. To redecorate it to look like her old room. I can do it myself, but it would take a really long time, so—”

“I’ll do it.” My reply was immediate. I smiled, but my face obscured the rush of thoughts behind my eyes. I thought back to Eri, back when Mirio and I first saw her in that alley. She was clearly scared. She clearly needed help. And yet we just watched as Overhaul pulled her back, bringing her out of reach when we could have done something. I was kicking myself for days, weeks even. How could I be a hero if I couldn’t even save the girl right in front of me? But at least I knew she needed help. Toga…it never even registered to me that she needed help, that she needed saving. And like before, I didn’t do my job as a hero. I couldn’t save the girl right in front of me. Even seeing Shigaraki, the symbol of all of society’s fears and the one who wanted to destroy it all…I could still see a young boy inside, trapped, begging to be saved. So why couldn’t I see it with Toga? What was it that made me miss that she so desperately needed saving? I didn’t know back then…but I did know that, just like with Eri, I had another chance. Because just like Eri still needed saving, so did Toga.

Ochako looked at me, her face beaming. “Thank you so much, Izuku!” She eagerly clutched her bubble tea with both hands. “It may not be for a while. My dad still needs to find an apartment and fix it up. But after that, I’ll let you know. Does that sound okay?”

“Of course, Ochako.” It was more than okay. It was a second chance for Toga to be saved—and a second chance for me to help save her.

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Six years before the present

Coming home on weekends was always…interesting, to say the least. With UA students living at the school, it was easy to forget sometimes how much destruction after the war still needed to be repaired. Then I’d step outside the walls and see how good we had it at school. It wasn’t nearly as chaotic or desperate as in the days and weeks after the war. Then, there was destruction everywhere. Soldiers from the Japan Self-Defense Forces were on the streets because the police couldn’t keep order and the heroes, even after All for One’s defeat, were stretched too thin. There were so many people who had fled for safety coming out of hiding, only to find that they had no homes to return to. You could see desperation everywhere. But Japan rebuilt—honestly, at a shockingly fast pace. Quirk society might have brought destruction, but it also brought recovery, too. The JSDF soldiers went back to their bases, new homes sprung up to house the displaced, heroes returned to active duty…you could almost tell yourself that things were normal.

Walking back, I didn’t have to look hard to see that things still weren’t normal, though. Maybe it was a side street that still had rubble sitting in a pile behind a fence, or maybe an abandoned building in disrepair because it had been damaged in the fighting. Little things that reminded you that there was still suffering out there. Why the world still needs heroes, still needs a helping hand. Many weekends, like on this chilly autumn morning, I thought about Himiko as I walked home. Where would she be in all of this if she didn’t have somewhere else to go?

Opening the front door to my parents’ apartment, I stepped in. Back in another safe and familiar place. “Mom? Dad? Toga-chan ?” I called out.

“Ochako!” I heard an excited voice come from my room, and a second later, I saw her poke her head out. “I’m so happy to see you.” She had a wide, toothy grin, and I couldn’t help but smile back. Like my face just did it on its own. I took my coat off and hung it up before going into my bedroom. Toga’s bedroom? Kind of both, I guess. She was living here, now, full time, but none of her things were on the walls. It was still my furniture and my decorations, even though there weren’t many of either to start with.

“Your parents are out getting groceries,” Himiko explained.

“Oh that’s fine!” I started, brushing my hair out of my eyes. “I talk to my parents on the phone a lot. I, uh…I come over to see you.”

I felt my face turn a little red, and I noticed the same on Himiko’s cheeks. I sat on the rug while she sat on my (her?) bed. We talked about the weather—how it was getting colder, the days getting shorter, the leaves turning brown and falling. I brought up a new album that was coming out from my favorite Korean pop group. She asked about school, so I talked about how my classes were going.

“That’s nice that you have so much to do,” Himiko said, almost wistful.

“What have you been doing?”

“Well…” Her smile disappeared. “…I haven’t really been able to do too much. I mean, getting a job is hard, because everyone knows what I look like. Even if they don’t, they think my smile is creepy, and they don’t want me to work for them. So I spend lots of time just kind of sitting here, trying to find things to do.” She started kicking her feet back and forth at the edge of the bed. “It gets kind of lonely.”

I got up from the floor and sat down next to her on the bed. “Toga-chan… ” She turned and looked at me, her smile creeping back.

“I’m glad I get to stay here. I really don’t know what I would do. But your parents are busy, and besides, they’re way older than me. I always felt like people didn’t get me, especially when they’re much older. So it’s nice to talk to you, Ochako-chan .”

My face got red again. I could feel it. “Have you, uh…maybe thought about volunteering? You know, to get out and do something? Maybe show more people that you’ve changed?” It was an honest suggestion, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t trying to distract myself from the fact that I was blushing.

“Hmm…” Himiko squinted, like she was deep in thought. “I guess I didn’t think of that." Her eyes widened and she looked at the ceiling. "Well, I did think of maybe volunteering at a blood drive, but I guess that’s a bad idea, huh?”

“Well, Izuku and I are volunteering to pack and hand out boxes of supplies to people in need before winter comes. They could always use more people packing. Maybe that sounds like something you might want to do?”

“Maybe?” She looked up at me. “I don’t see why not.”

“Great! I’ll be handing the boxes out, but I know Izuku is packing; maybe you’ll finally get to meet him.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Himiko looked back at the wall opposite us. “Ochako-chan …” She folded her hands in her lap. “You love Izuku. Don’t you?”

The question startled me. My eyes went wide. I hadn’t actually told her that we were dating. “Well, uh, we have been seeing each other for a little while, so…”

I saw her, still staring at the opposite wall, grinning. “I can tell from how you talk about him, Ochako-chan . The look you get in your eyes when you talk about him. You really like him, right?” She looked back at me. “I do too, Ochako.”

My face must have looked stunned. Maybe she thought I was scared. “It’s okay, Ochako-chan . We can just be two girls talking about the boy we like, can’t we? I like talking to you. I definitely wouldn’t want this to ruin it.”

“I mean…” I remember that my mind was racing. Why? What made me so nervous? Because even then, I knew that if it was someone else asking me about Izuku—even someone else with a crush on him—I wouldn’t have been this worked up. So why Himiko? “If you say it’s okay with you, then—”

I heard a key in the lock, and then the front door opening. “Toga-chan ? We’re back! Is Ochako home?”

“I’m here!” I called out. Himiko slid off the bed and stood up.

“We should help your parents unpack the groceries, shouldn’t we?” She turned back to look at me. “But later…” Her grin widened. “I want to talk about romance with you.”

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya 

Six years before the present

With winter just around the corner, there were a lot of charities and aid groups that wanted to help people in need. Even then, there were still way too many of those; many people who lost their homes and families still hadn’t been resettled, and were in temporary housing at best—or tent camps at worst. The Honshū Aid Society was recruiting volunteers to pack and distribute care packages to those still in tents, and anyone could pitch in. Many current and former heroes lended their help as well—both because they wanted to help and because there were many in the public who still were suspicious of the hero profession, with many more angry at those who quit just before the war reached its apex.

Ochako and I both volunteered there; many other classmates of ours helped at other aid groups, too. I had hoped that we would be assigned to work together, but they needed me in the packing area while Ochako helped with distribution. They had us all in small rooms filled with boxes: big ones full of canned goods and ready-to-eat meals, and small ones ready to be packed up and handed out. They told us we’d be working in pairs, but when I walked in at first, I was on my own. I looked around at the labels, opening up a box of canned noodles and setting it on the table before grabbing a stack of smaller cardboard boxes. They had been preprinted with a Christmas wrapping design, something festive to brighten people’s moods given how dismal things were for them. The aid society had a sheet taped to the table telling us what to include in each box: one can of noodles, one can of pickled vegetables, one can of pickled fish, two packs of nori snacks, one box of instant rice, and three Kit Kats—preferably different flavors, the sheet noted. Easy enough!

As I pulled another large box down, I heard the door open. “Oh!” I exclaimed, too focused on balancing the box of nori snacks I was holding to turn around right away. “You must be here volunteering too, right? Could you help me open these boxes?”

As I turned around to put the box in their hands, I heard the unmistakable shwik sound of a knife flipping open. I saw Himiko’s grinning face staring at me, her hands on the side of the box just barely touching mine; in one hand was a folding knife. “I’d love to, Izuku.”

“Toga!?” I jumped back, startled. “You scared me! What are you doing here?”

“Well, Ochako said I should think about volunteering, and she mentioned that you two would be doing this, so I offered to come by.” She took the box away and set it on the table, looking at the knife as if she was deciding what to do with it before, in one stroke, slicing the tape on top of the box in half. “I guess I’m just lucky I got to spend time with you here, aren’t I?”

“Haha, yeah, I guess so, huh?” What could I even say to that? As far as I was concerned, she was just the crazy girl who tried to cut me a year ago. And now she was helping me pack care packages? “Oh yeah, Ochako did mention that you were staying at her house for a bit.”

“Yeah, she’s been really helpful.” She grinned again, her fangs glinting into the fluorescent light. Her outfit was more festive than mine: I just wore a plain green shirt, but she had a beige sweater with a Christmas tree pattern on the front. “Having a place to stay is a big help, but it’s also nice to talk to someone who understands you and shows that they care.” She opened a box of Kit Kats and handed me a bag of matcha-flavored ones. “You know all about that feeling, don’t you?” She stared me down, still grinning.

“I uh…” Looking at her made me freeze up. She still scared me, but I also knew she was trying to change. That’s why she was here, right? But she seemed obsessed with me before. Was she still? And how did I feel? Even now, I still can’t fully explain all of the emotions she stirred up in me. “Well, I guess I do?”

“You and Ochako, right?” Toga handed some cans of pickled vegetables to me. “You’re cute together. And Ochako is the first person in a long time who really gets me. Who took time to understand me. So if that’s what it feels like for me…you must feel amazing right now, don’t you, Izuku?”

I mean, she was right. Ochako was patient with me when I was in my darkest mental space during the war, and she was always warm to me. And the fact that she had been so kind to Himiko…well, she clearly recognized that, and she seemed grateful.

“I want to get close to you, too, Izuku.” Himiko looked away. “I know we didn’t start off right, and that’s my fault, but…I want to know more about you. And maybe you’d be okay with knowing more about me. If, uh…if that’s okay.”

“Toga-chan…”

“Sorry, I’m not used to this.” Himiko glanced down at the table. She looked like she was shy. I had never seen this look on her face before. “When I, uh, like people, I’d do things that would make them scared, so, uh, I’m not used to talking like this.”

I softened and smiled. Himiko was just somebody who needed help. She always had been. I was just slow to realize it because of how she had acted. “Well, we can talk like this. Ochako told me about what you two have done together, but why don’t you tell me about what’s happened with you?”

Ochako had already told me everything, but I felt that Himiko needed to tell me herself. As we packed up care packages, she recounted how she was given a choice to go into a diversion program after her capture, and how the program had to scrap the reintroduction portion because of the war. She told me how she didn’t know what she would do when she got out, because she barely had any sense of what “normal” meant even before the war.

“I was so shocked to see Ochako there,” Himiko continued. “I mean, I knew I wanted to see her. I just didn’t think she’d be there for me.” Himiko tucked a few Kit Kats into a box and taped it shut. “Even when I saw my old house destroyed, Ochako made me feel like things were going to be okay. It was like…” She smiled again, with her wide, toothy grin, but her expression was different. Not her obsessive expression, but something that almost seemed softer. “It was like this is what it felt like for someone to care about me.”

“People do care about you, Toga-chan .” I had emptied out our box of canned pickled fish and started to fold it flat. It looked like Himiko had finished with a few of her boxes, too. Time really flew by while we were talking, I guess.

“I know. I can tell in the way Ochako listens to me.” She looked up. “And you too, Izuku. Nobody else has ever listened to me like the two of you.”

Was I blushing ? “Well, uh, of course, Toga-chan! I guess I wouldn’t be much of a hero if I didn’t show that I cared, right? N-not like you aren’t special, though—you are! I just—”

Himiko put a finger up to my lips. “I know what you mean, Izuku.”

Someone turned the doorknob, and Himiko put her hand back down. One of the aid society organizers was walking in. “How are you two? I was just checking on everyone’s progress.”

“We’re almost done!” I said.

“I can tell.” He looked at the care packages all lined up on the far wall, and then at all the empty food boxes on the floor. “Once you break down the empty boxes, could you two go to other rooms to help out some of the others who are still working?”

“Sure!” I exclaimed. The organizer thanked us and walked out.

“I guess we have to split up now, huh?” Himiko said with a smirk, her hands behind her back.

“Uh, I guess so?”

“Well, thanks for talking with me, Izuku. But I want to talk some more later, you know.” She flashed a grin again. “I still have so much more I want to know about you.”

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Six years before the present

I remember sitting on the train by myself on the way back from volunteering, hiding my hair buns under a hat. A couple of people must have noticed me anyway. I saw a boy glance at me and then look away, hiding his face. There was an older man with him—maybe his grandfather? Even though I didn’t look at him, I could feel him staring at me, scowling. At least, I think he was.

It was like being chased by my shadow. I was trying to be better, trying not to hurt people. I wasn’t hurting people! But that wasn’t good enough for people, I guess. Definitely not back then. Once a villain, always a villain. I often wondered if I would ever be able to come out from under that cloud. It felt really bad then. And not just because of other people, either. My own brain felt like it was working against me. Walking into that room with Izuku, I felt so happy. It was like my brain turned off. And just like before, the old urges came back.

Cut him. Stab him. Slice him up. You love him, don’t you? You want to see him bleed. You want to taste him. Just cut him, like you know you want to.

I remember that I froze. I was so close to doing it, too. Not because I wanted to be mean. There was just still that part of my brain that didn’t see it as hurting or harming. I just love blood. I love seeing people I love all battered and cut up. But I knew that wasn’t true for other people. It wasn’t true for Izuku.

One of my case workers taught me a trick for when I had strong urges. She told me to look around and start counting something. Maybe the number of branches on trees or stones on the sidewalk or panes of glass on a building. It didn’t matter what, she said, and the counting didn’t have to be correct. The point was to focus my brain on something else until the urge died down and I could think more calmly about what I wanted to do. So I started counting the bricks in the wall until the urge went away. I sliced open the box Izuku was holding instead of him. Thank goodness.

They told me I wouldn’t be better right away, that I’d find myself thinking like I did before. Knowing that helped a little, but it didn’t mean that it wasn’t hard for me. Slipping back made me feel like I’d never be okay, like my parents were right and that they shouldn’t have had their weird, fucked-up daughter. I tried not to cry in front of the others on the train, but I felt my eyes burn.

Bzzt bzzt. I felt my phone buzz in my bag and took it out. Everyone in the program got a donated cell phone to help us out when we left the rehabilitation center. It was definitely better than nothing, but they were all flip phones. Honestly, it’s incredible that they even still made those. The screen showed that I had one new text from Ochako. I slid the top part of the phone up to reveal the number pad and open the message.

Ochako [22:53]: Hey! I heard you and Izuku were boxing care packages together. Did you have fun?

Oh yeah—she was volunteering too! I slowly punched out a reply on the number keys. It took forever.

Himiko [22:55]: yea it was good thx

Ochako [22:55]: Sorry I couldn’t be there to spend time with you two! I was part of the group delivering the boxes

Himiko [22:56]: its ok

The train came to a stop and I heard the announcement for my stop. I got my bag and silently made my way to the door, avoiding eye contact with everyone. I didn’t need more people glaring at me. And I definitely didn’t need to see them if they were.

Still holding my phone, I felt it buzz again.

Ochako [22:57]: Are you going to be okay on Christmas? I’ll be with Izuku’s family and my parents are going to Hokkaido, and I don’t want you to be alone.

I stared at the screen. Christmas. Right. I always thought it was kind of dumb. A holiday from a country we’re not from, for a religion we don’t celebrate. But when I saw Ochako’s message, I realized there was another reason I didn’t like Christmas: I never had anybody to celebrate it with. I felt lonely all over again walking out of the station, surrounded by shops with Christmas lights in the windows. People walked past me holding presents and red cups of Starpucks coffee. It was just another thing that put the thought in my head: what if I really didn’t fit in with everyone else? What if this whole program was for nothing? Was I meant to always feel like this?

Himiko [22:59]: ill be ok

It was a lie, but I didn’t want Ochako to worry. She and Izuku were going to be spending Christmas together. It wasn’t right for her to be thinking about me, right? But at the same time, I still wanted her to. I knew Christmas was a holiday for people to spend together with people they cared about, and I cared about them both.

Ochako [23:01]: Well if you feel lonely you can text me <3 I won’t be busy all day, so we’ll be able to talk if you want to.

That made me smile. Maybe she knew how I was feeling, or mabe she didn’t, but it always amazed me how much Ochako showed she cared. Nobody did that. Nobody thought I deserved it. Even I thought I didn’t deserve it. But that didn’t stop her.

I walked up to my floor—well, Ochako’s parents’ floor, really—and put the spare key they gave me into the lock. Maybe this holiday wouldn’t be so bad.

I had almost forgotten it was Christmas morning when I rolled out of bed. Ochako’s parents said goodbye to me the afternoon before when they left for Hokkaido, so I was alone. I grabbed a shirt off the floor—the one that had the phone with the heart-envelope emoji on it—and tossed it on along with my skirt before opening the door. I was still sleepy and wasn’t paying attention, and so I almost stepped on the wrapped present that somebody had left in front of my door. There was a tag on the front that just said “TOGA”. It had never crossed my mind that anybody would get my anything. I picked it up and tore off the red and green paper. At the top of the box was a card.

Dear Toga,

We’re sorry we couldn’t have you with us for Christmas, but we still wanted to celebrate with you. We saved up to get you something that we thought might help you out. We hope you like it. Merry Christmas!

– Izuku and Ochako ❤️

P.S.: When you’re done setting up your gift, give us a video call.

A video call!? I tore away the tissue paper inside the box and saw my reflection in the black glass of a smartphone screen. I couldn’t believe it. They were still students! And they were saving up to buy me a smartphone? I fished the user guide out from underneath the phone and flipped to the quick setup page. “Push and hold down the side button to turn on.” I did, holding my thumb against it and, after two seconds, the screen lit up with a soft white glow. The word “Welcome” faded onto the screen in English, then in Japanese, then in a bunch of other languages. I tapped through the setup instructions, popping the SIM card out of my old phone and sliding it into the new one. Four bars popped up in the top right corner, and the screen advanced to the next step.

“Set up your profile?” I tapped yes. It asked me for my given and family name. Himiko Toga , I typed. This was already so much faster than on my flip phone. I tapped the little silhouetted head icon, and the front-facing camera opened up. I was startled to see myself, but I flashed a small smile and took a picture. My head appeared in a little circle next to my name. I tapped to go to the next step. “Thank you, Himiko,” the phone screen said. That made me smile. I knew it was just preprogrammed to say that, but it still made me happy. The message faded out, and it asked me a new question. “Import contacts?” I tapped yes again. There weren’t many on my old phone—just Ochako and her parents, and that was basically it. There was a little spinning circle icon in the center of the screen, and then it disappeared, replaced by a check mark. “You’re all set!” the screen said, before fading to the home page, with little rounded squares for all the apps that came with my new phone.

When you’re done setting up your gift, give us a video call. Where was that? I tapped the icon that looked like a TV camera, and saw my face again, along with a couple of phone numbers: Ochako’s was at the top. I tapped it, and heard a ringing sound. My face filled the screen as I waited for them to pick up. It rang once, then a second time, then a third. And then, ping . My face shrunk down into the bottom corner and Ochako’s face took up the screen instead. Izuku was looking over her shoulder, and someone else—I guess Izuku’s mom—waved from behind them both.

“Merry Christmas, Toga!” they all shouted at once. I smiled and held back tears. I had never had a good Christmas before. This was something totally new, and even though we weren’t physically together, I wasn’t going to have to spend it alone after all.

We all sat talking on the phone for an hour until my phone ran out of battery. I grabbed the charger out of the box and plugged it into the wall. After a minute, the screen came back to life. I saw a text from Ochako.

Ochako [09:17]: I guess your phone ran out of battery? It was still great talking to you! You can call us back later if you want to?

Himiko [09:17]: I might later, I still need to figure out all of these apps

Ochako [09:18]: Okay, that makes sense! I hope you like it!

Himiko [09:18]: I love it. Thank you so much, Ochako <3 You and Izuku made this Christmas so wonderful

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Six years before the present

It was a few days after New Year’s, and we were all back at UA. I still had some New Year’s party stuff lying around my room—a party hat with the new year written on the front, a noisemaker, some glasses with glitter that Aoyama gave to everyone. I stared up at the ceiling, not wanting to get out of bed to go to class. I had thoughts swimming around in my head. I was still hung up on stuff from volunteering the month before.

I heard you and Izuku were boxing care packages together. Did you have fun? I texted that to Himiko, but truth be told, I hadn’t heard that they were boxing things together. I saw them. When I went back to the packaging center to get more care packages, I saw one of the organizers opening the door to check on some volunteers, and I caught a glimpse of Himiko and Izuku together. I don’t know if they saw me. I don’t think they did.

Part of me was happy for them, especially Himiko. I didn’t want to be her only friend, and she always seemed like she liked Izuku, so it was probably best that the two of them were helping each other out. But there was a part of me that felt like she was stealing Izuku away, like I would lose him to her. I felt a little jealous. I was the one in love with Izuku.

Except…the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I felt the opposite way, too—like I was equally worried that Izuku was stealing Himiko away from me. That didn’t make sense, right? I mean, Izuku and I were together. I was just helping Himiko out with readjusting to normal life. What even was this feeling I had? Why was I still bothered by this, even weeks later, even when nothing happened except the two of them packing boxes together?

I closed my eyes and sighed. Yesterday, I told Mina about the gift that Izuku and I got for Himiko. “A new phone?” she said. “That’s pretty big from the two of you. Like, that’s the kind of thing that a suuuuuper close friend might get.” I remember her smirking. “You don’t have a second crush, do you, Ochako?”

I blushed hard and laughed it off then, but…did I? Could I? What if I didn’t, but it just looked like I did? I didn’t want to do anything to hurt Izuku. I really loved him then, just like I do now. Part of me started thinking that helping Himiko was a mistake if it messed with my feelings and made people think that there was something there when there wasn’t.

No! Mentally, I pulled myself back. Himiko deserved a helping hand just like anyone else, and I wanted to be the one to hold that hand out for her. If that made things difficult, then I guess I just had to deal with that, didn’t I?

I swung my feet out from under the covers and rubbed my eyes. I still didn’t want to go to class, but I guess that’s just because I didn’t want the holidays to be over. I liked spending time with Izuku and his mom, drinking hot chocolate and playing party games, staying up late talking and fooling around when his mom went to sleep. He made me feel safe and loved. And yeah, he still made me feel that way at UA, too, but it’s hard when we were in separate dorms. Himiko calling us on Christmas made me happy, too. Izuku and I sat up, waiting in our Christmas sweaters and hats for her to call us. We hoped it would put a smile on her face, and we were so glad that we got to see it, even though she wasn’t physically with us.

I pulled out my phone and opened the video chat app, looking at my call history:

↗ Mom – Jan 1 11:13 – 21m 12s

↗ Mom – Dec 25 15:06 – 14m 33s

↘ Himiko – Dec 25 08:03 – 01h 11m 51s

We really talked for a long time, didn’t we? And we’d have talked for longer if her battery didn’t run out. My finger hovered over Himiko’s name in my contacts. No, I thought, I have class. I shouldn’t call her now. And besides, what if she’s busy? I should at least ask first, right? I put my phone away and started to put my uniform on. Sitting up thinking about Himiko in my free time; worrying about her and Izuku, wanting them to get along but not wanting to lose either of them; wanting to cold call her with a video call before I started class…how did I feel about her?

I opened the door and saw Mina at the far end of the hallway; she turned around. “Ochako, come on, we’re gonna be late!” I jogged a little down the hallway towards the elevators and got to Mina just as the door opened. We stepped inside.

“It’s not like you to be late, Ochako.” She smirked and raised her eyebrows. “Were you up texting your boyfriend? Or your girlfriend?”

I blushed hard and put my head in my hands, shaking it from side to side. “Mina…” I moaned, exasperated. I know she was just pushing my buttons, like she used to do with me and Izuku back when we were all first-years. She was wrong with what she was saying, of course…but, in her own way, she also kind of wasn’t. I mean, yeah, Himiko wasn’t my girlfriend then, and I wasn’t up texting her or Izuku. But they were both on my mind a lot . And she did end up being right about me and Izuku, after all. Maybe Mina just had an eye for these things. Maybe she was really seeing something that even I couldn’t see back then.

“Can I see your texts, Ochako? Pleeeease?”

I held my phone over my head until the doors opened, with Mina reaching up to try to pull the screen towards her and sneak a peek. Maybe she was right, and she was definitely doing it as a friend…but she was definitely still pushing my buttons.

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Six years before the present

“You should start your own hero agency when you graduate!”

Mei Hatsume sat across from me and Ochako at the UA cafeteria; she was excited, as usual, although this time it wasn’t about her latest invention.

“Uh, Mei-chan …” I started to say.

“Don’t you think that would be a little, uh, too soon for us?” Ochako picked up my thoughts exactly. We had just started our third year not long ago—and sure, all of us were thinking about our futures and what would come after our time at UA, but I don’t think any of us had ever considered founding an agency as soon as we graduated.

“Yeah…” I rustled the hair on the back of my head. I still haven’t kicked that nervous habit, even now. “Honestly, I was more thinking about places where I could be a sidekick for a few years until then.”

“I know, it sounds crazy.” Well, if even Mei was saying that, at least she was self-aware! “But I was talking to a friend of mine in the business course. He’s the one who told me that the top crop of students who were in Class 1-A should start an agency.” She paused to take a slurp of some soba noodles. “Think about it: there might have been a surplus of hero agencies and sidekicks before the war, but since then, a bunch of places have closed down, and there’s still a shortage. It’s not as bad as it was before—the public safety commission has plugged the gap pretty well, but they still need new people to step up. And the 1-A students are famous. You two, Bakugo, Todoroki…I mean, the four of you basically saved Japan. All of you could easily start an agency on your own.”

“I mean, it’s not like it was just the four of us!” Ochako was blushing pretty hard.

“I’m not saying everyone who was in 1-A could do it,” Mei replied. “Like, I don’t see Mineta starting his own agency after he graduates. But you two? You could absolutely do it.”

I looked up from my food. “And you don’t think that would be too soon? I mean, graduates have pretty much always started out as sidekicks.”

“Think about it! If you were sidekicks, you’d get a fixed amount per mission worked—but if you went into business for yourselves right away, you’d get those contracts directly. You already have the name recognition, and you’ve already proven that you can tackle the biggest crises to public safety. You’d just need to bring on a business manager to handle the back-of-office stuff.”

Ochako had stopped eating her bento, and I had put my chopsticks down a while ago myself. The thought had never crossed our minds before. Could we really go into business for ourselves right after we graduated?

“It’s not like you have to decide right now,” Mei continued. “If you think being a sidekick would be best for you, go for it! I’m just saying that you two can be more than sidekicks.”

The bell rang. We were so enthralled with Mei’s suggestion that we hadn’t finished eating, and so we started shoveling the remainder of our food off of our plates and into our mouths.

“Think about it!” Mei got up, bringing her tray with him. “Just make sure you know who to go to for support gear.” She winked and walked away.

The third-year dorms were set up just like the first- and second-year ones, with separate wings for the boys and girls, but the school wasn’t particularly strict about visits. As long as we weren’t having sleepovers (or “sleepovers”), they didn’t mind.

I remember sitting in my room alone, my All Might memorabilia staring back at me. I looked at the limited-edition poster that Sir Nighteye gave me—or, more accurately, that his hero agency gave to me after he died on duty. It was bittersweet, getting that poster. He loved All Might as much as I do, and he would have wanted me to give his poster a new home. But that isn’t how I wanted to get it.

It was also a stark reminder of the dangers of hero work. As if I needed another; I had scars all over my body, and Kacchan had awful scars across his chest, too, from where he came within a millimeter of dying in the last battle of the war. Some days, I don’t know how any of us managed to stay sane. Then again…I looked at the poster again and thought a little more. Sir Nighteye started off as a sidekick with All Might before starting an agency of his own, and it’s not as though waiting saved him. The work is dangerous no matter what. Besides, how many sidekicks have been injured—or worse—while on the job? Sure, the news reported on them, but they didn’t get the recognition that the big-name heroes did, so most people hardly paid attention.

A knock at the door interrupted my thoughts. “Izuku? It’s me…can I come in?”

“Ochako-chan !” Her quiet voice still carried through the door, instantly recognizable. “Of course, come in!”

She turned the knob and took a step inside, standing just barely over the threshold as if she was too shy to step any further forward, despite having done so dozens of times before. She had changed out of her uniform into a more comfortable t-shirt and leggings.

“I uh…” She held her hands in front of her. “I wanted to talk to you about that conversation at lunch.”

“Yeah…” I remember looking down nervously. It was like she read my mind, like she knew what I was thinking.

“I don’t know if I’d be ready to start an agency of my own,” Ochako continued. “It’s a lot of work, and it’s a really big step for a couple of students who just graduated. But I thought about what Mei said, about how we’d get paid directly for our work, and I thought about how I want to make my parents’ lives easier. So I want to do it, but…” She looked right at me with determination in her eyes. “I don’t want to do it alone. I want us both to do it. Let’s start an agency—together.”

My mouth was wide open, and I could feel myself about to cry. I felt the way I did when All Might had found me after I tried to save Kacchan and his friends from the sludge monster. You can become a hero. Five words that changed my life. And now, Ochako told me another five: Let’s start an agency—together.

“There’s nobody I trust more than you, Izuku,” she continued, selling me on an idea that I, without saying so, had already completely bought. “And with our different skills, we wouldn’t have to specialize—we could handle all kinds of missions. Rescue, capture, protection…we could do it all together, Izuku.”

I felt a smile tug at my cheeks. “I’ll do it, Ochako. I’ll be right there with you.”

She ran to me with open arms and wrapped me in a hug. We sat there, surrounded by my All Might collection. I had spent so many years following in his footsteps that, when it came time for me to truly forge my own path, I struggled. Yes, I had gotten better at being my own kind of hero in my years at UA, but I didn’t have my future set for me. And then, with Ochako, I did.

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Five years before the present

“Here you are!” I reached over and passed a plastic bag full of wasabi-flavored snacks and bottles of Bocari Sweat drinks across the counter. The guy across the counter from me took his purchase and put away his wallet. “Thank you for shopping at FamilyMark!” I said, bowing slightly. He gave a slight nod back to me before walking out the door.

I was smiling slightly, but as I heard the eight-bit FamilyMark jingle that sounded every time the doors opened, I knew I could let my guard down just a little. I stopped reigning in my expression and went from a sheepish little smile to a full, toothy grin. That boy was cute, I remember thinking to myself. I thought a lot of people were cute. I still do. But I still had to put on a mask in front of customers.

My diversion program taught me that there was nothing wrong with your thoughts, that it was only a question of how my actions made other people feel. The real world was messier, though—when those actions were as simple as a smile with too many teeth, and when those other people were paying customers, it was hard not to feel like I was right back in the bad old days of burying my true self to make other people happy.

Still, I knew I should be grateful for this job after a long stretch of nobody even looking at me, much less considering hiring me.Yeah, it was low pay, but since I (very luckily) didn’t have to worry about rent, that didn’t bother me too much. FamilyMark needed a cashier now that most of the students were busy with classes and work-study internships, so it was a good time for me to start doing something to make money. And besides…

“Toga-san?” My manager stepped out from the back room, turning to look at me from behind thick, square glasses. “You can go home. I don’t need you to work overtime tonight.” Well, that was a first!

“Are you sure, sir?” The word sir still gave me the ick, but I had to get used to it in this job.

“We aren’t getting any shipments of anything, so I don’t need to restock this evening. Head home; I’ll work the register.”

I bowed. “Thank you so much, sir!” Ugh…I guess I never really learned to like that word. I traded places with the manager, stepping into the back to grab my shoulder bag and take off my name tag and navy blue FamilyMark shirt. Thankfully, it didn’t matter what else I wore—I could still wear my favorite blue skirt behind the counter, so all I had to do was throw on a new shirt and I was good to head out. “Have a good night!” I called back to my manager as I walked out the door to the sound of that all-too-familiar jingle.

The sun was setting as I walked to the station. I got out late most days, so honestly, it was nice to catch the sunset for once. Still, it made me a little sad. It was June, and the longest day of the year was right around the corner, and I was still just getting out at sunset? It felt like yet another part of life that high school girls got to experience all the time was being taken from me. Shouldn’t I be out enjoying the summer nights, doing…whatever fun things people my age were supposed to be doing?

Absent-mindedly, I pulled out my phone and opened Pinstagram. Ochako had downloaded it for me right after she and Izuku gave me my phone. It was honestly pretty addictive. I held my phone up and smiled, fangs and all, with my tongue out and my hand making a V sign by my face. Between the golden light of sunset and the fluorescent lights on the buildings behind me, I thought it was a pretty good photo! I swiped through some filters and frames before deciding that it looked just fine as it was. As I walked up the stairs into the station, I typed out a caption and posted my photo.

@himitoga • 19:07

Summer evening vibes 😝

I still had time until my train got here, so I started scrolling. It looked like Izuku posted something this morning. I saw a selfie of him, sweaty and dusty, with a few of the other boys from UA. It looked like Bakugo, Todoroki, and Kirishima? They all looked exhausted, and Bakugo did not look like he wanted to be on camera.

@the.hero.deku • 11:55

Third-year training is next level tough, but it’s what we have to do if we want to be top heroes! ✊🏼 #herotraining #plusultra

He always looks so cute when he’s all beat up. I let myself have another wide, toothy grin, and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed someone on the platform turn away from me. Maybe it was a coincidence, but it was always hard to feel like it wasn’t. I double-tapped the photo to leave a like and kept scrolling. There was Ochako with Mina in…their dorms, I think? I still wasn’t allowed to visit her there. It looked like the two of them were drinking ramune.

@bubbletea_uravity • 16:21

Study buddies! 💕

I left another like and scrolled some more. Most of the accounts that popped up weren’t super interesting—other UA students that I didn’t know, a couple of influencers I had never heard of. Then, a sponsored post came up.

@yandere_aesthetic • 12:00 [Ad]

Show off your psycho side 😈 New styles in stock now!

Pffft! Well this ad was just too targeted. I swiped through the photos. A tank top with a bunny holding a knife? A shirt that read “Cute But Psycho”? Honestly, these were kind of my vibe. The last shirt was a crop top that said “Support Women’s Wrongs” with a cartoon dagger next to it. I needed that shirt. That was worth putting part of my paycheck towards, right?

Before I could tap the ad to look at buying the shirt, my phone buzzed, and the heart icon at the top of my Pinstagram turned red. Then my phone buzzed again. I tapped the heart and opened my notifications.

@the.hero.deku and @bubbletea_uravity liked your post

I smiled again—another big toothy grin. I didn’t care who could see. I was allowed to be happy, right? And I wasn’t bothering anyone, right? So who cares? Seeing them makes me smile, even if it was just on my screen.

My phone buzzed again. At the top of my screen was a banner notification. A text from Ochako! I tapped it.

Ochako [19:14]: Hey! I know you’re working now but you should let me know when you have a day off. I can come see you and we can spend the afternoon together if you want (◕ᴗ◕✿)

I heard the screech of metal wheels as the train pulled in. As I waited for the doors to open, I typed out my response and sent it.

Himiko [09:15]: I have Friday off, does that work?

I stepped inside and immediately felt my phone buzz in my hand. She responded right away.

Ochako [19:15]: Yeah that’s perfect!

Ochako [19:16]: Class ends at 3 PM, so maybe let’s meet at 3:30 outside the east entrance of the station?

I couldn’t stop smiling. I had a row of seats to myself, and I couldn’t even care that people looked like they were avoiding me. Talking to Ochako, that didn’t matter.

Himiko [09:16]: I’ll meet you there (⁀ᗢ⁀)

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Five years before the present

Class finished late that day, and I remember running to the station in a panic that I’d keep Himiko waiting. I ended up being a couple of minutes early, so I just stood around in my summer uniform, which I didn’t even have time to change out of. Leaning against a lamppost, I watched as people strolled in and out of the station, subconsciously scanning the tops of people’s heads for that short blonde hair with two messy buns. Was I nervous? Again ? First the conversation in my room, and now this! I was just meeting a friend, right? So why was my mind racing?

“Ochako!” I heard someone call out from inside the station and, a moment later, I saw Himiko’s telltale silhouette emerge from the east entrance wearing a plain black T-shirt tied up in the front and a maroon red pleated skirt.

“Hi, Toga-chan !” I smiled and waved at her. “Sorry I didn’t have time to change out of my uniform…my last class got out late.”

“It’s okay, Ochako. I think you look cute.”

I felt my face turn red and I tried as hard as I could to play it off. “Thanks! Uhhhh…” I was flustered, and doing a bad job of hiding it. “Do you want to walk around the shopping mall in the station?”

“Sure!”

We walked into the station with the crowd and headed up the escalator. The ground floor was where the platforms were, and the stores there all catered to commuters—things like convenience stores and bento box kiosks, and maybe the occasional higher-end store. The bigger stores were on the upper levels.

“Wanna stop in UNIQLI?” That was my favorite store to shop at whenever I needed something. My parents didn’t have tons of money to spend on new clothes, so after wearing them out as long as I could, I’d make a trip to UNIQLI for something new.

“Sure!” Himiko seemed excited. As soon as we walked in, she went to a clothing display and picked out a white crop top and a knee-length pink skirt with side slits. “You should try this one on, Ochako-chan,” she said with a smile.

“Oh, sure!”

We headed over to the fitting rooms and I popped inside of an open booth, slipping out of my uniform and hanging the clothes over the top of the door before sliding into the pink skirt and white crop top. I looked at myself in the mirror, spinning around to give myself a 360-degree view. I look good in this, I remember thinking. I could buy this and just wear it out instead of my uniform.

I turned around and saw the clothes from my uniform were gone. Huh? I opened the door; maybe Himiko knew what happened.

“Hey Toga-chan—” I stopped mid-sentence. She was standing right in front of me, wearing my uniform.

“How do I look?” She pressed her pointer fingers into her cheeks and tilted her head to the side, smiling. “Think I could pass as a UA student?”

She did look good in my uniform. And my mind did wander to that thought—what if she was a UA student? How different would our lives be? I could visit her any time we wanted.

“You look really cute!”

“Aw, so do you, Ochako.” Himiko grinned. “And we’re the same size for clothes!”

“Yeah, I guess so!”

Himiko tossed me her clothes. “You should try my clothes on, just for fun.”

“Oh, uh…” I felt myself blushing again. “Sure! Why not?” I stepped back inside and shut the door. As I was changing, I could feel my heart racing. I was trying on Himiko’s clothes!! It was a very different style, much darker than I was used to wearing. Sure enough, though, they fit. And I kind of liked it.

I opened the door and stepped out; Himiko was still wearing my uniform. “I don’t know if it’s my style, but…what do you think?”

Himiko grinned. “I think it’s super cute.”

I couldn’t look her in the eye. “Aw, well I’m glad you think so!” I glanced at the pink and white outfit I had just tried on. “Uh…we should probably get changed so I can give you back your clothes and buy that other outfit, huh?”

She went into the booth next to me, and we tossed each other’s clothes over the divider before stepping out. I paid for my clothes and quickly went back to the fitting room to pull the tags off and change one last time before rejoining Himiko and wandering around some more.

“Hey, uh…why did you want to try on my uniform?”

Himiko looked down and smiled as we walked. “You know how you and Deku are both trying to become heroes?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“I see you working hard, Ochako-chan. Following in his footsteps.” She grinned her toothy grin. “Of course you wanna be like the one you love. It's natural. So you end up decking yourself out to look like him. But after enough time, even that's not enough. You literally want to become him. There's no helping it.”

Part of me felt like she was projecting, but was she really wrong? I mean, I did love Izuku, and I did feel like I wanted to do what he did. I did say I’d only start an agency if we both did it, right?

“I’m like that, too,” Himiko continued, looking at me with a spark in her eye. “When I think about the people I love, it makes me wanna become them. I get all emotional just thinking about it. That's just how I am.” She looked away, her smile gone. “But other people aren't like that.”

“Toga-chan…” I put my hand on her shoulder.

“You get me in a way that other people don’t.” She looked back at me with a weak smile. My mind was spinning. What was Himiko saying? When I think about the people I love, it makes me wanna become them. Was she saying that she tried on my uniform…because she loved me?

Across the hall, a storefront snapped me out of my thoughts. “Izzy Miyagi!?” I was shocked to see their logo at the other end of the mall. This was one of the priciest clothing brands in Japan. They only had a few stores nationwide.  “What are they doing here ?”

Himiko looked at me. “Let’s go in!”

“Toga-chan, aren’t they too expensive for us?”

“It doesn’t cost anything to just try things on, does it?”

“I guess you’re right.”

We walked inside. Already, the atmosphere was completely different. I felt like the two of us were imposters, that we would be kicked out. But the greeter at the front didn’t treat us that way. She bowed. “Welcome! If you have any questions about our pop-up location or any of our clothes, please feel free to ask.”

“Pop-up location?” I asked before I even realized that I had voiced my question out loud.

“Yes! Izzy Miyagi has a traveling pop-up store all year to promote our new line of formalwear. We’re only at this location until the end of the month, so if you’d like to try something on in person, now is an excellent time to do so.”

“Oh wow…thank you so much!” I looked around at the incredibly fancy dresses, ignoring the six-digit price tags as best I could. ¥100,000 for a dress was far more than I could even think to afford at this stage in my life. But like Himiko said, trying them on is free.

“Do you want to try this?” I pointed to a red dress with black rhinestones. It felt like it had her aesthetic.

“Yeah!” Himiko practically jumped at the suggestion. “You should put this one on, too.” She held up another dress, a lavender one with a floral pattern so subtle you might miss it if you weren’t looking closely.

They had fitting rooms at the back, with fancier-looking velvet curtains for privacy instead of a solid door. This really was a rich-people store, huh? I took off the skirt and top that I had just purchased not even ten minutes earlier and slipped into the lavender dress. And when I say “slipped into,” I mean it—the soft fabric glided across my skin, and even though the top hugged my body, I didn’t feel constrained by it at all. This really felt like luxury, and now I really felt like I was somewhere I didn’t belong. I opened the curtain.

“Toga-chan?”

“Almost done!”

The sound of rustling fabric died down, and then I saw the curtain open. Himiko stepped out, radiant in the red dress, the rhinestones glinting as the overhead lights hit them. Unable to stop myself, I put my hands to my mouth.

“Do you like it?” Himiko tilted her head, grinning.

“I…” The words struggled to get out, I was so overcome. “You look amazing, Toga-chan.”

She walked over to me and turned me around to face the mirror. “You wear that dress well.” She posed, grabbing my shoulders and resting her head next to mine. “We look pretty good, huh?”

I reached up to grab her hand on my left shoulder. “We really do, huh?” In that moment, I was too focused on my own emotions to even consider how much these dresses cost. Maybe one day, I thought.

“Want to go to the arcade downstairs?” Himiko asked me. We had long since changed out of those fancy dresses.

“Yeah, that sounds fun!”

We headed down the escalator, and I spotted a tuft of green hair in a crowd of people. Was that…?

“Izuku!” Himiko had already noticed him. I called out too.

“What are you doing here?”

“Toga-chan? Ochako-chan?” He looked as surprised as we were. “I was just going to go home to see my mom. She can get lonely there by herself, so I’m trying to see her more.”

“We’re headed to the arcade downstairs,” Himiko said. “You should come play games with us!”

“I, uh…I guess I have some time. Sure!”

Not even five minutes later, we were surrounded by the flashing strobes and bright colors of the arcade hall. It was overwhelmingly loud, and every game seemed to call out to us.

“Check this out!” Himiko focused her attention on a Tomb Hunter shooting arcade game. “I wanna try this!” She picked up the plastic gun that acted as a controller and pressed start. We watched as she ducked and weaved, shooting at mummies and monsters as they popped out from behind Egyptian pillars on the screen until YOU WIN! flashed in bright letters across the screen.

“They have Street Battles here too?” Izuku’s face lit up. It was a two-player game, so I took the second player slot and got completely destroyed round after round while Himiko chuckled off to the side.

“Sorry!” I said, sheepishly looking at the floor. “I’m not very good at these kinds of games.”

“Well, let’s find one that you are good at!” Izuku chirped.

We made our way over to a row of Dance Dance Evolution game sets and claimed three for ourselves, with Izuku on my left and Himiko on my right.

“Dance Dance Evolution! Get ready!” the booming voice from the console said. Moments later, we were off. Izuku had chosen Beginner mode, but I could see from his screen that he was having a rough time. “Miss!” “Miss!” “Okay…” “Miss!” “Miss!” His footwork was all over the place. I guess we all have our strengths and weaknesses. Himiko was doing better on Average mode, sidestepping and spinning in time with the very forgiving prompts.

I chose level seven—Dance Legend, the highest difficulty. And I was floating across the pad. I mean, I guess that was kind of unfair, seeing as I could literally float, but still, I put a lot of time into getting my footwork right. I finished my routine with a spin and twist, dropping my palms to the ground. “Nice moves!” the machine shouted as my score flashed on the screen.

“Yeah, Ochako, nice moves,” Himiko said, grinning.

“You’re incredible at this!” Izuku looked amazed, as if he had seen a totally different side of me.

“Oh, you know…I just really like this game, I guess!”

Izuku took his phone out of his pocket. “Oh wow, it’s really late! I should get back to my mom…”

“Wait!” I pulled my phone out too. “Can we at least take a selfie, all three of us? For Pinstagram?”

We all smiled as I held the phone at arm’s length, Deku next to me and Himiko sticking her head between us.

@bubbletea_uravity • 19:18

A fun time at the arcade with @the.hero.deku and @himitoga! 🕹️ #arcade #gaming

“Aw, that’s a cute photo of us!” Himiko was still looking over my shoulder as we walked to the main level of the station.

“I’m going this way,” Izuku said. “But I’m so glad you asked me to join you!”

“Us, too! We should do this again,” I said.

As Izuku stepped onto the train, Himiko turned to me.

“I wish I didn’t have to work this weekend,” she said. “I had a really fun time today.”

“Me too, Toga-chan.”

“You can call me Himiko.”

My eyes opened wide. “I…I can?”

“I want you to, Ochako. If that’s okay.” She smiled.

“Yeah, that’s okay.”

We hugged. “Today was so much fun. I’ll see you soon?”

“Definitely.”

As we parted ways and I walked out of the station, my mind was racing again.

“Of course you wanna be like the one you love.”

Was I…?

“When I think about the people I love, it makes me wanna become them.”

It couldn’t be, could it?

“You get me in a way that other people don’t.”

I thought back on all that happened—Himiko and I trying on each other’s clothes, me thinking of her as a UA student, our conversation as we left UNIQLI, her hands on my shoulders at Izzy Miyagi…and then I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk as the realization hit me. Dammit, Ochako. You’re in love with her.

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Five years before the present

It was late, and Jiro and I had been on patrol all evening with two of the first year students. UA had set up a mentorship system to help the younger students get real-world experience since there was still a limited number of pro heroes taking work study applicants. “You can head home for tonight,” I told my trainee. “Nice work today.” But I wasn’t finished. I kept on patrolling because…why? It’s not like there was anything keeping me. What was I trying to prove? And to whom?

I felt my stomach rumble. I was doing it again, just like when the war against the Paranormal Liberation Front broke out. I wasn’t as bad as before, when I was pushing away my friends, but I was still pushing myself too hard. In hindsight, it was clear: that idea from Mei to start an agency, and Ochako’s insistence that we do it together, lit a fire under me. I wanted this to go right. For her. Just like when All Might told me that I could be a hero, I had a goal, and I put my whole life into it. Finding a balance was never my strong suit, I guess…and my stomach was reminding me of that.

Hungry, I looked around for somewhere, anywhere, that was still open. I saw the glow of a backlit sign for FamilyMark. It wouldn’t be a full meal, but I figured I could grab a couple of onigiri. Looking inside, I saw Himiko behind the counter, wearing a FamilyMark shirt and visor. I didn’t know she worked there! But she was scowling. Something was wrong. On the other side of the counter was a burly man, his hands hidden in front of his torso, just out of view.

“Earphone Jack…” I didn’t have to elaborate. She nodded immediately, knowing that we had to listen in. We both crouched below the window, just beside the door, as she tapped her right earphone jack against the door. With her left, she plugged into my mask—another upgrade from Mei that let me listen to audio from any plug-in device, including Jiro’s earphone jack.

“I’m not scared of you,” I heard Himiko say.

“You should be, girl.” The man’s voice was deep and raspy. “I have a knife in my palm and nothing to lose. You work a dead-end job. Are you really gonna die over some yen in the register at FamilyMark?”

“Nobody’s gonna die, mister.”

“Not if you hand over the cash and let me walk out of here.”

“Not happening, mister.”

Himiko, what were you thinking!? He might have been a villain, but when he said that FamilyMark’s money wasn’t worth dying over, he was right!

“What’s the matter with you? Are you some kind of psycho?”

“Don’t call me psycho.” Himiko’s scowl deepened. “I don’t like you. I don’t like people who talk to me like that. So you should leave, right now.”

“I won’t ask again!” The man was furious now. “Open the register and give me the money!”

“No.”

“Then die!”

I could see him raise his hand, a blade protruding from the center of his palm. That must have been his quirk—he really did have a knife in his palm.

“Himiko!” I jumped up and rushed through the entrance, readying my blackwhip as I ran, watching his hand rush towards her with his blade pointed at her face. And then, with one motion, she put up her hand and slammed his palm down on the table, burying the knife in the laminate countertop. He tried again with the other hand, and Himiko slammed it down too, right at the exact moment that my blackwhip wrapped around his body.

“You should’ve listened, mister,” Toga quipped, still scowling. “I know knives better than you do.”

The man squirmed in the tendrils of my blackwhip, his palms still stuck to the counter.

“The police are on their way,” I heard Jiro say as she came in through the doors, the FamilyMark jingle playing as she did. That tinny chime felt so out of place.

“Himiko?” I reached out across the counter with my free hand. “Are you okay?”

She stared down at the counter. “I’m fine,” she said, obviously not fine. I watched her sulk to the door to the back storeroom as I heard the sirens of a police car approaching.

I remember waiting in the café for at least ten minutes. The morning after the attempted robbery, Himiko texted me.

Himiko [09:50]: Hey, could you meet me at Café Entetsu when I finish work? I should be done at 16:00 today

Izuku [09:53]: Sure, I’ll be there!

I got in a few minutes early, but still…sitting by myself, I wondered what Himiko wanted to talk about. What happened last night was a shock all around—not a big crime by any means, but still, being on the other side of the counter while you’re being robbed can’t be fun.

I heard the door open, and the bell on a string hanging off of the ceiling bounced around to signal that someone was coming in. I looked up. Of course—there was Himiko, holding her FamilyMark uniform under her arm.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said. There was no smile to be seen on her face as she slipped into the seat across from me, setting her uniform on an empty chair. “I had to talk to my boss once my shift ended.” She looked at the empty space on the table in front of me. “You didn’t order anything?”

“Huh?” I must have zoned out. “Well, uh, no, I guess not.”

“Do you know what you want?” She picked up a menu. “Point it out to me, I’ll get it for you.”

“Himi–” I stopped myself. “Toga-chan , you don’t have to do that.”

“Well, I want to.” There was a weak smile, so weak it could barely even be called a smile, tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I’m getting a caramel macchiato and a strawberry shortcake. So you should tell me what you want.”

I told her what I had my eye on—I had plenty of time to study the menu while I waited. She got up, and a few minutes later, Himiko came back to the table with a tray and set it down in front of us. At her end was her caramel macchiato and miniature strawberry shortcake. In front of me was a slice of matcha cheesecake and a vanilla latte.

“Thank you,” I said, lifting a spoon for my cheesecake.

“Of course, Izuku,” she said, doing likewise for her cake. “Itadakimasu!”

We sat in silence for a few seconds while we ate, the sounds of the coffee shop lingering around us: dishes and cups clinking, people chatting, and at least one person furiously typing away at a keyboard. What he was writing was anyone’s guess. A work report? An angry email? Fanfiction? It didn’t matter. The keystrokes just faded into the rest of the ambient noise, until Himiko cut through it.

“Izuku…” She set her spoon down and stared at her plate. “Thanks for saving me last night.”

“Of course, Toga-chan . That’s a hero’s job.”

“I know. But it means a lot that you were there. So…I wanted to thank you.”

I didn’t know why at the time, but the fact that I was the one there…it meant a lot to me, too.

“You know…” Himiko continued. “I don’t think you ever told me about why you wanted to be a hero.”

“Well…” I told her the story of how I was obsessed with All Might since I was a kid, and how I rushed to save Kacchan and his friends from the sludge monster when other heroes weren’t doing anything. “All Might said heroes’ bodies just move on their own when they see other people in danger. And that’s when he decided to pass his power to me.”

Himiko sipped her drink and looked at me, as if dissecting me with her eyes, and smiled. “Does it feel different, saving someone you care about?”

Her question cut through me. It was like she read my mind. No—she uncovered a hidden corner of my own mind that I couldn’t even read for myself. She was right. Rushing towards Kacchan did feel different, because I did care about him. And rushing towards Himiko felt different, too.

“I mean, I guess so!” I quickly stammered, my face burning. I frantically thought of how to change the subject. “Uhhhhh…if you don’t mind my asking…why did you fight back against the robber? Why not just open the register for him?”

Her smile was gone again. “I grew up thinking the world was unfair, Izuku. I wasn’t allowed to be myself. I felt like I had everything taken away from me.” She was staring at her plate again. “The diversion program was a second chance, definitely, but getting out, it felt like I kept getting hit with one reminder after another of just how unfair my life was. And so when this guy came into the store and tried to rob me, I got mad. It was wrong, what he was doing, and I wasn’t going to be pushed around.” She took a long drink from her cup, draining it before setting it down with a clink so loud that I wasn’t sure if she had chipped the saucer. “The last straw was him calling me a psycho. I hate being called a psycho, being called crazy. I just want to live. I just want to be me.”

“Toga-chan …” I reached out to grab her hand resting next to her empty coffee cup. “I want you to just be you, too. And you were brave. The way you grabbed his hands, it almost looked like you didn’t need saving.”

“That’s nice of you, Izuku. But I’m still glad you were there.”

With our food and drink finished, I gathered up the empty plates and cups onto the tray that she brought. She stood up, and I followed.

“Anyway, thanks for meeting me here, and thanks again for saving me.”

“Of course, Toga-chan .”

“Oh and…” She held her hands in front of her. “Last night, you called me Himiko.” She sighed, barely audible, and smiled. “I want you to keep calling me Himiko, if that’s okay.”

“Well, if that’s what you want…” I looked her in the eyes. The truth is, I had been stopping myself from saying Himiko. My brain told me it was too familiar. But in my heart, it just felt right. “Then yes, of course, Himiko.”

She was grinning from ear to ear, staring at the floor. I thought she was going to leap into the air. She raised her head, her eyes meeting mine. “Can I…can I hug you, Izuku?”

I held my arms out and let her fall into them, her arms wrapped around me. She felt like she needed this. And if I’m honest with myself, I needed this from her, too.

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Five years before the present

I knew 18 was supposed to be one of the big birthdays, but I never felt like I had a whole lot to celebrate. Sure, when I was a kid, my parents would get me a cake and a couple of presents, but after they basically disowned me, it all felt hollow. It was like it never mattered, like it was all fake. The League of Villains never even did that for me. I honestly can’t remember if they were too busy plotting out crimes to make time for the small things like that, or if my time with them was just too short for me to have had a birthday with them at all. And then there was the diversion program. To their credit, they tried to make us feel at home, so we did celebrate birthdays there, but none of us were there by choice, and the staff were doing it because it was their job to. It just wasn’t the same. So when I rolled out of bed late in the morning on my eighteenth birthday, I wasn’t excited for it. My boss gave me the day off, which was nice of him, but it’s not like I had any plans. And then I saw the envelope that had been slipped under my door.

Himiko-chan,

We want to celebrate your birthday with you! Come to 1-2-1 Ogubashi in Musutafu at 1 PM. We’ll be in apartment 31.

<3 Izuku + Ochako

I recognized Ochako’s handwriting and smiled to myself. She liked to do this kind of thing, didn’t she? I mean, she did it for Christmas last year. It was cute. Very Ochako behavior. I skimmed the letter again. Ogubashi? When I took the train coming back from central Musutafu, I always got off at Ogubashi station, so I figured it must be somewhere near there—but I didn’t know whose apartment it was. Obviously not Ochako’s, since I was staying with her parents. Maybe Izuku’s? I hadn’t figured out where he lived. And I had tried. That thought made me excited—first Ochako’s home, and now Izuku’s!? I felt like that was enough of a birthday present; I didn’t need anything else!

I didn’t even know what to do with the few hours I had between waking up and going to the party. I figured I wouldn’t be doing anything, so I didn’t put any thought into my outfit for that day. But now? What to wear? I rummaged through my drawers. The blue skirt was always cute, but what top to wear with it? I found one with a pocket in the front that had an axolotl’s head poking out of the top of the pocket—and when you pulled it down, he was smiling and holding a knife. Very cute. I threw the top on and headed outside into the August sun.

By force of habit, I went to Ogubashi station, as if I was going to work. I had to stop myself from going through the fare gates. No, Himiko, it’s your day off. It’s your birthday. Looking up at the clock on the wall, I still had some time. I took out my phone and typed in the address that Ochako gave me. 1-2-1 Ogubashi. I figured I should at least know how long it would take me to walk over. To my surprise, the pin dropped on the map right around the corner from the station. It wouldn’t even take me five minutes from where I was right then. Well, there was nothing wrong with me being early, right? I went back outside, following the blue line on my phone to the front door of the apartment building. It was a simple one, but it looked new. I remember walking past this place while it was under construction—it must have been damaged in the war, I guess, or maybe the old building had been completely destroyed. I figured this meant that Izuku didn’t live here, and I got disappointed…but also curious. If Ochako and Izuku didn’t live here, who did?

Walking through the front door, I saw a girl with short brown hair dip into an elevator, like she was in a hurry. Was that…? I couldn’t tell. She was moving too fast. I looked around at the lobby. It was minimalist—just some mailboxes on either side and a couple of elevators—but it was clearly new, just like the rest of the building. We’ll be in apartment 31. The third floor, then? I pressed the call button for the elevator. There wasn’t any music in the lobby, so I just had my own thoughts to listen to. Whose place was this? And why was my birthday party here ? It didn’t make sense to me. And was that Ochako I just saw? Who else could it have been? What if I pushed Ochako out of her own home because I didn’t find a place to live?

Stop it, Himiko. They’re here to celebrate with you. It’s okay.

I pressed the button for the third floor and rode up, stepping into the hallway and seeing a placard with arrows pointing to different apartment numbers. 31 was down the hallway on my right. I kept walking. Before I even saw the number 31 on the door, I saw a box with wrapping paper on the doormat in front, a note attached to the top.

For: Himiko (open me first!)

A gift before I even got to the party? I tore the wrapping paper off. The box was small, like it could hold something like a pair of earrings or maybe a bracelet. It fit easily in the palm of my hand. It felt light, too. I lifted the lid and saw the glint of metal…but it wasn’t jewelry.

“A… key!?” I’m pretty sure I said it out loud, I was that surprised. I tried the door handle, and sure enough, it was locked. Well, that could only mean that this key fit this lock, right? I put it inside and turned the key, hearing the pins in the lock fall into place as the handle gave way.

The door swung open, and Izuku and Ochako were standing on the other side in what looked like a perfect replica of my childhood bedroom, even down to the furniture and the wall color. There were balloons and streamers, and they hung up banners on the wall: HAPPY BIRTHDAY on one side, and WELCOME HOME on the other.

“Surprise!” they shouted together. “Happy birthday, Himiko!”

I was shocked. For a split second, it was like I forgot how to even speak. “You…How? Is this…?”

“I said I’d help you find a place to live, didn’t I?” Ochako smiled. “It took longer than I hoped, but my dad got a contract to help out on this apartment building, and he was able to fix this studio to look like your old room.”

I looked around. She was right—aside from the kitchenette being open to the rest of the room and the bathroom being en suite, pretty much everything looked exactly like the room I grew up in.

“Izuku and I helped assemble the furniture, and our classmate Momo helped us make some of the smaller things.” She tilted her head and looked to the side. “We couldn’t restore your photos from when you were younger, so we used some of the pictures of us that we took together. But you can change them if you want, we won’t mind!”

Ochako must have seen me frozen in the doorway and not known how I was feeling. “Sorry, I should have asked you first before going all in on this place…but we wanted to surprise you for your birthday.”

“You two…” I dropped the box with the apartment key and ran up to them, hugging each of them under one arm. “This is the best thing that’s ever happened! I can’t believe you did all this for me. I lo—” I stopped myself. “I love that you did this for me. I feel so lucky.”

“Seeing you happy makes us happy, Himiko-chan ,” Izuku said softly in my ear. I felt like I couldn’t believe my luck. They didn’t just find a place for me to live. They remade my home, took me back to a time in my life when things were okay. And they gave me new memories to fill my home with— my home!—from the moment I stepped inside.

“We got you cake!” Ochako pulled away and went to the fridge. “We’ll light candles for you to make a wish!”

They set out the cake, decorated with a cartoon house drawn in frosting, and lit the candles. Izuku turned off the lights while Ochako started singing, and I blew out the candles…but as cliché as it sounds, I had more than I could wish for already. A year ago, I was in the ruined shell of my old home, with Ochako trying to comfort me. Now, I was in a place that was truly my own, and my friends had helped me make it a home. A place where I could be me without having to hide any part of myself. Where I was supported, even encouraged, for being who I was. I was safe here, in this place, with these people.

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Five years before the present

The week of graduation was a whirlwind of emotion. I don’t know that any of the third-years in the dorms were able to sleep that night. We were all too excited—and sad, too. This was the culmination of our dreams, but over the last three years, we all bonded. We lived together, trained together, fought together…as much as we wanted to grow and succeed, we also didn’t want this to end. We knew how lucky we were to live together as a group, with all the people we cared about in one place. How could we walk away from that?

All of those thoughts were swirling around my head as I got into my uniform for the last time as a student. I remember how proud I was when I first got it. It was a long three years. How did they end so quickly? I looked around at my room as I was surrounded by boxes I had packed the night before. This was more than my school I was leaving. It was my home. I knew saying goodbye would be hard.

I heard a knock on the door. “Izuku?” It was Ochako, of course. The door opened, and in she walked, already changed into her uniform. “Are you ready?”

I nodded. “I was just thinking about everything that happened these last few years.”

She put her arms over my shoulders, bringing herself close to me. “We did a lot, didn’t we?”

“I can’t believe we’re finally graduating. It’s all over.”

“ This part is over,” she whispered. “We have so much to look forward to.”

I exhaled, not realizing that I had been holding my breath until that moment. “You’re right.”

“You’re going to do great, Izuku.” She looked at me. “ We are.” She lifted herself up and kissed me. “Now let’s go! We don’t want to be late for our own graduation, right?”

The ceremony was in the main auditorium—the same room where we all gathered for the hero program’s entrance exam. We were all grouped behind the curtain of the main stage, arranged by program and lined up in syllabary order, so Ochako and I weren’t next to each other, but we still took peeks at one another while we waited to be introduced.

“Okaaaaay everybodyyyy! Are you ready!?” Present Mic shouted in his trademark voice, trying to hype up the crowd. He got a few woo! shouts here and there. “This is the moment you’ve waited for alllll day! The moment you’ve waited for three! whole! years! I present to you…UA’s newest graduates!”

The curtain rose to applause as we were revealed, standing on a riser so that everyone could be seen from the audience. In front of us were all of our teachers—Cementoss, Snipe, Ectoplasm, All Might…I scanned the crowd for my mom, and found her almost immediately—sobbing because she was so happy. I guess I got that trait from her. I spotted Ochako’s parents, too. Himiko wasn’t allowed to attend; space was limited, and we were told that only close family—parents, siblings, and grandparents—were allowed to be there in person. The ceremony was streamed live for those who couldn’t attend. But even if friends were allowed…would I have invited Himiko? It’s not that I didn’t want her there. I really, really did. But I didn't want to give Ochako the wrong idea. She told me years later that she had the exact same thought, too! If only we knew…

“I’m gonna pass this mic off to your superstar principal Nezu to get things officially started, and then the one and only Shota Aizawa will call each graduate up by name. Leeeeeet’s get this going!”

Principal Nezu climbed onto a stool in front of the microphone to give a speech. I don’t remember it word for word, but the message of what he was saying really spoke to me. He talked about the importance of following our dreams and working to protect one another, about how our community and our bonds were what helped us overcome adversity and what would enable us to succeed. He was always thoughtful, and he always cared about us. We’re lucky to have had him as principal.

As Nezu climbed down, Aizawa stepped up to the podium. “I will be reading out the names of our hero program’s graduating class,” he said in his trademark monotone. “Students will be announced in syllabary order by family name.” He looked down at the paper in front of him. “Mina Ashido.”

Everyone applauded as she stepped out, flashing a huge grin. It would be a long hour or two as he read out all of our names, but we wanted to hear ourselves and our friends get called up. We worked hard for it. We earned it after three long and difficult years.

“Tenya Iida…Ochako Uraraka.”

Her! She stood up and walked to Principal Nezu, bowing to him as her family stood up and cheered along with the rest of us. She walked down the line of teachers at the front of the stage, receiving her much-deserved congratulations. As she turned back towards the riser that we were all standing on, her gaze met mine.

“I love you,” I mouthed silently.

I watched her lips move. “I love you too.”

“Shoto Todoroki…Toru Hagakure…Katsuki Bakugo…Izuku Midoriya.”

I could barely hear my own name as everyone cheered. And I could barely see in front of me through the tears in my eyes. I felt Hagakure’s invisible hand gently pushing my arm, signaling me to walk down, while Kacchan smirked at me. It felt like there was a mix of emotions in that face of his—the combined smug satisfaction of having his name read out before mine, blended with the begrudging acknowledgment of what I accomplished. Without a word spoken from him, I could practically hear what he was thinking. You damn nerd. You really did it.

My feet carried me to the front of the stage, as if I was walking through molasses. I bowed before Principal Nezu. “Congratulations, Midoriya.” Then, I faced the audience and bowed deeply to yet more applause. As I raised my head, I saw my mom, still sobbing, being propped up by the family behind her so that she didn’t faint. Oh, mom…all the danger of this hero program and all the heartache of the years before took a real toll on her. She deserved this moment of happiness, too.

I turned towards Aizawa and bowed before making my way towards the other teachers while Aizawa read the next name. All Might looked at me with his hollow eyes, his hero form having long since left his body; as haggard as he was, he still had a fierce determination behind that gaze of his. The embers of One for All might have gone out within him, but he saw the fire in me, and he reflected it back as if it was his own.

“Midoriya- shōnen …” He placed his hand on my shoulder. “I am proud of you.”

I looked up at him through my tears. “I won’t let you down, All Might. I’ll live up to the power you gave me.”

He smiled. “You already have, young Midoriya.”

After the ceremony, we all took photos in front of the main school building with our families. Ochako and I posed between our parents, each making one half of a pair of heart hands around the UA logo behind us. My phone buzzed as we finished. It was Himiko, of course. Ochako pulled out her phone, too.

Himiko [14:41]: I saw the live stream! Congrats you two ＼(≧▽≦)／

Himiko [14:41]: Do you need a tissue Izuku?? ˚‧º·(˚ ˃̣̣̥᷄⌓˂̣̣̥᷅ )‧º·˚

“You really were crying a lot, Izuku!” Ochako said, sheepishly. She wasn’t wrong.

Izuku [14:42]: Thank you Himiko!

Ochako [14:42]: Thank you \(^ヮ^)/ We wish you were here!

She attached our heart hands photo to her text. It really would have been nice to have her here. Not just watching, but as a student. I thought about what it would be like if it was the three of us together in that photo.

As the time came for us to leave, I stopped on the threshold of the UA High School gate. I remember how excited I was when I first stepped through that gate for the entrance exam. How I lost my footing. How Ochako caught me. I had no idea what the three years that followed would be like.

“It doesn’t feel real.”

I guess I said that out loud. Ochako turned to me. “It really doesn’t, does it?”

“I just can’t believe that…it’s all over.” I looked back at the school behind me. My home.

“It’s a new beginning too, Izuku.” She grabbed my hand and looked at me, smiling. “This is our dream! At the end of the week, we’ll get the key to our office space for our agency.”

Our agency. Our agency! I smiled back at her. It was both an end and a beginning. I was sad to leave, for sure. But we had a future ahead of us, and a job to do.

The signing day for our office lease came four days later. All of the UA students received generous reward payments from the government for our role in ending the Paranormal Liberation Front war, but that money was held in trust for each of us until we became adults. Now that we had graduated, that money was ours to use as we wanted—and we had a healthy amount to put towards founding an agency, like we said we would. We spent what must have been an hour at the realty office signing the papers, but when all was said and done, we had a floor of office space to build an agency with. “Congratulations to you both,” our realtor told us, handing the keys to us both.

It wasn’t until we actually left our realtor and went to the office that we realized just what we had taken on for ourselves. Our new lease gave us one floor in a narrow office building on a small side street. We stood in front of the main entrance to the building and looked around. We were next to a ramen shop on one side and a mobile phone shop on the other; across the street was a zakkyo building with, among other things, a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, a manga store, and what looked like a…sex shop? It was a bizarre location. In the lobby, I looked at the other businesses inside as Ochako pushed the button for the elevator. We were above an estate attorney’s office and below an import/export company. Our agency name wasn’t on the directory yet. We hadn’t even picked it.

The elevator dinged, and we stepped through the open doors for the short ride to the third floor. We stepped back out into a small hallway with a pair of locked double doors. I fished out the key, put it in the lock, and turned. The door swung open, and the light from the hallway spilled onto the concrete floor, illuminating nothing but a stack of folding chairs. I felt Ochako grab my arm.

“Izuku…” She sounded like she was holding back tears, like her voice was about to break. “There’s…nothing here.”

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Five years before the present

Looking back, I still feel dumb for getting so freaked out. I went to all the realtor meetings with Izuku. I agreed with him that we wanted to make our money last as long as possible so that we could get our agency started. Our realtor told us that we would be looking at a small, unfurnished office as a result. I guess I just didn’t actually visualize what that would look like. I let myself get wrapped up in the vision of me and Izuku as successful heroes, of me sending money back to my parents and letting them live an easier life. Seeing that empty office was like a sledgehammer to that vision I built for myself. I was looking at the cold reality: we had to build an agency from nothing.

Mei, in her excitement of encouraging us to start an agency, glossed over what Izuku and I already knew to be true: this was a business, and one that didn’t treat newcomers gently. As physically demanding as it is to be a hero, the financials behind the scenes take their own toll. A quarter of new hero agencies failed within a year, and it was rarely because of an injury or hero license suspension. Almost always, it was because of bankruptcy. While we were at UA, our hero suits were paid for by the school, and the same went for repairs on any damage to our equipment. If we had expendable equipment, like Bakugo’s improvised grenades or Kaminari’s sharpshooting pointer disks, they’d replace those, too. Plus, we had the benefit of helping the support course students trial their prototypes—free equipment for us, and free testing for them. Pro agencies take on all those expenses for themselves. Many startups quickly end up having paid more in expenses and wages than they took in through contract payouts and endorsements—and many heroes don’t ever get endorsements. Once the money runs out, it can be an impossible task to claw back and break even again. So even though I knew that we were making the best financial decision possible while starting an agency by starting small, that bare office was still a reminder that, if things didn’t go our way, it could still all be for nothing—that, just like those other unlucky one in four, we’d have to sell what we had and go into sidekick work just to pay down our debts.

After he calmed me down, Izuku and I took two of the folding chairs that had been left behind and sat down.

“Are we really going to be okay?” I asked.

Izuku smiled. “I have a plan,” he said, pulling out a notebook. I hadn’t seen one of those from him in a long time. It took me back to when we first met, when he kept notebooks full of his observations on heroes and villains. We were both so bright-eyed and hopeful.

“Izuku…you—”

“The first step is to hire someone with a background in hero agency administration as our chief operating officer.” Izuku was determined, flipping through his planning notebook. He was talking fast, under his breath. “They can work remotely until we get the funds to make office improvements, but with a COO, we can start taking on contracts instead of solely doing freelance work. That’ll also make it easier for us to make purchases for the office. We don’t need to make this a forever headquarters, just good enough to last us a couple of years until we can move into a bigger office. If we patrol daily, perform two rescues or apprehensions each week, and get contracts at a rate of…”

Izuku went off, totally in the zone, muttering excitedly about the plan he had drawn up. It put me at ease—not just because he had a plan to make our new agency successful, but because…I remember seeing him excited like this when we first met. Seeing how hard he worked, both mind and body…it made me admire him. It made me fall in love with him. When the war broke out, it was like Izuku left that part of himself behind. He let his mission consume him, swallowing up every moment of his existence. It’s why he left the school. And now, in this moment, it felt like that part of Izuku came back. I got reminded of what it felt like to fall in love. Like the moment he rushed to save me from being crushed, literally, in the entrance exam. Or like the moment when Himiko walked out the dressing room and—

“—Oh. There’s one other thing we need to do.” Izuku looked up from his notes. “We can freelance with just our licenses, but if we want to take contracts in advance, we have to pick an agency name and register it with the government.”

I snapped out of my reminiscing. Right. We had to focus on our new agency. “Did you have any ideas?”

“Well…” Izuku sounded shy, almost self-doubting. “A lot of agencies are just named after the founding hero, but we’re both the founding heroes, so…I figured we should brainstorm ideas together.”

“Hmm.” I sat and thought. “Could we just do our initials? M for Midoriya and U for Uraraka? MUA? Although…that’s also shorthand for ‘makeup artist,’ I think…”

“True. And what if someone joins us? If we bring on another hero as a partner, would we have to change the initials?”

Izuku made a good point. My brain went to the thought of Himiko as a hero, working alongside us. I had no reason to think that, really—she just got out of that diversion program. I had no idea what her long-term goals were then, and I don’t know if she knew either. And yet, my brain couldn’t help itself.

“Maybe R&R?” Izuku suggested. “For Response and Rescue?”

“I don’t know…don’t all agencies do those things? It doesn’t feel uniquely us…” I rested my elbows in my lap, my head balanced on my hands. “And people would probably see it as us playing off of ‘rest and relaxation’ and think we’re trying to be funny with our agency name.”

I don’t know for how long we traded ideas, but they were all bad. For all of Izuku’s planning, this one simple step had us feeling stuck. I looked out the window. Through a gap in the buildings, there was a small park that you could see from our office. Small shoots of green were appearing on the branches as the warmer spring weather began.

“Izuku!” My head picked up. “Can I see your notebook?”

He passed it to me, and I flipped through, looking for a blank page. There was none—every sheet was covered in notes and scribbles. That was so like Izuku, devoted to his passion to the point of obsessing over it. I flipped back to the inside of the front cover, the only blank area I could find, and wrote.

“Haru no te…” Izuku read as I wrote out the kanji and hiragana. “Spring roots?”

“I like how Harunote Agency sounds,” I said. “And I feel like it fits us. We’re starting our agency in the spring. And it’s a new beginning for us. Our chance to put roots down. To grow.”

I saw Izuku stare at the inside cover of his notebook where I had written and watched a smile grow across his face. “I love it,” he whispered. “Harunote Agency it is.” He closed the notebook. “I’ll get it registered first thing on Monday.”

It’s funny in hindsight, how quickly my fears washed away just by picking an agency name. We were still sitting in the same bare, unfurnished, echoey office space as when we walked in. We were still starting from the same place, figuratively and literally. But it felt different. We knew what we were working towards, and we knew how we were going to do it. We had a plan. And we had a name for it. Harunote Agency was our little project to nurture and grow.

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Five years before the present

Finally having my own place again felt so freeing. So much of what I learned in the diversion program was about how to be myself in a way that was healthy and safe and respectful of what other people needed. It took a while, but I think I found that balance. Still, after years of having to tone down a bit of myself everywhere I was, it meant a lot to have a space where I didn’t have to do that at all. I could decorate how I wanted, stay up or sleep in when I wanted, eat what I wanted, and act how I wanted. Which meant…

“Mmmmmm…Izuku…Ochako…”

After a shift at work, I loved being able to relax and let my mind really run free. Sometimes I’d think about someone cute I saw while I was working, but usually, it was them. I tossed my bag with my work uniform on the floor and twirled myself into bed, feeling my skirt lose contact with my legs as I spun around. As I leaned back, my skirt flipped up, covering the bottom part of my shirt.

“Touch meeeee…”

I always started with rubbing my fingers over my panties. Part of it was to tease myself a little, and part of it was also wanting to feel myself getting wetter through the fabric. But I also loved the thought of Izuku or Ochako being too excited to even wait for me to pull my clothes off to get their hands on me. It made me feel wanted. Desired.

“Mmmm, fuuuuuck, just like that…”

I pulled my panties to the side when they got really soaked, running my fingers over the wet skin to feel how horny I was. God, thinking about those two always did it. Thinking of Izuku behind me, with his arms around me and his head on my shoulder, or Ochako in front of me, reaching down to touch me while she looked me in the eyes.

“Make me feel good…make me feel sexy…”

I rubbed around my clit, letting myself let go of my inhibitions as I imagined my two loves putting their fingers on me, instead of just me lying in my bed alone. I could feel myself tingling with excitement. I thought about how I wanted Izuku whispering in my ear, how I wanted to feel Ochako’s breath against my face.

“Put it in me…”

I always start with two fingers, letting me build myself up. I slipped my skirt off to make sure I didn’t get it too wet…I guess I should’ve done that sooner, but I was very distracted. Oh well.
“Fuck me! Pleeeeease…”

I whispered to myself as I slid my index and middle finger in and out, slowly at first, then picking up the pace. Why couldn’t it be Ochako’s hand, or Izuku’s? I wanted them so badly. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. What they must smell like. What they taste like.

“More…harder…”

I slipped a third finger in and rolled over onto my knees, imagining myself bent over in front of Izuku while he fucked me from behind. What would his hands feel like, grabbing my waist? Every time my fingers went as deep as they could, brushing against my clit, I thought about how his cock must feel, sliding in and out, his balls hitting me as he fucked me as hard as he could.

“Fuck meeeeee! I’m gonna cum! Mmmmmm!”

I was frantically fingering myself as fast as I possibly could. I was barely able to think. I could feel myself about to cum, and I couldn’t control my voice anymore, so I bit my free hand hard . My teeth sank into my skin—and through it. I tasted rust. Blood. Oh, wow, that turned me on even more. I came so hard. My head was spinning, and my mind went completely blank. I lost all the strength in my arms and legs, and collapsed onto my bed, exhausted and deliriously happy, my pussy soaking wet. I must have had the biggest grin on my face, too. I was in a state of pure bliss.

I guess I fell asleep after that, because I woke up and looked at my phone and saw that an hour or so had gone by. I guess I really wore myself out. The cut on my finger from where I bit my hand had dried up a little bit. I’d have to find a bandage for that, I guess.

Without thinking, I opened up Pinstagram and scrolled through. A couple of posts from Izuku and Ochako came up. Even in my post-orgasm haze, it still made me fuzzy inside to see their faces. It made me want to do it all over again. If only they were actually there…

It felt like my phone was spying on me, because immediately under their posts was an ad that felt absurdly targeted.

@lotuspop_boutique • 20:00 [Ad]

Toys, costumes, and other erotic essentials for individual and partner play 💖 Visit our store to browse our full selection

As creeped out as I was by how on-the-nose the ad was…I did need an upgrade from just me and my fingers.

I went the next day to find out what this LotusPop boutique was all about. I had never been to a sex shop before. I never even talked about sex with anyone else before. Any time I tried to talk about love, people would think I was creepy and obsessive, so why would I trust anyone to talk about sex? It was another thing I learned to keep private, so I was nervous doing something as public as shopping for sex toys.

I looked around at the neighborhood. It seemed like the right place? Standing outside the building, I looked at the signs for which businesses were on each floor. It looked like this LotusPop store was above a manga shop, and there was a conveyor belt sushi restaurant on the top floor. I looked around me. Maybe I was nervous about people seeing me walk in, even though there were almost half a dozen other stores in the same building. Across the way, there was a small office building with a banner on the third floor that caught my eye. Harunote Agency . I remember thinking to myself that it sounded like some kind of business selling plants, but since it said “agency,” it was probably a hero agency? And it was a banner instead of a sign bolted to the wall, so they must have just started? Ugh, I was stalling. I wanted to shop at this store, right? This was a time for me to put aside what other people think about me and live how I wanted. That’s what this life of mine is all about, right? I took a breath and walked inside.

I went into the building and made my way up to the shop, swinging open the door to LotusPop and letting it close behind me, the metal chime attached to it dinging to signal that a new customer was here. There was a partition right behind the shop entrance, so that people passing by couldn’t glance in and see what, or who, was inside.

“Welcome in!” The clerk bowed to me as I came around the partition. Beyond her were more toys than I even knew existed. On the far wall was a collection of lingerie and costumes, and there was a bookshelf next to the register, too, with how-to guides on all sorts of different sex things. “Let me know if you need help finding something.”

I froze. I didn’t know what to say, but I felt the need to say something. “I, uh…I don’t really know what I’m looking for right now…”

“That’s fine!” The clerk smiled. “Did you want something for just yourself, or did you want something to use with a partner?”

“Uhhhh…I’m kind of by myself right now. I mean, there are people that I like, but—” What was I saying!? I was so flustered that I was about to start spilling my secret crush to a total stranger! I stopped myself and stood there with what had to be the dumbest look frozen on my face.

“That’s okay! We have a selection of insertable toys like dildos and vibrators on those shelves, and on the other side, we have things like sleeves and Tanga eggs.”

“I, uh…think I’m looking for a vibrator? But I don’t really know where to start, so…”

The clerk smiled. “I could show you, if you’d like?”

She came out from behind the counter and walked me through all of the options they had. There were so many choices…I would have been totally lost without her explaining the different styles and settings on everything. I picked out a small bullet vibrator for myself, but also two silicone dildos in two different sizes—a smooth, minimalist-looking one and a more realistic one with veins and everything. I had no idea what I would like, so why not try both?

“I’m Hasu, by the way.” The clerk smiled again at me as she helped me carry my things to the checkout counter. “LotusPop staff are also sex educators, so if there are things you want to know more about, it doesn’t have to just be about toys. You can ask me anything you’d like.”

Hasu. She really made my first time there so much less nerve-wracking. It felt like one less thing to worry about.

She took my items and scanned them one by one. “Would you like a plastic bag?” Hasu gestured behind her at a set of opaque black bags behind her. Everything was already in unmarked brown boxes, but it would still be nice to have something subtle to carry things in. I nodded, and she bagged my items while I paid, then handed the bag back to me with both hands. “Thank you for shopping at LotusPop!” Hasu bowed. “Please come back soon.”

I smiled and left. That went…really well, right? Nothing embarrassing, and I got a bunch of toys that I couldn’t wait to try out. And the clerk, Hasu, was super nice! Pretty good for my first visit.

I made my way back downstairs and out onto the street. Right as I stepped out, I saw the doors open for the office building across the street. Out stepped a woman with short brown hair and a skintight pink and green bodysuit, knee-high boots with built-in kneepads, and spherical gauntlets on her wrists. It was Ochako. Of course it was. Who else could I have possibly run into now, of all times? She recognized me immediately.

“Himiko? I didn’t expect to see you here!”

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Five years before the present

As soon as I stepped outside to start my patrol, I spotted her. How could I not? Her hairdo stood out anywhere.

“Himiko?” I called out, running over to her. “I didn’t expect to see you here!”

“Oh, same!” She looked flustered, clutching an opaque black shopping bag. “Uh…is that your hero outfit? I guess you’re working?”

“Yeah, I was about to start my patrol for today. You can walk with me if you want.”

“Is that okay?” She looked around, as if someone was going to materialize and stop her from tagging along. “I mean, I don’t want to pull you away from your work.”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t!” I smiled. She still seemed nervous. “Patrols are just us heroes walking around to keep an eye on things and let people know that we’re here to help. So there’s no problem with you just walking with me.”

She seemed to relax, but only a little bit—she was still clutching that black bag. I guess she went to that manga shop and didn’t want to lose her books? “I mean…I just wonder what people would think, seeing me with you.”

Oh. That’s what had her worried. I forgot that she was still wrestling with her past. She must have still been getting stares and rude comments from people who remembered her past as a villain. Did she think I would get judged for being seen with a former criminal?

“You don’t have to worry, Himiko-chan.” I reached out and gently grabbed her shoulders, smiling. “If people give either of us trouble, I’ll stop it. I mean, what else would a hero do?”

We walked down the street, Himiko following a few steps behind me. The neighborhood was pretty empty, with most people at work, but there were still a few people out and about. Every now and again, I’d catch one of them staring. It was tough to tell whether they were looking at Himiko or at me, but I’ve definitely had more people than I’d like staring at my bodysuit. Only Izuku could do that and make me feel good doing it. Izuku and Himiko.

“So that agency…Harunote…is that you and Izuku?”

I looked over my shoulder. “You noticed? Yeah, that’s our agency.”

“What’s it been like?”

I thought for a moment. It wasn’t like the day we first walked into a completely empty office, but we still hadn’t made that big of an improvement for ourselves. “It’s, uh, definitely a lot of work! There’s a lot more to starting a hero agency than just being a hero.” I waved to a young boy and his dad who were walking across the street from us. “We got new carpet and desks in the office last week.” Not that we had old carpet or desks, I thought to myself.

“…did you ever tell me about why you wanted to be a hero, Ochako?”

“Well, my parents never had a lot of money, and they worked hard to raise me. So I want to make money to let my parents have an easier life.” I used to be embarrassed, explaining myself like this. Not ashamed of growing up with less than the other kids, but ashamed that my hero motivations were about money, even if it was for a good reason. “I want to work to help people, and then support my parents so that they don’t have to worry about money again.”

Himiko looked like she was deep in thought. Like she was conflicted about something. “So it’s about the money for you?”

“Well, that’s why I started.” Why did I feel like I was defending myself? In over a year and a half of knowing Himiko, from the day she left the diversion program, this was the first time I felt like she didn’t trust me. Maybe I shared something I shouldn’t have. “But it was always wrapped up in wanting to help people, too. There are people who make a lot more money than heroes do, and their jobs are less dangerous. And besides…seeing how hard Izuku worked in the hero course, I wanted to be more like him.”

A smile came back to Himiko’s face. “I know how that feels. Loving someone so much that you want to become more and more like them.” We walked into a park with trees lining the paths. There were some children running around a playground while a pair of adults watched them from the side. “Do you think that…anyone can be a hero?”

I looked at Himiko. Was she asking about herself ? “What do you mean?”

“Well, I want to know…are there some people who can’t be heroes? Or can anybody who wants to be a hero become one?”

I sighed, thinking back to Izuku’s note where he told us that he had been born quirkless and was gifted his power from All Might. It made it all the more incredible how hard he worked to become a hero. Even though Izuku had told all of us in 1-A about his secret, we were all told not to speak of it. The idea of quirks being shared between people, given and taken away…it just wasn’t something that hero society was ready for, even after the war with All for One.

“I know a lot of people who worked really hard,” I told Himiko. Izuku ended up telling her later about his power, but that was for him to share, not for me. “They wanted to be heroes, and they didn’t care about the obstacles. They totally devoted themselves to their goals. So yes. I think that anyone can be a hero if they truly want to.”

Himiko looked down. I could still see her smile. “Thanks, Ochako.” She was clutching her bag again. “I’m really glad you let me walk with you and showed me some of what your work is like.”

“Wait…” Reflexively, I called out to her. It sounded like she was ready to leave, and I didn’t know how busy I would be with my hero work. I didn’t want to miss this chance. “There’s something I want to ask you too.”

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Five years before the present

I didn’t expect to run into Ochako, much less join her on a patrol. We talked about a lot of things. And for a moment, I was worried that I had gotten her all wrong. When she said she was motivated by money, I felt like I didn’t know her anymore, like I had been tricked. I guess that’s pretty ridiculous coming from me, given how my entire quirk is about tricking people and pretending to be somebody I’m not. But still, I didn’t know what to think. She cared so much for me, and then she revealed this piece of information and I thought that she was just in it for greed. I thought about Stain’s beliefs about who deserves to be a true hero, how heroics turning into a business was not what heroes should be about. Stain was why I joined the League of Villains in the first place, and while I left that life behind, there were still little bits of his message that stuck with me. There was a part of it that, to me, still felt wrong. But Ochako talking about her family’s money problems and how she wanted to make their lives easier, and how she could have made money in other places but chose to be a hero to help even more people…that put my mind at ease. It was like I lost the Ochako I thought I knew, but just for a second, and then she came right back. And then…

“Wait…there’s something I want to ask you too.” Ochako looked super nervous.

“Yeah, of course!”

“So…I don’t know if you remember. But last year, when you were staying with me, you said you wanted to talk about romance with me. And I wanted to ask you…” She took a deep breath and let it out. Like she was trying to air out all of the anxious energy inside of her. “Do you think it’s possible for somebody…to be in love with more than one person? Like…to love two people equally?”

I couldn’t control my smile. I never got to talk about romance, much less my kind of romance. Not even with the League. And here was Ochako asking me about it. I couldn’t have been happier!

“Ochako…” I found a bench to sit down on, putting my shopping bag away from her so she couldn’t see what was inside.. Ochako sat next to me, barely leaving a gap between us. “I fall in love really easily. With men, with women…” Now it was my turn to be nervous. “And it’s not like falling in love for me means I have to fall out of love with someone else. It’s like adding two loves together, not switching one with another. But that makes it really hard for me.” I closed my eyes and lowered my head. “Because I know that lots of other people don’t fall in love the way I do. So I would just keep it to myself, the same way I kept it to myself because people thought my smile was creepy. It made me feel like I couldn’t love people who would love me back.” I turned back to Ochako, just as I felt her hand on my thigh to comfort me. “So it makes me so happy that you asked that, Ochako. Because yeah, it is possible for people to feel that way…because that’s how I feel.”

Ochako looked me in the eyes. It almost seemed like she was about to cry. “I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t tell anyone, Himiko. But I’m really happy that you told me.” She let out another sigh. “I guess I just wonder how someone could, uh…tell a partner about how they feel. I would be so scared of losing them…if I was in their shoes.”

“I wish I knew.” I put my hand on top of hers. “It’s hard, feeling the way we feel. A lot of people don’t understand that it’s okay to have love for lots of people. But maybe us talking about it more will make it feel more okay?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

I caught a look in her eye, the same one I saw when she talked about Izuku. I wish that moment could have lasted forever—her hand on my lap, my hand on hers. It wasn’t like we hadn’t touched before, but this felt gentler. More intimate. I wish we could have been alone. I thought of what it would be like if we were sitting in my bed after a long day instead of in a park while she was working…because I knew her work would pull her away from me. Some emergency or something would mean she’d have to rush away and leave me by myself. And besides, I still hadn’t believed— truly believed—that I could be a hero. I still felt the weight of my past and the glares from strangers, and I thought I’d always be shackled by that. But I wanted to try to be different. I already was, but I wanted to do more. To be more like the people I love.

Just as I thought, Ochako’s headset buzzed, and she pulled her hand away, reaching up to press the earpiece against her ear.

“Himiko, I…I have to go. I’m sorry I’m so busy…”

“It’s okay.” I smiled, but it hurt to see her leave, even if it wasn’t because of me. “Go.”

“I’ll see you?” She said it like a question, as if she wasn’t sure if she would. Did she think she’d be too busy? Did she think I wouldn’t want to see her?

“Definitely. And…thanks for talking about romance with me, Ochako. We should do it more.”

She nodded and smiled at me before taking off, rushing ahead and lifting herself up with her quirk before shooting off her grappling hooks to swing herself away. Just like that, she was gone, and I was alone.

I looked up at the spot where she was just moments ago. I was sad that she was gone, and I wondered when I would see her next, but Ochako’s question stuck in my mind.

Do you think it’s possible for somebody to be in love with more than one person? To love two people equally?

I grinned to myself. I know you weren’t asking because you were curious, Ochako, I thought to myself. You’re not just in love with Izuku. It would be a while before she actually said the words to me, but I already knew it then: Ochako loved me, and I loved her, too.

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Five years before the present

Patrols are 99 percent mundane—walking around, letting the public know you’re there to help, showing your face so that people know who to turn to if they need someone—but that last one percent of the time, things get chaotic. And you have no way of knowing when that will be. Heroes have to be 100 percent ready, 100 percent of the time, even if nothing happens. Because it’s not a question of if we’ll be needed, but when.

I remember being on patrol late one morning; I had stopped to talk to a little girl and her mother when, out of nowhere, a manhole cover on the sidewalk popped open and a pair of hands grabbed the mother by the ankles.

“What!? Hey!” She was too shocked to even scream at him to let go, and she and I both were lucky that I was standing right there. I used Blackwhip, wrapping both the mother and her daughter and pulling them away to safety. As soon as I did, the hands let go and retreated into the manhole, pulling the cover back down.

“You two, get somewhere inside!” I shouted at the two as I pulled the manhole cover back up. There was no sign of the culprit down there…but down the street, I saw another cover pop up.

No way, I thought to myself. I pulled myself over, swinging from a light pole with Blackwhip. The pair of hands was pulling at a man in a suit. I swept him away.

“Uravity!” I toggled my headset to speak with her; I knew she was out on patrol. “I need you in the air now.” I didn’t know what was going on, but whoever or whatever this guy was, they were clearly moving fast through the manhole system, and if I was going to catch up with him, I needed Ochako’s eyes in the sky…but I didn’t hear her respond.

Another manhole cover popped up on the cross street across from a convenience store. People there at least saw what happened before and knew that something was wrong; they ran away, and the hands pulled the lid back down.

“Uravity! If you hear me, please respond!”

I heard a burst of faint static, and then her voice: “I hear you, Deku.” The wind was whistling past her—she must have been using her grappling attachments to propel herself. “Coming to you now.”

“Uravity, I need you to hover and keep near me for manhole covers that are popping up. Something is underground trying to pull people away.”

“Understood.” It felt good to hear her voice. If she hadn’t responded, I would have just broadcasted on the citywide public safety network that allows all heroes and other emergency responders to answer. But I wanted it to be her. Yes, because her skills were the best fit for the situation, but also because working with someone I love just feels better. It makes everything easier.

I glanced up and caught a glimpse of pink and green floating above me. There she was! “I see you, Uravity.”

“Same, Deku. I’m watching the side streets now.”

It was calm. The people who had run away from the last manhole cover to pop up were standing around, frozen, staring at the metal disk that covered the opening. Was this thing gone? Had it given up?

“Deku! Turn left and go up 250 meters! Another cover just came up!”

I turned and ran as soon as she gave me directions. We had to move fast to catch this thing.

“He’s pulling down a woman in a red shirt!”

I saw her ahead of me, falling forward as her legs were pulled out from under her. I wouldn’t reach her without Blackwhip, so I extended my hand out and wrapped around her with Blackwhip to pull her towards me.

“The cover is back down,” Ochako called out. “I’ll keep searching.”

I looked at the woman. “Get to safety inside!” She ran into a store. This was bad. At this rate, we would never catch him. I readied Fa Jin, quickly bending and extending my legs to store energy for a horizontal leap. If we were lucky, he’d pop up somewhere with a direct shot from where I was, and—

“Deku! Right, 100 meters!”

Yes! I turned and leaped with force. I could see the manhole cover still spinning in the air, and a pair of hands reaching out. I extended Blackwhip out from both palms, watching as they wrapped around the wrists poking up from out of the ground. Got you!

“Uravity, I have him!”

“I see you! Landing now to help you, Deku.”

I felt him wrestling against Blackwhip’s force, but he wouldn’t break free so easily. As I pulled Blackwhip back, I felt resistance, as if something was pressed against the opening of the manhole. Then, with a pop, a cylindrical shape emerged with a human face at the front before morphing into a normal human shape. Ochako set herself down beside me.

“Deku, do you need help?”

I shook my head no. “I’ll handle him. Radio for police, then go back and check on the others from further back.

She nodded and put her hand up to her headset. “Any police on the citywide network, this is Hero Uravity requesting a detention unit at…”

Watching him squirm against my Blackwhip restraints, it was impossible not to wonder why this just happened. Who was he? Why did he do this? But that wasn’t for us to figure out. The police detain and investigate. We had done our job as heroes.

The sun set on another long day of hero work, and Ochako and I were back at our office. We at least had office furniture by then, so it didn’t look like we were working out of a warehouse or something. I made my way to the circular table in the kitchenette area that we had gotten installed.

“Okay.” I took my spot at the table—even if our break area had to double as a meeting room, that was a major improvement. “Let’s start our debrief for the week. Sojo-san? Can you get us started?”

Yuuto Sojo, our chief operating officer, was our first hire…and back then, still our only one. Every Friday evening, we have a debrief to talk through what we’ve done and what our business outlook is. Sojo suggested it; apparently, regular meetings are something they teach the hero administration courses at UA. It’s worked well for us, and I’m glad, because this is the sort of thing that we in the hero courses would never have thought about.

“Uravity’s four rescues will be paid out by the government by Monday at the latest.” He always used our hero names in meetings. It kept things professional, he said. “Her rescue of that couple whose car went into the water off the Anzai Bridge was covered extensively by the local news, and they want to conduct an interview.”

I nodded. That was good for us—media interest raises a hero agency’s profile, and while we were well known as individuals, we needed our agency to be familiar in people’s minds for things like sponsorships and advance government contracts.

“Uravity, when would you be available?” he continued.

“Um, I can come in tomorrow if they’d like?”

“Great, I’ll let the TV station know and send you the time.” Sojo shuffled his papers. “Uravity and Deku’s arrest of the manhole cover kidnapper today got extensive coverage as well. No interview requests yet, but given how public those incidents were, I would expect that to change. The government is processing that payment; we don’t have an amount for it yet, but it should hit our agency account by the end of next week.”

The way that the government pays out freelance work is complex. I still don’t fully understand it. Contract work is straightforward, spelling out exactly how much they will pay and what makes you eligible for bonuses or reimbursements. But freelance work? Apparently, there’s some formula that calculates how many people were in danger, the value of property that was at risk, the effectiveness of your actions in saving people, whether you caused any damage yourself that could have been avoided, how likely the regular emergency services were to resolve the issue on their own…it’s really confusing. It also makes long-term budgeting hard, since you can’t actually tell how much money you’ll make in advance.

“On the subject of finance…” Sojo-san flipped through some more papers. “…it looks like we have our first contract requests.”

“What for?” I asked.

“They’re both small ones, both for security.” He pulled two sheets of paper out of his stack. Short-term security contracts were disappointing, but not surprising, given how new our company was. Those paid the worst out of all of them. At least they were good stepping stones to bigger contracts. “One is for AkibaFest at the start of next month.” Oh, the annual otaku street festival in Akihabara! “That lasts three days and pays ¥500,000 per day to the agency. The other is security for a speaking engagement for Keiriku Tetsunoten, the leader of the NTM. That one pays ¥1 million for a four-hour event.”

“I don’t know that I want us to accept that one,” Ochako said. I nodded. After the war, the scandal around prisoner treatment at the old Tartarus prison complex led the government to restructure the prison system, expanding the diversion program and replacing large prisons with smaller ones closer to where prisoners actually lived. Their philosophy was that a more humane approach would decrease the odds of people reoffending. The New Tartarus Movement was an activist group that sprung up in opposition to this—they wanted to go back to the Tartarus system of putting the worst offenders (or the people that they thought were the worst offenders) in a supermax prison completely isolated from the rest of society.

“Let’s reject the NTM one,” I added. “Uravity is right. It may pay better for the time spent, but…it just wouldn’t be right for us to do that.”

“Okay, that’s fine.” Sojo put the NTM contract off to the side. “I’ll communicate our decisions to both of them. And finally…” He flipped to the last page. “Our finances look pretty good, all things considered, but since we only have the one contract, I would hold off on making any hiring or expansion decisions for now. Once we get more contracts, we’ll be in a better position for that.”

I nodded. “Thank you, Sojo-san.”

“Did you need anything else from me?”

Ochako shook her head no, as did I. “That’s all. Thanks for your hard work.”

Sojo stood up, bowed, and left. It was just me and Ochako alone at the table, with Sojo’s weekly report on the table in front of us.

“Do you think that was the right move for us?” Ochako sounded unsure. “I know I said not to, but…turning down contracts so early in our career could be bad for us, right?”

“We can’t just accept every contract either,” I replied. I could hear the unease in her voice. “We aren’t mercenaries who just sell our quirks to the highest bidder. We have to do what’s right.”

“I just…whenever I hear about the NTM, I think about Himiko, and how she got into that diversion program and is trying to make her life better. The NTM would have just thrown her in jail forever.”

I thought about her, too. I thought about the time the three of us were at that arcade, taking pictures together and having fun. What would it have been like in a world without that diversion program? I tried to imagine seeing Himiko’s face through the thick glass window of a prison door, of her in a drab green prison uniform, of her hands and feet shackled and her mouth muzzled to prevent her from using her quirk. It made me want to cry. It wasn’t just like imagining anyone in prison. It was like imagining Ochako in prison. To even think about someone so close to me being treated that way…

“We’re doing what’s right, Ochako.” I put my hand on her thigh and smiled. “We’re doing this for Himiko. For her, and for everyone like her.”

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Four years before the present

When I got ready for work, I’d sometimes put on clips of old interviews that Izuku and Ochako did for the news. I liked seeing their faces, hearing their voices. It made me smile.

“We wanted to show this remarkable footage of your river rescue, Uravity. It’s incredible to watch.”

I’m sure I saw the video half a dozen times already, but it was still unbelievable each time. A traffic camera captured the moment a car went through the guardrail on the Anzai Bridge and fell into the water.

“You can see that shocking moment,” the anchor continued. “And then not even thirty seconds later, you’re on the scene.”

The screen showed Ochako swinging in from a light pole and, without hesitating, diving into the water. Maybe another thirty seconds after that, the car slowly rises out of the water while Ochako swam to shore before she turned around, grappled it, and pulled it to dry land.

“What was that rescue like? And how were you able to respond so quickly?”

“Well, my patrol path happened to put me in that part of Musutafu already, and I could hear the sound of a crash, so I went airborne and could see the spot where the guardrail was broken. Then, instinct just takes over.” Ochako was wearing her hero uniform for her interview. The way it hugs her body is so cute!

“It’s amazing how fearless you were.” I could hear the astonishment in the anchor’s voice.

“I mean, heroes kind of have to put everything else aside to save people. If it was another hero who was there, they would have done the same thing, I’m sure.” That was classic Ochako, humble as ever.

“Nevertheless, you saved those people in incredible fashion. I’m sure those people are incredibly grateful.”

“I’m just grateful that I could help.” So humble, Ochako!

“Speaking of incredible rescues, I have to ask you about you and your partner Deku’s apprehension of that villain in downtown Musutafu.” A graphic appeared next to the anchor showing the spot downtown where he had been captured. “The two of you worked well together to capture him before he could kidnap anyone off the street. How do you two coordinate so well?”

“Deku and I are very close,” Ochako said. That was an understatement! But I guess she didn’t need to tell the public that they were dating…even if everyone could already figure that out for themselves. “It makes it a lot easier to know each other’s strategies and tactics, and so when there’s an emergency, we don’t need to take time to figure out what the other person is doing. We just know.”

“That’s a remarkable relationship.” If only the anchor knew. And honestly…her saying that stung me a little. She didn’t mean relationship in the sense of dating, but I knew that they were dating, and it hurt to be reminded that the two people I loved were dating each other…and not me. It was the hardest part of listening to that clip again. But I clung to that little glimmer from my conversation with Ochako before she flew off to catch that villain. Do you think it’s possible for somebody to be in love with more than one person? To love two people equally? I knew there was room in Ochako’s heart for the two of us, just like I had room for the two of them.

The anchor continued, prodding for more info. “Now, some in the local media are calling him the Sewer Swiper. Police have told us that his goal may have been to seize people for ransom. What can you tell us about the motivations of this Sewer Swiper?”

“Honestly, the police probably know more about his state of mind than we do,” Ochako answered. “We heroes are focused on keeping people safe.”

“Uravity, thank you so much for joining us.”

The clip ended as I finished putting on my work uniform. Even with that relationship line in there, I loved watching that one. The fact that it aired the day after my conversation with Ocahko, and that they talked about the villain that Ochako left me to go capture…it made me think of her. Of us. And that made me so happy.

As I went downstairs, I stopped by the mailbox area to see if I had anything. There was just one letter, in an official-looking envelope with the seal of the Ministry of Justice. I pulled it out and opened it.

Himiko Toga,

The Ministry of Justice has certified that you have complied with the terms of your participation in the Alternatives to Incarceration Diversion Project (AIDP) by fully participating in required AIDP programs and refraining from any unlawful conduct since enrolling. Therefore, the Ministry of Justice is pleased to inform you that you have completed this program, effective as of the postmarked date on this correspondence. The criminal activity that precipitated your enrollment in the AIDP has been expunged.

The Ministry of Justice congratulates you on your successful completion of this program and wishes you success in your continued positive contributions to Japanese society.

The criminal activity that precipitated your enrollment has been expunged. I could hardly believe my eyes. Before, I felt pushed out by society. I thought I'd be a villain forever. When I was in chains in a police station after that raid on the UA training camp, I could never have imagined what my life would be like now. Even after getting out of the intensive rehabilitation part of the program, I wasn’t sure of myself. Seeing my old home vandalized, how much people had hated me…it made me want to turn my back on everything again. But now? I was free. I had a home of my own. I had friends— real friends, who were pro heroes right out of high school. I had two crushes that I could talk to without trying to stab!

I held the letter in front of me and took a picture. I had two people I just had to share this with.

Himiko [08:39]: Look what came in the mail!

Himiko [08:39]: <photo>

Himiko [08:40]: I officially finished my program!! ╰( ^o^)╮╰( ^o^)╮

Ochako [8:41]: That’s amazing!! So proud of you (´∀`)

Izuku [8:41]: You did it!! 〔´∇｀〕

I knew they’d be happy to hear it. I couldn’t contain the grin on my face as I made my way to work.

Ochako [8:43]: We should celebrate tonight!

Ochako [8:43]: Maybe when we finish our patrol and you get off work, we can go get dinner? We can treat you (´◡`)

Part of me felt weird saying yes. Two pro heroes offering to buy me dinner to celebrate that I…basically finished probation? But I would never say no to spending time with them.

Himiko [08:44]: DEFINITELY!! Let me know where!

Himiko [08:44]: My shift ends at 18:00

Izuku [8:45]: Our patrol ends in the afternoon, so that’s perfect for us!

Ochako [8:45]: We’ll text you the place. So excited!! （＾ω＾）

We went out to a yakiniku restaurant in central Musutafu that evening. We all had time to change out of our work clothes, but even when they weren’t in their hero outfits, Izuku’s green hair and Ochako’s blush always stood out. Other people noticed, too. I saw one or two people point and whisper excitedly. These two were celebrities.

“Himiko!” Ochako waved excitedly at me, and I walked over to them, sitting in an empty seat across from the two of them.

“We ordered the all-you-can-eat option for three, so they should be bringing food out soon.” Izuku handed me a small menu. “And here are their drinks. Everything without alcohol is at the bottom.”

It felt weird that the government said it was okay for people our age to put themselves in harm’s way as pro heroes but couldn’t have alcohol. Whatever. Two more years until we could all do that.

“So, how does it feel?” Ochako looked at me and smiled. “You finished the program. So this means you get to fully start over like nothing happened?”

“I mean…I guess…”

Ochako must have been able to tell that I was uneasy. “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that!” She waved her hands as if trying to erase the question she asked. “I mean, of course there was the war and everything, but I meant, like…you know…”

I set my hand flat on the table in front of her, half expecting her to put hers on top of mine like she did in the park. “It’s okay, Ochako.”

“We’re just happy that you don’t have to worry about that one part of your past anymore,” Izuku chimed in.

“Yeah.” Ochako smiled again. “Without a record, there’s so much more that you can do.”

The server came by with a large tray of cuts of raw meat, with a hole in the center of the tray just large enough for the yakiniku grill that had been burning since I arrived. The three of us started placing our chosen pieces of meat on the grill.

“So, what are you planning to do?” Ochako looked at me curiously. “I know you have your FamilyMark job, but have you thought about what’s next for you?”

I knew the answer, but I still wrestled with actually telling them. “I think…I want to study for the HeroSET.”

Their mouths hung wide open, as if they saw me do a backflip in the middle of the restaurant.

“The HeroSET!?” Ochako exclaimed. “Like, the test for people who want to be heroes after high school?”

“That’s incredible!” Izuku smiled. “To think that you started out being a villain, and now you want to study to be a hero…amazing!”

“Well, they mentioned it was something I’d be able to do when I finished the diversion program.” And besides, I thought to myself, I want to be more like you. More like the people I love.

“Do you have a study program picked out?”

“When will you start?”

“Will you tell us what it’s like?”

I feel like they had so many questions for me about it, which honestly amazed me. The Hero School Equivalency Test allows adults who didn’t attend a hero school to basically get a certificate as if they had been to one, which lets them take the hero licensing exam just like any other hero student. But HeroSET prep courses were a world apart from what they did at UA High School. They went to the most prestigious hero school in Japan. I was enrolling at the bottom of the pyramid…if it even counted as being on the pyramid in the first place. I think Americans have something similar—the GED? For people who didn’t finish high school, or something like that. The opposite of glamorous, totally different from their education. So the fact that they were so excited for me, even though my goals were so basic compared to what they had already done…it made me so happy, because it meant they really cared about me!

“I’m still figuring all that out,” I said, pulling my beef off of the grill. “But I’ll tell you all about it, and I’m probably going to ask you for help every now and again, if that’s okay.”

“Of course!” Ochako chirped, flipping her cut of meat over on the grill.

I pulled my beef apart in the center just slightly to see how cooked it was. It was red in the center. Rare. Just how I like it. Eating meat cooked rare, feeling the juice run out of a warm piece of flesh, looking into the center and seeing red…it just satisfied something primal in me. Probably the same part that likes blood.

“I think ours is ready,” Izuku said, pulling his off of the grill. Ochako did the same.

“Itadakimasu!”

We ate and talked about how our days went. How the two of them ran into a shy child on their patrol who wanted to be a hero just like them. How I had an older customer try to flirt with me while I was at the register. How they were hoping to start hiring more staff at their office. How I bought a new frame for my favorite photo of the three of us. All the while, Ochako was playing with her hair and laughing. Izuku tapped his foot against mine under the table a few times. I couldn’t stop grinning. I was just so happy to be with them, as busy and crazy as our lives were. This felt good. It felt right.

Izuku and Ochako took the bill for themselves to pay. I protested that I should at least pay for my drinks, but they insisted.

“We’re celebrating you, Himiko!” Izuku said with a smile.

“Yeah, this is our treat!” Ochako tilted her head, grinning as wide as I was.

We walked outside and went our separate ways in the warm air of the summer night. As I walked home, my stomach and my heart full, I thought about Ochako’s question again.

Have you thought about what’s next for you?

Every day. Every day, I thought about what’s next. Every time I saw them in their hero outfits, or heard about them on the news, I thought about it. I love them, and I want to be like the ones I love. Had I thought about what’s next? Absolutely, I did—about becoming a hero, just like them.

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Four years before the present

One thing they didn’t teach us at UA was how much hero work would eat into our free time. Some days, we’d get lucky, like when we got to celebrate Himiko’s program finishing up, but other times, a big assignment, or lots of little ones, would have us running around all day and night. And even without a busy day on patrol or on contract work, there was still the office work that went with running an agency.

“Our finances are improving,” Sojo told us. The three of us were sitting down for our weekly meeting on the status of the company. “Even though the contracts we’ve been getting are small, there are enough of them for us to hire some support staff—maybe a communications aide to relay emergency information, or possibly an intern or two. A sidekick would be a major stretch right now, but hopefully we should get there in perhaps the next year.”

Izuku looked like he was spacing out a little. I put my hand on his leg, and he picked his head up. “Anything else?” I asked.

“That’s all for this week.”

“Thank you,” I said, standing and bowing to Sojo. Izuku did the same. “You can head home for the night.”

He returned our bow and headed for the elevator. I waited for the door to close behind him.

“Izuku?” I looked at him. “Is everything okay?”

“Just tired,” he said—and he sounded like it. “It feels like this week has been nonstop.”

“Well, maybe we should take tonight to relax.” I wrapped my arms around him, resting on his shoulders. “How does that sound? We could have a night to ourselves, just you and me?”

“But…wouldn’t we be bothering our parents?” We hadn’t gotten around to getting our own places to live yet. I guess it’s ironic that we got an apartment for Himiko before we found one for ourselves.

“They’re in Fukuoka watching a baseball game.” My dad didn’t get much time off, but whatever time off he didn’t use for me or my mom, he liked to watch his team play in person. My mom tagged along too. “They’re coming back tomorrow night. We won’t be bothering anyone.”

“Ochako…” He grabbed my hands. It’s as though the stress had melted off his face. “Let’s go.”

By the time we got back to my room, it was late, and we were so eager to get back that we didn’t even change out of our hero outfits. We could barely contain ourselves. It felt like so long ago when Izuku and I last had time that we could just spend together.

“Izuku…help me out of my uniform?” I turned around and faced away from him, taking my gauntlets off. Not even a few seconds later, I felt him behind me, undoing the hidden zipper at the back of my hero outfit while he kissed my neck. He brushed his crotch against my ass through our clothes. He was already hard.

“Ochako…”

“You can just slide it off.”

I felt his hands run along my shoulders as he slid his fingers under my hero suit, gently coaxing it off of me, before he wrapped his arms around me, one arm around my waist, the other with a hand cupping my chest.

“I want to feel your skin on mine, Izuku.” I turned around, finding the fastener for his outfit and starting to undo it. As I did, he put his hands on my cheeks and lifted my head up so my eyes met his.

“Ochako…you look so beautiful.”

It didn’t matter how many times I heard him say that. It still made my heart happy. My eyes watered. “Izuku…!”

I tore his outfit open and kissed my way down from his face to his chest and further until I reached his waist.

“Let me taste you,” I whispered, pulling his dick out. It was hard and veiny in my hands. The tip just poked out with my fingers wrapped around it. I put my lips against it and lowered my mouth onto him.

“Ochako…” He put his hands on the back of my head, as if to encourage me to take him deeper. Feeling him in my mouth, my tongue running over the bumpy veins…it always felt so good.

“Mmmmmm…” I couldn’t speak with my mouth full, but I always want to tell him how good he tastes in those moments. How happy it makes me when I get him excited.

“You feel so good, Ochako!” He was thrusting now, too excited to hold back. I could feel him bumping up against the back of my mouth—any harder and he’d have gone into my throat. “I think I’m gonna—”

I pulled myself off of him. “Wait!” I said, standing up. I grabbed his hand and put it over my pussy. Having him thrust into my mouth made me soaking wet, and I wanted him to feel it. “I want you to finish inside me, Izuku.”

At first, he didn’t say a word, but I could see the “yes” in his eyes. He pulled me in and kissed me. “How do you want it?”

I laid back on my bed, my legs spread open for him. “Get on top of me, Izuku.” I held my pussy open with two fingers. “I want to look at you while you cum inside me.”

He slipped off the rest of his hero outfit and climbed onto me. I loved having him surrounding me. It made me feel safe and loved.

“Go slow at first, okay?” I said softly. “It’s been a few months since we’ve done this.”

“Okay.” He held his dick in his hand, guiding it into me. He was still hard, his dick still wet from my blowjob. “I’m gonna…” Izuku started. I nodded before he could finish. And then, he slid into me.

“Mmmm!” It didn’t hurt like I was afraid it would after such a long time since our last time, but he slid right in. I felt so full with him inside of me. I missed how it felt every time, no matter how long it’s been. He started slow, just like I asked him to, and he slid his dick in and out.

“Izukuuuuu…” I moaned.

“Ochako, you feel amazing!”

“Please, keep going…” I played with my clit while he slid back and forth, picking up the pace ever so slightly. “Ah, Izuku!” The feeling of him filling me up while I played with myself was making me go crazy. “You can go faster…”

He grabbed my hips, pulling himself into me harder and faster. The sound of him slamming into me, filling me up with each thrust, got me even more worked up as I played with myself.

“Ochako, you’re making me feel so good!”

“Me too, Izuku…I think I’m gonna cum!” I felt it building, and then it felt like an explosion of sensation throughout my body. “Aaaaaaahhhhh!!” As he pounded me, I screamed. My face felt hot, and my mind went blank. All I could think about was Izuku and how good he was making me feel.

“Ochako…you’re gonna make me cum too!”

I wrapped my legs around him. “Yes! Cum inside me, Izuku! Pleeeease!”

“Ah, I’m cumming!”

His thrusting became frantic—and then it stopped with one last deep thrust. I felt his dick throbbing inside of me, his cum filling me.

“Izuku…” I was in a total state of bliss.

“Ochako…” Izuku collapsed on top of me, and I felt his face against mine. He rolled over beside me, one arm still draped over me. “That was amazing.”

“I think we both needed that.” I kissed his nose. I always liked watching him smile when I did that.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

With his arm still resting on my chest, I curled up next to him and drifted off to sleep.

I woke up before Izuku did, so I went into the kitchen to make breakfast for us to eat after he woke up. Sex that night definitely cleared my head. I think it cleared his, too. I thought about how amazing it felt to be with Izuku. How safe and how loved he makes me feel. How much I adore him. But after we finished, I also couldn’t stop thinking about how Himiko had been sleeping in my bed for all those months. I thought about her in bed with me. With both of us.

I heard a yawn in the doorway. “Good morning, Ochako!”

“Morning, Izuku.” I smiled. “Did you sleep well?”

“After last night? Definitely!” He grinned. “You?”

“Same here.” I handed him a plate. “Breakfast?”

We sat down and started to eat. Maybe I hoped that seeing him in the morning would snap me out of it, but I couldn’t get those thoughts out of my head. It’s like I was arguing with myself—one part of me shouting to give a voice to what I wanted for us, the other part screaming to not risk losing the incredible love that I already had with Izuku.

“Uh, Izuku…can I ask you something?” I couldn’t stop myself. I guess I know what part of me won out that day. I was so nervous at what I was about to ask. “Do you, uh…do you ever feel love towards more than one person?”

Izuku looked up from his plate with a puzzled look on his face. “You mean like…romantic love?”

“Yeah…”

“Uh…” He looked deep in thought, like I asked him to name the capital of some micronation on the other side of the world. “I never thought about whether I could. Maybe? Why do you ask?”

“Well…” My heart was pounding. Was I about to end every good thing that Izuku and I had? Our relationship? Our agency? “I think…I’m someone who can feel romantic attraction to different people. And I wanted to know, uh…how you felt about love in general. So…yeah. That’s why I asked.”

Izuku put his chopsticks down and smiled, reaching across the table to grab my hand. “Ochako, you know how much I love you, right?” I nodded. Words weren’t coming to me anymore. “Thinking about how happy that makes me feel…you must feel that same happiness when you think about the two of us. And if you can feel that happiness with other people…well, wouldn’t that make you even happier? And seeing you happy makes me happy.”

I was shocked, in the best possible way. Was he understanding me? But I shouldn’t have been shocked at all. This is who Izuku is. He was always empathetic, always understanding other people, feeling their feelings, even if he didn’t understand his own.

“I don’t want to stop you from feeling how you feel,” he continued. “I love you, and I know you love me. I haven’t figured out if I can love multiple people, because I haven’t really thought of it before…but if you know that you can…well, I think that’s fantastic.”

I felt tears of happiness in my eyes. “I love you so much, Izuku.”

“I love you too,” he said with a smile before returning to his food. “I’m curious…was there someone you met who was making you feel this way?”

I smiled and looked down. “You’re gonna think it’s crazy, but…” I told him about Himiko and our conversation in the park just before Izuku called me to help capture that villain.

He looked at me, and I could see that, behind his eyes, he was deep in thought. “Hmmm…honestly, that makes sense. I see why you like her.” He was muttering in his typical Izuku way. “She’s pretty, she’s incredibly passionate, she’s remarkably resilient given everything that she’s been through, she’s put a lot of effort into improving her life…and we’ve spent a lot of time with her, even more than a lot of our old UA classmates.”

“I know, right? Spending time with her just feels…different.”

“Honestly? I think you have good taste.”

“So you’re not mad? Or jealous?”

“Of course not!” Izuku had a big smile on his face now. “And I’m not saying I’ll never get jealous, but if I do, then we’ll talk about it like the adults we are. It’s not like we own each other. Just because we love each other doesn’t mean we own each other’s hearts.”

I could hardly believe my ears. Izuku was always mature beyond his age, but I was so scared that he would react poorly that I didn’t stop to think about how he might react well—and he was more open-minded than I could have possibly dreamed.

“You amaze me, Izuku. In the best ways.”

He smiled. “So do you, Ochako. Every day.” Clearing his plate, he stood up. “Now, we have work to do, don’t we?”

I nodded. We did. Protecting our city couldn’t stop for two young adults in love. We picked our hero suits off the floor next to my bed and put them back on. We still had a job to do.

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Four years before the present

It was definitely weird to be going back to school as an adult, even if it wasn’t called “school.” Still, I remember how excited I was getting off the bus that evening, coming from my job at FamilyMark with my backpack slung over my shoulder. Standing in front of the Musutafu Education and Vocational Center, with its mix of juku cram schools and prep programs for senmon gakkō trade schools, I looked for the sign for my program. There it was, on the seventh floor: Windflower Academy HeroSET Preparatory Program.

I wasn’t the oldest person in the building, but walking in, I was definitely a little older than most. Nearly everyone around me was still in high school, heading to one of the cram schools because their parents were pushing them to get into some top-tier university or something like that. I felt for them. Maybe it wasn’t exactly the same as what happened with me, but I knew the feeling of having parents who wanted you to be something other than what you wanted. I packed into an elevator with a bunch of other people and waited for it to reach the seventh floor. As crowded as it was, some people close to me tried to give me space. They didn’t look me in the eye.

I tried to shake off that feeling of being shunned as I got to my floor and stood in front of the sign for Windflower Academy. My whole life for the past three years had been new starts, and this was another one! I turned on selfie mode on my phone and took a picture of myself with my backpack in front of the sign before walking through the doors, down the hallway, and into the classroom. I typed out a caption for my Pinstagram post as I sat down at one of the 30 or so desks.

@himitoga • 17:56

First day of class 📚📓 Excited for another new start!

While I and the others in my class waited for the teacher to come in, my phone immediately buzzed. Izuku and Ochako liked my post, and texted me straight away.

Ochako [17:57]: You’re starting classes today?? So exciting!

Ochako [17:57]: Good luck! \(^ヮ^)/

Izuku [17:57]: You can do it, Himiko! (๑˃ᴗ˂)ﻭ We believe in you!

They were always so thoughtful. Any time I see a notification from them, it makes me smile. I wanted to reply right away, but with class about to start, I didn’t want to get in trouble for being distracted on my first day. Not exactly what a former criminal trying to turn her life around should do. I put my phone on silent and waited for class to start. And waited. And waited. The clock passed 6 PM, and kept going. Some of the other students started glancing around. Was our teacher going to show up?

The door opened, and in walked an older man with white hair and a very tired look on his face. There was our teacher, ten minutes late.

“Good evening,” he said with a massive yawn, setting a briefcase on his desk. “My name is Yokumiro Mera. I’ll be your instructor here at Windflower Academy.”

I had never heard of this guy. I knew Izuku and Ochako had pro heroes teaching them, but that was UA, Japan’s best hero school. I didn’t know what to expect from this place.

“I’m sure most of you don’t know me, so I’ll introduce myself,” he continued in his tired monotone. “I spent 20 years working for the Hero Public Safety Commission until about three years ago. I served as acting president for several months until the Prime Minister appointed a new president.”

Three years ago. So, when the war happened. I could hear faint murmurs from the other students around me. They picked up on that too.

“Since leaving,” he continued, “I’ve been an instructor here to help adults like you take the HeroSET and prepare for the license exams.” He sat down, his head hanging like he was about to fall asleep at his desk. “I’m sure you all are eager to do the work needed to become licensed and contribute to helping society.”

The people around me seemed bored. Honestly, I was, too. He looked super sleepy, and the way he spoke wasn’t very exciting.

“I want to be transparent about this program, though.” He looked up, still sleepy. “The path that you’ve chosen for yourselves is a difficult one. I’m not talking about the dangers that come with hero work. I mean the difficulty of the HeroSET itself.”

His tone hadn’t changed, but the mood in the room did. It was like he was about to give us bad news.

“You may have heard that the HeroSET is an adult equivalent of hero school.” He let out a big yawn. “In the sense of enabling you to take the hero licensing exam after completing it, then yes, it is. But unlike hero schools, you will not receive combat training. You will not be given hero outfits. Our lessons are limited to the hero rules and regulations on which you will be assessed when you take the HeroSET. We’ll discuss the licensing exam, but any physical training for it, and any support equipment, is your own responsibility.”

I didn’t think we would get anything like that, but hearing it spelled out definitely drove home how different my class was from what Izuku and Ochako got.

“Furthermore, even after the licensing exam, most HeroSET test takers do not go on to become full-fledged heroes.” His eyes were half-open at this point. I wondered if he would actually fall asleep in the middle of this class. “Many go on to only be sidekicks or support staff at hero agencies, and that’s all assuming that you finish this course and take the test. Look at the people to your left and your right.”

I looked around. So did the others.

“Statistically, only one of you out of every three will finish this course. Even fewer will become licensed. And on average, only one of the people in this classroom will go on to actually do hero work.”

Everyone in the class started whispering, shocked. What a harsh way to start! Was he trying to get people to drop out?

“I know this sounds blunt.” The class got quiet again as he spoke. “I may seem like I don’t think your time here is valuable. But I say this not because I think you are wasting your time. In fact, I think it is admirable that you want to be here and do this hard work.” His eyes closed for a good two or three seconds. I could have sworn he fell asleep, but then they reopened. He must have just been resting them, I guess.

“I want you to know what the challenges are so that you can overcome them,” he continued, rummaging around in his briefcase for something. “Those of you who are truly committed can do good work. Your best chance at not only passing the HeroSET but also the licensing exam is to try to intern with a hero agency. Learning from their experience will make you a stronger student and a better HeroSET candidate.” He fished out some papers. “Okay. Let me go over the structure of our course for the…”

I don’t remember much else from that day of class. It was mostly just things like how we would be graded and what the course would teach and stuff like that, which was all in the syllabus. But his little speech at the beginning about how hard it was to become a hero with just the HeroSET made me nervous. What if I was wasting my time? What if I couldn’t become like Izuku and Ochako after all?

Those of you who are truly committed can do good work.

No. I wasn’t wasting my time. I wanted this, and I wanted this badly . Standing outside after class, waiting for the bus in the dark, I felt as determined as ever to finish this course, take this test, and get my hero license. And yeah, I knew it might be hard…but I also knew two pro heroes who would be there to help me get through it.

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Four years before the present

“So, yeah, that’s what my class has been like so far.”

Himiko wanted to tell me about her first couple of months of classes. She joined me on one of my patrols in the evening on one of her off days; with classes three evenings a week after work, it meant that she didn’t have a ton of free time. Just like me and Ochako.

“So it’s mostly focused on the penal code and the Heroes Code of Regulations?” I asked. She nodded. “I mean, I guess that makes sense. We had to learn about that, too. And you’re not learning about any other high school subjects like math and Japanese and everything else. But…you don’t talk about tactics? Or train your quirks?”

“I think we’ll have a couple of basic lessons on tactics and stuff, but we were told that we’d have to do training on our own.”

“Ah, I see.” I shouldn’t have been super surprised. Different hero schools teach different hero tactics, and this was just a program focused on the HeroSET. It made sense that all of their focus was on the written test. Really, it was kind of remarkable that they talked about tactics at all.

“What was your program like, Izuku?” Himiko looked at me curiously as we stood on a street corner waiting for the light to change. It was evening in a business district, and the streets were pretty empty as the office workers had all left for the day.

“I mean…” That was such a broad question. We had a very abnormal first year because of the war, and an abnormal second and third year because of the recovery from it. It was a dream and a nightmare all rolled into one. I wouldn’t trade my time at UA for anything, but it was grueling, and the war made our school an enormous target. I made it a target. I still felt a little guilty for it. I was supposed to save people, not put them in danger. But I was getting lost in my own thoughts. I had to just tell Himiko what hero school was like, as best as I could. “We had working heroes teaching classes for us. It was a mix of different subjects—some regular school topics, but also lessons on hero regulations. And we always had training on our quirks or on emergency response, every day.”

“Oh wow,” Himiko said. “That’s pretty different from what we’re doing.” The light changed, and we stepped into the crosswalk. “Uh…one thing that Mera-sensei told us was that we could have a better chance of success if we interned with a pro agency while we took lessons.”

“Yeah, that would be super helpful!” I remember my time with Gran Torino as he helped me get a handle on One for All so that I wouldn’t destroy myself every time I used it. I didn’t learn everything in one go, but I definitely wouldn’t have been as successful as I was without that. “Do you get to participate in work-studies too?”

“Um…I don’t know.” Himiko looked confused. “Is that different? They didn’t say anything to us about that.”

“Well…” I thought about my time at Sir Nighteye’s agency. As tragically as that ended…I know that all of us in 1-A fought hard to get into work-study programs so that we could get true hands-on experience. “Internships are more behind-the-scenes stuff, or shadowing a hero. Work-study programs let licensed students train under a hero and do field work—” I stopped myself. Licensed. Right. “Oh, I’m sorry, Himiko…I forgot that your license process is different.”

She didn’t say anything as we walked out of the business district and turned onto a street bustling with izakaya and restaurants. All the office workers had migrated here, and the energy on the street felt carefree, like people had been waiting all day to let go of their inhibitions.

“You know, Himiko…we’ve actually been talking about hiring soon at the agency.” I turned to her and smiled. “Maybe you can intern with us?”

She immediately burst into a wide smile, her fists in front of her face shaking with excitement like a child holding a bag of candy in each hand. “I’d love that!”

“We have a meeting tomorrow. I can’t promise you anything on my own, since we have to decide as a business, but…I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to be our intern.”

“Please let me know, Izuku.” Her eyes sparkled and her grin refused to go away. “It would make me so happy to work with you and Ochako.” She hopped to the street corner under a bus stop sign. “I need to head home, but I want to hear from you about this, okay, Izuku? You made me so happy!”

I smiled and nodded before turning the other way, heading back to the agency office. I was so excited at the idea of her working for us that I didn’t even have the presence of mind to tell her to call me by my hero name when I was out in uniform. It wasn’t until I walked away that my conversation with Ochako popped into my head. Himiko was her crush . Would having her in the office make things weird for Ochako? Working with two people that she loves? I hoped that I didn’t make a promise I couldn’t keep.

“Now that we’ve gone through contracts and payment numbers, I have something else I wanted to share with you.” Sojo was leading our end-of-week meeting as usual, running through our finances and telling us that our contracts and patrol payouts had us on a positive trajectory. Before I could even tell him to continue, he had taken out a sheet of paper with a floorplan of office space in our building and set it on the table.

“Our office?” Ochako asked after glancing at the paper.

“The one above ours, actually.” Sojo flipped to another sheet of paper. “The import/export company above us is not renewing their lease, and they’ll be vacating at the end of the month. I think we should lease the space.”

“What makes you say that?” I was confused. Yes, we were doing better in terms of our cash flow, but we still had a good amount of space on this floor that we weren’t using. The office wasn’t huge by any means, but it was still more than enough space for us to fit the three of us, plus our combined break room/meeting area. We could probably hire another four people with their own offices, put in a reception desk, and have a proper meeting room with the space we had. Why spend more money on more space?

Sojo leaned forward. “If we want to expand, we will need a real-time command center. Those take up a lot of space. With TV and computer screens, communications equipment, secure relays…even a small one would take up half of a floor in this building, and if we tried to squeeze it into the space we have now, there would be nothing left over for any new hires.”

“Couldn’t we rent the space later, Sojo-san?” Ochako asked. It was like she read my mind.

“There’s no guarantee that the space will stay vacant,” Sojo replied. “Someone else could come in and claim it, and we can’t have the command center in a separate building. Even if another floor opened up in this one, you’d want the command center adjacent to our main workspace for secure communications and easy access.”

He made good points. All of these things are the sorts of issues that I would never have thought of without the heroics management education that he had.

“It’s up to you,” Sojo said, his head resting on his hands. “But my recommendation is to secure this lease and set the stage for us to expand later.”

I thought for a moment. He was right—it was a slim window of opportunity. Even so…

“How will this affect our ability to hire more staff like we discussed earlier?” I asked; Himiko’s request was still fresh in my mind. I would have hated to tell her that we couldn’t help.

“We would definitely have to delay major full-time hires,” Sojo replied. “But we should still have the funds to hire one intern, and if we’re able to sublet the space, we’d be able to offset our expenses until we can get a command center set up.”

Good. So Himiko could still get her internship. I stood up. “Thank you, Sojo–san . Anything else?”

“That’s all for today.”

“Good work as always.” I bowed to him; Ochako stood and did the same. “Feel free to head home.”

He stood up, bowed, and gathered his things. As he walked out the door, Ochako turned to me.

“Were you thinking of hiring someone?”

“Well, I…actually wanted to ask you about that.” I sat back down. “You see, Himiko asked me the other day about internships, and I told her we were hiring, but I…well, you told me how you feel about her, and I don’t want to make things weird for you if you don’t want her working for us, but I also want to help her to become a pro hero, and—”

Ochako put her hand on my thigh. I was nervous and starting to ramble, and she could tell. “Izuku, I would love for Himiko to work here.” She smiled. “You didn’t have to worry.”

I felt myself blushing. “I just…this is all new, and I don’t know what’s okay and what’s not, so…”

“I’m glad you asked me.” She took my hand. “It means a lot that you cared to check.”

I smiled, relieved. I really did have myself worried for no reason.

“And actually, since we’re already talking about it…” Now Ochako was the one blushing. “We should probably discuss a little more about that conversation we had…”

“About you and Himiko?”

“Yeah, and…you know…dating other people?” She started fidgeting. “I don’t want this to be unfair or unbalanced. I’ll feel bad if this is just you giving me a hall pass. So…if I can date other people, then so can you.”

“Are you…but…are you sure?” I don’t know why I was so caught off guard. “There’s not really anyone else I feel that way about.” Or so I thought at the time.

“Well, if I’m exploring this part of myself, then you should, too.” She looked at me, confidence in her eyes. “So yes, I’m sure, Izuku.”

I smiled. Ochako was always so thoughtful. “Okay. And don’t feel like you have to keep secrets from me, okay? You can tell me about how you feel about anyone without having to worry.”

Ochako smiled. “Thank you, Izuku. And you know you can tell me anything, too.”

It felt like a weight off my shoulders. I always want to help everyone, and I get anxious when helping one person means not being able to help another. It felt even worse when it was Ochako and Himiko. I wanted to help Himiko follow her dreams, but I didn’t want to hurt Ochako in the process. My fear of those two things being in conflict…it was eating me more than I realized, until I felt the absolute sense of relief at finding out that I really could help Himiko, and that Ochako was as on board with it as I was. I don’t know if I was in denial about how I felt about Himiko back then, or if I just hadn’t figured it out, but I knew that I cared a lot about her. All I knew is that our agency could help her—and we were going to do exactly that.

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Four years before the present

Just a couple of minutes before my shift at FamilyMark was supposed to start, my phone rang. And it never does that—not without someone texting first to ask if it was okay to call. I was sure it was spam, so when I saw Ochako’s name and picture, I was surprised—and worried. Was something wrong? People didn’t just call out of the blue without a good reason.

“Ochako-chan ? Is everything okay?”

“Hi Himiko-chan !” She sounded happy. Phew. That was a relief. “Sorry to call you so early in the day, but I wanted to know if you could come by the office soon.”

“The agency office? Uh, let me see…” I tapped to look at the calendar app on my phone. “I have work and class all day, but is it okay if I stop by tomorrow? Like, maybe four o’clock?”

There was a pause—I guess so she could talk to Izuku? Or somebody else in the office? The seconds ticked down until I was supposed to clock in. I didn’t want to be tardy, but I didn’t want to hang up on Ochako either…

“That works!” She sounded as bubbly and cheerful as ever.

“Um, Ochako-chan …can I ask what this is for?”

“Deku said you wanted to intern with us, so we wanted you to come by the office to discuss it some more with you.”

My eyes went wide. Was it really happening? Me, getting to work with Izuku and Ochako?

“I’ll be there!”

“Great!” I could practically hear her smile through the phone. “We’re excited to see you!”

As Ochako hung up, I could feel myself about to burst with excitement. I couldn’t stop smiling if I tried. After so many nightmares, I was having dream after dream come true.

I practically skipped through the front doors, the cheerful FamilyMark jingle playing behind me.

“Not a minute too soon, Toga-san.” I saw my boss pile his head out from the back room. “You’re ten seconds away from being late.”

“Sorry for the delay.” I bowed. “I just got a call that I couldn’t miss.”

“Well, you sure seem cheerful.” He shut the door to the back room as I turned on the register. He didn’t know the half of it. Me? Interviewing for a hero internship? Younger me would never have believed it. And with Izuku and Ochako! Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough for me.

I don’t know why I was so nervous the next day, but I was. I only had an hour between the end of my shift at FamilyMark and my meeting at Harunote Agency, and I didn’t have any business-y clothes, so I hurried into the shopping mall at the train station where Ochako and I had tried on clothes before. I didn’t have much time, but I found a nice cream-colored blouse, a navy blue blazer and pencil skirt, and a little red tie. I liked it. It was like a little thread back to the sailor fuku outfit I wore when I was younger. Like a symbol of growing up, but still being true to who I’ve always been at my core. Plus, it made me look cute.

I paid for my new outfit while still wearing it, only taking the tags off so the clerk could scan them. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was wearing a suit, people probably would’ve thought I was stealing something with how fast I left that store. But I was in a rush—I just had to have this internship. I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew I had to work with Izuku and Ochako. To get close to them. To be with them.

As I raced over and turned into the building with their agency offices, I hopped into the elevator with just a minute or two to spare. The elevator felt like it was crawling up impossibly slowly. Maybe it was just my own nerves. Was my hair okay? Were there still tags sticking out on my clothes? Was I sweaty from running over here? What do I even say? I never interviewed for anything before!

Finally, I reached their floor. As the doors opened, there was a small group of like six or so construction people with a cart of materials waiting to get in. I slipped past them.

“Thank you for all your help!” I heard Ochako call out from inside the door to the office. She turned and looked at me. She wasn’t in her hero outfit; instead, she was wearing a pink blouse and black high-waisted pants. So professional of her. And so cute! “Oh, you made it! Please come in—we’ve been waiting for you.”

I hadn’t actually seen the inside of their office before then. I walked in behind Ochako past a front desk that didn’t seem to have anyone sitting behind it.

“Sorry that the place is a little bare right now,” Ochako said sheepishly. “That construction team was actually just now helping us get our new conference room set up, so hopefully it’s alright for you.” Alright for me? As if they had to work to impress me—I was just happy to be here.

She held a door open and gestured for me to walk through. Sitting across the table, I saw Izuku wearing a charcoal gray suit and red tie. At first glance, you could easily think he was wearing his old uniform from UA. And there was another guy further down the table, too, with a jacket draped over the chair he was sitting in, scribbling notes.

“You must be Toga -san ,” he said, looking up from his papers. “Please, take a seat.”

I sat down as Izuku smiled at me from across the table and Ochako took her seat next to him.

“My name is Yuuto Sojo,” he continued. “I’m the chief operating officer for Harunote Agency. Deku and Uravity will be leading this meeting for the most part, but I am here to answer any questions you might have.”

I sat waiting for the first question from them, and it never came. There wasn’t even a clock in the room, so I don’t know how many seconds went by. Five? Ten? It felt like ages.

“Um…I’m grateful for the opportunity to interview for this.” I bowed my head. I wasn’t used to being formal like this, but I was so nervous that I just did it without thinking. “Please ask whatever questions you’d like.”

“Oh, Himi– uh, Toga-san…” Izuku clasped his hands in front of him. “This isn’t a competitive interview. We’ve already decided we want to have you as an intern.”

“Yeah.” Ochako sat forward. “This is just for us to tell you about what it would be like and to see if you still want it. And you can ask us questions, too.”

They were just… giving me the internship!? I couldn’t believe it.

“So, in terms of what you would be allowed to do…” Izuku flipped through a notebook in front of him. “The important thing to remember is that, since you don’t have your hero license yet, you wouldn’t be able to actually perform hero work.” He turned the page. “But you can still shadow us while we are on patrols and see how we do our work.”

“Although, you’ve kind of already done that a couple of times,” Ochako quipped shyly.

“We could also use help around the office for things like answering phones and helping with some paperwork, if that’s alright.” Izuku looked at me. Was he expecting an answer?

“Oh, uhhh…of course, I’d love to help.”

“Okay! The busiest time of day here is in the late afternoon into the early evening. Do you think you could come in then?”

In my excitement about the internship, I completely forgot about all of the other things I had to do—my classes, my FamilyMark job… “Um, I’d have to change my class schedule, since I’m taking evening classes right now. But I think I can change to morning classes after our summer break?”

“That’s fine!” Ochako was beaming. “In the meantime, let us know what your off days are, and we can work around your schedule until then.”

They were going to work around me! “Of course! I’ll let you know.”

“We should also talk about your remuneration.” Sojo was talking now. I had no idea what remuneration meant, but I was too afraid to ask. “We’ve looked at our budget, and we are able to offer you an hourly pay of ¥2,100 per hour. Our apologies that we can’t offer you a higher wage.”

Apologies? That was double what I made at FamilyMark! I could quit that job and work at the agency full time! “No, no, that’s fine—I’m happy to accept that!”

Izuku and Ochako looked at each other. “Did you have any other questions for us?” Izuku asked, a smile on his face.

I couldn’t wait to get started. “I don’t have class on Thursday…can I come in then? You know, just to start to get familiar with things?”

“That would be amazing!” Ochako chirped. “We’re so happy you’re joining us.”

The others stood up, and I followed their lead. Even to this day, I can’t believe it went as well as it did. I guess I shouldn’t be—they loved me even then, and they wanted me to be successful. But I was just so used to being written off as a hopeless freak growing up that I still hadn’t thought to myself that people would go out of their way to help me.

“I’m excited, too!” I grinned, not caring if my smile was creeping Sojo out. “I can’t wait to work with you!”

I didn’t have any other office clothes back then, so I just wore the same thing that I did for my not-actually-an-interview interview for my first day of my internship. Ochako and Izuku were waiting, wearing their hero outfits.

“We’ll have you at the front desk for now,” Ochako told me. “We don’t expect many visitors, but it will be a huge help to have a friendly face if people do come in.”

Nobody ever called my face friendly before. People always told me I was creepy or scary.

“We don’t get many phone calls either,” Izuku added. “Most of the time, people just call Sojo-san directly. But in case someone calls the front desk, ask them who is calling and who they’d like to speak with, and then press the button next to that person’s name to transfer the call.”

I nodded. I didn’t expect that answering the phone would need to have such a detailed process.

“Oh, one other thing…” Izuku continued “I know we’re on a first-name basis with each other, but if you could, we’d appreciate it if you used our hero names when we’re on patrol or in the office with Sojo-san.”

“I know it’s really formal.” Ochako looked apologetic, “Believe me, it feels weird for me with Izuk– with Deku.” She giggled to herself. “See? Even we still make mistakes!”

“I’ll try my best,” I said, knowing that I would forget constantly in all of my excitement.

As we talked at the front desk, I heard a phone ring in one of the offices, and caught bits and pieces of conversation from Sojo and someone else.

“Harunote Agency…yes, Superintendent…this afternoon…meeting with both…thank you.”

Sojo popped around the corner a couple of minutes later. “Sorry to disrupt your conversation. Toga-san, we are expecting visitors from the prefectural police in about an hour. When they come in, could you please show them to the conference room and let Deku and Uravity know?”

“I will.”

“Thank you.” He went back to his office, and Izuku and Ochako left as well. I was alone at the front desk to wait for them to arrive. The minutes ticked by. I read through my HeroSET prep handbook while I waited, trying to make the most of my time and hoping that I didn’t have too obvious of a bored look on my face. As excited as I was to be working with Izuku and Ochako, I didn’t realize how boring it would be when I wasn’t actually physically with them.

Eventually, I heard the ding of an arriving elevator. I snapped upright and marked my place in my book. The doors opened, and out walked someone in a crisply-pressed police uniform. He stepped through the doors of the agency, taking his hat off and holding it under his arm.

“Good afternoon!” I beamed. “Welcome to Harunote Agency. You must be from th—”

I looked at his face and stopped. I knew that face. And he knew mine.

“Himiko Toga?” He looked stunned. “Is that you?”

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Four years before the present

I was waiting in my office for him to arrive, so when I heard Himiko call out to someone, I figured that it must have been our guest. When I walked out to greet him, though, I saw the two of them staring at one another, stunned.

“Himiko Toga?” he asked, his mouth hanging open. “Is that you?”

I looked at the two of them, staring, unable to process who they were face to face with.

“Pardon my intrusion,” I said. “Superintendent Tsukauchi?”

“Midoriya-san. Or should I refer to you by your hero name here?” Naomasa Tsukauchi was a regular fixture at UA, helping the staff uncover and protect against villain attacks when he was just an investigator. Now, he was a superintendent overseeing the prefecture’s Shizuoka Tactical and Anti-Riot Squad—a well-deserved promotion. Even then, I knew it wasn’t long until he’d be in charge of policing for the entire prefecture.

“You can use our hero names here, Superintendent. Thank you for coming to see us.” I bowed. “I didn’t know that you knew Toga-san.”

“I was in charge of her interrogation after the attack on UA’s summer training camp.” Tsukauchi spoke in his matter-of-fact way. “In fact, I was the one who told her about the diversion program that she enrolled in.”

Ah. It made sense. Before, I think Ochako and I thought of Himiko’s arrest and rehabilitation as just her kind of disappearing for a while. Even though we apprehended criminals all the time, once we handed them over to the police, we basically didn’t see or hear of them again, so it was easy for us to forget that there were more people later on in the process who would affect their lives.

“If I’m honest, I had my doubts about that program when it was first introduced,” Tsukauchi continued. “But the initial numbers are good. Recidivism is down, and the government wants to expand the program. This is actually my first time meeting someone who has completed the program.” He bowed deeply to Himiko. “Congratulations, Toga -san . I’m incredibly pleased to see you working for heroes now.”

She stood and returned his bow. “I’m doing my best,” she said.

Ochako had walked up behind me without me realizing. I’m guessing she heard the whole exchange, too. “Welcome, Superintendent.” She bowed. “Did you want to meet in the conference room?”

“That would be best, yes.”

“Okay.” She turned to Himiko. “Thank you for showing him in, Toga-san.”

It felt so weird to be this formal with her. She wasn’t Toga-san to us—she was Himiko. But in this office, if it wasn’t just the three of us, we had to keep up a professional look. If we were going to be pros, we thought, then we had to act like pros.

We walked into the conference room and took our seats. Thank goodness we were able to get this room set up in time for both Himiko’s interview and Tsukauchi’s visit—it would have been so embarrassing to have to meet with the superintendent of the elite STARS police unit in the break room.

“So, Superintendent, why is it that you wanted to meet with us?”

“There have been some developments in our investigation of a villain that you captured that we wanted to make you aware of.” He pulled out a Manila folder and took out a copy of a mug shot, sliding it across the table. “Do you recall this man?”

Ochako and I leaned forward. “The Sewer Swiper?” Ochako asked. It was definitely him in his non-transformed state.

“That’s how the media has been referring to him, yes.” He leaned forward, his hands resting on the table. “It has been months since you delivered him into our custody, and during that time, we hadn’t been able to get any useful information from him. It took us a month to even confirm his real name. The thing is…” He flipped through more papers in his folder. “…he wasn’t the only uncooperative criminal we’ve apprehended. There have been over a dozen, all of them using their quirks against members of the public. The crimes are very different—with him, it was attempted kidnapping, but others have been arrested for robbery by force, or arson, or attempted homicide. Nothing seems to connect them, except for the fact that they refuse to speak to any investigators in any way.”

“And they’ve been doing this for months?” I asked.

“Without interruption,” he replied. “At first, we thought they had no connection at all, but one of our investigators had a theory that they could be linked. On his suggestion, we separated the detainees and told each of them that their accomplices had already betrayed them, and that if they didn’t cooperate and give us additional information, they would receive a harsher sentence than if they told us what they knew.”

“The prisoner’s dilemma.” I remembered this from our classes at UA. It was a classic logic and sociology problem: two accomplices who could be compelled to testify against each other, even if they were both better off if they stayed quiet, because they lacked information on what the other was doing, and cooperation was always the best individual option no matter what the other person did.

“In most cases, this didn’t work,” Tsukauchi continued. “But the one you captured, and a few others, did share some information.” He pulled another paper out of his folder and turned it to face towards us. “There aren’t many specifics, but this is what we know.”

I looked at the title: Notes on the Criminal Group Known as Chōjō Keizoku Sensen. “The Paranormal Continuation Front?”

“Yes. We understand that it’s supposed to be a reconstituted version of the PLF, but that’s basically all we know for sure.” Even as he spoke, Tsukauchi looked like he was turning over possibilities in his head, like he was trying to solve things in real time. “They may have a cell structure that prevents large numbers of members from knowing about one another. Or it could be an umbrella group with no organization at all, where people can commit crimes and the group claims responsibility for them even if they have no involvement. We just aren’t sure right now.”

“Do we know what their goals are?” Ochako asked.

“We don’t know that either.” He shook his head. “The name suggests that they share Re-Destro’s ideals of removing all limits on quirk usage, but that’s only a guess. We don’t know if they plan attacks or if their members are lone wolves who act on their own.”

“I see.” I leaned forward, taking another look at the notes in front of me. “So you’re sharing this with us for awareness?”

“I want you to be ready for the possibility of an increase in violent criminal behavior against the public as a result of this group. We can’t be sure that that’s what will happen, but we must be prepared for that possibility.” He stood up. “You were both instrumental in the war against the Paranormal Liberation Front, and your capture of that villain did help us in our investigation. There is a good chance that you may be called upon to help us root out this group as well.”

“I understand.” Ochako and I stood and bowed to him. “Thank you for this information, Superintendent.”

“Thank you ,” he said, returning our bow. “You have done so much to protect our society, and we are in your debt.”

We walked him to the lobby, and Himiko showed him to the elevator. Both of us were still standing there when she came back.

“Are you okay?” Himiko asked. “You look worried.”

“We’ll be fine, Himiko-chan,” Ochako said. “It’s just a work thing.”

Maybe that was technically true, but Ochako and I couldn’t hide our concern or wave it away. We thought the PLF was done for, that we had left the war behind us. What was this new group? Was Japan in danger again? Were we about to be in the middle of it? All of these thoughts were running around in our heads—and we couldn’t even tell Himiko then, since she wasn’t a hero and the information wasn’t public.

I wanted Himiko to get her license as soon as possible. I wanted her to succeed, and I wanted her to continue her journey away from her villainous past. But now, for the first moment, I realized something else: as helpful as this internship was for her, Himiko was not our equal. She was a subordinate, and I didn’t like that. I didn’t want to look at her and see my employee. I wanted to see a partner.

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Three years before the present

The first day after summer break, I switched into the morning class at Windflower Academy. Switching was easy enough. Just like Mera-sensei predicted, a lot of people had already dropped out—maybe a third of the people in my original class just stopped showing up, and it must have been the same in the morning class, because Mera-sensei said there was room for me in any session I wanted to come to. But that first day…it was just awful. I hadn’t felt this bad in years. Not since I saw my destroyed childhood home.

Unlike normal school programs that get the whole month of August off, we only got two weeks off for summer, so I was already a little grumpy that we had classes so soon, but I figured I’d get over it. And then I heard the sound truck parked up the block from the building.

“…they make us live with criminals!”

I should have just ignored it and gone to class, but my curiosity got the better of me. I walked over and saw a crowd gathered around a gaisensha sound truck, painted black with white letters on the side: “New Tartarus Movement.” There was a small crowd of maybe 50 or so people around it, waving the Japanese flag and the old imperial flag. Some of them had banners, too. “Deport All Criminals!” “No Villains in Japan!” “Bring Back Tartarus!” Above them all was a man standing on top of the truck holding a microphone. Keiriku Tetsunoten. I didn’t remember his name back then; I knew it was Tetsu-something. But I didn’t like him after just one look at his face. He was angry, and it contorted his face. He constantly looked like he had seen the worst, most offensive thing possible.

“They destroyed our society. They brought Japan to the brink of extinction. And this government not only failed to protect the people—they broke up prisons. They made them smaller and put them in every neighborhood, every town. Making the law-abiding live side by side with the worst criminals there are!”

The crowd booed loudly. I heard that the Tartarus prison compound had been destroyed during the war, but I didn’t know much about the prison reforms that had been introduced afterwards—aside from my own program, of course.

“And not only that!” He put his hand out to quiet the crowd. “There are some villains that this government isn’t putting in jail at all.” A couple of people in the crowd started to shout again. “They are trying to reform them. Reform them!” The crowd got even more agitated as his voice rose. “They want villains to skip jail, spend a year in an all-expenses-paid bed-and-breakfast, and then just go back into society like nothing happened.”

The booing started again. I felt my face burning. That was me they were talking about. People just like me. And calling it an all-expenses-paid bed-and-breakfast was just an exaggeration to whip up the crowd. It was nicer than jail, but we weren’t free by any stretch.

“Is that fair to you?” Tetsunoten was shouting into the microphone by now. “Is this how society should be run?”

“No!!!” The crowd was in a rage. A couple of police officers stood off to the side, watching what was unfolding. What were they doing? Playing speakers at this volume, whipping the crowd into a fury like this…was it even legal? Was he trying to start a riot?

“That’s why…” He put his hand out again. As if on command, the crowd calmed down. The furious look on his face was gone. “That’s why we want the government to rebuild Tartarus.” Someone shouted excitedly from the crowd. “They told us that Tartarus failed, and I agree. They replaced it with something weaker and gentler. I say we replace it with something stronger.”

The crowd cheered. The shift in their mood was remarkable. They looked like they were going to run amok thirty seconds ago.

“Tartarus was just off the coast of Japan’s shores, connected by a long bridge.” That twisted, angry look was coming back to Tetsunoten’s face. “Always within eyeshot of this city. Is it any wonder that they broke free and caused havoc? Is it any wonder that so many died because of this incompetence?”

Another round of loud boos and shouts. The crowd found its rage again.

“I will send them further!” Tetsunoten was at full volume now. “We will rebuild Tartarus on the farthest point of Japanese sovereign soil from the home islands. Minamitorishima!” The crowd cheered their support. “A thousand kilometers away from any Japanese citizen. Almost two thousand away from Tokyo Bay. Trust in me, and you will never have to lay eyes on a deadly villain again!”

People in the crowd jumped up as they shouted for joy. I was fuming. They wanted to send people like me away for life. No second chances, no rehabilitation, no understanding. Just a lock with no key. I feel like they would have tried to kill me if they saw me. I turned away, sulking into class while the crowd’s chants roared behind me. Tar-ta-rus! Tar-ta-rus! Tar-ta-rus!

Class was forgettable. I just wanted to get out and go to my internship with Izuku and Ochako and start to put the day behind me. The only thing that made me smile was the thought of being with the two of them. Noon couldn’t come fast enough, and even then, when Mera -sensei let us out, I had to stay behind to talk to him about making sure my attendance record would stay consistent between sessions. By the time I actually got out, everyone else in class had already left, and I heard the voices of two classmates talking by the elevators.

“Did you see that new girl in our class?”

They were talking about me. Clearly. I was the only “new girl” there. I waited behind a corner and listened to them.

“The creepy one?”

“Thank you. Yes, she’s so creepy!”

I felt my face get hot. I was mad. I hate when people call me that.

“You know she cut someone once, right?”

“Shit, that was her? She’s the one who stabbed that kid? What the fuck is she doing in this class?”

“I don’t know, but I hope she quits.”

“Same. If I have to look at that creepy smile one more time, I think my brain is gonna turn into liquid.”

“Ugh. You’re so right. That psycho-looking grin she has at the weirdest times…it makes me want to die.”

My eyes were burning. Every instinct was screaming inside me to kill them. I wanted them to suffer. They didn’t see me as a real person—just a gross…thing that they had to share a room with. They didn’t care that I could be better than who I was in the past. But I knew I’d ruin everything for myself if I did that. I’d never see Izuku and Ochako again. I’d never get to be like them. And I’d prove those two haters right—that I was just as crazy and evil as they thought I was.

I turned back down the hallway and ran into the stairwell. I didn’t want to risk seeing them in the elevator. I just wanted to leave. Even if it meant running down six flights of stairs, tears streaming down my face. On the ground level, I slipped out the back door and headed for home, pulling out my phone to text Izuku and Ochako that I couldn’t come into the office that day.

Himiko [12:22]: Today was awful. I can’t come in for my internship. I’m really sorry.

I stuck my phone back in my bag, crying to myself, hiding my face so that people didn’t see my tears. I was sure that they wouldn’t answer right away. They were probably doing hero stuff and couldn’t look at their phones. I just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for the rest of the day. What was the point of trying to be better if I was always going to be treated like the worst version of myself that I ever was?

I opened the door to my apartment and crawled into bed. As I fished my phone out of my bag to charge it, I saw on the screen a ton of missed messages. All from Ochako.

Ochako [12:27]: Oh no!!! Are you okay? We can manage without you for today, don’t worry about us

Ochako [12:28]: What happened? Can you tell me?

Ochako [12:34]: Himiko, what happened? Can you tell me if you’re okay?

Ochako [12:41]: Please answer when you get this, I’m really worried about you

I debated between answering her and shutting my phone off. I wanted to be with her, but I also just wanted to hide away and forget about everything. Then, my phone started buzzing. The screen changed, and her face filled up the screen. Incoming call: Ochako Uraraka. Even though I could feel the tears coming back to my eyes, I tapped the green button.

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Three years before the present

Running your own business means setting your own hours, and hero work never keeps normal hours to begin with. Izuku and I didn’t get to the office until noon that day, and we were both just in our regular street clothes. I didn’t even have time to get changed when Himiko texted us.

Himiko [12:22]: Today was awful. I can’t come in for my internship. I’m really sorry.

That wasn’t like her. She was always excited to spend time with us, and even if the internship work was boring, she was still excited to share space with us. For her to say this…

“Izuku?” I poked my head into his office. “Did you see Himiko’s text?”

He nodded as he changed into his hero outfit. “I hope she’s okay…”

“Me too.” I started to type out my response. “We should let her stay home.”

“Yeah,” Izuku said. “I mean, we’ll miss having her, but she should take some space for herself.”

I finished out my reply and hit send as I sat in a chair across from his desk.

Ochako [12:27]: Oh no!!! Are you okay? We can manage without you for today, don’t worry about us

Immediately after, I found myself wondering what it was that made her so upset.

Ochako [12:28]: What happened? Can you tell me?

I stared at the screen while Izuku got changed, waiting for Himiko’s response, and didn’t get one. Minutes ticked by. I couldn’t focus.

“Are you okay?” Izuku could see that I was worried. I couldn’t exactly hide it.

“I just…I want Himiko to be alright.”

“I’m sure she just needs some space right now.”

“Maybe, but…I’m still worried.” I typed out another message, hoping she just forgot to reply.

Ochako [12:34]: Himiko, what happened? Can you tell me if you’re okay?

“I’m going to check the news wires and HeroNet for information,” Izuku said as he stepped back behind his desk. “Are you gonna be okay to get changed?”

“Yeah…” I answered, reflexively, even though I wasn’t. I couldn’t do anything without knowing that she was okay, and I just kept staring at my phone, nervously waiting for her response as Izuku typed away, scanning the internet for information that would help our hero work. I couldn’t hold back. I messaged Himiko again.

Ochako [12:41]: Please answer when you get this, I’m really worried about you

Izuku was always able to sense when something was wrong. He always had that quality. I saw him stand up and walk out from behind his desk to kneel beside me.

“You’re not okay right now,” he said, resting his hand on my thigh. I just shook my head no. He grabbed my hands in his. “You should go check on her. You’ll feel better if you do.”

I looked up at him. “But…what about our hero work?”

He smiled softly at me. “If your mind is stuck worrying about her, you’re not going to be effective.” He rubbed the back of my hand. “I’ll be fine. It’s okay. Go help her. It seems like you both need it.”

I took a deep breath and stood up. “Thank you, Izuku.” He stood, and I quickly kissed him. “Be safe, okay?” He nodded, and I headed for the elevator.

As I reached the lobby, I called Himiko, hoping to myself that she would answer. Please, Himiko, please pick up…

The dial tone ended, and I heard a weak, tired-sounding voice on the other end. “Ochako?”

“Himiko!” I couldn’t contain my relief. “I’m so glad you picked up—I’ve been so worried. Are you okay?”

“Yeah…” I immediately heard sniffling on the other end, and then full sobbing. Whatever had her upset, she couldn’t keep it bottled up. “No…”

“Oh no, are you hurt? Do you need someone to take you to a doctor or—”

“I’m not hurt,” she said, her voice tinny in my phone’s speaker. “I just had an awful day, and I don’t want to do anything.”

“Where are you right now?”

“I’m in my room…”

Okay, good. At least she was in a safe place. “Stay there, okay? I’m gonna come over.”

“But…you have work, don’t you?” The crying started again. “I don’t want you to get in trouble or something…”

“Himiko, I’m fine. I want to be there with you. Is that okay?”

More sniffling. “Uh-huh…”

“Stay there, okay? I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Okay…” She hung up, and I let out a long sigh, not realizing that I had been holding my breath. I was relieved to hear from her, but she clearly wasn’t okay. Whatever was bothering her, I wanted to make it go away and soothe her however I could.

I rushed in through the front door of her apartment building as someone was walking out. I furiously pushed the button for the elevator. I couldn’t wait. Every second waiting while Himiko in despair felt unbearable to me. When I reached her floor, I bolted to her apartment, quickly knocking on the door before turning the handle anyway. “Himiko!” The knob turned. She must not have locked it when she went inside. I looked around for her and saw a person-sized lump under her sheets. “Himiko?” I ran over and put my hands over it, shaking it gently. Out popped her head. Her eyes were red from crying.

“Ochako…” Her voice sounded weak. “You didn’t have to come.”

“I couldn’t stay away, Himiko.” I sat down on the edge of the bed beside her. She pulled the covers off of her and sat up, curling her legs up and hugging them to her chest.

“You have hero stuff to do, though.”

I shook my head. “I have something more important to do right now.” I rested my hand on her arm. “You don’t have to tell me what happened, but…if you want to tell me, then I want to hear.”

She sniffled. “My new class…there are these guys who…”

Himiko told me about the conversation she overheard. The people in her morning class talking about how creepy they thought her smile was. I knew how deep that cut must have felt for her.

“And I saw this awful demonstration outside of school, too,” she said, clearly holding back tears. “These people who want to bring back that Tartarus prison to put away villains…they were talking about how people like me didn’t deserve second chances to do better, and it just…”

She couldn’t finish her thought before she started crying again. I felt my own eyes watering, too. Seeing her suffer made my stomach turn in knots. I wanted to do more than wipe her tears. I wanted to reach out and touch the sorrow inside of her.

“I…” I put my arms around her and pulled her towards me. “I know you feel like you can’t always be yourself. I know it’s hard to hear people shut you out without trying to understand you. But…the thing is, they don’t understand you. You are so incredible, and the fact that they can’t see that…well, that’s their own ignorance. Because being able to declare what you love, and doing it with your whole face…well, that’s an incredible thing. And that smile of yours is so perfect, I’m honestly jealous.”

She turned her head towards me, barely. Just a part of one eye stuck out from behind her leg, still curled up in front of her. “You’re just saying that.”

“I couldn’t lie about it, Himiko. I don’t ever want to pretend that I never saw your amazing smile.”

She put her legs down, crossing them in front of her. Her eyes were still puffy, her cheeks wet. “It’s just…it’s so hard for me to believe it. All the time, growing up, I’d see smiling people…and when I’d smile, they told me to stop grinning…and I’d get so jealous. I love blood, and people would tell me that was creepy and weird. So I kept learning that society thought I was a freak, and that I had to hide who I was to fit in.”

She had told me this before, but it hurt me every time I heard it again, or even thought about it. A girl told to not be herself…they didn’t see the amazing person that they were trying to bury under their view of what normal meant to them.

“I thought heroes would always scold me and tell me what I’m supposed to be,” she continued, a smile still absent from her face. “That’s why I was a villain at first. I thought with them, I could live and love how I needed to. I feel like you and Izuku are the first heroes who gave me a real chance…but it’s so hard when it feels like nobody else will do that. It makes me feel like I have to hide forever.”

I moved my hand up to brush her bangs to the side, and as I parted her hair, I let my hand drop down and linger on her cheek, tilting her head towards me.

“You know… I think I told you this, but my family didn’t have much money when I was growing up. And it’s not the same as what you went through—not even close—but I know what it’s like to try to succeed when people expect you to fail. So I think there’s something really incredible about someone who’s going up against the odds and trying their hardest anyway.” I reached up with my other hand to hold her face. “And I can’t make your past go away, or make every mean person keep their mouth shut, but I’ll never stop telling you how special I think your smile is and how cute you are. And I mean that with every piece of myself.”

Himiko smiled, tears coming back into her eyes. “You…you think I’m…cute?”

“The cutest in the whole world.”

The second after I said that felt like an eternity. I sat on her bed, holding her face, staring into her eyes still glistening with tears, looking at that toothy smile. After what Himiko went through that day, maybe it wasn’t right…and yet, in my heart, it felt right. My fears went away. I pulled her face to mine and closed my eyes, feeling my lips touch hers as I kissed her.

“B-but…what about Izuku?” Himiko looked at me, amazed at what just happened.

“I told him how I feel, Himiko,” I reassured her, still holding her cheeks. “He knows, and he’s okay with it.”

“So we can…”

“Yeah.” I took a breath and pulled her back towards me. Himiko kissed me even more intensely now that the surprise had worn off. We didn’t have to hold back, and she didn’t. She rolled onto her back, pulling me on top of her, brushing her tongue against my lips. I opened my mouth ever so slightly to let it through. She tasted…so different from Izuku. Both good, but very distinct. She grabbed my wrist and guided my hand, putting it on her chest. Her ask was wordless, and yet crystal clear: touch me, Ochako. I caressed her, one hand on her chest and the other running through her hair.

“Himiko…” I pulled away and looked into her eyes. “I want to try something. And if you don’t want me to, you can tell me, okay?”

“Okay.”

I leaned back down to kiss her and, slowly but steadily, started kissing lower and lower. Her chin. Her chest. Her stomach. Her waist. When I reached her skirt, I lifted it up, flipping it onto her shirt and showing her panties.

“Ochako? Are you gonna…” Himiko sat up, looking at me.

“Is that okay?”

“If you’re just doing this because you feel bad for me, then you shouldn’t do it.”

I lifted my head and smiled. “I want to do this, Himiko. You don’t know how much I think about you…”

She smiled again and reached down, lowering her underwear for me. “Ochako…”

“I’ve never done this before, so…I hope it feels good for you.” As I lowered my head again, the smell was overpowering. I never smelled myself down there, so…did I smell like that? It wasn’t bad, it was just…new, I guess? And very strong. But I wanted to try this, for her and for myself. I kissed the hairy skin around the edges before putting my lips around her clit and, opening my mouth wider, rubbing my tongue along the outside.

“Mmmmmmm…” Hearing Himiko moan above me felt amazing as I adjusted to this new taste and feel. It was another kind of wordless encouragement from her. I flicked my tongue against her clit, feeling her hips twitch as I did.

“Does this feel good?” I asked. I’m sure it didn’t sound like that. It was probably more like Doeh thih feeh gooh? or something, but the meaning must have come across.

“Ochako, you’re making me feel so good…!” I looked up and saw that Himiko was taking her shirt and bra off. “Don’t stop, pleeeease…” I could only see the bottom of her chin and the buns in her hair in between her breasts, but this was a view that I could get used to.

As I pushed my tongue into her, I felt her hand on the back of my head, gently pressing me further. “Mmmmmmm!” All I could do was moan—words wouldn’t come even if I had the space to breathe them. My mind was just too busy. My lips and chin were soaking wet. Was I drooling on her pussy?

“Ochako, I…nuuuuhhhhhh!” Her legs squeezed my head from both sides as her hips bucked upwards. She held me there with her legs, refusing to let me go until her orgasm crested and she dropped her pelvis back down.

“Wow, Himiko, I…” I lifted myself up and wiped my mouth. When I looked down at the bedsheets, I saw a puddle between Himiko’s thighs. So that wasn’t drool after all! I stared at it for a second, amazed. I did that!?

Himiko sat up wearing nothing but her skirt. “You…you made me feel so good, Ochako.” I grinned. Maybe she was stating the obvious, but it made me so happy to hear her say the words. “Can I…make you feel good too?”

My eyes went wide and I buried my head in my hands, peeking through my fingers. “I don’t know. I’m, uh…I’m on my period.”

Himiko giggled. “You’re silly, Ochako. Don’t you remember?” She gently pulled my hands away. “I love the taste of blood.”

“I…well…” I felt dumb for forgetting. In my defense, I had a lot of other things on my mind. “If you want to, then…I’d really like that, Himiko…”

I leaned back on her bed and pulled my shorts and underwear down, fully expecting her to just start licking me there, but she crawled on top of me first and kissed my lips, brushing her tongue against them before pulling back and licking her lips.

“Mmmmmm…so that’s what I taste like.”

I felt her hands on my ribs as she slid my shirt up and over my head.

“Don’t bite me down there, okay?” I asked her. “I, uh…” I didn’t know how to tell her that I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

“Don’t worry, Ochako.” She dropped her hands to my hips. “I’ll be gentle.”

She didn’t kiss her way down my body like I did with her. She was eager. I felt her pull my tampon out and, before I knew it, I felt her lips against my pussy, her tongue riding up and down before sliding into me.

“Himikooooo…”

I looked down. All I saw between my thighs was her blonde hair, her two buns brushing against my skin. She picked her head up ever so slightly at one point, a satisfied look in her eyes as she continued to swipe her tongue.

“You tathed tho gooh, Othaco…” She didn’t need to pull her mouth away for me to understand her. You taste so good, Ochako…

“I feel…mmmmmmm…”

My mind was going blank again. I felt like the luckiest person. My boyfriend sent me to hang out with the girl I was crushing on, and I was in her bed, with her eating my pussy…and he was okay with it! How was this real? How was I so lucky?

“Wan me tuh do dith?” she moaned from between my thighs. Want me to do this? She pulled her tongue out of my pussy and flicked it upwards, playing with my clit and running circles around it.

“Ah! Himiko! If you do that, I’m gonna…aaaaaaa!”

Reflexively, I crossed my ankles as she toyed with me, pulling her head into me as she made me cum with her tongue. My head spun. My whole body felt hot. I felt out of control of my body in the best possible way.

Himiko pulled herself up next to me in her bed, her eyes meeting mine. There were reddish-brown stains all around her mouth. She wiped them off as she bared her fangs and smiled.

“Sooo tasty.” She licked her lips. “I haven’t tasted someone else’s blood in years.”

“What about period blood?” I asked.

“First time for everything,” she said with a giggle. Then, her smile softened. “Can we just…lay here for a bit, Ochako? I want to just…hold you.”

I nodded, rolling towards her as we wrapped our arms around each other.

“Hey, I’m curious, Himiko…” I don’t know how much time had passed, but it felt like it was too short. I knew I couldn’t stay in her bed forever, but my heart wished I could. “Your quirk lets you transform into other people after you drink their blood, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Does it work with period blood, too?”

She looked puzzled. “I don’t know. I never thought about that.”

“Why don’t you try it?”

She sat up and stood off to the side of the bed. I watched as she transformed, gray goo sliding off of her body as she made the transformation. For a second, if even that, I was staring at my exact replica. Then, the gray goo reappeared, and my copy melted away as Himiko reemerged.

“Hmmmm…that’s interesting.” She looked at the ceiling, thinking.

“What is it?”

“Usually, drinking someone’s blood lets me transform for longer. A half-liter would give me about a day of transformation if I wanted, so this should have let me transform for at least 10 minutes. I guess it has to be blood that comes from someone’s veins to be most effective.”

“Hmm…I guess that makes sense.”

“But you still tasted wonderful, Ochako.” She smiled at me as she went to put her clothes back on. “I really want to do this again.”

“Yeah, me too.” I looked for where my shorts went and found them at the foot of her bed.

“You know…” Himiko turned back to look at me as we both got dressed. “You didn’t have to visit me when I left the diversion program. And you didn’t have to open your house to me when your parents were struggling. You could’ve stayed in school and left me alone. But…” She held my waist. “You spared a thought for someone who tried to hurt you and your friends once upon a time. You cared for me. You listened to me, and believed in my dreams, and you’re still trying to help me become more like you and Izuku. I know this life is hard, but…you coming here…you made my heart feel so light. Lighter than it’s ever felt. Like…it could just float away.”

Now it was my turn for my eyes to water. I had wanted so badly to soothe her heartache, and I had wanted so badly to tell her how I felt about her. To think I could have done both, all at once…

“So thank you, Ochako.” She lifted her hands and brushed my hair aside. “This day started out so horribly, but…you’ve made me so incredibly happy. I…I don’t know what I would do without you.”

I blinked away the tears of joy forming in my eyes. “I feel the same way, Himiko.”

She looked at the door. “You should probably go, right? You have hero things to do, even if you keep saying you don’t.”

“I guess so…”

“But I mean it, Ochako. You make me so happy.” She walked me to her door and kissed me goodbye. “Be safe, okay?” I nodded, and headed for the elevator with a smile on my face.

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Three years before the present

“Typhoon Koto remains a very strong typhoon, with sustained winds above 180 km/h and extremely heavy rainfall. The storm is expected to affect the island of Kyushu within the next 24 hours, with Kagoshima, Nagasaki, and Kumamoto especially likely to…”

The four of us were watching the news on a projector in the meeting room. Typhoon Koto had been churning in the ocean for days, and forecasters weren’t sure if it would pass south of Japan and go into the Yellow Sea, but by this time, there was no doubt that Japan would take a direct hit.

“Additionally, residents in Ehime, Kochi, and Yamaguchi Prefectures should be prepared for the effects of this storm. Evacuation orders have been issued for…”

Sojo turned the volume down as the broadcast continued, low and muffled in the background. “The Fire and Disaster Management Agency has put out a general notice to rescue-focused heroes,” he told us. “They’re going to stage participating heroes at Camp Kaitaichi in Hiroshima and deploy them as needed for rescues. With a major disaster declaration, they’ll pay all heroes a base amount, plus an additional amount based on rescues.”

He looked directly at Ochako. Of course. She was the perfect hero for rescues. Her quirk was ideal for it—and her water rescue that went viral when our agency just started cemented her image as a rescue hero.

“Uravity? You are the ideal hero for this mission.”

“Well, Sojo-san…” She always deflected compliments, even if this one was just a plain statement of fact. “If I can be helpful, then absolutely, I’ll go.”

“Okay, excellent. I’ll inform them.” He turned to face me. “Deku, while it’s ultimately your choice whether to go or not, I would recommend that you stay here. As rescue heroes head towards Kyushu to deal with Typhoon Koto, that leaves fewer in the rest of the country, and they’ll need everyone they can keep here.”

I nodded. Ochako and I couldn’t be joined at the hip. We were our own people, and just because she went somewhere didn’t mean that I had to follow.

“Normally, we’d have our end-of-week meeting tomorrow,” Sojo continued, “but since Uravity will be away for the typhoon response, we can skip tomorrow’s meeting and just meet next week. Does that make sense?”

“It does,” I said, glancing at Ochako and Himiko. With Ochako gone, it would be just us two at the agency in addition to Sojo.

He stood up. “I’ll make the call now to let them know you’re coming. They’re asking heroes to transport themselves, so I would get on a train now while they’re still running down to Hiroshima.” He bowed at us. “Best of luck, Uravity.”

He left, and the three of us stood up. Ochako looked at us both. She seemed sad.

“I should get going…”

“It’s okay,” Himiko said. “Do what you have to do.”

“I’ll miss you two.” She pulled us both in towards her, one under each arm, and kissed our cheeks. Ochako had told me about what happened when she went to check on Himiko, so I wasn’t surprised, but it was still the first time she showed that kind of affection in the office. It felt different, and I had more emotions about it than I could process. We were always careful to conceal our affection while we were working. We didn’t want to be unprofessional. But since all three of us knew, Ochako and I didn’t have to keep our affection from Himiko—and the two of them didn’t have to keep theirs from me. There was something freeing about that. It was at least something where we could treat Himiko as an equal.

“It shouldn’t be more than a week,” Ochako continued. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Don’t hurry back for us,” I said, smiling.

“People down there need you,” Himiko added.

“Now go! You have a train to catch!”

“I will!”

She went back to her office to get her go-bag—we all kept one with the essentials pre-stocked for if we had to deploy far from our agency for hero work—and went to the elevator to catch her train. That left just me and Himiko alone.

“Uh, since it’s just us in the office…why don’t you join me on my patrol?” I asked. “I know you’ve come out on patrols with us before your internship, but this is an opportunity for you to really learn how we do our jobs.”

She broke into a huge grin. “I’d love to, Izuku!”

“Patrolling serves a dual purpose, Himiko,” I explained as she followed behind me. Since she didn’t have a hero costume back then, she was just in her regular office clothes. “There’s a practical purpose, which is to spread ourselves out and be ready to respond to where people need our help. There’s also a social purpose.” I turned to wave to a small child across the street who was excitedly jumping up and down. “When people see heroes, it’s a reassurance to them that there are people who will keep them safe. They learn what we look like, and they know that they can trust us.”

“Hmmm…are there any people you see who are scared of heroes?” Himiko asked.

“It happens sometimes,” I said, thinking for a moment. “Sometimes it’s kids who see a hero with a scary costume, sometimes it’s a person who had a bad experience in the past…it really depends. But most people are nice to us.”

Himiko was quiet for a moment. I had a lot to say to fill the silence—there was so much that went into hero work, and I could talk about it for hours. But I would be lying if I said it wasn’t also because I wanted to avoid a more uncomfortable topic with her. I didn’t want to ask her about Ochako and her having sex—it wasn’t right for me to ask, certainly not without talking more about it with Ochako. But I still had questions swimming in my head. How did they feel about each other? How did I feel about them? How did I feel about her? Avoiding the questions was just easier to do.

“I remember being afraid of heroes,” Himiko said, almost ashamed. I looked at her face. There was pain behind those eyes. “After, uh…after what happened in middle school…I was so scared of being caught.” She looked down, and I only saw her face from the side. She did look cute in this light, and yet there was no hiding the years of anguish that even the most gentle and loving and understanding presence in her life couldn’t fully erase. “I was scared of what people would do to me. That I’d be put away forever.”

“Himiko…”

“It’s funny,” she continued, a smile on her face just starting to poke through. “I had this fear in my head for years, and I tried so hard not to get caught. And in the end…getting captured was the best thing that could have happened to me.”

I knew bits and pieces of her past, but any time she told me about the pain she went through before…it made me want to wind back the clock. To step into the past and fix things for her, to make it so she never had to suffer like she did. When her heart ached, mine did, too. But even with her diversion program, given how scared she had been of heroes, it made me want to ask: What made you want to be a hero, too?

I was a split second away from asking, but my radio scanner interrupted me before I could get a chance. Since our agency didn’t have a command center set up yet, we were still listening to police radio traffic to pick up on events as they happened—and an alert had just gone out over the air.

“Units in the Nakada neighborhood, start for a robbery by force that just occurred in…”

“Himiko!” I turned back to face her. “We’ll need to move quickly. Grab onto my back and hang on as tight as you can. I’ll drop you off in a safe place where you can watch.”

She grinned and nodded before pouncing on my back, wrapping her arms and legs around me as the police dispatcher kept talking.

“This is a robbery of a bank transport van. One subject, unknown description, assaulted the guards and drove off with the van. Unknown use of quirks or weapons.”

I tethered Blackwhip to a streetlight and swung upwards, then grappled the lattice frame of a construction crane. The added weight on my back from Himiko grabbing onto me upset my balance a little, and I had to recalibrate on the move, but I did like the feeling of her wrapped around me, pressing against me.

“The van is a gray Isuza with the Yaoyorozu Finance Corporation logo on the side…”

I swung to the top of the crane. “Himiko, did you hear that description?”

“Yeah,” I heard her say directly into my ear.

“If you see it, tell me.”

I scanned the main roads and side streets. The gray roof of the van would blend in, but if either one of us could catch a glimpse…

“Izuku!” She pulled my arm and pointed below us. In her rush, she forgot to use my hero name, but that was okay. Underneath us was a gray bank transport van that looked like it was desperately weaving through traffic.

“Good work!” I jumped down to a flat roof to give Himiko a safe place to step off. “Stay here, okay?” I looked back and she nodded with a grin on her face.

Alright. Let’s get this guy stopped. I hopped off the roof and swung myself onto the top of the van…and immediately lost my footing as my boots slid on the surface. Why was it slippery ? It was a dry metal roof—unless this was the villain’s quirk? Before I slipped off the roof and into traffic, I pulled myself up and off the van with Blackwhip and swung above it. How to stop him? Maybe I could use Blackwhip on the wheels? But that might cause the van to spin into traffic and hurt someone else. If only Ochako was here, I thought. She could float the van, and we’d be able to safely catch the driver…

As I was thinking through my options, I heard someone shout below me. “Acid whip!” I looked down and saw a flash of pink hair. Mina! She tossed out two strings of acid from her palms that hit the tires, melting through the rubber and putting the van on its rims. Sparks flew off the rims as the carjacker slammed on his brakes. Now was my chance! I shot Blackwhip at the rims, ensnaring them and locking them in place. At that lower speed, the van just lurched forward slightly before coming to a halt. I heard the engine revving as he desperately tried to recover from the blowout and drive off.

“Deku!” Mina shouted up at me. “Keep holding it!” She put her palms on the driver’s side door and started melting the gap to fuse the door shut. “Nice job with that Blackwhip.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you, Pinky.” I hopped down to Mina’s level as she fused the passenger side door.

“That guy looked like he had some kind of slipperiness quirk, right?” Mina looked at me as the carjacker frantically started banging on the windows. “You would’ve pulled the van up with Blackwhip if you could.”

“Yeah…”

“I’m guessing he could probably make himself slippery and get out of Blackwhip that way, too.” She came around the other side of the van as we heard police sirens converge around us. “I figured sealing him in and letting the police take the whole van would be a safer bet.”

“Good thinking.” As the police got out of their cars, I looked up at the roof of the building I jumped from to see if Himiko was still up there. Sure enough, I saw her head sticking out from over the parapet.

Mina must have noticed, too. “Who’s that?”

“Oh!” I rubbed the back of my head nervously. “That’s our agency’s intern. She’s shadowing me while she studies for her license.”

“Oooooh, can I meet her?” Typical Mina, always nosy, but in the friendliest way! “It’s so cool that your agency is already bringing on interns!”

After explaining the situation to the police and leaving the villain with them, I swung us back up to the roof. Himiko was waiting, eagerly peering over the edge, and her eyes lit up as I reached her.

“Himiko, is everything okay?” I asked. “Sorry to leave you up here like this.”

She smiled. “I get it. I’m just glad you’re back.”

“Oh!” I turned to Mina and gestured back at Himiko. “This is our intern, Himiko Toga. Himiko, this is Pinky, the Acid Hero. We were actually classmates at UA.”

“Oooooh, I’ve heard about you.” Mina bowed with a sly grin. “Nice to finally meet you properly, Himiko-chan .”

“You know each other?” I asked.

“I just heard about her from a friend,” she said, her eyebrows raised. “Didn’t realize you two were on a first-name basis.”

“Oh, you know, that’s just…” I didn’t know what to say.

Mina elbowed me gently, winking at me. “I’m just messing with you! I’m happy for you three.”

“Three?”

“The two of you and Ochako!” She smiled. “She’s down helping with the typhoon, right?” We both nodded. “That’s just like her. She always wanted to be a rescue hero.” Mina turned around and walked to the service door on the roof. No need to swing down if we weren’t in a rush, I guess. “Nice to meet you, Himiko-chan,” she said, turning back to wave at us. “And good to see you again, Deku!” She smirked. “Don’t keep any secrets from me, you two,” she quipped, a twinkle in her eye as she raised her eyebrows again. And then she was gone. Leave it to Mina to be nosy like that, I thought to myself. But I didn’t know how much she already knew about us. Truth be told, she understood our dynamic even before we did.

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Three years before the present

Mina [21:16]: Omggggg you’ll never believe who I just saw!! (•□•)

I was sitting on a cot in an empty storage room at Camp Kaitaichi, the JSDF base in Hiroshima where all of the rescue heroes were staging. The wind was picking up outside as the hurricane approached. I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d have cell service, but for now, Mina was keen to share more gossip.

Mina [21:17]: Check it out: it’s your bf AND your gf!

A picture loaded on my phone. Mina must have snuck a selfie of herself with Izuku and Himiko unaware behind her. So typically her!

Ochako [21:17]: Mina! Stoppppp (//ω//)

Ochako [21:17]: How did you run into them?

Mina [21:18]: Deku and I were both chasing a guy who stole a bank truck

Mina [21:19]: And after we caught him Deku took me to see Himiko

Mina [21:19]: She’s your intern??

Ochako [21:20]: Yeah! She’s studying for the HeroSET now

Mina [21:20]: Hiring your own gf? Am I gonna see you on the cover of Heroes Unmasked? (◑ ○◑)

As soon as I read that, I shook my head. What a trashy gossip magazine, publishing paparazzi snoop shots of heroes and printing whatever made-up exposé about something scandalous they thought would move copies. Heroes Unmasked had a field day when Dabi revealed he was Endeavor’s son.

Mina [21:21]: But fr, I’m happy for her! I know she had it tough, so I bet she feels really good now.

Mina [21:21]: I know you’re dealing with the typhoon so be safe down there ヾ(＾-＾)ノ

Ochako [21:21]: Thanks!! 〔´∇｀〕

I bet she feels really good now. I hoped so. Her transition from villain to hero was far from straightforward. It did seem like it was going in the right direction, though. I looked again at Mina’s selfie. Izuku and Himiko looked like they were having an animated discussion in the background. They were both smiling. I smiled to myself, too. Seeing the two of them happy together…it didn’t feel right for me to be dating Izuku and Himiko at the same time while Izuku had only me. Even if the two of them weren’t dating then, I wanted them to get closer. I couldn’t force it, but I kept hoping that something would spark between them. I kept imagining myself in both of their lives, and I wanted Izuku to feel the same way. Funny how things changed from that time I saw them together, boxing up care packages for Christmas. I wasn’t afraid of one of them stealing the other away from me anymore.

“Uravity?”

Hearing that voice behind me made me jump, but I knew exactly who it was.

“Froppy!” I jumped up and smiled. “I figured you’d be down here to help.”

“I’m glad to see you, too.” She looked at my phone. “Who are you talking to?”

“Oh, Mina ran into Izuku and Himiko while she was working, so she was telling me about it.”

“Himiko?” She put her finger to her chin, thinking. “Like, Himiko Toga? The girl we caught at the training camp?”

“Yeah…” I was a little embarrassed. Tsuyu was the one who actually captured her in the first place, and she didn’t know anything about what happened with her since. “She finished a diversion program, and now she’s studying to take the HeroSET.”

“Wow, that’s a big change.” Tsuyu let her tongue hang out of her mouth. “I’m glad she’s doing that. She was pretty scary back then, kero .”

Maybe so, I thought. But that was when we didn’t understand her.

“Is that Todoroki?” Tsuyu looked behind us. Sure enough, there he was with his unmistakable red and white hair. We waved at him, and he walked over.

“Shoto!” I stood up, smiling. “What brings you here? I didn’t think of you as a rescue specialist.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “I’m trying to expand a little bit more, since people think of me as mainly being a combat hero.”

“Well, it’s good to see you again,” Tsuyu replied.

I pulled out my phone again. I didn’t know how much longer I had before we lost signal completely, and I had two people I wanted to message first.

Ochako [21:26]: Hey, I heard that you two had a busy evening on patrol today

Izuku [21:27]: We did!

Himiko [21:27]: Yeah!! Izuku showed me what his hero work is like, and he caught a carjacker too

I smiled. The way these two make me happy…it almost overwhelms me sometimes. I wished that they could have been down there with me, but the fact that Izuku caught a criminal already just showed how important it was that he stayed back home. Plus, Himiko needed that one-on-one experience.

Ochako [21:28]: Good work, you two! Be safe while I’m away ❤️❤️

Himiko [21:28]: You too!!

Izuku [21:28]: We will! You do the same (´∀`)

I looked back at my texts. Two hearts for my two loves. I couldn’t wait to see them again. Before that, though, I knew there were people who needed saving. With a typhoon approaching, I laid down on my cot and tried to sleep, not knowing what the next day would bring.

When I woke up in the morning, we could hear the howling wind and pounding rain from inside. Through the thick clouds, hardly any daylight reached us. Some of the heroes we had bunked with were already gone, but Tsuyu was still asleep, and Todoroki was sitting up in his cot, reading something. A JSDF officer was going around to different heroes who were just waking up. He came my way, and I stood up.

“Uravity.” He had a serious expression on his face. “We have reports coming in of flooding and landslides in and around Beppu. The typhoon is still active and won’t pass for up to 24 hours, but there are likely many people who need immediate help. It’s your decision, but—”

“I’ll go.” I didn’t hesitate for a second. What else would a hero say?

“Okay.” He looked at a clipboard. “But given the conditions, we can’t run the risk of sending heroes out on their own. You should head out with at least one other hero, ideally two.”

“Do Shoto and Froppy have assignments?” I asked.

“Not right now.”

“Then I’ll ask them to join me.”

Not even a half hour later, the three of us were outside, in full typhoon-force winds and heading into even worse weather. A JSDF truck drove us as close to Kyushu as it could, stopping just over the water from Kitakyushu.

The soldier driving us turned to face us. “The winds are too high for me to cross the bridge!” he shouted. We could barely hear him over the wind and rain. “You’ll have to go the rest of the way on your own! Can you do that?”

“We will!” I shouted.

“Good luck!”

The three of us hopped out, and Todoroki and I immediately struggled to stand upright in the intense wind. Tsuyu grabbed onto each of us with her sticky grip.

“Uravity. If you float us, I’ll use my tongue to swing us there.”

I nodded and, forcing myself against the wind, touched the two of them. We lifted off the ground, and the wind started to carry us.

“Now!” Tsuyu’s tongue shot out and caught a highway sign that hadn’t yet been blown away, swinging us up to the mast of the bridge before latching onto that. The deck of the bridge was rocking in the high winds. That driver was right—we would’ve been blown into the water if we tried to cross it like that.

“Let’s keep going!” We swung forward; eventually, I took over with my wrist grapples as Tsuyu’s tongue got tired. Eventually, we saw the spa town of Beppu—barely, through the brutal rain and thick cloud cover. From what we could see, though, it didn’t look good. By the coast, the storm surge was encroaching on the town, while in the hills, a few neighborhoods had slid downhill as the soil gave way under the torrential rain.

“I’ll put us down there,” I said, pointing to a school that was still in decent condition. We drifted down and, as we touched ground, I grabbed onto the handle of the front door. Locked. Of course.

“Let me try something,” Todoroki said, gently moving me aside.

With a fist encased in ice, he slammed into the lock, and the door flew open. We hurried into the school, standing in the dark, empty hallway.

“We should use this as our base,” he continued. “We can bring evacuees here, and then the JSDF can move them to safer places as a group.”

“That’s a good plan,” Tsuyu said.

“Check in on the radio regularly, okay?” Todoroki implored. “Froppy, you can start on the coast. Uravity, you look in the hills to the west. I’ll start south of here and help either of you if you need me.”

We had our assignments. After we had a chance to collect ourselves, I set out again, heading into the hills where I had seen a landslide gouge out a line of destruction. Using my grapples, I held myself in place as I floated so that the intense wind wouldn’t drift me away. I needed to keep my eyes open for any sign of people still alive, but with no way of knowing which houses were evacuated, and with the wind still too strong to thoroughly search, I could only go based on what was visible from the air.

As I scanned, something caught my eye. Was that…a hand sticking out of the window of a damaged house? And it was waving at me! I released one grapple and reeled myself in with the other, setting down next to the flattened house.

“Are you hurt?” I shouted over the wind and rain.

“I’m pinned in,” came an older woman’s voice from inside. “I can’t move!”

“Stay calm, I’ll get this off of you and get you to safety.”

I laid my hands on the roof of the building and watched it float off. The wind flipped the underside of it, and I watched as it tumbled away. Underneath was a short woman with wrinkles and a tired face, soaking wet from the rainwater that had leaked through. A heavy wooden beam laid across her waist, held up by a small pile of other debris. She was lucky. If it had fully collapsed, her rib cage would have been crushed, and she’d have had no chance of surviving.

“I’ll get you out, okay?” I shouted, releasing some of my grappling wire. I’m going to wrap this wire around you so that you don’t fall.”

She didn’t say anything, but I saw her nod, weakly. She must have been trapped for a few hours at least. I wrapped the cable around her. Now to take care of this beam, I thought. But before that, I had to set the roof down if I didn’t want to get too nauseous from overusing my quirk. I looked out and saw the roof floating over the mountains.

“Release.” I touched my hands together and watched it plummet into the forest. I turned back to the woman. “Do you know who else is in this neighborhood?”

“I think everyone else left,” she groaned. “It’s just me right now.”

“Okay.” I’d still come back and check, just to be sure, but for now, I had to free this woman. I laid my hands on the beam and it slowly rose up. “Come with me!” She was too weak to stand, so I put my hands under her armpits and pulled her out. Once we were far enough away, I set her down and put my hands together once again. “Release!” The beam crashed down and splintered. She really was lucky to be alive. That thing was very heavy.

“Froppy, Shoto, I’m returning with one rescued from my area,” I said into my headset as I lifted us both off. Even with the grapple tied around her, out of habit, I clung to her as tight as I could. A hand physically holding onto her probably made her feel safer.

“Okay, Uravity.” I heard Todoroki’s voice in my ear. “We are still searching.”

As I pulled my way back to the school with my one free grapple, I looked down at the neighborhood more closely. Most of the houses had their foundations slide out from under them. Even the undamaged ones were still cut off completely from everything around them, with the roads connecting them completely severed. We definitely needed to be here. If anyone else was left alive here, they wouldn’t last until the typhoon moved on.

“You’re Uravity, right?”

The school was starting to fill up with people we rescued. While I was talking to the old woman I saved, Froppy was bringing two more people into the classroom next to where we were.

“Yeah.”

“I know you from TV,” she said. “You gave that speech when the people at your school wanted to keep that Deku boy away.”

I could never forget that day, when I was desperately floating above the school, pleading with the crowd. Izuku Midoriya is trying to carry the burden of his quirk on his own! He’s got a lot to learn, but…he’s just an ordinary high schooler. So please! Let him stay here! Yes, it was because I loved him, but no matter what, it pains my heart when people push somebody away because they don’t understand who they are. What does it say about me that both of the people I love had that happen to them?

“I’m glad you came here to help,” she continued. “Thank you for rescuing me.”

I smiled. “It’s what we’re here for.” Outside, Tsuyu was heading back out, and Todoroki brought in someone else over his shoulder. The rain still pelted the windows, but this building was well built. We could safely stay here. “I have to ask…were you not able to evacuate?”

“Oh, it’s not that I couldn’t,” she said. “I chose to stay behind.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “I know it wasn’t smart. I didn’t mean to put people in danger. It’s just…I couldn’t bear to leave.” She looked like she was about to cry. Her gaze fell, and her voice got quiet. “My family has always lived here. We’ve run an onsen and inn for seven generations. It’s what our family has always done. We try to keep up with the changing times, but so many other places have been bought out by big hotel chains that it makes it hard to survive. My sons want me to sell, but this is everything my family has ever done, and I can’t give that up.”

An elder with a small business, just trying to do what she knows best and keep her family’s traditions going, even if it’s financially hard. I could have been talking to my dad in that moment.

“My kids and grandkids left, and they told me to come with them,” she continued, “but I couldn’t bear to leave this place behind. I don’t even know if the inn is still standing, but I have to try to keep it going. My grandson wants to take over when he’s old enough. I have to do it for him.”

I looked out the window. The rain was coming down in sheets by that time. She’s lived long enough to know how bad this typhoon would be, I thought. It takes a lot for someone to choose to stay behind in all of this. “I understand why you stayed. And I know how hard it is to keep things going when everything around you is pushing the other way. But you’re going to recover from this. And…” I reached out and touched her hand. “I’ll come back.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll come back to your inn.” I was determined. This woman needed a vote of confidence, someone to give her the emotional strength to believe that everything would be okay. “I mean it. My partners and I…we’d be honored to have your hospitality. And if nobody has stayed with you by then, well, we’ll be the first.”

Seeing her smile at that took the darkness out of the room in spite of everything. I’ve always felt like being a hero means saving more than just people’s bodies—not just helping people live, but helping them thrive. Any time I could do that made my decision to be a hero worth it. And if I could do that while on vacation, that was just a bonus. After months of nonstop hero work, I honestly needed one.

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Three years before the present

“How did you figure out the design for your hero outfit?”

Izuku and I had just gotten back from a patrol a couple of days after he helped foil that bank van robbery. I still thought about clinging onto his back that day, having my head next to his. To be so close to him, holding onto him…it felt like a dream come true. I felt like I could hardly contain my excitement, but I don’t think Izuku noticed. He was laser focused on his job.

“Oh, this whole thing came together in bits and pieces.” He held up his arms. “The gloves help me channel air to create a shockwave, so that I can do damage over a distance. I also have compression wraps on my arms to protect my bones from fracturing. The shoes have…”

He was going full nerd mode. I wanted to kiss him so bad! Every time I’d see him obsess over something, it made my heart flutter, as if it was already so full of love and it was still trying to add more.

“…but honestly, it’s as much about appearance as it is about function.” He took off his mask and held it in front of him. “You’d think this mask does something, like filter air or let me breathe at high altitudes or something, but it’s mostly just for looks.”

He held it out for me and smiled. Did he want me to…put it on? I took it and held it over my face.

“Look!” Izuku held out his phone with selfie mode turned on so that I could see myself. “You look cute with it!”

I blushed. Ochako and Izuku thought I was cute!

“Remember how I said patrols were important because they let the public know we’re here for them?” He took the mask back from me as he kept talking. “Costumes are a part of that. They help us stand out and be recognizable. And they help to convey a message about who we are—what our quirks are, what our values are, what’s important to us…”

“So, what does your costume say about you?” I asked.

“Well, I guess it’s about all of the people who helped me be where I am today. Each part of it is because of a different person. Actually…” He started rubbing the back of his head, looking almost embarrassed. “The very first costume was one my mom made for me. She sewed it to look like All Might’s, except green, since, you know, my hair is green.”

“Do you…love All Might?”

Izuku jumped at my question, like someone snuck up behind him and shouted in his ear. “Love!? Well, I, uh…love is a really strong word, you know? Like, when I think of love, I think of, like…you know, romance and dating and stuff like that, so I don’t love All Might. But…” He stopped, like a realization just popped into his head. “I always admired him. I know I already told you this, but I wanted to be just like him ever since I was little. So if you call that a kind of love, then…I guess so?”

I smiled at him. Me and Izuku, both becoming heroes because there’s a hero each of us loves… “You and I are really similar, Izuku.”

“You…think so?”

“You spent your whole life becoming a hero to be like someone you love. And I’ve always tried to become more like the people I love.” I sat in a chair in his office across from his desk. “We both get passionate. We both had people we care about give us a chance to do something we shouldn’t have been able to do.” I put my hands up to hide my widening grin. “Maybe it doesn’t look like it at first, but you and I…we’re really similar, Izuku.”

He looked like he was in awe—like he just found a hidden passage that he had walked past for years without realizing. “Wow, I…when you put it like that…”

“Just something I’d been thinking about.”

Izuku came out from behind his desk and put a hand on my wrist. “You know, you don’t have to hide your smile around me.”

I hadn’t even realized I was doing it until he pointed it out. Sometimes I forgot to hide it, but sometimes I forgot I didn’t have to.

“Oh, I…” I put my hands down.

“Ochako tells me how pretty your smile is all the time, and…” Izuku was blushing. His face was beet red. “…I want to see it more, too.”

That made me smile again. “You make me feel so good about myself, Izuku.”

I didn’t think it was possible for him to blush harder, but it was. Now he was the one hiding his face. “Uhhhh…anyway…hero outfits! Right!” Why did he want to change the subject so badly!? “Since we were just talking about mine and all, I uh…why don’t you have any gear or anything?”

“I mean, I still have it, but…I can’t use it without a hero license, right?”

“No, but you can wear it. There’s no rule against that, and we shadowed pro heroes in our outfits and with our gear before we had our licenses.”

“Maybe, but it’s not the same for me.” I thought about those people who glared at me on the train, or turned to face away from me. “People remember me as a villain. Even now, walking around in public, they still see me the same way. I don’t want to think about what it would be like if I suddenly started wearing my old gear, too. I mean, I guess I’d have to use it for the license exam after I finish the HeroSET, but I don’t want people to be scared of me, and…I don’t want them to think less of you for helping me.”

He came out from behind his desk and sat down next to me, putting his arm on my shoulder and guiding my head to rest against him. “You’re more than your past, Himiko,” he said softly and gently into my ear. “People will learn to see who you really are. They’ll learn to trust you. You don’t have to worry about us, and we’ll help you with anybody who gives you trouble.”

“It’s still hard…” I didn’t want to leave Izuku’s side. His hand against my body felt so comforting. “Did Ochako tell you what happened that one time?”

“You mean the sex?”

“Not that!” I picked my head up and stared at him. “Well, I mean, I guess that too, but that’s not what I meant. I was talking about the stuff from class.”

“Oh yeah.” He put a finger to his chin and looked down, deep in thought. “Those classmates who were talking about you behind your back, and that New Tartarus Movement rally.”

“Yeah.” It still made me angry thinking about it. “It really hurts, you know. Living in a world that feels like it doesn’t want you to exist in it.”

Izuku’s arm tightened around my shoulder, and he leaned his head against mine. “I’m glad you’re in it, Himiko. And Ochako is too. And I think we can change a lot of people’s minds about you.”

“I hope so.” I stood up. “I should let you change, Izuku. But…thanks for caring. It means a lot.”

“Of course, Himiko.” Izuku smiled at me. It made me happy, seeing the corners of his mouth turned up, his freckled cheeks puffing out ever so slightly as he did. “Oh, but seriously, you should think about bringing your hero gear to the office. Even if you don’t wear it on patrol, it’ll still help us out to see how it works and how you use it.”

“You bet!” I called back. Typical Izuku, always thinking about hero stuff. I wouldn’t have it any other way with him.

Typhoon Koto quickly broke apart once it hit land, going from a ferocious typhoon to a jumbled mess of rain clouds in a day and a half, but there was a lot of damage on Kyushu, and Ochako spent nearly a week deployed with the other rescue heroes down there. I missed her a lot. Izuku did, too. I knew what she was doing was important, but I wanted her back.

I woke up one morning to a text from Izuku. He sent it in the middle of the night—maybe he got woken up by something, or maybe he just couldn’t sleep. With him, who could say which it was?

Izuku [03:20]: Himiko! Sorry for the early morning text, but I just heard that Ochako is returning home today. Her phone is out of battery, so she can’t update us, but I wanted to make sure you knew

She was coming back! Finally! I bolted awake right away.

Himiko [07:49]: OMGGGGGG

Himiko [07:49]: This is amazing, I’m so happy ヾ(*´ ∇ `)ﾉ

Himiko [07:50]: Is she coming back to the office?

Izuku [07:50]: I think so!

Did he ever sleep!? If I was up at 3 AM, there’s no way I’d have been up this early! It didn’t matter now, though. I was just too excited.

Himiko [07:50]: I’m so excited to come in aaaaaaaaa ~(≧ω≦)~

Himiko [07:51]: I can’t wait to see her (⁀ᗢ⁀)

I couldn’t focus at all in class that morning. I almost didn’t even notice that those two guys who were talking about me weren’t there that day. I just wanted to see Ochako again. I rushed over from Windflower Academy the instant that class ended and waited at the front desk. Minutes felt like hours, but when I heard that elevator chime and saw the doors open, it was like all of my emotions that had been building up just erupted.

“Ochako!!” I practically leapt over the desk and jumped onto her. I couldn’t hug her tight enough. “I’m so happy you’re back!”

I heard footsteps behind me as Izuku came running out. “You’re back!” He wrapped his arms around her too, and we stood in the lobby, just grateful to be together again.

“I missed you two,” she said, sounding exhausted. She looked exhausted, too. There were bags under her eyes, and her suit was torn in a few places.

“Ochako…what happened to your suit?” Izuku asked.

“Oh…” She ran her hand along one of the tears. “The typhoon winds picked up a lot of debris, and every so often, a piece would tear into our outfits.” She must have seen Izuku’s shocked expression. “But don’t worry, I’m fine!”

“What about your spare suit?”

“This is my spare suit!” She held up the bag she brought with her. “The other one is torn up, too.” She yawned. I guess she hadn’t gotten much sleep. Same as Izuku, apparently.

“You look so tired, Ochako.” I held her face. Her eyes were definitely sleepy, but there was still a brightness in them. She was as happy to see us as we were to see her.

“Do you need us to get you anything?” Izuku asked.

“I just need a quick nap,” Ochako replied, yawning again. “I’ll be fine.”

“Well, we’ll get you water and stuff at least, okay?” Izuku gave her a quick kiss and went off to the break room. I went looking for a pillow, but I couldn’t find one, so I rolled up the sweater I kept at the front desk for the colder months and popped into Ochako’s office.

“Hey, I couldn’t find a pillow…is this comfy enough?”

She held it up and smiled. “This is fine, Himiko.” She held it to her face and took a deep breath. “It even smells like you.”

“Are you gonna be okay sleeping in here?” I asked as Izuku walked in with a big cup of water for her.

“Mmhmm.” She pushed two chairs together to set up a makeshift bed for herself and put my sweater under her head. “Wake me up when we do our Friday meeting, ‘kay?”

Wow. Of course Sojo insisted on having a meeting the day Ochako got back … and of course Ochako still wanted to try and make it.

“We will,” Izuku said, giving Ochako a kiss on her forehead before walking out.

It was just me and her for a moment. I looked at her torn suit, at the scratches on her skin and the places where little cuts had started to scab. I wanted to pull them off and drink her blood. Just a little bit. Just to taste her again. But she needed to rest…and I didn’t know how to ask her even if she didn’t. I bent down and kissed her.

“Sleep well, Ochako.”

Maybe she was already asleep, but she let out a sigh that sounded happy to me. I think she heard me. That made me smile.

Her “quick nap” ended up being four hours long. Poor Ochako looked like she needed it, but she ended up being just fine for the weekly meeting that she (for some reason!) insisted on coming to. For almost a half hour, Ochako told us everything she had gotten up to during the typhoon. It made sense why she was so tired. Hero work is hard, and I had always grown up thinking about it in terms of villains…which, back then, just meant “anybody that heroes didn’t like” to me. Rescue work might be difficult, but I also felt like it was nice and neat—nobody right or wrong, just people who need saving.

“You did excellent work, Uravity,” Sojo said. “It may take a month for the government to calculate and process payments, but I can run a preliminary calculation and give us an estimate.” He looked at another sheet of paper in front of him. “I’m sure Deku told you about the bank van incident?” Ochako nodded. “We have word on the financials for that as well. In addition to the government payout, Yaoyorozu Finance is paying us a reward lump sum for the recovery of their assets.”

That still felt icky to me. It really felt like another instance of heroes just protecting what they wanted to protect, and that powerful people would use their power to keep things for themselves. Yeah, stealing is wrong, but helping out big banks that already had absurd amounts of money felt wrong, too. I still haven’t figured it out for myself.

“There are a couple of contracts I wanted to review now that you’re back,” Sojo continued. “They’re both supplier contracts. One is for building out our real-time command center. Fujitsan Electronics is offering us a full build-out. The other is for our hero support equipment repairs and supplies. That one is from the heroics division of Mitsubashi Industries…”

I don’t know how this stuff is interesting to Sojo. It wasn’t interesting to me then, and it still isn’t now. I know this is what comes with running a business. I know that heroes need this stuff. But wow, did it have to be so boring? I don’t remember a thing that any of the three of them said after that, which means it probably wasn’t that important for me to know it.

“That’s all I have,” Sojo said. Finally! “Anything else you wanted to discuss?”

“Yes, I do…” Ochako spoke up. “I know it may sound small, but…many mornings, there’s a group outside the Musutafu Education and Vocational Center that’s using a sound truck in a very disturbing way. I know this sort of thing is really small for heroes to deal with, but…could we let the police know? And maybe they can do something?”

“What do you know about the group?” Sojo asked.

“It’s the New Tartarus Movement.”

I was blown away. Ochako spent a week in the thick of a terrible typhoon, and she was still thinking about that? About me? How much was my bad day weighing on her mind? The fact that I was still in her thoughts while she was hundreds of kilometers away in a raging storm…

Sojo shook his head. “You’re right that it’s illegal,” he replied. “Paragraph 165 of the National Education Law forbids disturbances like loudspeakers near education centers. But…for us to intervene, to take action against a political party…we’d be seen as influencing politics. Putting our thumb on the scale. It’s far too risky.”

“Even if we just told the police?” Izuku asked. He sounded so angry at the thought of doing nothing. I could hear the disbelief in his voice. “It would just be letting them know—they would be the ones who’d decide what to do, not us!”

“If word got out about a phone call like that, even that news would be a disaster for our perception.” Sojo hung his head ever so slightly. “There is still skepticism of hero society after the war. Many people still think heroes play by different rules than everyone else. And there is a lot of speculation that the Prime Minister might call elections in the next few months. If we’re seen as influencing a potential election, there would be people who would call it a coup attempt.”

“A coup attempt?” Ochako shot back. “They’d call a noise complaint a coup attempt? That’s ridiculous! It’s such a minor thing!”

“It’s because it’s so minor that people would accuse us of interference.” Now Sojo’s voice was getting heated, too. “We’ll be accused of using a minor, trivial law to punish a political party because we don’t like them. It doesn’t matter if it’s not true—that’s how it will look.”

“So we can’t do anything!?” Ochako was standing up, like her anger wouldn’t let her keep her seat.

“There has to be something we can do!” Izuku slammed his palms on the table. They were this angry…for me?

Sojo took a deep breath. “At the end of the day, I work for you,” he replied, his voice a little lower and a little calmer. “If you want me to make this phone call, I will. But I need you to understand how dangerous this is for our public perception, at a time when people are gaining our trust—”

“Don’t do it.”

As I spoke, I felt every pair of eyes on me. I looked down at the table, afraid to look anyone in the eye.

“Don’t do it,” I said again. “It’s not worth the risk. It’s just not. So please…”

Sojo took a deep breath. “Deku? Uravity?” Back then, I was just the intern. I couldn’t make decisions, so of course, he had to ask them. They didn’t say a word. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw them shaking their heads. No. They wouldn’t do it.

“Was there anything else?” Again, no words, just the two of them shaking their heads no. Sojo stood up. “I sincerely apologize to you all for the uncomfortable conversation, especially so soon after Uravity returned. I did not mean to act insubordinate. Please excuse my conduct.” He bowed deeply. “Thank you for allowing me to speak freely. And welcome back again, Uravity.”

He left, and the three of us sat alone in that conference room.

“Himiko…” Izuku looked at me with concern in his eyes. “Why?”

“You didn’t have to do that for me, you two.” I looked at them both, my head low.

“But to have you constantly run into them and deal with that awful stuff they say…” Ochako looked like she was about to cry.

“Sojo-san is right. It would be too risky for you two.” I rolled my chair closer to theirs. “I know heroes take risks, but you don’t have to take that one for me. I don’t want you to risk your business for my sake. If anything happened, I’d feel guilty about it forever.”

“Himiko…”

“I’ll be okay. I promise. And besides…” I stood up. “Just knowing that you wanted to help so badly…that already means a lot.”

It was my turn to be at the center of a three-way hug as they stood up and embraced me. Yes, it hurt to know that we couldn’t do anything about the New Tartarus Movement back then. I would have loved to never see those angry faces and hear those hateful chants. But it didn’t have to hurt so much with these two in my corner.

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Three years before the present

The three of us were huddled in a training room three stories below ground. Ochako and I hadn’t needed to use one since we finished school at UA, since we saw plenty of action on patrol, but Himiko had never had to use one until now.

“This place is huge!” Himiko was awestruck. The street-level entrance was the size of a coffee shop, but below ground, each training level had about as much floor space as an airplane hangar—and there were four stories in total. Since we didn’t need a huge amount of space for our training session, we were given a smaller training room set up to look like a restaurant. Dummies made out of ballistic gel were positioned throughout the room to simulate patrons, staff, and villains. Around the room, strategically placed, were ruggedized cameras, designed to resist impact, heat, water, and shockwaves. They let the front desk watch trainees in real time and recorded footage that we could review for training.

“We figured today was a good day for you to show us how your gear works,” Ochako said. Himiko had brought her support gear into the office at least a month earlier, but we’d had so much hero work that we didn't take time to get a training room until mid-November.

“I thought you just meant, like, talking about it at the office,” she replied. “I didn’t know you wanted to see me use it. I didn’t even know this place existed!”

“They didn’t tell you about training centers in your class?” I asked.

“Not really…they mentioned restrictions on where and how quirks can be used, but nothing about places like this.” She looked around. “So, can I come here any time I want?”

“Uh, for now, I think you can only come with one of us,” I replied. “Without a license, you’d need special permission from the police, and that could take a month or more to get.”

“But once you get your license, yeah, you could come whenever you want!” Ochako chirped. She and I both were excited for her to finally hold a license of her own.

“So, Himiko, we’ve seen some of what you can do at, uh…at our summer training camp…” It felt awkward for me to even say that. Yes, it was true, but thinking about how she started as a villain, attacking us…maybe it shouldn’t have felt weird, and maybe it’s actually good in the grand scheme of things, since it shows how far she’s come. But I still didn’t like it.

“I know…” she replied, sheepishly. I guess I wasn’t the only one who felt weird about it. “I know I’ve already said I’m sorry, but…I really am sorry.”

“No, no, it’s okay, Himiko!” Ochako interjected. “You don’t have to keep apologizing to us.”

“Yeah! All I was going to say is that, well…we don’t really know everything about how your equipment actually works.”

Himiko had her gear strapped over her street clothes. She had her old green backpack and belt boxes on, with her piped mask hanging below her chin.

“Everything about my equipment is to help me collect and swallow blood more easily,” she explained. She pulled a knife from a sheath on her leg. “I would always have a knife on my thigh, so that if I got into combat, I could pull it out quickly. Plus, it made it easier to slice someone and get some of their blood on the blade.”

She still talked about knives and cutting and blood so excitedly. I remember feeling a chill hearing it. Even though I knew that the work she had done in the diversion program helped her separate out her love of blood and cutting from her feelings of love in general, and that she wasn’t going to try to slice us up all of a sudden because she liked us…there was still that little pang of nervousness anyway from that part of my brain that equated weapons with danger and blood with pain.

Putting the knife away, she put her hand on one of the canister-looking things next to her head. “I can collect blood from a distance with these. Each one has a needle that only extends after I pull it out of its holder, so that I don’t accidentally poke myself.” As she pulled on it, a needle popped out of the front, and a long, slim hose trailed behind. “There are six of them attached to my backpack. It has a built-in machine that pumps the blood for me to drink through my mask. I can also drink blood stored in tubes that I keep in my belt pouches.”

“You know, I don’t think we’ve actually seen your long-distance fighting style,” Ochako said. “Maybe you could show us?”

“This would be a good way for us to see how you’d do hero work, too!” I was excited. The room was set up perfectly for a training mission. “Why don’t we do this? Let’s say that those four dummies in there burst into the restaurant to take hostages for ransom. Can you show us how you’d rescue them?”

“I mean, I feel like my biggest strength is infiltration, but if I had to mount a solo rescue…” Himiko looked around at the room, thinking. “If they were real, I’d probably steal blood from one of the villains and transform into them, and then I’d use the confusion to take down everyone else. But since they’re just training dummies…”

“That’s okay,” Ochako said. “We already know about your transformation quirk, so we just need to see more of your fighting style.”

Himiko nodded and smiled, a determined look on her face. “Got it.” She put her mask over her face. It really did look fearsome. “Just say when.”

“Start any time you like,” I said. No sooner than I did, she leapt through the window cut out of a plywood board and tossed one of her needles at one of the villain dummies, landing it right on its neck. A second later, she yanked it away, and the dummy fell over as she ducked behind a table and pulled out her knife, slashing the legs on the second dummy as it slumped to the ground as well.

“Wow!” Ochako couldn’t hold back her amazement. We knew she was a good fighter from the training camp attack, but to see this, after years of her not fighting at all , was unbelievable.

As we watched her roll out from under the table and pull two needles from either side of her backpack, tossing both towards the last two training dummies, I thought about what an incredible hero she would be. Versatile, flexible, hyper-aware, and fierce in combat without any formal training. Without the equipment, she looked like an average young woman. She was certainly built like one—but here she was fighting like a close-quarters combat expert. And yet…seeing her fight also reminded me of what she said when Ochako was out helping with the typhoon recovery.

People remember me as a villain. Even now, walking around in public, they still see me the same way. I don’t want to think about what it would be like if I suddenly started wearing my old gear, too.

It hurt to think that she was right, but she was right. If a stranger had walked into our training session, would they have seen a future hero, training to rescue hostages? Or would they have seen a notorious villain brandishing a knife and terrorizing innocent people in a restaurant? We knew the truth, but there were still so many people who didn’t. People knew her as a villain, so they kept seeing her as a villain until she did enough to change people’s perceptions of her. Ochako and I saw her most often, so we were able to reset our perceptions sooner than other people, but that also meant that we struggled to understand why other people couldn’t see what we saw. That must be how Himiko felt her whole life, struggling against how other people couldn’t understand her perspective on life and what it meant for her to be “normal.” Even though it’s so much better for her now, it still hurts my heart to think about it.

Himiko stood up, pulling back her needles and returning them to the holders mounted on her backpack. “How’s that?” she said, turning to us, breathing heavily as she pulled her mask down.

“That was incredible, Himiko!” I was smiling from ear to ear. “If this was the entrance exam for UA, you’d have gotten in for sure!”

Himiko smiled, putting her hands up to her face. “Ah, I’m so happy you like it!”

“Izuku is right—you’re so skilled,” Ochako added, beaming. “I’m sure they’re going to love you at the licensing exam!”

“I hope you’re right…” Himiko looked down. “Do you know what the exam is like?”

“Apparently, the commission changes it often depending on what they need,” I replied. “When Ochako and I did it, it was a two-part test where the first portion was basically a free-for-all to weed out most of the other participants, and the second part was a simulation. But there’s no way to predict what it’ll be like next time.”

“I see.” Himiko turned around to look back at the training room, the four dummies representing villains strewn on the ground. “Were you two…ever worried about failing?”

“You mean the exam?” Ochako asked. “Or just in general?”

“I guess both?”

“Hmmmm…” Ochako thought. “I think we were worried that not everybody in our class would pass the exam at first. There were a lot of candidates, and they only advanced a small percentage of them.”

I nodded. “And in general…do I worry about failing? I don’t want to speak for Ochako, but for me…I guess in a sense, I worry about it all the time. I always want to save people.” I thought about Eri, scared in that alley with Overhaul over her. “So I guess I’m always afraid that something will happen where I can’t save someone…or where I don’t realize that someone needs saving. Like with—” I stopped myself. I hoped Himiko didn’t put the rest of that sentence together. Like with you.

“Well, I’m gonna do everything I can to get that license,” Himiko said with a huge grin. “When you two are out there saving people, I want to be right next to you.”

That was a happy thought. Something for all of us to work towards. “We’ll help you get there,” I said. “Promise.”

Ochako nodded, looking determined. “You’ve got this, Himiko.”

“Can I come with you on patrol again?” she asked, excitement in her voice.

“You’re not tired?” Ochako asked. “If you’re up for it, of course you can come with us!”

“Yay!” She jumped for joy like a schoolgirl finding out that school was snowed out for the day.

We made our way upstairs, and I collected the training footage from the front desk for us to watch again later. Himiko and Ochako were talking and laughing, and I smiled, thinking back to what Himiko said to me.

You and I are really similar, Izuku.

We might be different in plenty of ways, too, but seeing her excitement at becoming a hero, and her determination to make it happen, it wasn’t hard to see the similarities, too. I caught up to them, and the three of us walked out, all grinning at the idea of Himiko being a hero alongside us. She’d have to work hard to make it happen. We all would. But the thought of that future for us three made us so incredibly happy.

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Three years before the present

I grew up hating New Year’s Day. Looking back, I think I was jaded from years of being told to be different by everyone around me. Every new year, people talk about the things that they wanted to change in their own lives, or the things that they wished for the year ahead. I didn’t want to change. I wanted to just be me —but nobody ever let me. I would wish for people to accept me, and each year, it never came true…so eventually, I just stopped wishing. It never even crossed my mind to do anything for New Year’s Day until Izuku and Ochako texted me.

Izuku [11:15]: Hi Himiko! I don’t know if you have plans for New Year’s, but Ochako and I are going to a shrine to celebrate and watch the first sunrise

Izuku [11:16]: We’d love it if you joined us (⁀ᗢ⁀)

A shrine visit for the new year. I hadn’t done that since I was a child. My parents took me; we never went to see the first sunrise, but they insisted I go with them on the first morning of the year so that we could all say prayers as a family. They bought an ema prayer plaque and wrote their wish on it. I still remember what it said when they hung it up with all the others. We pray for our daughter to live a normal life. I wanted to cry. They might as well have wished for a totally different daughter. I had never went to a shrine for New Year’s after that. But I had a feeling that, with Izuku and Ochako…maybe it could be different.

Himiko [11:18]: I’ll come with you!

Izuku [11:19]: Great 〔´∇｀〕 we’re so excited to ring in the new year with you!

An hour before midnight, I was bundled up in my pink coat at the bottom of the steps to the shrine. It was already busy with a bunch of other people who had the same idea that Izuku and Ochako did. I remember it being busy when I was with my parents, too.

“Himikooooo!”

I heard Ochako calling out to me and saw her run towards me with a box in her hands while Izuku followed behind her, a backpack slung over his shoulder.

“There you are!” She opened the box. Inside were six round mochi balls. “I hope you like mochi. There was a cart selling them down the street, so I got us some to eat while we wait in line.”

I smiled. My parents never got mochi for me on New Year’s Day.

“Should we head up?” Izuku asked. “There’s probably going to be a big line of people to buy ema and say prayers.”

I nodded. The steps were already getting kind of crowded, so the three of us filed in behind the others—first under a modern concrete torii gate, then a succession of traditional vermillion wooden ones. The line moved slowly, and at first, I was worried that we’d miss the stroke of midnight.

“Here!” Ochako handed me a mochi ball.

“Thanks, Ochako.”

The three of us nibbled on mochi as we climbed further up the steps, eventually seeing the shrine as we reached the top of the staircase cut into the hillside. I could hear the murmurs of conversation of those ahead of us, and beyond them, the ringing of a bell and the sound of hands clapping twice, repeated in an almost rhythmic way.

“I think we’ll be able to say a prayer before the new year,” Izuku said, looking at his phone. I checked mine, too. 23:47. Not too much time, but it ended up being enough. We reached the front and tossed our coins into the collection box.

“Let’s all ring the bell together,” Ochako said. We all put our hands on the rope and pulled it forward, and the bell chimed. We stepped back and bowed twice, clapped twice, and bowed a third and final time. I thought hard about what I wanted for myself for the new year. It felt so much different than when I was with my parents all those years ago. I felt like I could wish for what I wanted. And I felt like it could come true.

“It’s almost time!” Izuku hurried us to the side as the seconds ticked away. He opened his backpack and crouched down, pulling out a small bottle and three tiny sake cups. “We’re all 20 now, so…I figured we could toast to the new year together.”

As we crouched down with him, he set the three cups down and poured for me and Ochako, then set the bottle down. Ochako picked it up and smiled at me. “Himiko, what do you say we both pour for Izuku?”

I put my hand next to hers and tilted the neck of the bottle down. Clear sake filled his cup.

“It’s almost time…” Izuku set his phone down, and I watched the seconds flashing on the screen. We counted down together.

“Ten…nine…eight…seven…”

I couldn’t stop thinking about how different this New Year’s felt. I rolled my eyes at this holiday before, but that year, for the first time…it felt different.

“…six…five…four…”

We heard everyone counting down around us. Everyone was excited—including, for once, me. The three of us had our hands on our sake cups.

“…three…two…one…”

The bell at the shrine rang out, and everyone cheered.

“Happy New Year!”

All around us, people were hugging and cheering. The three of us, sitting on the ground, put our cups together and drank.

“Kanpai!”

I had never had sake before, and the taste was smooth and clear. I looked at Izuku and Ochako, and I felt my face get hot, like all the blood was going to my head.

“I’m so happy that the first thing we get to see this year is your smile, Himiko,” Izuku said. I hadn’t even realized that I was grinning, but I just couldn’t help myself. I never had a new year to look forward to before they came into my life.

Ochako stood up. “Does anyone want to buy an ema? I have wishes for the new year, so I’m going to get in line.”

“I’ll come with you!” I stood up to follow her. I wanted to put my parents and their ignorant New Year’s prayer behind me. This was going to be my wish.

“Me too!” Izuku collected the sake cups and joined us, and we got into another line to get our ema. There were a lot of people, and the hooks for us to leave our prayer plaques were already very full, but we carefully wrote out our desires for the new year.

“What did everyone wish for?” Ochako asked.

“Here’s mine.” Izuku tilted his towards us. I wish for the three of us to achieve our dreams.

“I like that!” Ochako held hers out. “This is mine.” I want to protect the people closest to me.

I held mine next to my heart and took a breath, then flipped it around in front of my chest. I want to become more like the people I love.

“I really like that, Himiko,” Izuku said.

“If you want…” Ochako held her ema by the string. “Why don’t we tie our ema together before we hang them up? That way, they’ll always stay together.”

We tied a knot around the strings for our three ema and found a hook that had enough room for ours. Three people with three different wishes, all joined together. We really were inseparable, weren’t we? Even though Izuku and I weren’t dating yet, it still felt like all three of us had something blossoming, something linking us together.

“First sunrise isn’t until 6:52,” Izuku said, looking at his phone. He was going into nerd mode again. “It would make sense for us to sleep, but we also don’t want to miss the sunrise, so if we nap until 6:15, and I set an alarm for then, we should be able to—”

“It’s okay, Izuku.” Ochako put a hand on his shoulder. “We can rest. I’ll make sure to wake us up.”

We found a quieter spot off to the side of the shrine area and started to drift off as the sound of conversation from the worshippers wafted in through the trees. I must have fallen asleep pretty quickly, because the next thing I knew, Ochako was rocking me and telling me to wake up.

“Himiko!” Ochako whispered. There was a little bit of light in the sky as the sun approached the horizon, but it was still dark. “The sun’s coming up soon.”

I stumbled up. Izuku was already awake.

“It’s cloudy right now,” he said, “but we should at least see the sunlight.”

A crowd was gathering, facing the east and staring at the horizon. Everyone wanted a glimpse of the first sunrise of the year.

“Look!”

At first, just a bit of orange poked out, and it looked faded through the clouds. The weather wasn’t cooperative—until…

“Wow!”

The crowd gasped as the clouds broke at the perfect moment. The sun poked through, framed by wispy pink clouds on either side, and we were bathed in orange sun rays in the cold January air. Still tired, I rested my head on Izuku’s arm and held Ochako’s hand.

“Thank you two…for taking me here.” I smiled again. “I can’t wait to spend the next year with you.”

Ochako squeezed my hand. “We’re so glad you’re here.”

“It wouldn’t be the same without you,” Izuku whispered.

My parents’ awful wish for me was far behind me, and as my tired eyes started to close, I thought back to our wishes, tied together on a string and hung up for everyone to see. I thought about Ochako and Izuku looking at me in those first seconds of the new year.

I’m so happy that the first thing we get to see this year is your smile, Himiko.

I felt like I was finally able to really experience what other people felt around New Year’s: a chance to break from the pain of the past and have something bright to look forward to. With the morning sun on my face, I closed my eyes and let myself drift back to sleep.

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Three years before the present

Izuku and I were at the office getting ready to head out on our patrol when Himiko texted me.

Himiko [12:06]: Hey! Is it okay if I call you?

Himiko [12:06]: Nothing bad, just wanted to talk about class today (^◡^)

Nothing bad. Thank goodness. She knows I’d worry if she just asked to call and didn’t say why.

Ochako [12:07]: Sure!

A few seconds later, my phone rang, and Himiko’s smiling face appeared on the screen. I pressed the green button on my phone and answered.

“Moshi moshi! Is everything alright?” Even though she had just said that nothing bad happened, I couldn’t help but ask.

“Yeah, everything is alright,” she said in a hushed tone. “Sorry if it’s hard to hear me, but I’m still in the building, and Mera-sensei said that the college exam students are in the final stretch for their studies, so we have to be extra quiet.”

I had forgotten about that. It was that time of year, after all. People took college entrance tests extremely seriously.

“So what happened in class?” I asked.

“Mera-sensei told us about signing up for the HeroSET and the license exam today,” Himiko answered. Her voice got a little staticky; maybe she was in the elevator or the stairs? “I’m gonna take them pretty much back to back, since the HeroSET is in March and the first license test is in April.”

“That’s so soon—you must be so excited!”

“Yeah. I’m kind of nervous, too.” Even in her hushed voice, I could tell that it was weighing on her mind. “Like, if I fail the license test, I’ll have to wait another four months to take it again, and if I fail the HeroSET, it’ll be a whole year.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that, Himiko. You’ve been working hard, and you are really talented.” I smiled to myself. I wish she could have seen how happy just thinking about her made me. “You’ve got this.”

“Thanks Ochako,” she said. “I know you and Izuku believe in me, and that means a lot.”

There was some kind of commotion happening in the background—chanting or yelling or something. She must have stepped outside.

“Hey, what’s happening over there?”

“Oh, that’s just the New Tartarus people being noisy,” she said, clearly disgusted with them. “I’ve just been ignoring them, but they’re definitely—”

In the middle of her sentence, Himiko stopped. I could hear the sound of cars passing by her, the chanting still going on in the background.

“Hey, Ochako? Why are the police here?”

“What!?” The smile was gone from my face. I was as shocked as she was.

“I told you not to call them!”

“I didn’t, I swear!”

“Did Izuku call?” She sounded genuinely worried.

“I’m sure he didn’t, but I’ll ask him.”

I put the phone against my chest and went into his office.

“Um…Ochako?” He looked up, still in the middle of putting on his suit. I walked in while it was still around his ankles. He was in his boxers and nothing else. “Everything okay?”

I blushed. Even though we were dating, there was still something about one of us seeing the other almost naked at work. “Sorry! I didn’t realize you weren’t dressed…”

He smiled at me softly. “You know I don’t mind.”

“Yeah, I know, I just…” I shook my head, as if I could shake the embarrassment off of my face. “Himiko is calling. She says the police are at the New Tartarus Movement rally near her school. You didn’t call them, did you?”

His eyes went wide. “No! We talked about that, right? She said we shouldn’t call.”

“That’s what I thought!” I lifted the phone back up to my ear. “Izuku says he didn’t call them either.”

“Well, they’re here now,” Himiko said. “And there’s way more than usual, so I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Stay put, Himiko. We’ll come take a look.” I was bewildered. What was going on?

Izuku and I finished getting changed into our hero outfits, and we made our way over. Himiko was sitting on the curb at one end of the street. Behind her was a line of black and white police cars with their red emergency lights on, and past them was a crowd of people with banners and flags, yelling and chanting as a man on a sound truck led them. That had to be Tetsunoten. Around the corner, we saw three blue and white vans with police insignia and red emergency lightbars. A bunch of officers in helmets and padding were standing around with shields. Riot police. This was the elite STARS unit.

“There you are!” Himiko stood up as she saw us. “I have no idea what’s going on. I was so scared that you were the ones who called.”

“We know as much as you do,” Izuku said. “Maybe we can ask someone—”

“What are you three doing here?” From behind us, I heard a familiar voice.

“Superintendent Tsukauchi?” I turned around. “We could say the same for you!”

“What’s happening?” Izuku asked.

“We got a call from one of the juku cram school directors,” Tsukauchi began to explain. Well, at least that answered the question of who called. “He said the noise was disrupting his students’ lessons, and this building is a testing location for the entrance exams in two weeks, so we’re here to tell them that they can’t use their loudspeakers like this.”

“But…” Himiko looked over at the riot police in their armor next to their buses. “Why so many? And why all the riot police?”

Tsukauchi tilted his head towards the crowd. “Follow me. I think you’ll see why.”

“I shouldn’t go over there,” Himiko replied. “I’ll hang back here.”

“Do you want one of us to stay with you?” Izuku asked.

Himiko smiled. “I always want you two to stay with me,” she replied. “But you should find out what’s happening. I’ll just watch.”

We followed Tsukauchi up the street. The heavily armored riot police were obscured from view, but there was a line of regular patrol officers standing around the group. One of them was holding up a white banner with black text.

NOTICE

It is illegal under the National Education Law to use a loudspeaker in a manner that disturbs peace and order near an educational testing location. Violators may be removed and fined.

They clearly didn’t care about the warning. Everyone was still chanting, and Tetsunoten was standing on top of the sound truck egging them on. As we started to push our way through the crowd, I could feel the hostility. These people were angry.

We got to the front of the sound truck, and I could practically feel the eyes in the crowd burning into the three of us. “Tetsunoten -san .” Tsukauchi bowed to him. “Can you step down for me? I need to speak with you.”

“But of course,” he replied, setting the microphone down. I was surprised at how polite he was, given how angry he seemed just moments ago. The crowd wasn’t matching his energy, though. As he stepped down, they booed us loudly.

“Fake heroes!”

“You working for the other side?”

“Let him speak!”

I hadn’t experienced this level of hostility against heroes since the war. They were furious at us, and we weren’t even the ones who were making him stop! We were just there to watch!

“I apologize for my followers, Superintendent.” Tetsunoten said to Tsukauchi. “They are just so passionate, you see.”

“I understand that,” he said in reply. “And I know that this is inconvenient for you. But that building down the street is a college entrance test site.” He pointed at the building clad in decals and signs for various test prep groups. “They are in the last weeks of preparation for the biggest exam of their lives. We just ask that you refrain from loudspeaker use and excessive noise while they study.”

“Well, that’s not unreasonable at all, Superintendent.” Tetsunoten held his palms out, as if to say that this wasn’t his fault. “I think I can convince them to settle down. But I must warn you…” He looked the three of us straight in the eyes like a tiger watching prey. “…my followers are quite passionate. There may come a time when I can’t control what they do, you see, and if you continue to push against us…well, they might feel like they have no choice, and then who knows what they might do.”

I was stunned. Was that a threat? Was he threatening the commander of the police special forces unit to his face!?

“Oh, but enough of this unpleasant talk!” He held his palms up again. “Let me speak to my followers. I’m sure they’ll be reasonable.”

He bowed and climbed back up onto the truck as the three of us made our way back out of the crowd. Behind us, we heard him shouting.

“Everyone!” Tetsunoten was speaking without his loudspeaker now. The crowd quieted down. For what he said about the crowd being beyond his control, it sure seemed like he had a lot of control over them. “You all know that our children are our great nation’s future, and right now, they are studying for college entrance exams. Let’s return at a later time, when their exams are finished, so that they may study in peace and have every possible chance at success.”

There was a smattering of applause and a couple of shouts of agreement. People started folding up their banners and lowering their flags. Tsukauchi grabbed his radio and raised it to his mouth.

“STARS-1 to Shizuoka Center on tac channel 1.”

There was a crackle of static. “STARS-1, go.”

“We’re stable here. Anti-riot detachment will be demobilizing shortly.” With that, he clipped his radio back onto his vest.

“I was afraid that was going to be way worse,” I said, turning to Tsukauchi. “I didn’t think he would be so…polite.”

“He isn’t,” Tsukauchi said, the feeling of contempt clear from his tone. “He’s a manipulator. If being polite helps him, he’ll act polite, but he is a calculating person. He knows what he’s doing.”

“So when he said that thing about not being able to control his followers…” Izuku started.

“Oh, that was absolutely a threat,” he replied. “The idea that he can’t control his followers isn’t even remotely true. You saw how they all settled down as soon as he did.” He turned back to look at the crowd, dispersing with their flags and banners. “His supporters do concern me, you know. His ideas are popular with some police officers and JSDF soldiers, and the run-of-the-mill supporters can easily turn violent when they’re in a big group.”

We rounded the corner, back to the buses and riot police—and Himiko, sitting on the opposite curb, watching the whole thing play out. “That’s why we had so many riot police waiting, just to be safe,” Tsukauchi continued. “We keep them out of sight, to try not to provoke anyone, but we have to walk a fine line with groups like this.”

Himiko got up and jogged over to us. “What happened over there?” she asked. “It looked like they were getting really mad at you.”

“We just had a talk,” Tsukauchi replied. Technically true, I guess, but that’s not what I would’ve called it. “They’re going to avoid noisy rallies here until the college entrance exams are over.”

“Well, that’s good, I guess.” She looked at us. “Sorry for freaking you two out. I just don’t want to cause trouble for you two.”

“You don’t cause us trouble, Himiko,” Izuku said.

“Everything worked out just fine,” I assured her.

We thanked Tsukauchi before leaving, and he turned around to debrief the group of riot police that were packing their equipment away. I felt relieved that everything worked out without things deteriorating. Himiko was reassured, the New Tartarus Movement wouldn’t be a bother for at least the next couple of weeks, and nobody got hurt or arrested. Plus, the fact that someone else called the police proved how many people they were disrupting. It wasn’t just me and Izuku angry on Himiko’s behalf.

And yet…I still felt uneasy. Tetsunoten looked the commander of the riot police in the face and threatened him, and he was able to just walk away like nothing happened. His followers looked like they were one harsh word away from throwing punches. The whole thing felt like a powder keg, and just because there wasn’t a spark this time, that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be sparks later. He was dangerous. I knew it. And I knew we hadn’t seen the last of him or his supporters, either. But back then, I could never have guessed just how dangerous he would be.

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Three years before the present

As I flipped through my study book for the HeroSET, I felt my phone buzz. A text from Izuku or Ochako!? My face lit up as I marked my spot and flipped the phone over. Nope. A calendar notification. Sojo moved our weekly meeting a day earlier, so now it was this afternoon instead of the next day. Boooooring. At least now our meeting wouldn’t be on Valentine’s Day, I guess.

Valentine’s Day… I opened my phone again and started browsing through gift options. Flowers, chocolates, stuffed animals, cards—there were all kinds of cute options. But what would Ochako like? What would Izuku like? I froze. Another thought popped into my head. Should I get something for Izuku at all?

I was torn. I loved him, just like I loved Ochako, but what if Ochako didn’t want me buying things for her boyfriend for Valentine’s Day? What if I got him something bigger than what Ochako got him? What if she thought Valentine’s Day was stupid and she skipped it, and I ended up being the only one who bought anything? What if it made things awkward for the two of them? Or for the two of us? Ugh, this is so complicated, I thought. I spent years pining after my crushes from far away, convinced that nobody could love me in the way that I wanted to be loved—in the way that I needed to be loved—and now I was dating one of them and within arm’s length of another, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I never thought I’d get this far.

Izuku and Ochako came back into the office at the same time, coming off of their patrol still in their hero outfits. “Hey, Himiko!” Izuku smiled at me. “You saw that our meeting is today, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I saw.”

“See you in a few minutes, then!” Ochako grinned and waved as the two of them went into their offices to change. Well, I guess we might as well get this meeting over with, I thought. I need to get used to it if I plan on working here.

I took a seat in the conference room, and a minute later, Sojo walked in. “You’re early, Toga -san !” he said, surprised. “Anything on your mind?”

Plenty, I thought, but I’m not going to tell you how I want to make out with your two bosses. “Just focused on my studies,” I said. Technically not a lie!

Izuku and Ochako walked in not long after, sitting next to each other with Ochako between me and Izuku. Is she trying to put herself in between us? I thought.

“Okay, with everyone here, we can go ahead and get started,” Sojo began before running through the list of heroics that the two of them had gotten up to over the past week and what payouts they could expect. A few low-level apprehensions for minor crimes, a couple of rescues from a building fire, and some public service events. Not a bad week for them.

“I also got an interesting call,” Sojo continued. “There’s a proposal to adapt the UA story from the war into a manga series in Shonen Leap . They want to purchase the rights for all of the former 1-A students, and you’d be paid royalties for any tankobon and merchandise sales.”

Izuku looked flustered. “R-r-r-royalties? Merchandise!?”

“It’s early, but they feel confident that your story would have wide popular appeal,” Sojo explained. “This technically isn’t an agency matter, since your story covers everything before the agency started. Any payments would also be to you two directly, not to the company. Still, since I’m the one they called, I wanted to let you know—and if there’s any merchandise of you two as pro heroes, that’s obviously something for the agency.”

“Uh…Deku and I will look at the proposal and get back to them, I guess?” Ochako seemed just as stunned as Izuku. Honestly, who wouldn’t be?

“That works,” he replied. “One last thing…the reason I moved our meeting to today is because contractors from Fujitsan Electronics are coming by to take measurements and compile drawings of this floor and the one upstairs, and all of next week, they’ll be building out our command center. It’s going to be an extensive retrofit—they’re running new wiring and ventilation, and they have to cut into the ceiling to install stairs for us to access the floor above without using the one in the main portion of the building. All of that is to say that our office is going to have to be closed for all of next week.”

“That long?” Izuku asked. “Can we still do hero work?”

“In theory, yes…but all of our payroll software is on our computers here. That’s how we get paid by the government for your work. You’d have to keep your records on paper for that entire week and give them to me afterwards for me to submit them as one batch.” Sojo gathered his papers and closed his folder. “It’s up to you how you want to use that week, but if I were you, I would go on vacation.”

Izuku looked deep in thought. Did those two ever go on vacation? I thought. Sometimes I wonder if Izuku even sleeps!

“Anyway, that’s all I have prepared,” Sojo said. “Did you have anything for me?”

“That’s all for today,” Izuku answered. “Thank you for all of your hard work, Sojo -san .”

Sojo bowed and left. Once again, it was just the three of us.

“I think Sojo’s right,” Ochako chirped. “The three of us should go on vacation!”

“That would be great!” Izuku said, smiling.

They both turned to look at me. “I…can’t go.”

“What? Why not?”

“There’s too much going on in class for me to skip a whole week.” I still had my study book sitting at the front desk. I must have spent pretty much the whole day going through that thing. “And the test is next month, so I really can’t risk missing classes now.”

“Oh right, I completely forgot that it’s so soon…” Izuku said, brushing the back of his hair with his hand.

“Maybe we can stay here and help you study?” Ochako asked.

“No, you two should go on vacation!” I said. “I really wish I could go with you, but I’d also feel really bad if you stayed behind because of me. Besides, you two have been working super hard, so you deserve to relax a little!”

“Well, at least let us help you study when we get back!” Izuku replied, determined. “We want to help you.”

“Yeah!” Ochako seemed just as eager. “And we’ll make sure we can take you on vacation soon, too. Maybe to celebrate you getting your hero license?”

I nodded. “I’d love that so much!” The three of us stood up. “Promise you’ll send me vacation pictures?”

“You know it!” Ochako said.

“We’ll be thinking of you,” Izuku added.

As we filed out, I tapped Ochako on the shoulder. If I was going to ask her about Valentine’s Day…

“Himiko?” She turned around as Izuku went into his office.

“I wanted to ask you about, uh…Valentine’s Day…”

“Right! That’s tomorrow.”

“Yeah, and…I wanted to give something to Izuku. But I wasn’t sure if that was okay.”

Ochako smiled at me. “Himiko, of course that’s okay! Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I mean, he’s your boyfriend and all. And I meant what I said about not wanting to get in between you two. But…I still really like him.”

She grabbed my hands. “Himiko, when I asked you if it was possible to be in love with more than one person, and you said that you felt that way, it made me feel so relieved. I don’t ever want you to feel like you have to hide who or how you love. And besides…you two would be cute together, too.”

“Ochako…”

She leaned in and kissed me. “You don’t have to worry, Himiko. I promise.”

I smiled. Her kisses always made me happy. “Thanks, Ochako.”

I headed back to the front desk and set my study book aside, pulling out my phone again instead. I had Valentine’s Day shopping to do.

Before I went to class the next morning, I went to the mall inside the train station. I didn’t want them to sell out of any of the good Valentine’s Day gifts. A bunch of other people looked like they had the same idea, but I got lucky: one store had cute little boxes of chocolates with mini plushies to go with them, and they still had good ones left. I bought two boxes with mini cat plushies, each one holding a little paper card pinned to one of its paws that said “_____ is thinking of me! 💕” Well, that was cute! I took out a red pen from my bag and wrote my name in the blank. I had figured it would be a nice Valentine’s Day color, but the red ink kind of made it look like I wrote my name in blood. I mean, I liked the look of that, but would Izuku and Ochako?

That whole morning in class, I couldn’t focus, even though I knew I should have, with the HeroSET around the corner…but I just couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d give them their valentines. Should I hand it to them in person? I thought. Or maybe I’ll leave it somewhere as a surprise? I kept glancing at the shopping bag with my gifts.

“Toga -san ?” Shit! Mera -sensei must’ve seen that I was distracted. “Would you care to answer the question?”

“Um…could you repeat it?”

He yawned. “Can you tell us how long a provisional license holder must wait until they receive their full license?”

“Um…two years?”

Mera -sensei shook his head. “That was before the war. It’s been reduced to one year.”

Dammit. I really did need to study…but I couldn’t get my head off of Izuku and Ochako. When they get back from their vacation, I thought, I really need to take them up on that study session offer.

I couldn’t get away from Valentine’s Day thinking on the way to my internship, either. It felt like I was constantly walking past people carrying flowers or some other romantic trinket to give to someone. They looked so excited. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling either.

I was hoping to just give my valentines to them—I wanted to see the looks on their faces. But by the time I got into the office, the tech people from Fujitsan had already gotten there, and Ochako and Izuku were with Sojo and the contractors talking about the stuff they wanted installed. Plan B, then! I wouldn’t be able to see their reactions, but they’d love a surprise gift hidden somewhere for them to find before they went home, right? Maybe if I left their gifts in the cupboards in their offices where they kept their hero outfits?

I set my study book on the front desk and put my backpack by the chair before sneaking into Ochako’s office. In terms of decorations, she didn’t have too much in it—just a handful of framed pictures on her shelf. One was of her and her parents, and there was another of her and Izuku graduating from UA. I think I saw that one on her Pinstagram, actually! And then next to it, she had a framed picture of the three of us, back when we all went to the mall arcade after Ochako and I tried on clothes. I smiled and thought about how busy we had all gotten. I really wish I could have gone on vacation with them that week. We didn’t get many moments like that one, where we could just be ourselves and have fun, just the three of us. But if I wanted to be a hero like them, I didn’t have a choice but to stay with it and keep working hard. Besides, I knew we’d have other chances. That’s what I reminded myself as I left my gift in Ochako’s hero suit cupboard on top of her clothes.

I peeked into the hallway. Nobody saw me. Good. Izuku’s office was next. I went in. Unlike Ochako’s office, his was decorated all over—he had filled it with All Might figures and posters. He really did love All Might, even if that’s not what he called it. Maybe it wasn’t the same kind of love that I felt for them, or that he felt for other people, but that’s still some kind of love. He had that same drive I did—not just to love someone, but to become more like them. I gripped my gift box and opened his cupboard. Ochako must have had the same idea that I did—sitting on top of Izuku’s clothes was a small bag made of pink mesh, tied up with a ribbon. Inside was something wrapped in foil—a chocolate, I figured—and a folded-up note. It was a smaller gift than mine was, but she clearly made it herself. I guess I didn’t have to worry about one of us upstaging the other. Our gifts were both good in our own way.

As I stepped back out into the hallway and walked around the corner, I saw the group standing in the lobby and talking. Sojo and Izuku were by the main doors, talking to one of the Fujitsan contractors; Ochako was behind my desk.

“…so if there aren’t any issues, we look forward to seeing the finished product!” I overheard Sojo say.

“Some of the equipment is on backorder, so we might have to come back for final installation in a couple of months,” one of the Fujitsan people explained. “But all of the intrusive work will be finished this week, and you’ll be back in your office in no time.”

“Thank you very much for your hard work,” Izuku said, bowing. The others did the same before the contractors left. Sojo followed them, saying something about “parking restrictions” and “tow-away zones.” Probably important, but definitely not important for me.

“Oh, there you are, Himiko!” Ochako noticed me and smiled. “I saw your bag and your study book here.”

“Yeah!” I brushed my hair. That was Izuku’s nervous habit! Was I copying his mannerisms? I guess I really was becoming like the people I love. “I just wanted to stay out of your way, since you seemed like you were busy.”

“Oh, you didn’t have to do that!” Ochako said, waving her hand. “We’re actually about to head out on patrol, so we’re going to get into our hero outfits. Did you want to come with us?”

I always wanted to be with them, but… “I’m really behind on studying,” I said. “I should really stay here and focus.”

“Well, don’t leave before we come back, okay?” Izuku said. “We won’t be out too long, I promise.”

As soon as they went back to their offices, I heard shouts of surprise and joy from down the hall.

“Himiko!” Ochako shouted as I heard her office door open.

“Ochako? Himiko?” Izuku came out as well. “Ochako, your gift is so sweet!”

“Aw, thank you, Izuku!”

“And Himiko!” Izuku held up the little plush cat with the paper card. “This is so cute!”

“Yeah!” Ochako chirped. “I love this little guy. I’m keeping him on my shelf next to your picture.”

“Aw, you two…” I could feel myself blushing. “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

They went back to change as I flipped through my study book, looking for sections where I needed to focus the most. I found one, and I bent down and unzipped my backpack to get a pencil out. Sitting on top of my pencil case was a small pink mesh bag with a ribbon tied around it.

“Ochako…” I whispered to myself. I should have known that’s why she was behind my desk. I opened the bag—there was something wrapped in foil. I peeled off the wrapping, and inside was a chocolate heart…a little misshapen, but clearly a heart. I bit into it, and felt something gooey and tart pop in my mouth. Cherry filling? There was red oozing out of the little handmade chocolate, as if I had really taken a bite out of someone’s heart. There was a note in the bag, too. I unfolded it.

Himiko,

Sorry this present is so small! I’m still not used to spending lots of money on gifts, but I hope you like this chocolate. I taught myself how to make it, so I really hope it came out okay. I hope you know how happy you make me, and how glad I am that you are here with us. Thank you for opening your heart to me, and for letting me open mine to you.

Happy Valentine’s Day ❤️

Ochako

I felt tears in my eyes. I never wanted to let this piece of paper go. For Ochako to write that for me…for anyone to write that for me…

“We’re heading out, Himiko!” Izuku called out as he walked past the desk, smiling at me. I stood up.

“Be safe!” I called out to them.

“We will!”

As they stepped out, I folded Ochako’s note up and tucked it into my shirt. Being in love felt good—it always felt good for me. But to be loved back…well, that was a whole other feeling altogether.

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Three years before the present

Ochako wanted to go to Beppu for our vacation, and I had never been. She told me about this inn with an onsen that had private baths, and that she really wanted to go and stay there.

“Weren’t you just there back in the fall because they got hit by a major typhoon?” I asked.

“They’ve recovered super fast,” she said. “Besides, I made a promise to someone who lives down there.”

“If you’re sure…”

She took my hands. “Izuku, if you aren’t having fun, we can leave after a day or two and finish our vacation somewhere else.”

“No, it’s not about whether or not I’d be having fun. I just…I don’t want to burden them if they’re still recovering.”

Ochako smiled. “They need people to go back down there, Izuku. That’s their normal, and they want to get back to it.”

“You’re right.” I relaxed a little. It was easy for me to forget how quickly places could rebuild in the quirk era, even after the war. Those emotional scars, though…they take longer.

The next day, we were on a train heading south. We could have flown and gotten there an hour sooner, but it wouldn’t have saved us that much time—and besides, we both liked to see the landscape whizzing past us as we looked out the shinkansen windows. In Kitakyushu, we switched onto a local train to take us the rest of the way, along the island’s beautiful Pacific beaches on the east coast. The sun was out, and we were far enough south that the temperature was mild for the winter. The whole time, I kept Ochako’s Valentine’s Day note in my pocket.

Izuku,

I know this present is small, but you know that I’m still not used to spending lots of money on gifts. I made this chocolate for you myself, so I really hope it came out okay. Ever since we started this agency together, I’ve felt so lucky to be able to see all the best parts of you from up close. Thank you for being my partner, in hero work and in everything else.

Happy Valentine’s Day ❤️

Ochako

In hero work and in everything else. Well, we hadn’t had many chances for “everything else” in a while, and we probably both needed it. Letting ourselves get consumed by our work wasn’t healthy. I know I made that mistake when the war broke out. We needed a break to rest. More than that, we needed a break to grow as a couple.

I kept Himiko’s note with me, too. Ochako and I got the same gift, and for days after, I had been turning over in my mind what that meant. Did she just like giving gifts? Probably not—she hadn’t really given us gifts before, and this was for Valentine’s Day specifically, so…did that mean she felt the same way about both of us? I knew she liked Ochako—or maybe it wasn’t as deep as I thought it was? Maybe it was more superficial? I knew I was overthinking it, but it’s what I do. And if she did like me in the same way that she liked Ochako…how would I feel about that?

It would make me so happy to work with you and Ochako.

I still have so much more I want to know about you.

You and I are really similar, Izuku.

What was going on in her head? How did she feel? And how did I feel?

A melodic chime over the train’s speakers interrupted my thoughts. “Passengers: we will soon be stopping at Beppu,” a prerecorded voice announced. “The doors on the left side will open.”

“This is us!” Ochako stood up, and I followed her, grabbing our luggage from the rack and waiting patiently by the door until we came to a stop along the platform.

“I guess you already know the station?” I asked Ochako.

“Only sort of…” She looked around as we got into the elevator and went down to street level. “When I was here, the whole downstairs part was under a meter of water.” You would never have known that by looking—they restored everything in the station, and not a trace of water damage remained.

We made our way to the taxi rank. There were plenty of cars and not many people, so we got into the first taxi without waiting. Granted, it was the off season, but tourists still hadn’t come back to Beppu. Ochako slid across the seats while I brought our luggage to the back. The cab driver loaded it into the trunk before hopping back into the driver’s seat.

“Where to?” he asked.

“We’re staying at the Ryokan Mittsushinzō,” Ochako replied.

“Ah, that’s a lovely one.” I saw the driver smile in the rear view mirror as he drove us away from the station. He looked like he was on the older side of middle-aged. “Very nice family that owns that one. They never sold to one of the big chains.”

As we drove through central Beppu, I was amazed at how normal everything seemed. If you weren’t looking closely, you’d never guess that a typhoon had swept through. In the mountains, though, there were still scars on the landscape from where the wet soil washed downhill, bringing the roads with them. It looked like construction crews were still working to stabilize the ground and repave the roads.

“Say, you two look like those heroes from up north,” our driver said, glancing back at us in his mirror.

“Yeah! I’m Deku, and this is Uravity. She was actually here when Typhoon Koto hit.”

“Izuku…!” Ochako blushed. No matter how well known we were, or how big the job was, or how much money we made, she was always still a little embarrassed to get credit or praise for things.

“Incredible…” I could see the driver’s expression change in the reflection of the mirror. “I feel so honored that you are here. Thank you both for your brave work. Especially you, Uravity—you heroes did so much for us during the typhoon.”

Ochako’s face was bright red. “Oh, you know, I was just doing my job.” She kicked her feet back and forth. “How is everything now? Things seem a lot better.”

“They are,” the driver replied. “We were able to rebuild in the city center very quickly, but there are still spots in the mountains where they’re still repairing from the landslides.” We could see as much as we drove further up the hillside. In front of us, orange cones channeled the road into one lane as a construction crew filled in a missing section of the road with cement. A flagger waved us through with an orange baton. “They’ve also had trouble with electricity, apparently. Something about needing to replace specialized equipment, or something like that. Usually it doesn’t impact us much, but they told us that they’re turning off electricity to the city for about an hour tonight to let them install the new parts.”

“Oh, wow.”

“It’s okay, though.” The driver turned onto a side street. “Every day gets us a little bit closer to normal. And it’s good to have people visiting again.”

Our taxi pulled up to a short building in the traditional Japanese style. The driver opened our doors and took our luggage out of the trunk, and we thanked him for his help before heading inside. The room was elegantly decorated with porcelain and lacquered bowls and plates, and there were wood-block prints on the walls. An older woman bowed as we entered.

“Welcome to th—” Her eyes widened as she lifted her head back up. “Uravity!?”

“Please! You can call me Uraraka-san when I’m not working.”

The old woman bowed again. This must have been the one who Ochako saved during the typhoon! “I am so happy that you came back, Uraraka-san.” She turned to me and gestured. “And this must be your partner?”

“Yes! This is Izuku Midoriya.” She took my hand in hers. “You probably know him as Deku from his hero work.”

The old woman bowed again. “Midoriya-san, it’s an honor to have you here.” As she straightened up, she gestured to the door at the far wall. “Please, allow me to show you to your room.”

We walked out the back door and saw a beautifully manicured landscape surrounding a hot spring pool with a bamboo partition in the center. Mist rose up from the water that the natural volcanic heat of the earth had made hot. Around the edges were individual buildings—guest houses for visitors to the ryokan.

“We have our communal onsen in the middle of the property,” the old woman explained. “It’s separated by gender. The shorter cabins you see on either side are for changing and washing before you enter.”

“Wow…” Ochako looked awestruck. “This looks so beautiful.”

The old woman bowed politely and continued. “Over on the left are individual rooms that only have access to the communal pool.” She then pointed to the opposite side, to a set of larger buildings. “Those are the rooms that each have private onsen bathing. Each one has bathing that comfortably fits two people. The one closest to us is where you two will be staying.”

“Huh!?” Ochako was shocked. “I, uh, I think there must be some mistake…I only booked us for one of the smaller rooms for this week.”

“I know, but since it’s you here, Uraraka -san , I wanted you to have one of the upgraded rooms as a gesture of my thanks to you. Of course, if you truly want the smaller room, I can happily move you back, but I do hope you will accept this token of appreciation.”

Ochako blushed. “You are far too kind to us…” She bowed. “We would be honored to accept your generous hospitality.”

The old woman bowed again. “The pleasure is truly all mine.”

As we spoke, I noticed a larger building at the top of a slight incline overlooking the others in the courtyard. “Excuse me, but…” I pointed up at the building. “What building is that? Is it a communal building, or another guest room?”

“Ah, that is the Sakura House. Unfortunately, there is still some damage from the typhoon that we are repairing, so we’ve had to keep it closed. Otherwise, I would have gladly put you two there.”

“The Sakura House?”

“We wanted to offer a more luxurious experience for guests, so we set aside the Sakura House as our very best guest accommodations. It can comfortably sleep six people, and it has a larger ofuro for private onsen bathing, but it was most popular with newlyweds on their honeymoon.” She smiled to herself. “I really hope we can get it reopened soon. It’s my favorite when young people in love are guests here.”

We walked into the building with our guest room, and the old woman opened the door and gestured for us to step inside. It was minimalist yet elegant—very traditionally Japanese. A low table on the tatami mat floor had a tea set prepared for us, and a pair of nemaki robes were laid out for us on hangars. The pattern on the fabric had pink accents on a green base color. Perfect for us.

“Through the door over there is the private ofuro for bathing,” she explained. “Your dinner will be ready in an hour, and I’ll bring it here for you to enjoy in your room.” She bowed deeply to us again. It was clear that she had been doing this for most of her life, taking care of guests…but it was also clear that she was doing this out of more than just hospitality. Her heart was in it. “If you two need anything at all, please don’t hesitate to ask me.” With one last bow, she departed and left the two of us alone.

“Do you want me to help you rinse, Izuku?”

Our private bathing area had a small anteroom for us to leave our clothing and to rinse off before stepping outside to the ofuro , the traditional bathing vessel filled with hot spring water. Ochako was already undressed and showering herself. I walked over and joined her, slipping off my nemaki robe and rinsing her off before she did the same for me.

The air was cool as we stepped outside, the sun having already gone down. Mist was coming off of the hot onsen water. Our open-air bathing area was fenced off for privacy—nobody could look in from the outside unless they climbed over, but with no ceiling over us, we had a view of the night sky. No clouds that night…but with the lights of the city nearby, no stars to be seen either. We stepped into the spring water.

“It’s so good to just relax, Izuku.” Ochako smiled and closed her eyes.

“Yeah.” But I wasn’t relaxed. Not completely. My mind was still turning. “Ochako…”

“Hmm?” She opened her eyes and turned to me. “Is something wrong?”

“Maybe it sounds weird to you, but…I’m thinking about Himiko.”

Underneath the water, she took my hand. “I don’t think that’s weird at all!”

“It’s just…I’ve been thinking about her a lot recently. Ever since you and her…well, you know.” I don’t know why I couldn’t have just said the words had sex. I guess the anxious part of my brain can’t fully turn off.

Ochako frowned at me. “Did what happened…did that make you upset?”

“Well…I don’t know how to explain it. Because there was a part of me that was so happy, and there was also a part of me that felt like I was losing her to you. But the weird thing is, I also kind of felt like I was losing Himiko to you.”

She took her hands out of the water and cradled my face. Her palms were warm, having absorbed the heat from the spring water. “Izuku…I wish you told me sooner.” She leaned in and kissed me. “Do you remember when we volunteered with that care package group that one Christmas? And Himiko was there too?”

“Yeah…”

“When I came back to get more boxes from the packing area, I saw you and Himiko sharing a room together, and you two looked like you were super close.” She looked down at the water as the misty air gathered around our faces. Naked, in a cloud of mist with the soft light around us, she looked like a fairy, or a mermaid. As if she was too good to be true. “When I saw that…it’s funny. I thought the same thing you did. I felt jealous that I was losing you…and I felt jealous that I was losing her, too.” She looked back at me. “Do you think you like Himiko too?”

“I…I don’t know.” All of my thoughts about her flew through my head. “I mean, I love you, and the feelings I have for her aren’t exactly the same as how I feel about you, but…I care a lot about her. I want her to succeed, and I want to spend time with her. I want to see her smile. I want to get closer to her. So…I feel like you’re both special to me. But I don’t know what to call it.”

“I mean, you know that I really like you both.” Ochako smiled and put her arms around my neck. “The way you each make me feel…I wouldn’t trade that for anything. But it’s not like I’m feeling two exact types of the same love. There are things that Himiko makes me feel…and there are things that you make me feel that she doesn’t. But those can both be love, right? So maybe the same thing is true for you?”

“I guess you’re right…”

“Maybe you should ask her out?”

I closed my eyes and lowered my head. “I…I really shouldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Why not?” She ran her fingers through my hair. “You wouldn’t upset me, you know.”

“It’s not that. It’s…” I thought about Himiko sitting at the front desk of our agency while we were changing into our hero outfits. “I’m her boss. She works for us. If I asked her out…what if she felt pressure to say yes to me to keep her job?”

The smile vanished from Ochako’s face. “Oh, yeah…”

In a panic, I realized that everything I said about myself was also true for Ochako. “But I’m not saying what you did was wrong!” I put my hands up, waving frantically as if I could shoo away the implication that Ochako had pressured Himiko. “I’m just worried about it for myself, that’s all!”

She gently put her hands over mine and lowered them into the water. “Izuku, it’s okay.” She kissed me again. “I know you don’t think I did something wrong. You’re just being responsible. But…I do think you should still explore how you feel about her.”

I rested my head on her shoulder. “I wish she could be here with us…”

“Me too.” I felt her hand run along the inside of my thigh. “But I’m also happy we get some time for just the two of us.”

As she started kissing me again, I felt her hand wrapping around my cock, gently stroking it.

“Ochako!” I whispered. “What are you—”

“I want to make you feel good, Izuku.”

“Here!?” I was shocked. When did Ochako get bold like this? “We can’t…not in the onsen water!”

“Let me just get you nice and hard, okay?” She kissed me again. “I want to try something”

Her hand massaging my cock under the warm spring water got me so worked up. My face felt so flushed from the heat, and Ochako’s fingers and palms gliding up and down my shaft was making my head spin.

“Do you feel good, Izuku?”

“Ochako, we shouldn’t—if we get the onsen water dirty…”

“When you’re getting close, tell me and I’ll stop.”

Her voice was so soothing and gentle, barely louder than a whisper. The way she played with me, I was melting in her hands. “You’re making me feel incredible!”

“Mmmmmmm…”

“You know just how I like it, Ochako…”

“Mm-hmm…”

The way she stared into my eyes as she touched me, I felt like I was being hypnotized. I could get lost in her gaze. My mind was empty except for Ochako’s blushing, smiling face, the heat on my body, and the tingling I felt in my cock as I got closer to orgasm.

“Ochako…I think I’m close!”

She took her hands off my cock and kissed me. “Here…let me get out.” I watched as she slid herself over the side of the tub and stood dripping on the stone floor, her elbows resting on the edge. “I want you to get behind me, Izuku.”

“You mean…”

“Yeah.” She turned her head to look at me as I climbed out. “I want your hands on my hips. Hold me over the hot spring while you pump into me.”

“Ochako…” 

She held herself open with one hand while she balanced on the edge of the onsen tub with the other. “Come on, Izuku. Make me feel good, too.”

I put my hands on her waist. Seeing her from this angle, the way her ass curved, how inviting and eager she looked…if I hadn’t already been worked up from before, this would’ve sent me over the edge.

“I’m…”

I slid myself into her, and she moaned. She turned back to look at me, her face bright red as the heat from the spring water kept warming her face. I thrust in and out, slowly at first, working myself into a rhythm and making sure I didn’t finish too quickly—I wanted her to feel as good as I was feeling. With one hand, I slid my fingers underneath her to find her clit and start playing with it.

“Izukuuuu…you’re so…fuuuuck…”

“Ochako, we can’t be too loud!” I whispered. “What if other people hear us?”

“Then I’ll cover my mouth!”

The thought of us having to stay quiet, the slightest nagging fear that we could be caught…it was all making me even more turned on. I felt my pace quicken, grabbing her hips as I made her bounce on me, pulling her in with each thrust.

“Mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm…” Every time I slid all the way in, as hard as I could, it interrupted her moaning ever so slightly. It was so sexy.

“You’re making me feel amazing, Ochako!” I whispered. “I feel like I could cum any second!”

“Fuck, yes, please!” Ochako whispered through her fingers, still covering her mouth. “Cum in me!”

“I’m–!”

I couldn’t even finish the words before slamming into her one last time, pulling her in towards me, and holding myself inside her as I felt my cock twitch and throb. Ochako slid off of me and turned around, planting herself on the ground with her legs open as a drop of my cum dripped out.

“Oh fuck!” Ochako whispered, sliding her fingers into her pussy. “Your cum in me…” She slid her fingers in and out as fast as she could. Just because I was done didn’t mean that she was. “Cover my mouth before I scream!”

I knelt down beside her and kissed her as I felt her arm frantically moving, shoving her fingers as deep as she could into herself. Her legs tightened around her arm.

“Mmmmmmmmmmmm!”

I could feel her muffled scream in my lips as I held mine against hers, still kissing her. As she quieted, I pulled away and looked at her, sheer delight on her face, her fingers sticky with my cum. I sat myself down next to her.

“See?” She held up her sticky fingers. “We didn’t get the water dirty, did we?”

I shook my head and smiled. “I didn’t know you were this bold! But…I like it.”

I rested my head on her shoulder as we sat by the tub. Not even a few seconds later, all of the lights went out, and everything around us went dark. We heard a couple of confused shouts from other parts of the inn.

“Huh?” I picked my head up, still in my post-sex daze before I connected the dots. “Oh right. The electricity thing that the driver told us about.” Ochako wasn’t answering. “Ochako?”

“Izuku!” With her free hand, she pointed to the sky. “Look up!”

I turned my head to the sky. With the power out, the light from the city wasn’t bleeding into the sky. What seemed empty minutes before was now a blanket of stars—hundreds and hundreds of them—over our heads.

“Ochako…it’s so beautiful,” I whispered.

We were in no hurry to get cleaned up and dressed. Naked and warm, we sat on the ground, in the dark, staring up at the starry night sky.

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Three years before the present

I was so used to going to the agency after my classes that I just went there without thinking. I only remembered that we were closed for the week when I saw the construction vans outside. Oops. They’ll get a kick out of this, I thought, taking my phone out and snapping a selfie in front of the work vans.

Himiko [12:11]: Guess who forgot the office is closed (⁄ ⁄>⁄ ▽ ⁄<⁄ ⁄)

Ochako [12:12]: That’s so funny! (˃̣̣̥▽˂̣̣̥)

A few seconds later, she sent me a selfie back—she and Izuku were in T-shirts standing in front of a bubbling hot spring. They were a little sweaty, but the two of them were both smiling from ear to ear.

Ochako [12:12]: We’re on a hot spring tour of Beppu! Wish you were here with us

I did, too…but if I wanted to be a hero like them, I couldn’t afford to take a week off from classes. There would be plenty of time for more fun later.

Himiko [12:14]: Have fun down there!! Take lots of pics for me ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡

Speaking of having fun…I was right across from LotusPop, and with Izuku and Ochako on vacation, nobody I knew would catch me coming out of there with toys. Why not pay a visit? Now’s the perfect time, I thought to myself. I walked across the street and headed up the stairs and through the door of the shop.

“Welcome in!” I recognized that voice—it was Hasu, the clerk who helped me the first time I came in. And she recognized me, too. “Good to see you again,” she said, looking at me and smiling. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

“Uh, no, I’m just looking around right now. The, uh…the toys from last time, uh…work really well.” I don’t know why I said that. Something about Hasu just made me feel more comfortable sharing things with her, even though I hardly knew her.

“That’s good to hear!” She sounded genuinely happy.

“I uh…I actually have a partner now, so I guess I could look for toys that we can both use?”

“Of course!” Hasu stepped out from behind the counter. “And you know, your partner is welcome to come here with you if they feel comfortable doing so.”

She asked about what Ochako was like and what she enjoyed, and we walked over to one section of toys that was full of two-ended dildos. The whole time, though…all the questions about what she would like, and what we wanted to do together…it made me think about that first time we had sex, when I ate her out while she was on her period. Tasting her blood…how good that made me feel, and how I wanted to taste her blood again. But would she even want me to do that? If I asked her if I could do that, would she think I was weird? Would she want me to stop? Would she not want to date me anymore? Would she fall out of love with me?”

“Do any of these sound good?” Fuck! Hasu had been talking the whole time, and I was distracted.

“Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about…stuff I want to do with my partner.”

“Like, things you’d want to incorporate into bedroom play?”

“Yeah, but…” I couldn’t stop myself from sharing. “…I’m kinda worried, because the things I like are really weird.”

Hasu smiled. “You mean like kink?”

“Huh? Kink?”

“Yeah!”

I felt dumb. Hasu must not have realized that I really didn’t know what she was talking about. “I, uh…I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Hasu looked embarrassed, and she bowed like she was really, really sorry. “I shouldn’t have assumed that you know. So, kink is basically an umbrella term for sexual preferences that aren’t in line with what people think of as ‘normal.’ It can include a lot of different things, but if you feel like someone would think that your preference is weird, then it might fall under kink.”

Did I tell her? I wanted to, even though I was afraid she would kick me out of the store and say I could never come back. “I like…blood. I really like seeing it and tasting it. And…I like knives, too.”

I hadn’t confessed what I like to a stranger before. My whole life, people told me I was weird, and my parents made me hide what I liked because they thought other people would think I was a monster. They thought I was a monster. I was scared that Hasu would think the same thing. But instead…

“Oooh, those are some intense kinks!” She sounded…fascinated? Definitely not grossed out or scared. “I had an ex-partner who’s interested in blood play. He actually works here, too. He knows more about the specifics of that.”

I was amazed. I was able to talk about the things I liked with a stranger…and I was being accepted for it? And there were other people who liked what I did!?

“Actually, I want to show you something.” Hasu walked over to a black windowed cabinet and unlocked it. Behind the door were needles, gauze wraps, and clotting pens on one shelf. Other shelves had restraints and whips, plus some other unusual contraptions that I didn’t recognize. “We sell kink gear, but we keep it locked up because we want to know that people are educated on how to use it before we sell it to them.”

“Educated?”

“A lot of kink has risks associated with it.” Hasu pulled some silk rope and a whip out of the cabinet. “Take me, for example. I like bondage, so that means I like being tied up, and I’m also a masochist, so I like when my partner makes me feel pain. I really like being whipped. But I wouldn’t just hand these to anyone and say ‘do your worst.’” She held out the whip. “If you’re too forceful with a whip, you can leave scars on someone, and it’s easy to miss the spot that you’re aiming for if you aren’t familiar with using a whip. You could take your partner’s eye out if you aren’t careful. So you have to know not just what your partner is comfortable with, but also what the risks are and how to bring those risks down to a level that everyone is okay with.”

She put the whip back in the cabinet and held out the rope. “Even with this, you have to be careful,” she continued. “You might think that this is harmless compared to the whip, but tying people up is no joke. If the restraints are too tight, you can cut off blood flow without realizing it. One minute, you feel pins and needles in your hands, and the next minute, you don’t feel anything at all.” Hasu put the rope back inside and pulled out an angled pair of scissors with a rounded tip. “I always make sure there’s a pair of safety shears close by whenever I’m tied up, because if I need to get out quickly, I want my partner to be able to cut me free right away.”

“Wow. So…does that mean I shouldn’t do blood or knife stuff? Because it’s too dangerous?”

Hasu shook her head. “Not at all! If you and your partner want to, you absolutely should—you just need to talk with each other about what the risks are and make sure you know what you’re okay with. Like, for blood play, do you like just the appearance of blood? Or does it need to be actual blood?”

“It has to be real,” I said, with no hesitation. “When I, uh…licked…my partner when she was on her period, I told her how much I liked the taste of blood.”

“Oh, so your partner already knows about your interest in blood—that’s good!” She smiled. The idea that I could talk about this with a stranger was crazy to me! “Your main safety considerations are going to be bloodborne diseases and controlling bleeding. If you want to be safe, both you and your partner should be tested for HIV and any other diseases that are spread through contact with infected blood, and you’ll want to have a first aid kit handy if there’s any uncontrolled bleeding. Know where major veins and arteries are, and know how to stop bleeding with pressure. And if you need to call an ambulance, call right away—don’t wait.”

I nodded. There was a lot of stuff to keep track of.

“What about knife play?” Hasu asked. “Does it have to be a real blade? And if so, would you be cutting your partner?”

“I mean…I would really like to,” I said. “But if she doesn’t want me to cut her, and if she doesn’t want me to use a real knife, I’d be okay with a fake one.”

“Okay!” She sounded excited to talk about it. I’d never, in my entire life, met anyone who was even close to excited about blood and knives in the way that I was. “That’s something to find out, for sure. You don’t want your partner to be expecting a fake blade and you pull out a real one. If you do use a real knife, all of the first aid stuff I talked about before applies to this, too. Make sure the blade is a length that you can control. Anything longer than 10 centimeters is probably too long. The blade should be fixed, too—a folding knife is too dangerous. Same thing for a two-edged blade like a dagger, or a knife with a serrated edge. There’s too much risk if you use those.”

Sounds like the knife I have is okay, I thought to myself. Fixed blade, not too long, single-edged, and no serrated parts. As long as Ochako is fine with it…

“If you end up needing a fake knife, there are some pretty realistic ones,” Hasu continued. She reached in and pulled out a pretty convincing prop. I could tell just by looking that it was fake, but it could fool a lot of people. “This one is my coworker’s favorite,” she explained. “There’s no blade, but it still gives the physical sensation of being poked with a knife or dragging the blade across someone’s skin. If you leave it in the fridge, it’ll even feel like cold steel when you put it on someone’s skin.”

“Oh wow!” 

“One other thing—you and your partner need to have a way to communicate while you’re doing dangerous things,” Hasu continued. “You and your partner should agree on a safeword: something that both of you know means, ‘We need to stop right now.’ It shouldn’t be too long, but it also shouldn’t be too easy to confuse with something that you’d say during sex. My partner and I use pineapple for our safe word, but it can be whatever you two agree on. A lot of people use stoplight colors, so red means stop, green means keep going, and yellow can mean slow down or take a break.”

“I didn’t realize how much preparation went into this,” I said. That wasn’t even half of it. I didn’t know any of this stuff existed. I didn’t even know that there were other people who might like the things that I liked. For my whole life, I thought I was alone. If I knew that other people felt this way…even just one other person…

“Like I said…we don’t sell these to people unless we’re satisfied that you’ll use them safely,” Hasu explained. “You seem pretty new to this, and since blood play and knife play aren’t my specialty, I’d like you to come back later this week on Thursday, when my coworker is here. I won’t be working—I work another job as a writer and manga artist—but I’ll let him know you’re coming by. He can tell you more than I can.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m just…I’m so happy that I could talk about this with someone else and not get judged. I’ve always been worried about what other people will think about me.”

“Oh, you can talk to us about anything here!” Hasu held her arms out, almost like she was going to hug me. “Believe me, a lot of us that like kink have had to navigate around the feeling that the things we like are weird or might make people not like us. And I get it—regular people think blood and knives and whips and handcuffs are scary, because they wouldn’t want to deal with those things themselves. But that doesn’t mean that they’re bad or wrong. They’re just different, and just because it’s not normal for someone else doesn’t mean it can’t be normal for someone like you or me.”

I felt so seen. My whole life, I was told that there was only one kind of normal, that I wasn’t it, and that I had to change if I wanted to be loved and accepted. Having someone else tell me that my normal was okay, it felt like I could be free to be myself and not be punished for it.

“Thank you, Hasu.” I smiled at her. “I’ll be back to talk to your coworker for sure.”

“Great—I’ll let him know!”

“In the meantime…” I picked up one of the double-ended dildoes and looked around the shop. In the costume section, a sexy nurse outfit caught my eye. “…there’s some other stuff that I think I might want to buy.”

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Three years before the present

Izuku and I completely transformed the conference room at the office into a study zone after we got back from Beppu. Whatever we could do to help Himiko get her license, we wanted to do it. We spent hours in that room after her internship sessions, helping her think through test questions and running through practice exams, but the night before the exam, we must have set a record. As soon as Sojo left, the three of us hurried into the conference room. Izuku brought in what must have been a dozen notebooks. I started covering the whiteboard in key terms and concepts from the test prep books. “Minimum use of force.” “Field triage.” “Permitted quirk usage.” We spent semesters covering these topics, and her program condensed it all—and more—into a single year. It’s amazing that her class could have taught her so much in such a short time…and it’s so unfair that the people who come out of it are treated as hero rejects because they couldn’t get into a full three-year hero school.

“Okay, let’s go through some more questions,” I said. Izuku had stepped out to get us some snacks. We brought a bunch back from Beppu as souvenirs for Himiko (the bean paste biscuits with rum raisin were our favorites!), but it was late, and we were running out of stuff to nibble on.

“Come on, I’m tired!” Himiko put her head down, still holding her half-eaten pastry. It must have been at least 10 PM. Just eleven hours before her test was scheduled to start.

“You can do it, Himiko! You’re doing great.” I queued up a practice question to display on the projector. “Let’s start with this one.” With a click, I advanced the slide, and a question from the practice exam popped up on the screen:

Which of the following is NOT considered permitted quirk usage in Japan?

A) Hero Alpha uses a restraint quirk to stop someone who stole money from a bank
B) Private citizen ​​Hoshi uses a water generation quirk to make drinking water for himself in his home
C) Private citizen Chihiro uses a paralysis quirk to recover a wallet that someone stole from him
D) Private citizen Saki uses a blocking quirk to stop someone from attacking her

Himiko stared at the question for a few seconds. “Which is not permitted…hmm. I’m gonna say…C?”

I clicked the button for the next slide. Answer C was circled on the screen.

“Good!” I smiled. “Self-defense is permitted, but you need a license for any other public quirk use.” I moved to the next slide. “How about this one?”

Hero Gamma is on patrol when a child runs up to her and says that someone stole his wallet. He describes the thief as a tall man with red hair and a black jacket. A few minutes later, Hero Gamma sees a tall man with red hair and a black jacket walking out of a convenience store. She immediately uses her quirk to restrain him and take him to the police. Hero Gamma’s actions were…

A) Proper, because he matched the description of the thief that the child gave to her
B) Improper, because she should have done more to confirm whether the man was involved in a crime
C) Proper, because heroes publicly restraining suspects sends a message to people that crime is severely punished
D) Improper, because children are unreliable witnesses and should not be believed

I tried not to roll my eyes. Some of these questions were useful, but ones like this were just so dumb. Still, I had to remind myself that this was just my perspective. The Hero Public Safety Commission had to weed out all the would-be heroes who just want to use their quirks to knock people around, and a lot of people really think that what this test question described was okay. Honestly, that was as scary as any villain.

“Is it B?” Himiko replied. “And besides, it’s not like the guy was running away or anything. He was just walking out of the store.”

“You got it!” I clicked the button for the next slide, and a circle appeared around answer B.

Behind us, the door opened, and Izuku walked in with a plastic bag from FamilyMark. “Got us some snacks!” he said, holding it over his head and smiling.

Himiko picked up her head and grinned, holding her fists up to her face like a kid on a sugar high. “Yay! What did you get?”

Izuku set the bag on the table and started pulling out snacks. “I got us some onigiri that were half-price since it’s so late. Let’s see…wasabi-flavored puffed rice bites, orange-flavored Kit Kats…oh! I also got some Noodle Cups, if anyone wants those.”

“Yum!” Himiko reached for the green bag of wasabi snacks. “Lemme try these,” she said, tearing the bag open and tossing a small handful in her mouth. I never had the stomach for them—they were too spicy—so as far as I was concerned, she could have them all.

“Did I miss anything?” Izuku looked at the questions on the projector.

“We were just looking over some practice test questions together,” I said.

“Makes sense!”

As he sat down, I showed the next slide.

A group of heroes arrives at a building where people are being held hostage. Which of these actions is the MOST likely to cause harm to innocent people?

A) Hero Epsilon uses a stealth quirk to sneak into the building and find out how many hostage-takers are inside
B) Hero Zeta uses a sleep quirk to fill the building with a mist that makes everyone inside fall asleep
C) Hero Lambda uses a telepathy quirk to negotiate with the hostage-takers
D) Hero Tau uses an explosive quirk to break through the front door and let the hostages escape

Himiko stared at the question. “Telepathy?”

“Is that your answer?” I asked.

“Oh, no, I just…don’t know what that means.”

“Oh! Telepathy is basically mind-reading,” I explained. “So that hero is talking to the hostage-takers with just their mind.”

Himiko nodded. It was easy to forget sometimes, but Himiko was on the run for all of the years that she should’ve been in school. All the vocabulary that Izuku and I and all of our classmates learned from just going to normal lessons…she missed out on that. And this class never covered it for her—why would it? The HeroSET was meant for people who went to normal, non-hero high schools but wanted to try their hand at heroics. There wasn’t any consideration for people who had never been to high school at all. Himiko could miss whole sections on this test because she just doesn’t know the words, I thought. Another way that she can fail, even though she can be an amazing hero. It’s just not fair!

“I probably would have figured it out from the description,” she said. It was like she could read my mind. “D sounds riskiest.”

“Right again!” I advanced the slide, and D was circled on the projector.

“I don’t like some of these questions,” Izuku said. “Like…all of these really depend, right? What kind of stealth quirk is it? What if the sleeping quirk doesn’t work right away, or the telepathy hero is a bad negotiator and makes the hostage-takers angry? And the explosion quirk could be a small explosion, too—like, Kacchan has his AP shot special move, and that wouldn’t have a huge risk to the people inside, so…”

He was muttering again. I loved when he got into something and used his brain—but…

“I think they don’t want hero candidates to overthink it too much, Izuku,” I said. “They just want to know that heroes know the risks of what they’re doing.”

“Can we stop soon?” Himiko asked. “I’m sleepy.”

“We’ll do one more slide, okay? I think you’re in great shape for tomorrow.” I clicked to advance the slide.

The next eight questions are based on the following scenario:

You are arriving on the scene of a building collapse with a large number of people who are injured. Triage the following people according to their injuries with GREEN, YELLOW, RED, or BLACK tags.

1) A man who has a broken leg and is unable to walk
2) An elderly woman with cuts and scratches on her face
3) An elderly man who is not breathing and has no pulse
4) A child with bruises on his arms
5) A woman with a deep gash on her head who appears confused
6) A person whose head is severed
7) A man with uncontrolled bleeding from a cut on his arm who appears very pale
8) A woman whose foot has been crushed by heavy debris

“Oh, come on!” Himiko whined. “This is, like, eight questions in one!”

“I know, but you’re going to be tested on the triage system, so let’s just finish this question and we can stop, okay?”

“They taught you the triage system?” Izuku looked at her, interested.

“Yeah, it’s like a stoplight system, right?” She put her finger to her chin and thought. “Green means they don’t need to go to the hospital, yellow means they need to go to the hospital but they can wait, and red means they need help right away. So black…” She sat still and looked at the ceiling for a few seconds. “Black tags are for dead people, right?”

“Yeah,” Izuku nodded excitedly. It felt weird, but I knew he was just excited that she knew about the system—not that he was excited about people dying. “Either they’ve already died, or their injuries are so severe that there’s no way they can be saved.” Just like that, I saw the smile vanish from his face. Talking about people we couldn’t save always makes him sad. Honestly, it makes me sad, too.

“Hmm…” Himiko stared at the question, her eyes darting between the descriptions. “Okay. Person 2 and 4 are mostly okay, so they’re green. 1 and 8 have broken bones, so they have to go to the hospital, but if they have to wait, they can. So those two are yellow. 5 has a head injury, and 7 is losing blood, so they need help as soon as possible. Those two are red. 3 can get CPR, right? So he also gets a red tag. That just leaves 6, and he’s obviously dead, so he gets a black tag.”

I clicked ahead, and the answers popped up next to each person. “Seven out of eight,” I said. “That’s really good!”

“Only seven?” She looked at the descriptions again. “Which one did I miss?”

“They wanted you to tag that third person with a black tag, not a red tag,” Izuku said.

“Wait, but why?” Himiko looked confused. “I thought we were supposed to give CPR if they don’t have a pulse.”

“It’s different when there are lots of people who are hurt,” Izuku said.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Triage is all about making sure that you can save the most people in a short time without a lot of equipment or help from other people. So if someone doesn’t have a pulse, and there are lots of other people who are hurt, they want you to leave them to help save other people.”

“Ugh, and I was doing so well…” She looked really sad at having missed just one question.

“Don’t feel bad!” Izuku said. “Triage is hard. At least you gave that person a tag that would give him more help instead of less.”

“I just…I really want to be a hero like you two.”

I walked around the table to hug her. “You’re gonna do just fine.” She didn’t hug me back—she just kind of leaned into my torso and rested her face against me. “You got every question right except one that we studied, and that’s way better than the 80 percent that you need to pass.”

“Yeah…”

“You’ll be okay tomorrow.”

“Mmhmm…” She yawned.

“You look really tired, Himiko,” Izuku said. “Do you want us to get you back home?”

“Mmmm…I could honestly sleep here…”

Before we could talk her out of it, she laid her head on the table.

“Let’s just get her a pillow and a blanket,” Izuku whispered. I floated myself to the storage closet to not wake her up. After I fell asleep coming back from the Beppu rescue mission, we figured it was probably a smart idea to have some pillows and blankets in the office, just in case. I grabbed them from the top shelf and fluffed up the pillow for her. When I made my way back into the conference room, Izuku was already moving her into a more comfortable position to sleep. He put his finger up to his mouth. She really was sound asleep. Poor thing!

“Let me just…” I gently raised her head and slipped the pillow under it. I could have sworn I saw her smile.

“Should we stay here?” Izuku whispered. “To make sure she gets to her test on time?”

I nodded, and we turned off the lights in the room as we slept on the floor.

We went with Himiko in the morning to the testing area in her school building. They normally used it for the college entrance exams, but a bunch of other exam students used it at other points in the year. We only saw six other people there to take the test that day—way fewer than the number of people who signed up at the start of the program.

“I have to lock my phone outside,” Himiko told us. “But as soon as it’s over, I’ll let you know how I did.”

“When do you get the results?” Izuku asked.

“The test is on a computer, so it tells us our scores right away once we're finished.”

We each grabbed one of her hands and gave it a squeeze.

“Good luck,” I whispered.

“You can do it!” Izuku said excitedly.

Himiko smiled and nodded at us, and then turned around and walked into the exam room. All we could do was head outside and wait—so we did, heading to the mall for some rare down time. We got some bubble tea and snacks, and wandered around for a bit, but we couldn’t relax. All we wanted was to know how she did.

“It’s been five hours,” I said at one point. “Shouldn’t it be over by now?”

“Maybe her phone is out of battery?” Izuku suggested. “Or maybe they started late?”

“Yeah, maybe, but now I’m worried. What if she didn’t text us because she failed?”

“She wouldn’t do that—she’d tell us!” He was right. I just couldn’t stop worrying. And even passing the test wasn’t the final step. This was just to give her the opportunity to take the in-person licensing exam that Izuku and I did when we were still first-years at UA. A test to take a test. So many hoops for her to jump through, all because she just wanted to do the right thing!

Our phones buzzed at the same time. That could only be one person. I pulled my phone out, and saw Izuku do the same out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t even need to unlock the screen—the notification said it all.

Himiko [12:46]: I PASSED!!!! °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Three years before the present

With the HeroSET finally done, I could spend more time at my internship—but all the downtime I used to spend studying was just filled with a whole lot of nothing. In between shadowing Izuku and Ochako’s patrols one day, I got bored and decided to sift through my spam folder and clear out some emails. Some ads for that Yandere Aesthetic shop I saw on Pinstagram, a marketing email from Windflower Academy, an obvious scam from some random Russian email address…and buried in there was an email address from the licensing and exams section of the Hero Public Safety Commission.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]; [email protected]

Subject: IMPORTANT — Provisional Licensing Exam Information

Shit! I thought. How did this get in my spam folder? I kept reading.

HIMIKO TOGA,

Thank you for registering for the Spring 20XX hero provisional licensing exam, which will be held on  20XX-04-04 at the Kanto Regional Exhibition Grounds. Please arrive no later than 10:00. The exam end time is undefined, but should end no later than 16:30.

Ugh. That meant getting up early to make it up there in time, but I just had to live with that. And from the date on the email, it looked like I still had enough time. I scrolled down to read more of the email.

Our records indicate that we have not received your provisional hero information. This is essential for us to prepare your provisional hero license should you pass your exam. Please complete the attached form and return it to our office via fax.

Dammit. I’d better not put this off, I thought. If I forget, and I don’t get my license because of some stupid red tape…

I sent the form to my printer—or at least, I thought I did. Nothing happened. The front desk printer was silent. Then, a minute later, I heard Izuku’s voice, and he stepped around the corner holding a sheet of paper.

“Um, Toga-san?” I didn’t like how formal things were in the office. Sojo wanted a “professional atmosphere” or whatever, and it really felt stuffy for no good reason. “Did you print something in my office by mistake?”

“Oh, that’s where it went!” I took the paper from him.

“The provisional hero information form?” Izuku asked, handing it to me. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snoop or anything. I just remember when we had to fill those out before our exam, too. Most of it is just basic info, but the hero name is the most important part.”

“Are you picking out a hero name!?” Ochako practically ran out of her office when she heard Izuku mention that. “What’s it gonna be?”

“Uh…I didn’t really think about it.”

“Let’s help you pick one!”

Before I knew it, we were in the conference room again, brainstorming ideas on what I should call myself. The two of them were scribbling ideas on the board.

“Okay, so something that would fit Himiko’s personality…something that reflects your blood drinking and your ability to transform…” Izuku was muttering again. He was always so cute when he got like this. “What about Sanguine Chameleon?”

“Sanguine?” I asked. That was another new word for me.

“Nowadays, most people use it to mean calm and optimistic, but it used to be an adjective that meant ‘relating to blood,’ so it could be a good fit for you.”

“Ehhhh…”

“Ooh!” Ochako’s eyes brightened. She had an idea. “How about Mimicula?” We must have both looked confused—Izuku and I looked at each other, and then back to Ochako. “You know, like a combination of mimic and Dracula? Since you drink blood to transform into other people?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. It feels weird on my tongue.”

“What about Carmilla?” Ochako suggested. “Like the vampire?”

I smiled. “You know, it’s funny. The villains wanted to help me pick a name, and that’s one of the ones they thought of, too.”

“I know! What about Bloodwork?” Izuku said. “Like when you go to the doctor and they take your blood to run tests? Since they take some blood and use it to help people, and that’s what you’ll do as a hero?”

“Huh…I mean, it’s cool-sounding, but I feel like it fits a boy in a shōnen manga or something.”

They threw out some more names. Morphang. Bloodlust. Changeling Culicidae. They just kept getting worse. And then, we sat in silence. Completely out of ideas. I looked at the paper in front of me. I honestly didn’t want to pick a hero name. Why couldn’t I just be me? I picked up my pen and wrote in big letters in the middle of the field at the top:

トガ

“Toga…” Ochako read from across the table.

“So just your name?” Izuku asked. “I mean, it’s not unheard of. Shoto’s hero name is just Shoto..”

“Yeah.” I smiled. “I spent so many years not being able to be myself, and now that I got another chance, I can finally be me. So why not just use my own name? Why not just be Toga?”

“Honestly…” Ochako looked deep in thought. “That makes a lot of sense, Himiko.”

“You can also have, like, a descriptor part of your hero name at the beginning,” Izuku added. “Like, I don’t know if you know our old classmate, Yaoyorozu, but her official hero name is ‘Everything Hero: Creati.’ When she’s out working, people just call her Creati, but the longer name is what goes on her license and things like that.”

“Ooh, that’s a good idea.” I thought for a few seconds. “What was that S-word about blood? The one in the chameleon name you suggested?”

“You mean ‘sanguine?’”

“Yeah! Is there a word like it for liking blood?”

Izuku thought, his finger on his chin as his face scrunched up. “Hmm…uh, ‘sanguiphile,’ I think? ‘Sanguiphilia’ would be the concept of liking blood, so I think that means that someone who likes blood is a ‘sanguiphile.’”

“That sounds so cool!” I put my pen down to start writing—and just held it there. “Uh…could you spell it on the board for me?”

I was embarrassed, but Izuku didn’t seem to mind, erasing some old scribbles and writing the word out in big red letters. I copied them down, squeezing them in smaller characters next to what I already wrote. I looked it over.

Sanguiphile Hero: Toga

Ochako and Izuku smiled as I showed them what I wrote.

“That’s perfect,” Ochako said, sounding almost amazed.

“I think it fits you perfectly!” Izuku’s excitement was obvious in his voice. And he was right. It did fit me—because it was me. It is me. No more hiding who I was, no more hiding what I liked, no more apologizing for being me. This was my chance to show everyone that I could just exist as myself, love who and what I love, and be happy.

Izuku stepped out while I finished the rest of the form. All boring stuff—birthday, height, weight, hair color, eye color, quirk description…nothing exciting, just busy work as far as I cared. It took a few minutes, and by the time I finished, Izuku had come back holding two gift boxes. He slid one in front of me.

“Izuku?” I looked down at the box, and then back up at him. “What’s this for!?”

“I don’t know if you remember, but…today is White Day,” he said, sliding the other box in front of Ochako. “It’s not much, but I hope you both like it. You can open it now if you want…”

I looked at the box again. Izzy Miyagi was written in gold letters on the top. That fancy place where Ochako and I were trying on clothes that one time? There’s no way he bought us something from there, I thought.

“Izuku…” I opened the lid on the box. Inside was a beautiful cream-colored blouse. He did buy us Izzy Miyagi! “Izuku! You didn’t have to get us this!”

“Is this silk!?” Ochako held up her blouse—pink for her, but the same as mine in every other way.

“It’s small, but I thought you’d both look good wearing it, so I hope you like it.”

I didn’t want to ask how much it cost him to get us this. It had to be a lot. But just knowing that he cared about us like this…

“Oh, there’s one other thing inside the box.”

I looked inside again. Sitting at the bottom was a small box with three macarons, all with different flavors—one matcha, one lemon, and one raspberry, side by side in a clear box tied up with a ribbon. Ochako took her box out, too. She got the same thing.

“Izuku…”

Ochako and I both hugged him. We were both so happy—and I was beside myself with his gift. Yeah, the blouse was cute, and every time I wear it, I still think of him. But those macarons…I always hoped that Izuku liked me back. And at that moment, I had my strongest clue yet that he really did.

It felt like all the time between the HeroSET and the in-person licensing exam just vanished. Before I knew it, the three of us were on the Shinkansen up to Yokohama, and then on a smaller commuter train to get to the exhibition grounds.

“I’m nervous,” I said. I could see the train filling up with lots of other hero hopefuls. Most of them were in their school groups, and all of them were in their costumes. I didn’t have one. I just put my support gear on over my most comfortable clothes. I could see people giving me looks. People recognized the needles over my shoulders and the green tank on my back for processing blood. Notorious villain Himiko Toga, the schoolgirl on the run from the police after attacking her classmate because she wanted his blood. I didn’t need to hear their thoughts to know what they were all thinking. What the hell is she doing here?

“Don’t be, Himiko!” Ochako smiled. “You’re going to be fine.”

“You didn’t have to come up with me, you know.”

“We want to see you get your license,” Izuku said. “We wouldn’t think of missing it!”

“But…you have an agency to run.”

“This is important to us,” he said.

This is important to us. Well, “this” was all for me. My license exam, my hero career. He said it without saying it: You are important to us.

A robotic voice came over the speaker. “This is Tenjikaijou Station. Exit here for the Kanto Regional Exhibition Grounds.” This was it. No time to be nervous anymore. I had an exam to ace.

We got off the train, left the station, and headed up the road to a big building, filing in with all the other candidates under a metal arch that read KANTO REGIONAL EXHIBITION GROUNDS in Latin letters. The Hero Public Safety Commission didn’t have their own testing grounds, so apparently, they’ve always borrowed a stadium or convention center to run the exams. Some people in yellow vests waved the crowd into the main events ballroom, where they had a bunch of chairs set up in front of a stage.

“Candidates, please take a seat in rows 1–24!” A voice came over the loudspeaker in the ballroom. “Teachers, family, and friends, please sit anywhere in rows 25-32. Thank you for your cooperation!”

Izuku turned to me. “You go ahead, Himiko. We’ll be rooting for you.”

“You’ve got this!” Ochako said with a determined smile on her face.

I nodded and went to find a seat. Around me, hero candidates at least four years younger than me in full costumes took a seat, too. Nobody sat next to me. I noticed. They weren’t subtle about it. I caught a few people looking back at me from a row or two ahead. One looked shocked. A couple looked scared. One of them stared at me. He looked disgusted with me, as if I was trash. I wasn’t welcome here.

“Everyone, please take your seats.” Someone had stepped up to the microphone on stage. I had no idea who this guy was, but he must have been the one in charge of testing for the commission or something like that. “On behalf of the Hero Public Safety Commission, I’d like to welcome each of you to this quarter’s provisional licensing exam. You have all worked hard, and your commitment to the safety of Japan and its people is admirable. The commission has a solemn responsibility to ensure the qualifications of professional heroes, and so this exam is not a rubber stamp—it is a rigorous assessment of your capability to…”

Oh, this was boring . I really did not want to be here. The other examinees hated me, and I wanted to get this test over with, but instead, we all have to listen to this stupid speech? I tuned out.

“…now, the format for the exam—”

Shit! I definitely had to pay attention to that.

“Hero candidates will be split into randomly-assigned pairs and placed in a scenario in which people must be rescued and criminals must be apprehended.” The guy on stage shuffled his papers. “In this exercise, injured people and innocent bystanders are represented by training dummies, and criminals are represented by combat robots that fire paintballs, so you can use your quirks freely without fear of causing harm to others.”

Dammit—all robots, I thought to myself. I won’t have any chance to show off my quirk.

“For those observing the candidates, we have a viewing room set up in the exhibition room upstairs. Candidates, your test will be complete once all training dummies are removed, or when all combat robots have been disabled. You may complete both objectives if you are able to do so.” He pointed at the screen behind him. “I will be displaying the candidate pairs behind me, along with your assigned training area. Best of luck to all of you.”

“A-a-are you that Toga girl?”

The kid I got paired with was scared. He couldn’t have been more than 16. He looked like he was shaking.

I nodded. “That’s me.”

“Y-y-y-you’re really scary, you know…I heard you were a villain.”

“I used to be,” I said. “But some heroes found me, and now I want to be like them.”

“I, uh…I…”

I put a hand on his shoulder. I don’t know if that was the right thing to do or not, but it was all I could do.

“It’s okay.” I smiled. I don’t know if that was helpful, either. Not everyone liked my smile. “Tell me about your quirk.”

He held his hands up. “I…I can change the shape of whatever I touch.”

“Oh, that’s a super useful quirk!”

“Well…it’s more limited than you think. I can’t make things bigger or smaller—they take up the same amount of space in the world.” He picked up a paper cup and, instantly, it transformed into a miniature throwing knife. “I also can’t change the properties of something. If it’s something weak or brittle, it’ll stay that way.” He threw it on the ground. The pointy part of the throwing knife he made flattened on the concrete ground.

I looked at the training setup. They somehow managed to put a two-story concrete building into this room of the convention center, with real glass in the windows and a metal ladder leading up to the roof.

“I have an idea,” I said to my test partner. As I told him, he nodded. Maybe—just maybe—this could work, I thought.

We climbed the ladder and found a hatch to the second floor. Locked. No problem—he took a piece of metal off of his belt and, with his quirk, turned it into a key that fit the lock precisely. It opened without a problem.

“I’ll go first,” I said, sliding down into the building. There were two robots with their paintball guns pointed at the stairs. They hadn’t seen me. Perfect. I took out my knife. Looks like the joints that connect the paintball gun to the rest of the robot are made of rubber, I thought. I can slice right through them.

I turned back to my partner and pointed up at him, then down at the floor. Drop down. He did, sliding himself down with a rope that I guess he made using his quirk. The robots didn’t move. Good.

“I’ll slice the paintball gun off the one closest to me,” I whispered. “Can you run up to the other one and use your quirk to close the barrel of that gun?”

He nodded. We crept up behind them, the two machines still clueless that we were even there.

“Now.”

With one flick of my arm, I pulled out my knife and cut the paintball gun off of the robot. It flailed around, as if it was shocked—as if it even could be shocked, since it was just a machine. At the same time, my partner grabbed the other robot’s paintball gun, and the barrel started to deform. It started shooting off paintballs…or at least, it tried to. We could hear the tik-tik-tik sound of the paintball gun trigger trying to let shots off, but the paintballs just got stuck in the barrel, and the tik-tik-tik sound slowed and stopped.

Even that sound must have been enough to alert the other combat robots. We saw one move to the bottom of the stairs, raise its paintball gun, and shoot at us. We ducked out of the way as red splatters of paint hit the wall behind us.

“I’ll pry off some metal,” I shouted to my partner. “Can you make us a shield?” He nodded. With my knife, I pried off a slab of metal from one of the downed robots. My partner immediately put his hands to it, and it transformed into a tall shield with a viewing slot.

As he did, I studied the paintball gun I pried off of the robot. No trigger that I could use—the gun’s firing mechanism was designed into the robots themselves. Well, so much for that plan.

“I can’t use this gun,” I said. “Can you—”

I heard a whirring sound. I poked my head around the corner and looked down the stairs. The robot was coming towards us. It shot at me again, and I pulled my head back. More paint on the back wall. We didn’t have much time.

“Bring the shield up!” I shouted. He understood me right away, picking up the shield with both hands and moving in front of me. With his quirk, he reshaped the shield to add spikes to the front of it. Using up the extra material made the shield a little shorter, but that didn’t matter. When the robot reached the top of the stairs, he bashed it, the spikes poking into the exposed rubber gaskets. The force knocked the robot back. It fell down the stairs, air hissing out of the gaskets, as it shot wildly into the air before lying motionless at the bottom.

“Nice work,” I said.

“Thanks.”

“This gun…” I held it up. “I can’t use it. There’s no trigger. Can you add one?”

He shook his head. “There are too many moving parts. I’d have to study the specific mechanics of it, and that would take forever.”

“Can you make it into a javelin or a sword or something?”

“Definitely,” he said, taking it from my hands. Seconds later, I was holding what looked like a cyberpunk spear.

“You take the shield. We’ll go downstairs and finish off whoever is left.”

Slowly, we maneuvered down the stairs. He held the shield in front of us as I crouched behind with my spear in hand. I can do this, I thought to myself over and over again. I can do this. I can do this.

We reached the ground floor, and I heard movement. Something metallic. That had to be a robot.

“Did you see that?”

“Where?” He must not have noticed.

I pointed over the shield. “In that room,” I said. There wasn’t anywhere else for it to hide. We rounded the corner with the shield in front of us—and immediately, paintball pellets splattered against the metal shield, pinging against it and spraying red paint.

“Be ready to move up fast!” I shouted. I had one throw with that spear, and I had a split second to throw it. The robot was right next to two training dummies—the hostages. I couldn’t miss. And the robot was still shooting at us, so if I took too long to throw, I’d get hit in the head. I had to throw perfectly, and my partner and I would need to rush up to close the gap as fast as possible in case I missed. I felt the weight of the spear in my hand, and…

“Now!” I threw it around the side of the shield and watched it sail across the room. It landed right in the barrel of the paintball gun, plugging it shut.

“Go!”

“Moving!” My partner rushed up with the shield and bashed the robot to the ground. I followed behind, pushing the training dummies to the side and moving them to the far side of the room.

“Anyone else?”

“Let’s check,” my partner answered, holding the shield in front of him, still splattered with red paint. It didn’t take more than ten minutes for us to check every room for training dummies. We brought them outside and, once we were sure that every last one of them was out, hit a button outside of the building to let the examiners know that we finished the exercise.

“Well done.” A voice came out from the speaker underneath the button. “Your performance is being scored. We will release final results in the main ballroom at 16:00. You may rest until that time. Changing rooms are available on the second floor if you need them.”

My partner and I smiled at each other. We aced this exercise. Right?

“You were incredible, Himiko!” Izuku looked like he was completely beside himself with what he saw.

“We watched everything on the live stream from the observation room,” Ochako said. “The way you were moving, the way you were so confident…you’re incredible!”

I smiled. Whenever they told me I did a good job, it just made me feel so warm inside. “Thanks, you two.”

“You’re going to get your license for sure—I know it!” Ochako sounded excited, and Izuku nodded along, too. I was sure I’d get my license, too—after all, we were two of the earliest candidates to finish the exercise. We saved all the hostages and defeated all of the combat robots, and we never got hit with paintballs. That had to be a perfect score, right?

A few minutes before 4:00, we went back to the ballroom and sat in our separate spots again. The room was filling up. Everyone was anxious. I looked at my phone as the clock changed. It was time. A couple of seconds later, that guy who introduced us walked back up.

“Thank you for waiting,” he said. “Our team has thoroughly reviewed all of the footage from the exercise. Behind me, I will display the names of all of those who have passed. Your names will appear in syllabary order.”

The screen changed, and dozens of names appeared on screen—but fewer than before, when we were paired off. Not everyone passed. That was obvious. But when my eyes darted to the section of the screen where my name should have been, it wasn’t there.

I heard gasps from around me. “That’s me!” “No way!” “Oh, come on…” “There I am!” But I couldn’t say a word. Where was I? Was there a mistake? Maybe they listed me by my given name, or my hero name? No, that couldn’t be it. They had my name right the first time. I checked the whole list anyway. Nothing.

I could feel my eyes burning. I wanted to cry. I couldn’t believe it—I thought I did everything perfectly. I thought there was no way they’d keep me from getting a license. It didn’t matter. I was going home with nothing. I had failed.

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Three years before the present

We were silent on the train ride back to Musutafu. Himiko was crying when we first saw the results, but as we rode back home, she just had a vacant look on her face. I couldn’t tell if she was sad, angry, confused…honestly, probably all three. I knew I was. I knew Izuku was, too. He was gloomy—it felt like he took Himiko’s result as hard as she did.

The three of us went back to the office. Sojo was in the conference room, still working. We had told him about the results. He didn’t show a lot of emotion, but we knew he was as surprised as we were.

“I…I don’t understand.” Himiko spoke for the first time in hours. “I did everything right, didn’t I?”

“I know, Himiko.” I didn’t even care about being formal in front of Sojo. I just wanted her to feel better. I put my hand on her shoulder. How did I comfort her? How could I cheer her up? I felt helpless. Probably the worst feeling that a hero can feel.

“And the paper they gave me at the end…does this even make sense to you?”

All of the candidates got a sheet of paper with info on their decision, whether they passed or failed—but Himiko’s had more information than I had ever seen before.

Candidate: Himiko Toga — Sanguiphile Hero: Toga

Date of Exam: 20XX-04-04 

Decision: Based on your performance in the exam on the date listed above, the examination board of the Hero Public Safety Commission marks your performance as follows: DID NOT PASS

Additional Remarks: Based on your performance in the exam on the date listed above, the examination board recommends you for one of the following roles:

• Special Assault Team/STARS squad commander, prefectural police forces
• Special Forces Group strike team leader, Japan Ground Self-Defense Forces
• Senior Agent, National Intelligence and Research Office

“Did they ever do this?” Himiko asked. “Like, with people who failed in your class?”

“I mean…” Bakugo and Todoroki failed their first exam, but the commission recommended them for a remedial course, not for a completely different line of work. “We only had a couple of students fail, but they didn’t get recommended for something else. They just retook the exam later.”

“Nothing says you can’t retake the exam in three months, Toga-san.” Sojo was right. The commission was running exams every three months now, and nothing on her decision sheet said anything about her not being able to retest. Anyone could retake the exam as often as they wanted until they were told otherwise.

“I know,” she said. “And I’m gonna. But…I want to know what happened this time.”

“Well, the hero commission doesn’t like to release the scoring rubric they use, since they don’t want hero candidates gaming the system. Still…” Sojo paused to think. “We could try and get a meeting with one of the examiners? I’m sure we can ask them questions.”

“Do you think we can do that?” I asked.

“I’ll make the call tomorrow morning. It could take a while before you actually meet, though. The commission is probably busy.”

“Do you think I failed…because they know about my past?”

We all stopped and looked at her. My stomach felt like ice. Could it really be? They said her record was expunged, but…what if they didn’t care? What if they still knew about her history and chose to just ignore her performance in the exam?

Sojo shook his head. “I don’t think that’s it. I mean, anything is possible, but the commission takes its job very seriously.”

“But it doesn’t make sense!” I just couldn’t get past how ridiculous it was that she failed. “How could she do as well as she did and still not make it through? What scoring system could they possibly have been using?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Sojo said. “We’ll find out when we meet with them, hopefully. But if they were really worried about her past, why would they recommend her for specialist positions in the Self-Defence Forces or the intelligence service?”

“Do you think she’d do better if she had better support gear?”

“Even if we could justify the cost to the company, you know that there are very strict limits on what people without a license can get their hands on, even if they’re interning with an agency.” Sojo was right, again. It really felt like the system was stacked against anyone trying to become a hero who didn’t come from one of the big schools. If you didn’t do it the way they wanted you to, you were just out of luck.

“In any case…” Sojo stood up “Toga-san’s best chance at getting answers is that meeting with the commission. I’ll call them in the morning.” He bowed. “I’m sorry about the result, Toga-san. For what it’s worth, I also think it’s entirely unfair. I’m sure next time will be better.” With that, he walked out and left the three of us alone in the room.

“It’s my fault.”

Izuku had his fists curled on the table. He hadn’t said anything this entire time, but those three words…he said them like he was disgusted with himself.

“Izuku…what are you saying?”

“It’s my fault,” he said again. “I just sat back and watched this entire time Himiko was interning with us.”

“That’s not true, Izu—”

Himiko couldn’t even get a full sentence in. Izuku just kept going. “We had three years of training at UA. We sparred with each other all the time. We had exercises. We had lessons on how to save people. And I just…we saw how athletic you were, Himiko, and I thought that was good enough. But it’s our job to teach you, and we didn’t do that. I didn’t do that.” He shook his head. “One demonstration at a training center and some shadowing? How could I possibly think that would be enough? I’m so stupid !”

“Izuku, stop!”

I didn’t mean to yell, but I couldn’t stand it anymore. The way he blamed himself for not doing more…he did it all the time, and he just wasn’t being fair to himself.

“It’s not your fault,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. “It’s not yours, or mine, or Himiko’s. It’s just…something that happened.”

“But still!” He turned to Himiko, still determined as ever. “I’m sorry I didn’t do more to teach you, Himiko. I’ll make it up to you—I promise. We’re going to spend more time sparring, and I’ll think of as many training options as I can.” He grabbed her hands. “We’re getting you your license.”

Himiko and I went to the mall the next day. I figured she could use something to clear her head after the exam. I asked Izuku if he wanted to come, too, but he insisted on staying at the office to work on training plans. Maybe Izuku was right—we probably were too sure of ourselves. We forgot how hard our own license exam was, and that was with the full training and support that UA gave us. We definitely could have done more to train her. We definitely should have.

And yet…seeing Izuku get so worked up over not doing more got me worried. I knew how he could throw himself into something, completely putting himself aside. It wasn’t healthy. I saw it from him during the war, when he left UA. And before that, when he didnt save Eri right away. He hated letting people down. If someone who needed saving wasn’t saved, he would kick himself endlessly that he wasn’t there to help. I know the feeling. I’ve felt the same way. But I saw the feeling consume him before, and I didn’t want it to happen to him again. My heart couldn’t take it.

“Ochako? You okay?”

Oops. I was completely in my head.

“Sorry, I was just…spacing out.”

Himiko hooked her arm around mine and smiled. “I thought you said I was the one who needed cheering up.”

That made me smile. “I mean, I guess we all could, huh?”

“What were you thinking about?”

“Oh, just…Izuku.”

She grinned, her pointy fangs glistening under the fluorescent lights. “Me too, Ochako.”

We found a conveyor belt sushi spot for lunch and took a seat, chatting as we pulled different colored plates off of the carousel.

“He seemed more angry than I was,” Himiko said, putting some shrimp nigiri sushi in her mouth. The shrimp tail hung from her lips. It made her look like she was a cat who had just caught some prey. So cute, I thought.

“He just really wants to help people,” I said, dipping some tuna sushi into a dish of soy sauce. “He takes it really personally when he feels like he could’ve done more to help.”

“Yeah.” She swallowed her other shrimp sushi before pulling a plate with a crab stick sushi roll off the conveyor belt. “It’s interesting. If anyone saw Izuku out of uniform and didn’t know anything about him, they’d probably think he was a soft and sweet guy. And he is. But he gets so intense…and I really like that about him.” She grinned. “Kinda like you, Ochako.”

I blushed. “Y-yeah, I guess so.” I stirred some wasabi into my soy sauce. She really read us well, I thought. “I, uh…I like how you’re both passionate about the things that are important to you. You’re both working so hard to follow your dreams, and I…it’s really cool, you know?”

I felt my face get red. I wasn’t the only one—I could see Himiko’s face turning pink.

“Do you think Izuku likes me?”

Her question completely caught me off guard. I dropped my sushi into the soy sauce dish, and it splashed onto the counter.

“I mean, you know him best, right?” Himiko continued. “I know he gave us both macarons for White Day, so I know he thinks we’re both special, but…I want to know more about how he feels about me.”

I wanted to tell her everything—that Izuku was thinking a lot about her, that he wanted to ask her out but didn’t want to feel like he was abusing his authority as her boss…but I also didn’t want to force the two of them together. I couldn’t be a matchmaker for them. They had to figure each other out for themselves.

“I think you should ask him, Himiko,” I replied, rescuing my sushi from the soy sauce dish. “He didn’t know that I liked him until almost a year after we met, and that was because I told him, so…if you talk to him, I think it would be good for both of you.”

I felt Himiko’s foot brush against mine under the counter. “You think so?”

“Yeah.” I smiled and tapped her foot with mine. If she could be as open with him as she was with me, I thought, maybe those two can be something special.

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Three years before the present

When I needed to think, I’d make extra patrols…and back then, I really needed to think.

“How did Himiko fail?” I’m sure I must have been muttering to myself. “I’ve got to do what I can to train her, but what can I do with her one on one? We had plenty of group exercises at UA, but we obviously can’t do that…but she’s probably going to be tested on her group work again in the next exam, so—”

“Good morning, Deku!” A newspaper vendor called out to me from his kiosk next to the train station. “You’re out here early, huh?”

It was early. Instead of going to the office first, I was squeezing in extra patrols beforehand. It was quieter, so I could really focus.

“Good morning, sir.” I waved at him and walked over. “Everything quiet?”

“At this time of day, yeah, definitely.” He bent down to grab some magazines to stock his shelves. “I keep reading about awful stuff all over the country, though,” he continued. “Kinda hard to miss when you’re in a booth full of newspapers. Makes me worried that we’re going back to the bad old days before the war.”

While he fiddled with a bundle of magazines, I saw that the latest issue of Heroes Unmasked was already on display. ALL MIGHT AND ENDEAVOR: SECRET COUPLE? The headline was ridiculous. Who could ever believe that? “Do people really read this?” I asked, pointing to the magazines.

“Oh, definitely! I wouldn’t sell it if people didn’t buy it.” Fair point. “Most of it’s nonsense, but that doesn’t mean it’s not interesting.”

He started putting out that morning’s newspaper. I caught the headline on the Musutafu Shimbun in bold letters across the top: PM Saburo Murayama Calls Elections for National Diet.

“Elections?” The announcement must have happened the day before, and I guess I missed it. Sojo mentioned a while back that Prime Minister Murayama would call an election, I thought. Guess he was right.

“Yeah.” The newspaper vendor opened a carton of cigarettes and stocked the wall behind him. “If you ask me, it’s way overdue. He’s been hanging on since the war, and we need someone strong like Tetsunoten to keep Japan safe.”

I felt a chill in the center of my chest. “Tetsunoten…is running?”

“You didn’t know?” The man smiled at me. Did he think I was on his side? “He registered the New Tartarus Movement as a political party! I know I’m voting for him. We’ve got to stop being so lenient with all these criminals and get them out of Japan. They’re why we had the war in the first place, right? You fought back then—I bet you must love the guy too!”

I was too stunned to speak. I had seen Tetsunoten face to face after he whipped up a crowd that looked like it wanted to tear someone to shreds. He threatened the riot police commander without a second thought. He acted like he was untouchable. And all of that paled in comparison to what Himiko saw of him. They wanted people like her exiled—or worse. He thought I liked that?

“Oh, I’m sorry! It’s rude of me to just go on and on about politics.” The vendor looked embarrassed. He must have seen from the look on my face that he and I did not agree. “You must be busy patrolling, so I won’t keep you any longer.”

“Not a problem, sir. Be safe!” I waved and walked away. So much for having space to think about how to help Himiko. This had me worried. In twelve days, there would be elections across the country, and Tetsunoten was running. He had his group registered as an official party, and they wanted to win seats…and he had real support. This could be bad, I thought. I didn’t realize just how bad.

By the time I got to the office, Ochako and Himiko had already been there for a while. Even though heroes make their own hours, and even though it was our own agency, I still felt like I was late. Maybe I just felt guilty that I hadn’t thought of a way to help Himiko get her license.

“Morning, Deku!” Himiko stood up and smiled at me from behind the desk. As worried as I was about Tetsunoten and the license stuff and everything else, I felt calm again seeing her smiling face. It feels silly to think that her smile ever scared me!

I smiled back at her. “Hi, Toga-san!”

“Oh, Deku’s here!” Ochako came out of her office in her hero outfit. “Everything okay? You’re usually here earlier.”

“I, uh…I got distracted. I was thinking about training options for Himiko.” They didn’t need to know about my weird conversation with the newspaper vendor, or that I was nervous about the election. Helping her with training was eating up enough space in my mind already.

“Why don’t you start with sparring?” Ochako asked. “It may not be formal training, but the exercise should help, right?”

“I don’t know…” I really wanted something that would actually train Himiko. Sparring was useful for knowing how you and your opponent fight, but it wasn’t like the training exercises we had at UA that actually simulated the missions we would go on.

“Come on, Deku, I’d love to spar with you!” Himiko lit up. She was super eager. “Can we go now? I’ll go now!”

“Hang on a moment.” Sojo. Of course. “Toga-san, some Fujitsan Electronics contractors are coming by to install some of the equipment for the command center. Can you stay until they get here?”

She sighed. “Yeah, fine…”

“Don’t worry, Himiko, we can spar in the evening.” I smiled at her. She was definitely frustrated that we couldn’t go right away, but I figured that having something fun to look forward to that night would help her feel a little better. “Once I get back from my patrol, we can head over together with your support gear, okay?”

She smiled again. “Definitely!”

Ochako and I were coming out of Sojo’s office that afternoon—he was explaining how the contractors needed to come back another time to install some things that were on backorder—and as soon as I stepped out, I was face to face with Himiko again.

“Are you ready!?” She was grinning. Her face was a few centimeters from mine.

“Aaa!” I jumped back. “Himiko, you startled me!”

“Can we go, Izuku? Pleeease? I’ve been waiting all day!” I could practically feel the energy radiating off of her. She was super eager. She already had all of her support gear with her.”

“Oh yeah, of course! You just scared me a little, that’s all.” I brushed the back of my hair. Having her this close to me…it got me flustered. “So…back to the training center?”

“Yeah! Let’s go!”

We took the elevator down and walked over—me in my hero outfit, her with her support gear. I noticed a few heads turning our way. Because of me? Because of her?

“I’ve been so excited to spar with you, Izuku,” Himiko said, still grinning. “I can’t believe we haven’t done it sooner.”

I felt a pang of guilt. I can’t believe we haven’t done it sooner. That made my brain churn all over again. I wondered if she would have passed if we had even just sparred more.

“Well, we definitely have to make up for lost time, don’t we?” I put on a smile—I didn’t want her to know how I was still feeling guilty.

“Yeah,” she said. “I just…I like spending time with you, you know? And I want to be close to you. To be more like you.”

Hearing her say that made some of my guilt go away. I couldn’t put my finger on why, but hearing her say that put me at ease. A bit like how I felt when Ochako reassured me.

Once we got to the training center, I checked us in with my hero license. I had to sign Himiko in as a guest and put down all of her contact information—the rules for anyone without a license were extremely strict, even if they were interning with an agency. I understood why. Even though years had passed since the war, people were still on edge, as if all of the peace and calm of the post-war period was about to vanish. There were already cracks that were starting to show. Smaller crimes, mostly, but it felt more frequent. Maybe there wasn’t an actual increase in crime—just more reporting on it—but I remembered what Superintendent Tsukauchi had told us about the Paranormal Continuation Front. Were the smaller crimes all their doing? No, that’s too conspiratorial of me to believe, I thought. But still, the police must have information that we don’t, and they wouldn’t have told us if they didn’t think it was serious…

“Okay, you’re all set for training room 219.” The receptionist gave us both keycards. “These will get you into the room, and there are shower rooms on that floor as well if you need them.”

“Thanks!” Himiko chirped, taking one of the keycards. I grabbed the other.

“Come back up here and exchange the cards for your training footage when you’re done.”

“We will!” I nodded at him. “Thanks for your help.”

We headed downstairs and into our training room. Unlike last time, it was mostly bare. There were some low concrete walls and some pillars set up, plus some training dummies scattered around, but there weren’t many places to hide. It was perfect for sparring: just two people testing their skills against each other.

“Okay, so here’s what I think we should do.” I put my mask up to my face as I explained my thinking to Himiko. “I’ll play the role of a villain, and you’ll have to try to either restrain me or make it so that I can’t use my quirk.”

“So, basically as if I was a real hero?”

“Yeah!” I smiled under my mask. “While you do, I’ll try to attack as many of the training dummies as I can. You’ll need to stop me.”

“Okay!” Himiko held her fists up to her face in excitement.

“I’ll only use one quirk at a time, too. Just to make things easier.”

She nodded. “Got it!”

“Are you ready?”

Himiko pulled a knife from her holster. “I have this dummy knife. Is it okay if I use this?”

I walked over and felt the knife. It was fake, but it looked real, and it even felt convincing. But the blade wasn’t actually sharp, so there wasn’t any risk of getting badly hurt.

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

“Then I’m ready!”

“Good.”

I immediately released Blackwhip and pulled training dummies towards me.

“Woah! Already?” Himiko sounded surprised—I must have caught her off guard!

“You’ve got to be fast,” I said, releasing another Blackwhip tendril and pulling the knife out of her hand. I tried to pull her in with another, but she dodged and rolled out of the way, pulling two needles from over her shoulders. What was she trying to do? Even if she could get my blood, transforming into me wouldn’t trick me, and she obviously couldn’t get any blood from the dummies, so what was her plan?

As she threw them, I realized that she wasn’t using the needles—she was using the plastic tubing that connected them to the tank on her back. They looped around two of the dummies that I had pulled towards me, and it broke my concentration. I lost my grip, and she pulled them towards her.

“‘Gotta be fast,’ huh?” Himiko was smirking. I couldn’t help but feel proud of her. Even without triggering Danger Sense, it’s hard for someone else to catch me off guard. And yet…

I sent out a Blackwhip tendril to her right. She flinched and rolled left. Just like I hoped she would. She ran straight into the other tendril I had let loose, and she couldn’t stop her roll fast enough. I wrapped Blackwhip around her.

“Can you move?” I asked.

“Nnngh!” She squirmed and tried to wriggle free, but it was no use. “No…”

“Guess I win this one.” I let her go, and she flopped onto the ground. “You did really well,” I said, walking over and helping her get back up.

“You really think so?” As tired as she was, and even though she had just lost, she was still all smiles.

“Yeah! You have a natural talent.”

We started setting up the dummies again for another round, picking them up off the ground rearranging them. Okay, so Blackwhip is a tough quirk for her to counter, I thought as I set up a pair of dummies by one of the pillars. How would she do against Smoke?

Once everything was set up, we met back in the center. “Ready?” I asked. She nodded, and I released a puff of smoke that surrounded us as I looked around for training dummies to grab. I immediately knew that I was in trouble, though. Smoke is a great support quirk—but only in combination with something else. If I used Float with it, or Fa Jin, or Blackwhip, I could be anywhere in the room I wanted to be in a second…but Smoke on its own was as much a handicap for me as it was for Himiko. I couldn’t see any training dummies—and I couldn’t see her either.

I heard footsteps. That has to be her, I thought. I was being hunted, and Danger Sense wouldn’t warn me about her because she had no intent to hurt me. I had forgotten what it felt like to be chased. It hadn’t happened to me since the war. And to have no sense of what was coming…even though it was just training, it made my heart race.

I heard a heavy footfall, then a scrape, a thud of shoes hitting concrete…and then nothing. She was on top of something. At this point, I totally ignored that I was supposed to be rounding up training dummies. I need to hide myself, I thought.

I released another puff of smoke. That should do it. Now, if I just—

Himiko crashed right into me, pouncing like a cheetah. She was lighter than me, but the speed with which she moved forced me onto the ground. One moment, I was on my feet, and the next, I was on my back with a very realistic knife at my throat. In the middle of a cloud of smoke, Himiko was straddling me, her legs on either side of mine, her chest pressing against me. My heart was pounding.

“Looks like I got you, Izuku,” she said, grinning.

I smiled back. “You sure did.”

I thought she would get off me, but she didn’t. She put the knife down next to me and pressed her pelvis into me. What was she doing ?

“Himiko? Shouldn’t we get ready for another round?”

“Aww, but I don’t wanna right now,” she said, her face hovering just over mine. I felt the heat of her breath on me.

“Huh? Well then, what do you want?”

She flashed her fangs. “I want you…to be my boyfriend.”

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Three years before the present

In my head, this was way better than a first date. I wasn’t just getting alone time with Izuku. We weren’t just sitting across from each other sharing a milkshake with two straws and playing footsie under the table. When I first saw Izuku, he was all beat up and worn out, and I immediately fell in love with him. I wanted to be the one doing that to him. I wanted to slice him up, get him worn out, make him bleed. The therapy I got when I was in my diversion program helped me understand how to balance the things that make me happy against what other people want, without making myself feel too limited—and without hurting anyone else. But there was no turning off the part of me that wanted blood. If I like someone, I want to become them. And if I love someone, then I really, really want to be them. For me, that means blood, and since the times I saw other people bleeding was when they were in a fight, my brain connected the two. So when Izuku said that we should spar, I was so happy. Even if I had to use the fake knife I got from LotusPop, this was still about as raw an expression of love as I could ever feel.

Even though I lost the first round with Izuku, I still felt so happy. As much as I had been afraid my entire life of getting captured, I felt safe wrapped up in Izuku’s Blackwhip. We’re fighting, and it’s okay? I never want this to end, I thought. I want to do this forever!

“Guess I win this one,” Izuku said. He sounded almost like he was apologizing—as if I wasn’t just thrilled to be fighting with him! His Blackwhip went away, and I fell to the ground. “You did really well,” he said as he pulled me back up to my feet.

“You really think so?” I asked, grinning. Izuku praising me…it made me feel so warm inside. I wanted to bottle that feeling up and save it forever. My parents never said I did a good job with anything. But Izuku and Ochako did.

“Yeah! You have a natural talent.”

That…didn’t feel good. I shrugged it off and went to pick up the training dummies, but what Izuku said just wasn’t true. But I didn’t want to say anything right then and there. I wanted to keep fighting. I wanted to keep feeling good.

Once we reset, we started again, and Izuku released a puff of smoke. This was perfect! Sneaking is what I do best. Whether I was hiding from someone or tracking someone down, being stealthy was my specialty. And now I got to use it to hunt Izuku. It was like an animal part of my brain switched on.

I knew I’d have a better chance of seeing him if I got up to a higher spot. Where are those pillars? If I can just get on top of one… I spotted a tall block of concrete through the smoke. There! I ran up to it and jumped, perching on top to spot Izuku’s green hair. It was still too smoky, but it was starting to clear a little bit. Maybe I can spot him if I wait…

There was a second puff of smoke. He has to be there, I thought. Right in the center of it! If he moved too fast, or if I took too long, I’d miss him and just land on flat concrete. I had to go right away. Without wasting a second, I grabbed my play knife and jumped from my crouching stance. Was he here? Was he here?

I saw his green uniform and gray mask through the smoke, just a few centimeters away from me. Yes! I put my left hand out to tackle him, still holding the knife in my other hand, and slammed into him. We both hit the ground, and I put my fake knife against his neck. I smiled. “Looks like I got you, Izuku,”

He chuckled and smiled at me. “You sure did.”

Hunting down Izuku made me so worked up—and not just physically. I got to fight and spar with the guy I liked, and put a knife at his throat! Nobody ever just let me do that! And now I was on top of him, with my legs on either side of him, my hips above his. This was too good to be true! Younger me could’ve passed out from the excitement. I put the play knife down next to him and lowered my hips onto him. I felt his bulge through his uniform. Did I make him hard? It sure felt like it.

“Himiko?” He looked up at me, puzzled. “Shouldn’t we get ready for another round?”

“Aww, but I don’t wanna right now.” And it was true. Sparring with him, tackling him, feeling like I caught him…it all got me so turned on.

“Huh? Well then, what do you want?”

He looked so confused, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was face to face with my crush, and my heart was racing. My mind went back to my talk with Ochako, when I asked her if he liked me.

I think you should ask him, Himiko. If you talk to him, I think it would be good for both of you.

This probably wasn’t what she meant, but I didn’t care. I spoke the words knowing I couldn’t hold them back if I wanted to.

“I want you…to be my boyfriend.”

His face turned bright red. “Wh…what are you saying!?”

“I like you, Izuku,” I answered, closing my eyes and putting my hands up to my face. “I have ever since I saw you.”

“But…now?” He sounded shocked, like he didn’t know what to do. “Like, being your boyfriend…you mean you want to hold hands and go to an amusement park and share a crepe? So why in the middle of training!? There’s cameras everywhere!”

“For me, love means becoming like someone.” Even talking about it with him felt like such a rush. I felt like my heart was going to leap right out of my chest. “You remind me of the first boy I ever had a crush on. When I saw him all beat up after a fight, I knew I wanted some of his blood. So seeing you at the training camp, all tattered and broken after fighting…it almost made my heart burst! And actually sparring with you, it’s like I can hardly control myself. So please…let me be more like you, Izuku. Let me be your girlfriend too.”

“Himiko…” he whispered as the smoke started to clear. He slid himself out from underneath me and stood up. “I like you, too, but…this is so fast, and…”

“So…you’re saying no?” All of my excitement turned to fear. Was I being rejected? I didn’t know if my heart could handle that, and I didn’t know if I could even talk to Ochako about it if that happened. He was her love too, after all.

“That’s not it!” He waved his arms like he was trying to shoo the question out of the room. “It’s just…I know you’re new to all of this, but so am I, you know? Like, Ochako and I…it took us a while to even confess our feelings to each other, and it took even longer before we did anything physical, so I…kind of don’t like moving really fast, that’s all.”

I lowered my head. “I understand.”

He put his hands on my arms. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to date you.” He smiled. “I just want us to focus on making you a pro hero right now. You said you wanted to be more like people you love, right?”

I nodded. It was my whole life. I didn’t know anything else.

“And that’s why you want to be a hero with us?” he asked. I nodded again. “Well, we’re gonna make that happen…but we’ve got to keep training for it, okay?”

“Okay.”

We stayed down there for two hours. It was exhausting, but it got my heart rate up, and I loved the alone time with Izuku. By the end of it, we were both filthy. We both needed a shower and a change of clothes.

“You packed a second set of clothes, right?” he asked me.

“I…only brought these.”

He smiled. “That’s okay. I brought a spare set of workout clothes in case my clothes ripped or something, so you can wear that if you want.”

Wearing Izuku’s clothes! Thinking about that put a smile on my face.

“Thanks, Izuku!”

We walked out of the training room to look for those shower rooms the front desk mentioned. There weren’t many—only three per floor, all in a row, and the middle one was out of order. One of the ones on the end looked like it was busy, so…

“You can go first,” Izuku said. “I’ll wait until you finish.”

“No, you should go first!” I insisted.

“No really, you first.”

We went back and forth like this for a minute. At that rate, neither of us would shower. We’d just have been standing in the hallway endlessly.

“You know…if we’re going to be working together, we need to get used to changing in front of each other …” Izuku said shyly. “We could just…share a shower?”

My eyes went wide. Was this a come-on? What happened to moving slowly? He must have realized what it sounded like, because he blushed hard and started stammering.

“B-b-b-but it’s not like that!” he insisted. “Nothing weird or anything!”

I smiled. “You’re silly, Izuku. You think I’d say no?” I opened the door to the shower room and stepped in. He followed me. There was a little changing area with a bench before the actual shower. Izuku set the clean clothes down while I started getting undressed. He was still trying to cover himself up—he couldn’t exactly hide how shy he was. But I didn’t care. I wanted him to see me.

The shower itself was nice and clean. They even had soap and shampoo dispensers for people to use. We huddled under the water and cleaned ourselves off. I was calming down from the high energy sparring and the emotional roller coaster from earlier, and what Izuku said earlier popped back into my head.

You have a natural talent.

“Izuku…”

He turned to look at me.

“What you said before…I’m not a natural talent.”

“Himiko, what do you mean?”

Suddenly, I felt vulnerable being naked in front of him. I covered my chest and crotch. “You know why I’m so good at fighting and dodging? It’s not like I was born like this. I…”

Was I crying ? If I was, I hoped Izuku couldn’t tell with us both in the shower.

“…I had to learn to do this just to survive. Remember when I told you that something happened in middle school? That I was afraid of being caught? Well…that boy I had a crush on, Saito…I wanted some of his blood. But I knew I couldn’t just ask him for it—he’d think I was creepy, and definitely not cute at all! So I just kept it to myself. But that feeling never went away, and one day, I just couldn’t take it anymore…so I cut him.”

I told him that something happened in middle school before, but I hadn’t told him about Saito. I figured he already knew, because that story was all over the news. I couldn’t get away from it, even when I was on the run. I kept seeing the headlines: Middle School Student Stabs Classmate in Crazed Attack. Who could have missed it? Who could have forgotten? But I guess Izuku did. Or maybe he just didn’t connect the dots and realize I was the one who did it. He knew something happened with me, but when I told him about Saito, he went silent—just the sound of the shower raining water down on us filled the tiny room. 

“That’s why I had to get good at hiding and fighting. I just had to if I was going to stay out of jail. Even before I found the League, I was teaching myself how to fight and hide. Because if I didn’t, I’d be caught, and they’d lock me away.” I couldn’t even bring myself to say what I was really afraid of—because even thinking about it felt too awful. If they caught me, they’d execute me. Just for being myself. It feels silly to think now, since I got such an unbelievable second chance, but that fear completely swallowed me up when I was younger. And people like Tetsunoten…they were just proof that my fears were correct.

I felt Izuku put his arms around me. I was worried about how he’d see me, but feeling him hug me, pressing himself against me, I felt safe.

“I’m sorry, Himiko.”

I rested my head against his chest. Seeing him naked meant I got to see all of his scars from the war. So cute, I thought. “You know, I never would’ve thought I’d be telling a hero all of this.” And I definitely never thought I’d be naked in the shower with one.  

“Well…I’m glad you told me.”

Izuku got soft—I guess sad stories about school girls slicing up their crushes doesn’t get people turned on. But I still felt his dick against my skin. I wanted to play with it, but he said no weird stuff. Oh well. It would just have to wait. Younger me would’ve just ignored it and done what made me happy.

“I guess you probably don’t want to go out with a crazy girl like me now,” I said, trying not to be too obvious in staring at his crotch.

“You’re not crazy.” He tilted my head up and kissed me—a quick peck on the lips as we stood under the shower together. “And I really do want to go out with you once you get your license.”

Izuku kissed me! Was I losing my mind? Was this real!? I wish it lasted longer. I wish it never ended. But he did say he wanted to go slow. For him, that was probably really bold.

“But I want to make sure I do everything I can to get you that license first,” he said, still holding me. Now he wasn’t trying to cover himself up in front of me anymore. “Becoming like the people you love…I know how important that is for you. And I don’t want to lose focus.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

He turned off the shower and the water stopped, except for a few drips from the showerhead onto the wet tiles. We got towels and dried ourselves off, and Izuku had me try on his clothes. All of the stuff he bought was All Might themed—he really does love him, even if he doesn’t call it love. The t-shirts were all big on me, but I wore one anyway and tied a knot in the back to help it fit me better. He put on shorts and tossed on the other shirt.

“Uh…I’ll go outside first, Himiko,” he said. “If people see both of us coming out of the shower at the same time, they’re gonna get the wrong idea.”

Oops. We probably should have thought about that. Getting in trouble for having sex in a public shower would be really bad—especially since that isn’t even what happened! But Izuku stuck his head outside and looked around, then waved for me to come outside. Everything seemed fine, and we went back upstairs. Izuku handed in our keycards and got our training video footage. I wonder if the smoke was thick enough to hide us while I was on top of him, I thought. Guess we’ll find out.

“Can we do this again, Izuku?” I asked as we walked out of the training center.

He smiled. “I feel like we’ll do this a lot between now and your next test, Himiko. We have to get you ready!”

“No, I mean after that!” I grinned and put my fists up to my face, totally unable to hide how excited I was. “I want to keep sparring with you all the time!”

“I’ll spar any time, Himiko.” Izuku stopped at a vending machine on the street and put in some coins. “But can we have calmer dates, too? You know…holding hands, going to an amusement park, sharing a crepe?”

He pushed some buttons, and a bottle of Bocari Sweat fell into the pickup slot. Izuku handed it to me and put more money in to buy one for himself.

“I’d love that, Izuku.”

As we made our way back to the office, I thought about how much fun it was going to be to train with Izuku all the time, and how much closer I’d be able to get to both him and Ochako. I was so excited. Even though I failed my first test, I thought the next couple of months between then and my next one would be amazing. But life was about to get in the way—again. Things were going to get harder before they got easier, and I had absolutely no idea what was coming.

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Three years before the present

People have asked me what the hardest part of being a hero is. A lot of people think it’s the risk of getting hurt, and it’s true that none of us want to get hurt, but we also know the risks. There are plenty of other jobs that involve helping people and aren’t nearly as risky as hero work. Some people think it’s being in the public eye all the time. And yeah, that takes getting used to, but there’s a lot of good that outweighs the bad. Ending up on the cover of Heroes Unmasked or having to field questions from eager reporters isn’t fun, but having small kids come up to you and tell you that you’re their inspiration makes it all worth it. Other people think it’s the long hours that we work sometimes. Maybe for some people that’s the hardest part, but I’m used to that. No. Times like what happened at Sunset Grove… those are the hardest part.

I was at the office late, again, but the long hours were my own choice that night. It was a few nights after Himiko and I trained together for the first time, and I wanted to plan out our next session. Freeform sparring was fun, but I felt like she needed some more structured training sessions on top of that, too. I sketched some out at my desk, and then just kept going. What was supposed to be just 20 or 30 minutes after work ended up with me staying awake past 2 AM, listening to the emergency scanner in case something happened somewhere in the city. I didn’t even change out of my hero outfit when I got back into the office—I just sat down, plugged in, and started drawing up ideas on how to train Himiko, and didn’t know when to stop. The others had long since left, and the only sounds were the chatter from the emergency scanner and my furious scribbling, which got quieter and more sporadic as I got more and more tired.

“…start for a burglary of an occupied structure at the Sunset Grove Assisted Living Community.” The scanner, I thought. Something’s going on. “Caller is a staff member saying that a former employee broke into the building.”

Oh, that’s probably not a big deal, I thought at the time. Weird that someone would break into a nursing home, but if it’s an ex-employee, I guess that makes sense. Better for the police to take care of that. Break-ins aren’t good, of course, but those are the kinds of minor crimes that the police usually handle. Unless a hero is right there when it happens, we usually don’t respond. If we went out of our way to every minor offense that happened in Japan, we’d be constantly tied up, totally unable to deal with anything serious when it happened—and besides, people would see us as busybodies nosing around in people’s lives, not as heroes meant to protect and save.

I must have fallen asleep after that, because the next thing I knew, I was jolted awake by an alarm sound. My phone? No…that’s the scanner. I was still coming out of my sleepiness, but I recognized those tones. You don’t hear them often, but when a dispatcher needs to get the attention of every police officer in the city, they play that sound.

“Attention all available officers, all available officers, respond priority for the stabbing at Sunset Grove Assisted Living.”

Stabbing!? This was a break-in before! How long was I asleep? How did I miss this!? My thoughts were racing. I felt guilty that I was asleep on the job—literally—but I had to put that aside. This changed everything. Now I had to respond.

I rushed down the stairs. It was faster than waiting for the elevator. If the windows in that office opened, I would’ve just jumped out and flown that way, or gone up to the roof if that was closer. Dammit, I thought. I can’t waste any more time! I made sure my headset was switched to the citywide frequency and spoke.

“Hero Deku. I’m responding.”

No time to lose. I floated myself and released Blackwhip to pull myself towards the nursing home.

“Hero Ingenium responding.” Iida! If anyone else would be up at this late hour, of course it would be him, I thought. Sure enough, I saw a trail of dust making a dash for Sunset Grove. The nursing home was on the outer edge of Musutafu, in a quieter neighborhood. I hadn’t been there before, but I imagined it would be a nice, calm place for someone to spend their last years if they couldn’t stay in their own home. For something like this to happen…

What could it be? They said it was a former employee, so maybe this is some sort of work dispute, I thought to myself as I made my way there, desperately trying to piece together what was happening. But if it’s that, then why go at night? Nearly everyone who works there would probably be there during the day, right? Unless…

“We’ve got a lot of patients,” one of the officers said over the radio. He must have been inside. “How many medics do we have?”

“I have two responding to you now for two patients,” the dispatcher answered, calm on the surface but with a hint of worry in her voice.

“That’s not enough!” The officer sounded frantic. “We have at least ten patients, multiple stab wounds to the neck, severe blood loss.”

Ten patients! I felt like I had swallowed a ball of ice. This is really, really bad, I thought. Was I already too late? If only I hadn’t fallen asleep…

“Is the scene safe for medics?” the dispatcher asked.

“Send them in, we have people bleeding out!” That officer sounded even more panicked than before, like he had seen the worst thing in the world. Honestly, to his eyes, he probably did.

“—multiple people with severe trauma, we cannot wait!” Another officer spoke up, and he was practically screaming into the radio. He couldn’t even wait for his partner to finish before he radioed in. I could hear him hyperventilating. Many officers who worked during the war ended up with post-traumatic stress, and the ones who were hired afterwards had basically no experience responding to serious violent crimes. They were totally unprepared for this, and they were in a full panic. But who could blame them? If anybody saw what they saw, how could you not break down?

“Okay, I need everyone to try and stay calm,” the dispatcher replied, masking her own growing panic. “You’re cutting each other off.”

Every few seconds, I’d hear police sirens below me interrupting the quiet night as they raced to the scene. The flashing red emergency lights in the distance were impossible to miss. I heard the whirring rotors of a helicopter in the distance, too.

“Helicopter Fuji 2 is airborne. We’re two minutes away.”

The closer I got, the more I could make out on the ground. A few police cars were set up at intersections further away while more went directly to the nursing home. I saw lots of ambulances speeding over, too. The little white vans with flashing red lights looked like pills on wheels from the air. An officer on the radio read out the description of the suspect as both I and the police helicopter arrived overhead. They were easy to spot, even at night—the robin’s egg blue fuselage of the helicopter had a bright orange stripe in the middle for visibility. My forest green outfit, on the other hand, probably blended into the night sky, and I didn’t need to get chopped up by their rotors by accident. 

“Fuji 2, this is Deku. I’m south of you, searching from the air.” Better safe than sorry, I thought. Danger Sense wasn’t going to activate if they weren’t trying to hurt me, after all.

“We see you, Deku,” one of the pilots said. I was close enough to see into the cockpit. “We’ll keep our search pattern to the north.” One pilot waved at me while the other pulled on the control stick, and they turned back away from me. It was better for us to split up our search. We have to find this guy, I thought. It’s been too long already. He can’t get away.

I started looking from the air, street by street, looking down each one to see if there was anyone out and about. It was the middle of the night, but with all the commotion, people were walking outside to see what was happening—but nobody who matched the description. And at this rate, it was going to take me forever. I could get lower than the helicopter could, but they had a thermal camera and searchlight. They could see much more at a time then I could.

All the while, the radio chatter in my ear kept painting a darker and darker picture of what was going on. The STARS team was on their way, which made sense, given how bad everything looked on the ground and how shaken the regular patrol officers were by what they were seeing. I couldn’t tune out the updates from inside.

“—we have some medics here evaluating patients.” This officer on the radio sounded older and calmer. He was definitely still worked up, but unlike the others, he wasn’t in a panic. “Right now, we have one green tag, two yellow, two red, and three black. Keep medics coming to the front and we’ll bring them in.”

Three black tags…that’s three dead. I felt sick. I was already too late for them. I can’t fail like this. I can’t keep failing people. I…

…what am I doing!? I shook my head, as if I could get the self-doubt out of my brain by just rocking it loose. Don’t get distracted. Yeah, things are bad, but everyone has their own part to play right now to help however they can. You have a mission! Keep searching, Deku! Focus!

“Command, Fuji 2.” The helicopter pilot got back on the radio as they circled north of me. “We have someone on thermal who looks like he’s hiding. Any time we shift our orbit, he ducks behind something.”

Was this it? Did we have our guy? Until we knew for sure, though, I couldn’t lose focus. If they’d had the wrong person, and he was in my area, then leaving would have been the worst thing I could have done.

“Fuji 2, Ingenium!” Iida’s voice came back over the radio. “If you have a spotlight, shine it on him!”

A couple of seconds later, I saw a white beam of light extended down from the helicopter. Iida ran—I could tell from the dust cloud he kicked up behind him. He was the best one to go there.

“I see him!” Iida called out over the radio just a few seconds later. So it was him! For the first time that night, I felt a moment of relief. I started swinging my way over to him.

“Deku to Ingenium, I’m coming to you now.” I raced as fast as I could to where the helicopter’s spotlight was aimed. Below me, I saw police cars racing towards him, too. With them stuck winding through the narrow streets, I’d get there first by seconds. I landed next to Iida right as an armored car filled with STARS officers turned around the corner. The doors flew open, and a half-dozen of them got out with guns and a metal shield.

“Ingenium!” I shouted. “Are you okay?” He had said something over the radio after I said I was on my way, but I didn’t hear it. I just had to get to him as fast as I could.

“I’m fine, Deku,” he called back. He was holding a man in a bloodstained shirt by his collar. Behind me, I heard the heavy footsteps of the STARS team racing up to detain him.

“Is there anyone else?” I asked. “What do you need from me?”

Before he could answer, two officers raced past me and yanked the man from Iida’s grasp. One put him in handcuffs while the other one radioed the rest of the team. “One in custody.”

The helicopter kept circling overhead, and more officers were arriving. One picked up a backpack from the carport where he was hiding. It clanked like it was full of metal. The radio chatter was frantic. Iida probably didn’t even hear my question.

“Ingenium, tell me what you need me to do.”

“We’re okay here, Deku,” he said in his firm, authoritative voice. He was probably the most calm and composed person there. “You should go back to Sunset Grove. See if they need your help there.”

I nodded. “I will.”

As I started to lift off, I overheard the helicopter pilot radio down to us. “Fuji 2 copies, one suspect in custody, no one outstanding. Good work down there, everyone.”

I couldn’t find any happiness in that. “Good work down there.” Was it? Would he have said that if he knew I was asleep before? We stopped a bad situation from getting worse, but it was still really bad, I thought, still shouldering guilt from sleeping through the original call. The radio updates kept coming, and whatever good mood that any of us had from capturing him was completely erased.

“Updated patient count right now is one green, one yellow, four red, and twelve black.”

Twelve people dead. By the next morning, it would be sixteen total. It felt like someone tore me in half. I’m too late, I thought. If I was faster…if I was more alert… But the truth is, by the time anyone called the police, the killer had already left the building. Nearly everyone was dead before any of us knew what was happening. Short of a miracle, there was nothing I could have done—and that felt terrible. Heroes don’t get many second chances. I was lucky before. I had another chance to save Eri. I had another chance to save Himiko. But this time, there were no second chances.

I landed in the street in front of the nursing home. The sign out front for the Sunset Grove Assisted Living Community had a cartoon sun with a smiling face, eyeglasses, and a walker. It felt like some kind of sick joke to see such a cutesy sign surrounded by the emergency lights of police cars and ambulances. As a crowd started to gather, more police arrived to keep them away from the building. Further down the street, a bus pulled up, with flashing red lights and painted white like all of the ambulances. I read the words on the side: Ambulance Bus — Mass Casualty Unit . This was an absolute disaster. How many people were still in there? How many people would make it out? I didn’t want to think about it, but I couldn’t stop myself either.

A paramedic ran out of the building to the bus holding up six fingers. “Six units of type O blood!” he shouted.

“I got it!” someone yelled back from inside the bus.

“And bring as many code kits as you have—all of ours are being used!”

Code kits. They were doing CPR in there, and the ones that the regular ambulances had on board were all being used. I felt like I was in a nightmare. For a few seconds, I just stood there, stunned at the pandemonium around me. I knew that inside was a whole lot worse.

“Deku!”

I turned around. An older police officer walked up to me.

“I’m the on-scene commander here. Thanks for all of your help.”

“What do you need from me?” I asked.

“It might seem chaotic, but I think you’ve done all you can,” he answered. “We’ll handle everything else.”

“There has to be something,” I pleaded, desperate for anything to do. Anything to keep my mind off of the helpless feeling. Anything to not feel useless.

He shook his head. “There’s nothing else for you to do, Deku.”

I wish he hadn’t said that. I wished it wasn’t true. I was desperate to be useful, because I felt like I hadn’t done enough. I wanted there to be something. Anything.

“Please!” I turned and looked to my left. There was a young woman pleading with a police officer who was keeping the crowd away from the nursing home. “I have to get in. My grandfather is in there. He can’t walk, he can barely hear, he’s getting confused…he must be so scared right now. Please…”

“It’s too dangerous, miss,” the officer said back. “We’re arranging a spot for friends and family to wait, so once we have that, we’ll—”

The front doors of the nursing home flew open again, and medics rushed out with an elderly man on a stretcher. His face was wrinkled, and his skin was ghost white. He was covered in bloody bandages. One of the medics was holding up a blood bag connected to his arm.

“Grandpa!”

Even in the chaos, she must have recognized him somehow. She and the rest of the crowd watched, helpless, as they hurried him to a waiting ambulance and loaded him inside, shut the door, turned on their siren, and drove him away.

“No…!” She screamed as if someone had punched her in the chest, and all of the pain inside of her, desperate to escape, could only trickle out of her. That scream…I can never forget a scream like that. You hear a lot of screams when you’re a hero—desperate screams, pained screams…but that one is the worst. A scream that feels final, like a part of yourself just died.

The hardest part of being a hero? It’s that. It’s hearing that scream and knowing that you were too late. That someone’s family is broken, and someone’s life is over, because you couldn’t be there. That there was no saving people who desperately needed saving. People trust us to use our quirks to save them, to protect them. It’s why our job exists…but it makes people think that we’re larger than life, that we’re almost godlike. But at the end of the day, we’re all just human. We have our weaknesses. We can’t be everywhere. We can’t save everyone. And yet…I still wasn’t done.

You’ve done all you can. There’s nothing else for you to do, Deku.

No. That wasn’t true. Helping when you weren’t asked to is what makes a hero. And even if I couldn’t help anyone inside, there were still people out there who needed help. I knew there was at least one. I went over to the woman who, at that point, was kneeling on the ground, sobbing as the police kept asking the rest of the crowd to move further back. I knelt down to her level and put a hand on her shoulder.

“That was your grandfather?” I asked.

She looked up and nodded. Her cheeks were wet with tears. She was still dressed in her pajamas—she must have rushed out of bed to go there. “Yeah…”

“This must be really scary,” I said softly. “But I’m sure they’re doing everything they can for him right now.”

“I just…he’s so old…” Her voice was breaking as she spoke about him. “He’s been forgetting more and more, and last year, he fell at home and broke his legs, so he couldn’t stay in his house anymore. My brother and I insisted that he go into a nursing home—he can’t take care of himself. I’m the one that found this place because I live just down the street. It’s my fault he was here. I’m the one who made him go…”

She started crying again. I could feel her pain. All she wanted was what was best for him. How could she have known that this would happen? How could anyone?

“You did what you could to take care of him,” I whispered. “And now there are other people taking the best care of him that they possibly can.” So don’t blame yourself, I thought. But saying that wouldn’t have helped her.

“You’re Deku, right?” she asked after a break in her crying.

“That’s me.”

“My brother works for a hero agency,” she said. “He’s an administrator, or something like that. He’s always busy, so he hasn’t told me lots about it, but I know he likes what he does.”

“Well, what your brother does must be very important,” I said. “Heroes can’t do everything all by themselves, so I’m sure he must be very helpful.”

“Yeah, I guess so…”

“What’s your name?” One thing that we were taught early on in our hero courses was that calling someone by their name was a good way to calm them down. It makes people feel like they’re not anonymous. They feel like your focus is all on them…because in those moments, it has to be.

“I’m Sojo,” she replied. “Yoshiko Sojo.”

Sojo. It couldn’t be…could it? No, it had to be, I thought. Her brother works in administration for a hero agency. Who else could she be but Yuuto Sojo’s sister? I didn’t even realize that he had a sister. He didn’t talk about his family. Nothing about siblings, nothing about his parents…and nothing about his aging grandfather, who was being rushed to the hospital while her sister was left crying in the street. But there wasn’t any time for me to unpack my thoughts or process the surprise of realizing just how close to home this was hitting. In that instant, she needed someone.

“Well, Sojo-san…everything's going to be fine.” I stood up, held out my hand, and smiled. “I’m here.”

She looked at my hand for a second or two, as if she was deciding whether she even wanted to get up off the ground. Her eyes met mine, then went back to my hand, and she took it. I pulled her up to her feet and held her. It was all I could do. It felt so small, but when there was nothing else for either of us to do, it meant the world to both of us.

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Three years before the present

I found out about the Sunset Grove stabbing in the morning, like everyone else. It was the first notification on my phone I saw when I rolled out of bed.

NHA World News
BREAKING: Police say 16 killed in overnight knife attack at nursing home in Musutafu

Who would do such an awful thing? Those poor people, completely defenseless… It still hurts just thinking about it. I tapped the notification and scrolled through the article. Reporters were still piecing together all of the details, so there wasn’t much information, but I saw pictures they shared online of the ambulances outside the nursing home and police keeping crowds of onlookers back. One journalist managed to get a picture of Izuku kneeling to console somebody in the crowd. Of course he was there, I thought. I bet he’s still at the office right now, and I bet he’s kicking himself because he wishes he could do more.

I wish I had been wrong, but I know him too well. As I made my way to the office, my gut told me I’d walk in and see him asleep in his hero outfit. The lights were off when I got up to our floor.

“Izuku?” I called out as I walked down the short hallway. “You here?”

The door to his office was cracked open, and I poked my head inside. Sure enough, he had his head down on his desk, sound asleep, his hero outfit still on. Called it. I walked in and put a hand on his shoulder and gently shook him. “Izuku!” I whispered.

He snapped his head up and raised his hand. Little tendrils of Blackwhip extended from his palm.

“Morning, Izuku,” I said with a smile and a soft whisper. He hasn’t done that since the war, I thought to myself. That was as much a sign of how bad things were as the headline on my phone. “How long did you sleep?”

“Mmm…” He yawned and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “What time is it?”

“It’s 8:30.”

“Uh…like two hours? Two and a half?”

“Izuku!” I walked around the table and hugged him. “Was it…” I stopped myself. “No…I won’t ask. I know it must have been really hard.”

“You know I was at Sunset Grove?” he asked, still sleepy.

“There’s a photo of you there on the internet. And besides…” I kissed him on the forehead. “I know you too well.”

I heard footsteps in the hallway, and Himiko stepped around the corner and into the room, holding up her phone.

“Hey, did you two hear about what happened at that nursi—” As soon as she saw Izuku, she stopped. Just from looking at him, she knew right away. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” I said. What else was there to explain?

“You want a pillow?” Himiko asked.

“Mmmm, I’ll be okay…” Izuku mumbled.

“Shhhh. It’s okay, Izuku,” I whispered back to him before turning back to Himiko and nodding.

We walked out and got a blanket and pillow from the closet. Guess this means all of us have slept in the office at least once, I thought. And each of us has had the other two tucking them in and taking care of them. Like we’re one big found family. Even though something terrible had just happened, that put a smile on my face. Us, a found family. I was lucky to have so much love and support from my parents, even though they didn’t have much money. And Izuku’s dad might’ve disappeared, but his mom was always so caring and worried about him. But Himiko…

I turned to look at her as she stood on the tips of her toes to get the blankets off of the top shelf of the closet. “Poor Izuku,” she whispered. “Always working so hard. But I like that we get to take care of him.”

I nodded back at her. If that could be our entire lives, just us taking care of each other… I liked that future for us. I still do.

After we got him tucked in, we didn’t see Izuku again until two in the afternoon that day. I would have started patrolling hours earlier, but Himiko and I didn’t want to leave Izuku alone. Whatever he went through last night, we wanted to be there to help him. I figured we should also wait for Sojo, but he sent us an email to say that he wasn’t coming in that day.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected]

Subject: Unplanned absence due to family emergency

Sincere apologies, but due to a family emergency, I will be unable to come to the office today. I will keep you advised as things develop.

— Yuuto Sojo

Always so formal, I thought. I hadn’t even connected the dots until Izuku woke up again. Himiko and I were watching news coverage in the conference room when he woke up and found us.

“Did you sleep okay?” Himiko asked.

“As well as I could,” he answered, taking a seat between the two of us. I put my hand on his thigh.

“Glad you’re up,” I said, smiling. He nodded back at me as the reporters kept talking on screen.

“…and police have said that it’s thanks to close coordination between heroes and responding officers that they were able to find the main suspect,” a young reporter said on screen. It looked like he was in front of the nursing home, which still had a bunch of police cars parked in front of the sign for the building, their cartoon mascot looking so at odds with the awful things that happened inside.

“Oh, I don’t know if you heard, but Sojo-san isn’t coming in today,” I told Izuku, remembering his email from earlier.

“Yeah, I had a feeling he wouldn’t,” he replied. “His grandfather was at the nursing home.”

I was shocked. “Oh, that’s awful…”

“Do you know if he…” Himiko didn’t finish her question, but the meaning was clear.

“Last I saw, he was taken to the hospital,” Izuku answered. “I saw his sister in the crowd, and we talked. That’s the only reason I know.”

I knew Izuku wasn’t telling us everything. Not that he was trying to keep secrets or anything—he just wanted to keep the worst of what happened that night away from us. So typical of him, taking on a mountain of hardship so that people around him didn’t have to feel any. I wish he shared that burden more. Just like he wanted to keep that pain from others, we want to keep it from him.

“Thank you for bringing us that report,” the anchor said as the image on screen cut back to the studio. “Well, for more on that suspect, let’s go live outside the Musutafu Detention Center where we have our lead justice correspondent on scene.”

The shot changed again to a reporter standing outside of the city jail. After the Tartarus breakout and the war, the government had to house tens of thousands of arrested villains and common criminals who had broken out of prisons—but they also wanted to remove the social isolation that the Tartarus compound had caused for the people who were being held there. If people who were arrested could still feel connected to society, wouldn’t they have a better chance of being reintegrated when they got out? Himiko’s case is probably the best example, but so many other people have been able to live better lives just because they were treated like people instead of like animals. So the government built lots of smaller jails instead of a handful of large and isolated ones. The Musutafu Detention Center was one of those.

“Now, we know you’ve been asking for more information about the suspect,” the anchor continued, “but you’ve also told our producers in the studio about a protest nearby.”

The reporter put his hand up to his ear to better hear the question. Behind him, between where he was standing and the entrance to the jail, a handful of police officers had put up some metal barricades. Somewhere off camera, there was chanting, and someone was giving a very angry speech. I couldn’t make out full sentences, but I caught bits and pieces. The only things I heard clearly enough to understand were “no mercy” and “they’re destroying Japan.”

“Yes, well, the police have not released the identity of the accused,” the reporter out front started to say. “All we’ve been told is that he’s a former employee. Now, a spokesperson for the Public Prosecutors Office says they will hold a press conference to discuss the charges, but I want to turn your attention to this rally that’s been happening just up the street.”

He pointed to one side, and the camera panned to show a crowd of what looked like at least 200 or so people. A man was on top of a sound truck, continuing his impassioned, furious speech.

“As you know, it’s the middle of the campaign period for the National Diet,” the reporter continued. “And while the prime minister and his Constitutional Liberal Party, and all of the other main parties, have said they’re suspending campaign activities for the time being because of this stabbing, Keiriku Tetsunoten and his New Tartarus Movement have not. They have seized on this stabbing as evidence, in their view, that the Murayama government has been too lax on criminal justice.”

Of course they would say that, I thought. And of course they would be the only party to be cold-hearted enough to campaign on this. I looked at Izuku and Himiko’s faces. Izuku looked worried—I couldn’t tell if it was because of the protest or because of what he saw last night. Himiko had a scowl on her face. None of us liked them, but out of all of us, she hated them the most.

“Now, Tetsunoten stopped speaking about ten minutes ago and has since left, but the crowd has only gotten more agitated since then,” the reporter said. The man on top of the van started pointing towards the jail and the cameraman, and the crowd turned and started walking closer, but the reporter kept talking. “We haven’t heard anything official from the NTM leadership about why they haven’t suspended campaigning like the other parties, but…”

The crowd was running now, clutching their banners and furiously shouting.

“What’s going on!?” Himiko asked. The two of us were silent.

“I have to ask, is everything okay where you are?” The anchor in the studio sounded concerned.

The crowd swarmed past the reporter. The pole on someone’s banner knocked the camera, and the picture got distorted for a moment before resetting. “This is more chaotic than they’ve been all day!” the reporter shouted into his microphone, barely audible over the shouting all around him.

“We’ll kill them ourselves!” “Drag him out!” “Show them how we treat killers!”

And then the picture went black for a second before cutting back to a visibly disturbed anchor in the studio. “We, uh…seem to have lost the feed from our correspondent at the detention center. We’ll obviously work on getting that back up and finding out what’s happening down there.”

Izuku stood up. “We need to get down there. Right now.”

I nodded and got up too.

“Himiko, you come too,” he said. “Bring your gear, but don’t get involved. You still don’t have your license.”

“Okay,” she said as she stood and headed for the door.

As I was changing into my hero outfit in my office, I felt a wave of worry come over me—for both Izuku and Himiko. Izuku had just spent hours helping people after a horrific attack, and now he was going back out into the field with barely a few hours of rest? And Himiko…how long had she had to deal with New Tartarus people telling her that she didn’t deserve to live a normal life? I couldn’t even begin to imagine what staring them down face to face could be like for her. What we were up against, it ate right at our core. And it felt like they didn’t even have to try.

With Izuku still tired from the night before, I floated the three of us and used my grapples to get us to the jail. The crowd looked bigger from the air—there had to be at least 500 people, maybe more, and they were all pushing and shoving their way towards the front doors of the building. Even from up above, the sound of the crowd was deafening. They already overran the first line of barricades, and all that stood between them and the entrance were some metal barricades set up between concrete planters, and the two dozen or so police officers behind them.

I landed the three of us on a narrow sliver of pavement between the crowd and the jail. Izuku went to talk to the senior officer.

“You’re in charge?” he asked.

“Yeah!” The officer was the only one who wasn’t at the barricades desperately trying to push people back. On his belt, he had a megaphone. “We called for the STARS anti-riot unit, but we have no idea when they’ll get here. We’ve locked the building down, but if we don’t get help soon, we’ll have to completely withdraw.”

The megaphone on his belt…it gave me an idea. It was a little desperate and a little idealistic, but it had worked once before.

“Officer!” I called out. “Can I use your megaphone?”

He looked at me. “Uravity?” he asked. “Of course!”

I took the megaphone from him and floated back above the crowd. Just like at UA, I thought. But it wasn’t like that at all.

“Everyone!” I shouted through the megaphone. There was a screech of feedback as I adjusted the volume. “I know that you are upset. I know that this is a difficult time. But the police are working hard to keep everyone safe—”

I heard the crowd below me start booing. I had really hoped that I could get through to them…but I had to keep trying, didn’t I?”

“Pushing like this, being violent…it doesn’t fix the violence that already happened!” I pleaded. They wouldn’t listen.

“Get down!” “Go to hell!” “In bed with villains now?” “Nobody asked, you sellout!”

Someone shot a firework at me, and I moved to dodge it before it hit me. I must not have been paying attention, because I ended up going right into the path of a glass bottle that someone else had thrown. It shattered against my arm, tearing my hero outfit and drawing blood. I dropped to the ground.

“Ochako!” That was Himiko’s voice. As I landed, she ran up to me and grabbed my arm. She looked worried. “Are you okay?”

“It’s just a cut,” I said. And it was. It didn’t seem that deep, and Himiko started to wrap it up with some gauze. I figured she was also going to take a little bit of blood for herself. But I wasn’t okay. Not emotionally. I remember UA. I remember pleading with the crowd of evacuees to let Izuku come back. They were scared. But these people…they weren’t scared.

I looked back at the crowd. From the ground, I could get a better look at the banners and signs they were carrying. A bunch of them had the old Rising Sun flag from the Imperial Japan era. Others had signs that looked like they were tied to pikes or spears. They had angry slogans and messages written in big letters: “No Mercy for Villains!” “Maximum Punishment Now!” “The Only Way to Atone is to Die!” No, these people weren’t scared. Not like the ones at UA. They were angry. They were furious . They wouldn’t listen to me or anybody else.

Himiko finished wrapping my arm up. “Good?” she asked, as we heard sirens in the distance getting closer.

I nodded. “You should get back. If they recognize you…”

“I can take care of myself,” she insisted. There was no smile on her face. She looked determined and angry. She might have been the only one even remotely as angry as the crowd was.

A long line of blue buses with red flashing lights on top pulled up. The STARS team. Their anti-riot force was here. The doors opened, and dozens of police in armor ran out, some with shields and others with what looked kind of like big shotguns. The ones with shields wedged their way in between us and the crowd as best they could, but the crowd was pushing against them. One officer came up to where we were. I didn’t recognize him with his helmet visor covering his face, but when I heard his voice, I knew exactly who he was.

“Central from STARS-1, anti-riot detachment on scene. I’ll have incident command,” he said into his radio before lifting his visor. Superintendent Tsukauchi. “Are you all okay?” he asked us.

I nodded. “We’re holding our own.”

“We’ll do what we can to get them out of here.” He raised his radio receiver back up to his mouth. “Attention, everyone gathered in front of the detention center!” His voice boomed from a loudspeaker mounted on one of the buses, far louder than the megaphone that I had tried using. “This is a police warning. We will use force against anyone who does not disperse. This is your only warning! Disperse immediately!”

Two officers who were still by the buses raised a banner. It was bigger than the one we saw the last time we saw the anti-riot team. In big white letters on a dark blue background, they gave their warning to the crowd:

POLICE WARNING

You are engaged in a riot.
Disperse now!
We will use force against those who remain!

If anything, it made them angrier. They tossed more glass bottles towards us, and the officers at the front raised their shields to block them. Tsukauchi shook his head. “They’ve been warned.” He raised his radio back up again and toggled a different switch. “Gas officers, deploy CS gas.”

“Copy,” came a staticky reply over the radio. Seconds later, we heard what sounded like gunshots. Pop! Pop! Pop! Those cops with the big shotgun-looking things were shooting tear gas into the crowd. Maybe this will make them back off, I thought—and for a few seconds, it seemed like it would. We could tell where the gas canisters landed because a little circle of people would clear out around it. But then, we saw streaks of white smoke sailing through the air back towards us.

“Gas commander to STARS-1, they have shovels in the crowd! They’re scooping the canisters and throwing them towards us!”

Shovels? So they were prepared for gas!?

“Shield commander, advance with batons.” Tsukauchi sounded like he was starting to lose his temper, too. The gas didn’t work…maybe just beating them back would?

The officers at the front tried to bash forward with their shields and batons, but there were too many people and not enough of them. The crowd might not have had armor, but they had numbers, and the gas didn’t change the dynamic at all. The canisters they launched back at us were landing at our feet now, making it hard for us to breathe. My eyes stung.

“Deku!” I shouted. “What do we do!?” There were too many people for me to float them all at once, and Izuku’s quirks weren’t suited to the situation—too many targets for Blackwhip, too much risk of collateral damage for a Smash hit or Air Force…but we needed to do something. “Deku!”

I saw his eyes go wide. I knew that look. Danger Sense. Spears and pikes from the crowd jabbed in his direction. So they really did mount their signs on pikes, I thought. This was planned! They wanted to storm this place! He dodged out of the way and ducked. Himiko was right next to him, and her reflexes were just as fast as his were. She dodged, and then unhooked her needles from over her shoulder.

“Don’t!” I shouted. She couldn’t get involved. She didn’t have a license yet. But it was too late. She looped the tubing attached to her needles around two people on the other side of the shield wall and yanked them towards her. The officers with shields moved to the side as she pulled them through, then closed ranks before anyone else could slip past. Another group of cops behind them took the two rioters and dragged them back. By now, the crowd was furious. The people with pikes had them hooked onto the backs of the officers’ shields and were trying to pull them out of their hands. We’re going to be overrun, I thought. Either we kill people or they’re going to completely swamp us, and we can’t let either of those things happen. What do we do? What do we do!?

Pew! A bright laser burst shone across the sky. Is that…? It was—his suit-of-armor hero costume was unmistakable.

“Can’t Stop Twinkling!?” Izuku looked up at him and, probably for the first time all day, smiled.

“Navel Laser ☆ Ultra Dazzle!”

Aoyama landed in front of us and shot his laser at the crowd at head height in a wide arc. The crowd stepped back and covered their eyes. I heard people in the crowd shouting.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” “Another criminal hero?” “He’s not even Japanese!”

As I looked on, I heard another familiar voice behind me. “Let’s get these guys back.” Kaminari put a hand on my shoulder and moved past me. Jiro was right behind him.

“Get ‘em, Chargebolt!” Jiro shouted.

He smiled and raised his fists, shooting a row of disks into the ground in front of us.

“Static Fence!”

He released electricity from his fingertips, and a wall of charge went up between us and the rioting crowd.

“We’ve got ‘em on the run!” he yelled back. “Hit ‘em, Earphone Jack!”

“You bet,” she said. “Let’s get loud.”

Jiro stood on Kaminari’s shoulders and plugged into the amps on her wrists.

“Heartbeat Surround: Audio Wave!”

Booming bass erupted from her amplifiers, knocking the crowd further back. Some people turned and ran, and others collapsed to their knees, holding their ears in pain. A few plugged their ears and tried to fight against the dense wall of sound. Above us, I heard the sound of popping explosions.

“Let’s end this.”

Bakugo too! He grabbed onto the bars of one of the jail’s windows and extended his fist over the crowd.

“Dynamight Dispersal: Cluster Stinger!”

A rain of tiny explosions rang out through the crowd in a wave from front to back. People recoiled in pain, unable to protect both their hearing and their bodies at the same time. At last, it was finally too much for them. Some people just lay on the ground with no strength to move. The rest turned and ran.

“Looks like I saved you extras again, huh?”

We gathered in a group, all of the heroes, while the police were rounding up the rioters who hadn’t run off and loading them into buses to be taken away. The jail wouldn’t hold them all, and given that they were just trying to kill everyone inside of it, that probably wouldn’t have been the best place to put them even if it would. All of us wanted to decompress after everything that happened…and Bakugo was being Bakugo, as always.

“We definitely couldn’t have done it without everyone’s help,” Izuku said. “And that new move of yours is pretty useful, Dynamight.”

“That’s ‘Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight,’ dammit!” he shouted back. Jiro had to stop herself from laughing.

“I’m kind of surprised,” I said. “I didn’t think you’d be defending a prison. And I didn’t think you’d be working on using your quirk in a non-lethal way. You were always about bigger explosions and destroying villains.”

“You think I’m some kind of monster that just wants to beat people up and kill them!?” he screamed. Well, he definitely sounded like one just then! But then his voice lowered. “Nah. We do things the right way—’cause we’re better than the villains.” He smirked and looked at Izuku. “Ain’t that what it’s all about, Deku? Being better than villains? What else are heroes for?”

Izuku nodded and smiled. “Yeah, Kacchan. What else are heroes for?”

Being able to finally take a breath after all of the chaos of the day felt good. While Bakugo and Izuku talked, I looked around at the others. Jiro was twirling her headphone jack extensions on her earlobes while Kaminari reloaded the electric conductor disks into the launchers on his gauntlets. Aoyama was twirling and posing, as sparkly as ever. And Himiko…

“Hey…where’s Himiko?” I asked.

Everyone stopped and looked around. She wasn’t in the group with us? Where was she?

“Over there!” Jiro pointed at one of the prison buses. I saw Himiko’s backside, her messy hair buns sticking out and her green blood transfer pump on her back. She threw open the door to one of the buses and stepped inside, her fists clenched tight, before slamming it shut behind her.

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Three years before the present

I was mad. More mad than I can ever remember being.

If I had been four or five years younger, I would have loved seeing Ochako’s arm all bloody. I would have wanted to see Izuku get bloody, too, if he had just gotten himself hit by one of those spears. I still wanted to see them bleed…but not like this. In the diversion program, one of the things my case worker spent a lot of time with me on was understanding other people’s needs and comparing them to my own. Treating people not how I wanted to be treated, but how they wanted to be treated. It didn’t mean ignoring my love of blood, like what my parents wanted. It just meant thinking about what the people I love wanted and needed, and finding a way to make us both satisfied. So yeah, a younger version of me would have been grinning from ear to ear, seeing Ochako get bloody. But not this time.

As soon as I saw the glass hit her, I ran over to her. I couldn’t stop myself. It was like my body moved by itself. Izuku said his body did the same thing before—that’s how All Might knew he could be a hero.

“Ochako! Are you okay?” I yelled.

“It’s just a cut,” she answered as she reached the ground. I could see for myself: she was bleeding, but the cut wasn’t deep. I patted her arm down with some gauze and wrapped it in a bandage—but not before I took a tiny vial of blood for myself. Just a little bit. It wouldn’t have been enough for even five minutes of transformation if I wanted to…but I just liked the taste of her. I slipped the vial in my storage box.

Once more police arrived, things got even more chaotic. They shot gas into the crowd, and the crowd tossed it right back at us. My eyes burned. My throat did, too. I was already mad, and this wasn’t helping.

Ochako told me to stay out of sight earlier. She didn’t want these New Tartarus people to see me and try to hurt me. “I can take care of myself,” I snapped back. I was done hiding. These people hurt me. It was people like them that broke into my old house and destroyed my room. They didn’t want me to go back to school. They didn’t want me to become a hero. They didn’t want me to succeed. Well, if they’d wanted to stop me, they’d have had to kill me. And I wasn’t going to let that happen.

I saw Izuku’s eyes go wide as he dodged a spear or hook or something that someone swung at him—and a split second later, another one flew at my face. I ducked out of the way and grabbed my needles. Nuh-uh, I thought. You’ll pay for that.

My sparring session with Izuku paid off. I tossed my needles and used the connector tube to loop around the two guys who tried to swing at us, yanking them through the police shields and onto the ground.

Wait. Are those two…? I only saw their faces for a split second before some police officers hustled them away in handcuffs, but they were familiar for sure. If I could just hear their voices…

Shit! I looked at my needles in my hands. I wasn’t supposed to get involved! I don’t have a license! Was I going to get in trouble? Did I just ruin everything for myself? I couldn’t believe what I did just then. I got too carried away. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, my needles wouldn’t go back into their holders. Don’t tell me… There they were—tears in the tubing. One of them was ripped so badly that it was hanging on by just a millimeter of plastic. The two guys I pulled down were a few times heavier than the training dummies I had used them on before, and the tubing couldn’t take the strain. Fuck me. I worked hard to make these, and now they’re useless. What the hell am I going to do for the exam? Maybe it was dumb to be worried about my hero exam when there was a riot raging all around me, but all of a sudden, this was the most important thing.

I heard the sounds of other heroes just a few seconds after that. Lasers, electric zaps, a pounding bass, explosions—it seemed like a bunch of different hero types. I remembered a few of them from the UA training camp raid…back in my villain days. Sometimes it’s still weird to think that we’re all on the same side. I’m definitely glad we are now, though. If I was still with the League, I don’t think I would have stood a chance. Those rioters had us pinned down for what felt like forever, and four heroes showed up and forced them out in under a minute!

With everything calmed down, all the other heroes were gathered in a circle, talking about what just happened. But not me. I didn’t calm down. These New Tartarus people attacked me. Attacked the people I love. Maybe even made me throw away my chance to become a hero. And I saw two faces that made me stop. If I’m right about who they are, then they’re gonna get a piece of my mind.

I figured they had to be in the first prison bus, since they were some of the first ones arrested. Is the door open? I tried the handle. Yes! It opened easily.

I stepped inside and slammed the door shut, realizing only afterwards that there was no handle on the inside. Fuck! Of course there wasn’t—it’s a prison bus. Whatever, Himiko. Act like you’re in control.

It was dark inside the bus, but I could see the rioters’ faces. They were scared of me. And for years after I got out, I hated that people were still scared of me. But them? These people? I loved that they were scared of me. They made me feel small and powerless. Now it was their turn to feel how I felt.

Except for two people. The ones I pulled down. They smirked at me, and one of them spoke up. “So, the psycho knife girl got to play hero after all, huh?”

I knew it! The voices from my HeroSET prep course, from the hallway by the elevators. The two who called me crazy and hoped I’d quit the course. I knew they dropped out, but seeing them in the riot…

“You here to tell us off?” The other one—shorter, stockier, and with scraggly facial hair—sounded just as smug as his friend. “Or do you just like stabbing so much that you just had to come in here and slice up some defenseless people?”

“How can you say that!?” I shouted, pointing at their smug faces. “‘Defenseless?’ Like you didn’t just swing spears at us?”

“And what if we did?” The first guy was taller and had three horns on his forehead. It made his smirking face seem even meaner.

“Hey, man, shut up!” someone behind him whispered. “What if they’re recording us? They’re gonna use this on us in court!”

“Oh, please. That shit doesn’t matter,” the shorter guy said, rolling his eyes. “Once the NTM is in charge, Tetsunoten’s gonna let all of us out. They can’t do a damn thing to us.”

“Guess we shouldn’t be shocked you’re here, knife lady.” The horned forehead guy tilted his head and stared me down. “You fucking would be here to protect a knife fiend who slaughtered a bunch of helpless elderly people. Two peas in the same pod, huh? You love cutting people that much, do you?”

“Nothing worse than a villain-loving hero,” the shorter one snapped. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He was angry at me. “Worse than villains themselves.”

“You really think that?” I could barely hold back how mad I was.

“Why do you think we quit the class?” he shot back. “Don’t you know how many heroes were in bed with the villains during the war? And the way everyone’s gone soft on villains nowadays, it’s disgusting! Tetsunoten’s the only real hope that Japan has for the future. Besides, dropping the class meant never having to look at your psycho smile again.”

I hated that word. I hated it more than anything. “Don’t call me psycho!”

“You are psycho! And you’re as dumb as you are psycho if you can’t see it!” His friend with the horns practically laughed as he said it, like it was the stupidest thing he heard. “You think it’s normal to want to cut people and drink blood?”

“That’s my normal!”

“Your normal? Your normal?“ the short one screamed back at me, like a parent frustrated at a kid who just wasn’t getting it. Like my parents. “You’re not normal at all. You’re a criminal who stabbed a kid and got off easy. Fuck what you call ‘normal,’ you freak.”

“People change!” I shouted, feeling the tears in my eyes.

“Nobody changes,” he snapped. “You still walked in here waving a knife around. You’ve still got that psycho smile. You’re a rabid dog, and you don’t change that. You put that dog down.”

So that’s all I was to them? A rabid dog who couldn’t be saved? Who didn’t deserve to be saved?

“And heroes nowadays are too soft to do it,” he continued. “We need more like Hawks. He stabbed Twice in the back without a second thought. Now that’s a hero.”

My stomach dropped. No. They’re lying.

“Only thing he did wrong was apologize afterwards,” his taller friend added, laughing and shaking his head.

I couldn’t believe it. “…Twice…Jin!? They killed him?”

“Oh, wow, you really are as dumb as I thought!” he said. “It was all on camera! Everyone in Japan saw him die—and good riddance to him! We don’t need mercy. We need villains to die.”

I felt like I had broken into a million pieces. I looked up what happened to a few of the League’s villains, but I never checked on Jin…because I was too scared of the answer I’d get. I’d hoped he was just in prison, that he survived the war, but maybe I always knew in my heart that he had died. Still, I figured it would’ve been in the heat of a battle. They really just killed him? Stabbed him in the back? I was so broken, and so furious. People like these two…they took everything from me.

I felt my palm on the handle of my knife. “So you think heroes should just kill criminals and be done with it, then?”

I don’t know for sure if I would’ve cut them. I’m lucky I never had time. But I know I wanted to. Two quick slashes. That’s all it would’ve taken. They were chained to their seats—they wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. It would have been so easy.

The door to the prison bus opened, and I felt the light hit my back. I turned around. Ochako stood just outside.

“Himiko!”

Just like that, it felt like she broke a spell that was on me. What am I doing here? What’s wrong with me? This wasn’t worth it! My life is over—I threw everything away! And Jin…! My mind felt like it was tumbling. Every other bad emotion that my anger was holding back just burst out all at once. I broke down sobbing and ran outside, pushing my way past Ochako.

“Himiko, wait! Please!”

I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to run away forever. I ran and ran, crying the whole way, until I was too tired to run anymore and fell to my knees on a side street. I felt desperate. I hadn’t felt this desperate since…I can’t even remember when. Probably right after middle school. I ran then, too.

I didn’t want to be around anybody, but I needed something to feel better. Anything. I opened my storage box that held just the one vial I collected—Ochako’s—and tipped it back, swallowing up the blood inside. I didn’t want to transform. I didn’t need to. But I needed to taste blood. To taste her blood. It didn’t make every bad feeling I had go away. But it helped a little.

“Himiko…”

Ochako!? I was so startled I jumped up and flipped over. How did she do that without me hearing? Did she float herself!?

“Izuku and I…we’re so worried about you.” The frown on her face was plenty of proof of that. “I watched you running from up above. Can I talk to you?”

I curled myself up, pulling my knees to my chest and burying my face. Ochako already saw my tears a lot, but I still didn’t want her to see me this way. And I heard another set of footsteps—Izuku’s? “I don’t want to talk.”

I heard her kneel down next to me, and she put her hand on top of mine. “Well…can I just stay here with you, then?”

I nodded, still not lifting my head up from my knees. “Yeah…”

“There you are!” It was Izuku. They must have both been so worried.

“Let’s just stay here,” Ochako said. “The three of us.”

So we sat there on the side of the street. I cried while Ochako held my hand and Izuku rubbed my back. I felt so exposed, but with Ochako there, it felt safer. It was like I was freezing cold, and Izuku and Ochako were my blanket. Them next to me, touching me…it didn’t make every bad feeling I had go away. But it helped a little.

My walk to the office the next day was the worst. I felt like there was a sword over my head that could fall at any moment. Was I going to lose my internship? Would I have to go back to jail? Everything is going wrong, I thought.

Walking past a newsstand, I saw the headline on the paper—Rioters Attack Jail After Nursing Home Stabbing—with a picture of the heroes breaking up the riot. The cover of Heroes Unmasked with the story about some made-up affair that Endeavor and All Might were having seemed so stupid sitting next to that headline. But I couldn’t even smile at that. I felt sick. There was an agency meeting at 9 AM sharp that day, and we never had meetings that early back then. I was sure it was because I was in trouble.

I took a seat in the conference room as soon as I got there. Izuku and Ochako were already there, and Sojo had apparently called in. I didn’t know what to say, so I just didn’t say anything. We just sat in silence until 9 AM, when Superintendent Tsukauchi’s face was projected on the screen. There were a few other smaller squares on one side that had the faces of the other heroes who helped break up the riots, plus one or two others. I could see our little conference room in the bottom corner, too.

“Good morning, everyone,” he said. “Thank you for attending. I wanted to debrief everyone here on the response to the riot yesterday.”

Izuku had his notebook out to take notes. The rest of us just sat and listened.

“With your help, we were able to make over 130 arrests,” he continued. “As we look over video footage, we will identify more rioters and make additional arrests in the coming days. We’ve also identified the instigator who was speaking and directly called for the attack. We’ll have a warrant out for his arrest as well.”

“Is it Tetsunoten?” the hero with the headphone jack ears, Jiro, asked in her tiny box on screen.

“Tetsunoten left the rally before the riot began, and in reviewing his statements, he never explicitly called for violence,” the superintendent answered. “It would be extremely difficult to charge him with a crime, even if he weren't in charge of a political party in the middle of campaign season.”

Again with the different rules for people in charge! I shook my head. Are they really going to keep getting away with this?

“I also wanted to let you know that our preliminary use of force review shows that all officers and heroes were proportionate in how they engaged with the rioters. Everything that you did yesterday was appropriate, and we greatly appreciate your help.”

“Even me?” I asked. Did this mean I wasn’t in trouble? He said “heroes,” so maybe he just meant people with a license…

“I was going to speak to you separately, Toga-san, but yes, that includes you,” he answered. “It’s true that you don’t have a license, but upon review of the video footage that we have, it’s clear to us that you acted in self-defense.”

I was so lucky. They didn’t think that me pulling those rioters down was illegal. They must not have even known about what happened in the prison bus. What a relief.

“Superintendent!” The hero in white armor wearing rectangular glasses spoke up. Ingenium. “Do you have any updates on the stabbing at Sunset Grove? Is there a connection to any larger group?”

“Right now, there isn’t any evidence of that,” Tsukauchi responded. “We are, of course, investigating whether there is any link to the Paranormal Continuation Front, but since he is a former employee, there may not be a connection there.”

“Paranormal Continuation Front?” I asked.

“The remnants of the villain group from the war.” That was Sojo’s voice over the phone. “We can fill you in on that afterwards.”

“One other thing.” The superintendent looked down at a sheet of paper, then back up at the camera. “Both the stabbing and the riots have shaken public confidence, and the government wants to reassure the country that everything is still safe. The Hero Public Safety Commission is going to send out information on this to all the agencies later today, but I can tell you all that they are going to activate a patrol stipend scheme for the next thirty days. You’ll be paid for the number of hours that you patrol, on top of any regular payouts. They want to see as many heroes on the streets as possible to help reassure people.”

Getting paid just for patrolling? That felt weird to me. I didn’t like it. But if people were scared, then I guess helping them feel less scared was a kind of hero work, right? I never used to think of heroes as comforting, but I had two of them comfort me just a day before.

“Any questions?” he asked. Nobody answered. “Thank you again for meeting with me,” he said with a bow. “You can contact the Commission or the National Police Agency if you have any questions.”

He ended the call, and all of the faces on screen disappeared. Izuku leaned forward and looked at the phone in the center of the table; Sojo was still on the line.

“Sojo-san, you really shouldn’t be working,” he said. “Shouldn’t you be with your family right now, taking care of your grandfather?”

“We’re still waiting right now,” Sojo answered. “He’s still in the ICU, and until we get an update on his condition, all we can do is sit around, so I might as well at least call you.”

“Well, promise you won’t keep working like this while you’re with your family, okay?” Ochako was always so concerned about other people. She really had a hero’s heart.

“When you get back, I think we should hire more staff,” Izuku proposed. “To help take some work off of your plate. It’s not fair for you to run the whole agency by yourself.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” he said. “We need to staff up the command center anyway. I’ll start researching roles and candidates.”

“I didn’t mean right now!” Izuku shouted.

“Don’t worry about me, you all.” He tried to sound reassuring, but I think we all knew that he was stressed.

“Please rest, okay?” Ochako pleaded. “We insist.”

“I will. Don’t worry.”

“Okay. Please keep us updated.”

Izuku ended the call, and it was just the three of us. Ochako put her hand on his thigh.

“Izuku, you need to rest, too,” she said. “I don’t want you overworking yourself again.”

“But I…there’s more I could have done,” he said. “There’s more I can still do.”

“Izuku—”

“And besides, if we’re going to hire more people, we’ll need to build up financial reserves, so we need those patrol stipends.” He was rambling again. When he was excited, I loved hearing him go into nerd mode, but he looked stressed. “It’ll mean increasing our patrols to double shifts, but I think we can—”

“Izuku, please stop!”

Ochako looked like she was about to cry. Izuku and I both looked at her.

“Please stop, Izuku.” Her voice trembled. “I already watched you almost destroy yourself during the war. I can’t watch you do this to yourself again. If you won’t rest for your own sake…will you at least do it for me? For us?”

Izuku put his head down. I didn’t know about how he had overworked himself during the war. I was still in my diversion program. But seeing him now, telling Sojo to take a break while he took on more and more work for himself…I got why Ochako was worried. And if she was worried, that made me worried, too.

“I’ll try my best,” he said, looking back up at us.

Ochako put her hand on his shoulder. “We’ll help you, Izuku,” she said, smiling. “You don’t have to save everyone on your own.”

Growing up, I never thought about how heroes suffered because of their work. I only thought about how they were messing up my own life. Seeing it from the other side, watching it happen to people that I love…that changed things. But it made a difference that we were trying to be heroes together. Those two days were awful for all of us. I wouldn’t have gotten through it if I was on my own…but neither would Izuku, and neither would Ochako. We made each other better. And if the three of us could get through this, then we could get through anything.

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Three years before the present

I couldn’t shake the nervous feeling I had for days after Sunset Grove, and I couldn’t put my finger on why. Was I still in shock from what happened? Probably—a lot happened in the space of just a couple of days. But I knew that wasn’t everything. It wasn’t just shock about the past. I was worried about the future, too. About the election, about Himiko, about Sojo…

You don’t have to save everyone on your own.

I knew Ochako was right…but shouldn’t a hero at least try? And yet, there wasn’t anything for me to do except patrol the streets and give people the reassurance they needed to know that things would be okay with heroes around.

I remember getting ready at the office for a patrol when Himiko came in. It was just a day or two after Superintendent Tsukauchi’s meeting with us and the other heroes.

“Himiko!” I turned to look at her as I put my gloves on. “You’re here early. Did you want to come with me on my patrol?”

She looked tired, as if she had slept on the floor. I saw her frown at me. “I don’t think I should do that.”

I tilted my head, confused. “But…why? With all of the extra patrols we have to do, we probably won’t be able to train as much as I hoped, so this is probably the best way you can build up experience before your next exam.”

“It’s too risky,” she mumbled.

“You’re worried about getting hurt?”

“No!” Himiko shouted, like I wasn’t understanding her. Clearly, I wasn’t. “I’m worried that…I’ll get mad again.”

I walked over and took her hands in mine. “Himiko, getting mad isn’t something to be worried about. We see a lot of awful things when we do hero work. It’s normal to get mad. And besides, I think it’s sweet of you that you got mad because of what they were doing to us.”

“It’s not just that.” She shook her head at me. “Those people…they hate people like me, and people like that have made me miserable my entire life. So I…I wanted to hurt them. Just like how they hurt me.”

I couldn’t help but think of Iida when she said that. They didn’t use the same words, and it wasn’t for exactly the same reason, but it was the same feeling: You hurt me. You took something important from me. And because you did that, I want to make you pay.

“And I know I can’t do that,” she continued, shaking her head. “I know it’s not right if heroes just went around attacking people they didn’t like. I just…I’m worried that I won’t be able to stop myself next time.”

I knew the feeling. I saw it in Iida…and I lived it myself. When I saw my friends hurt in the war, it made me want to tear everything apart. Everything in my body wanted to hurt Shigaraki, just to even the score, because he deserved to get hurt. It crowded out every other thought in my head. Nothing else but rage. If Mirio hadn’t talked me down and helped me control myself, I would have just rushed head first at Shigaraki—and it could have killed me.

“Himiko…” I rubbed my thumb along the back of her hand. “I may not know exactly what it feels like for you, but I do know what it’s like to feel hurt, and to want to punish the people who hurt you.”

She nodded. I debated whether I should tell her about Iida, but what happened with Stain wasn’t public knowledge. If word ever got out about what he did, it could end his career.

“I know I already told you this, but it’s not wrong to get mad,” I said. “But what’s important is to not get consumed by it. Revenge feels like a powerful thing, and it is, but it isn’t satisfying in the way that people think it is. The people that hurt you…they deserve all kinds of bad things, but it doesn’t bring back anything that was taken from you. What they did will still be wrong, and there’s no amount of pain that you can cause them that will change what happened.”

She looked at me. The expression on her face looked confused and understanding at the same time—as if to say, I know you’re right, but I wish you weren’t. “So what should I do about it? When I’m feeling like this?”

I gave her hands a squeeze. “Well, I feel like every hero has things they want to fight for, or to protect. Something forward-looking. Maybe try thinking about that?”

Himiko thought for a moment. “I mean…right now, that’s just myself, and you and Ochako. Before that, I didn’t have anyone. My parents disowned me, I didn’t have any friends…nothing until I met the League.”

The League of Villains. She never really talked about them with us before.

“Even with them, Shigaraki didn’t really care about me. Dabi sort of did, I think. The one I was closest to was Jin.”

“Jin…” That name was familiar. It has to be one of the villains, I thought. They gave us dossiers on the big ones at UA, so Jin must be… “That’s Twice, right?”

“Yeah.” She smiled for the first time all morning. “He and I…back then, it felt like he was the only one who understood me. His life was so hard. He was always so unlucky. We just wanted to make our lives better, because it felt like nobody cared about us.”

As heroes, we didn’t get to see the softer side of many villains—Himiko was the biggest exception. But Ochako and I wanted to. We wanted to see the good in as many people as we could. Lady Nagant, Gentle Criminal…even with Shigaraki, I knew there was a little boy inside who was desperate to be saved. I never fought Twice, so I knew almost nothing about him until Himiko told me what he was like.

“When I was in the diversion program, I kept hoping that he would show up,” she continued, her voice getting softer and sadder. “I wanted him to get the chance that I got. But he never came, and after I got out, I was too scared to check what happened to him. I was worried that he died—but those people…they said he was stabbed in the back.”

I watched her smile vanish and saw tears come back to her eyes. I knew about how Twice died. Everyone did. The Paranormal Liberation Front put out that hastily-cut video to the entire country. But with Himiko in her intensive program while the war was happening, she wouldn’t have known until someone told her.

“I haven’t been able to sleep since then,” she mumbled. “I’ve just been lying awake, thinking about him. Not given a chance to be better—just killed without a chance to live.”

“Himiko…”

“Is it true?” she asked. I could hear her anger. I didn’t know if she was mad at me or not. Did she think I wanted Twice to die? Was she just sleep deprived?

“It’s…” I thought about how to answer. What if I said the wrong thing and made her hate heroes again? What if I undid all of her progress? But I couldn’t lie, even if I wanted to—and I didn’t want to. “Yes…Hawks did stab him in the back, but the video that everyone saw…that’s not all that happened. There was a fight, and Hawks did talk to Twice, and—”

“I want to see it.” She grabbed my outfit, scrunching up the fabric in her fists. “I want to see for myself.”

“Himiko…there is a longer video, but…are you sure?”

“I have to,” she insisted. “I’ll never get this out of my head if I don’t.”

I took a deep breath and opened my computer. The commission sent Hawks undercover with a camera embedded in his glasses to gather evidence, and after the raid on the Paranormal Liberation Front’s hideout, they released the full video of his fight with Twice. But…is showing this to Himiko going to make everything worse? I had no way of knowing, but I knew she wouldn’t rest until she saw it.

The full video was still online, and Himiko and I watched Twice from Hawks’s point of view. He was cutting through Twice’s doubles in a back room at the PLF hideout.

“The speed at which you replicate is astounding,” Hawks said, his voice tinny through the impossibly small microphone.

Himiko looked at me. “Jin made doubles of himself?”

I nodded. “Yeah. And all of his doubles could make doubles, too.”

She looked shocked and sad. “He always told us that he couldn’t do that. The last time he did, he and all of his doubles fought over who the real Jin was. So he…he got over his fear?”

“I guess so. I…didn’t know he was dealing with that.”

Himiko turned back to the screen. “That must have been so hard for him,” she whispered. I wasn’t sure what she meant—that dealing with his fear was hard? Or overcoming it? Or both?

On screen, Hawks lowered his feather blade. “There’s still a way forward if you come quietly now.”

I saw Himiko ball up her fists. “So he wanted to save him!” she said under her breath.

We watched as Twice raised a fist. “These are my only friends in the world, and you ain’t welcome to join the club!”

I knew the video existed, but I never actually watched it myself. Hearing how angry Twice was, even though he was getting a chance to live…

“It’s useless, you scum!” Twice’s voice almost wasn’t recognizable through the miniature hidden microphone as he screamed. His voice cackled. “You total dirtbag!”

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that he was so mad. Hawks lied to him before. Twice had no friends outside the League. And yet…if he had just taken the hand that Hawks was giving him…

“Why do you think I prioritize speed when taking down villains?” We watched Hawks bring up his feather blade. “Because it’s the ones who don’t give up that heroes need to fear the most. Experienced villains with wills of steel refuse to get knocked out.”

Twice rushed up to Hawks. “Shut up—”

He brought his blade down across Twice’s chest, and he fell down onto the ground. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Himiko wince and close her eyes, scrunching up her face. Oh…she must have never seen him get hurt like this, I thought. Is she really going to be okay watching?

At that moment, Dabi burst into the room with a jet of blue flame—and Hawks pulled Twice to the side to keep the two of them from being burned.

“He cut him…and he still tried to save him?” Himiko whispered

We watched the chaotic battle as it unfolded from his perspective. Hawks bolted up with such speed that his camera couldn’t keep up. When it refocused, we could see Twice bolting towards Dabi, creating doubles of himself. Then, Hawks’s feather blade appeared on screen again. He lifted up his arms, then brought them down, and we watched the red blade sink down towards his back.

I paused the video just in time, with the point of the blade just barely above Twice’s skin. Himiko’s face looked like she had just seen a car crashing into a tree, with everyone she ever loved trapped inside.

“…is that it?” she asked, looking at me. Tears were running down her face.

“I stopped it there,” I said. “I…I figured you didn’t need to see when Hawks actually…you know…”

She closed her eyes. More tears ran down her cheeks. “Thank you, Izuku…”

I closed out of the video while Himiko wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve.

“I wish he took that chance,” she said. “Like I did. If he was still here…if he could have believed in getting a second chance…”

She put her head down and cried, and I didn’t know if comforting her would help or make things worse. For the first time since she got out of the diversion program, it felt like we weren’t on the same side anymore. While I was a hero student helping the hero force try to defeat the Paranormal Liberation Front, her closest friend was killed on national television by heroes. What if that was too big a split for us? What if she blamed me for it?

Hold her, Izuku, I thought. She’s not her past. Neither is Hawks. Neither are you.

So I did. I reached out and put my arm around her. Her sobs slowed.

“Izuku…” Himiko picked her head up. “What I want to fight for…”

“Himiko?”

“You asked earlier what I want to fight for,” she said, her voice quiet but determined. “I want to fight for second chances. I want people like me and like Jin to see that things can be better. I want to make sure nobody else ends up like Jin did.”

I pulled her towards me. “I think he would be proud of you,” I whispered.

“I hope so,” she said, tilting her head to look at the clock on the wall. “Don’t you have to go on patrol?”

“I can stay here with you,” I answered.

“No, you should go on patrol. You need to make money for the agency. And…” Himiko stood up. “I can come with you, if that’s okay.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “This was a really rough morning for you, and you’re still tired, and you said you were worried about how you’d act, and—”

“I’ll be okay, Izuku,” she said, flashing a weak smile even as her eyes were still red from crying. “Promise.”

I smiled back, and we headed for the door.

Election Day was unmissable. All day while I was on patrol, candidates and volunteers were out on the streets handing out pamphlets while sound trucks drove around promoting their side over the others.

“Stable leadership for Japan! Elect the Constitutional Liberal Party!”

“Vote for the Alliance for Harmony! Support a peaceful future!”

“Nobody will be tougher on villains and criminals than the New Tartarus Movement!”

I didn’t stop to talk to any of them. I didn’t even look at them. Heroes need to be above politics. We can’t take a side. We can’t use their influence to sway the result. If we did, the public would never trust us again. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t use our voices like any other citizen.

I went back to the office an hour before the polls closed to change out of my hero outfit. Even showing up to vote in that would have been too much, and I didn’t need to be accused of playing favorites. Especially after what happened at the jail. If they let people vote by mail, I would have just done that…but you had to be in the hospital or in assisted living to be eligible, so there was no avoiding showing up at the polls in person.

It’s tough to be inconspicuous when you’re one of the country’s most famous heroes, but I tried. The line outside the middle school that they converted to a polling station was long, but it moved quickly. I don’t remember there being this many people lined up to vote before, I thought. Is this…good? Maybe I don’t need to worry?

I got up to the front, and the poll worker asked for my ID.

“Here you are,” I said, giving my hero license.

She looked it over and smiled. “Ah, Izuku Midoriya. It’s good to see you. Thank you for all of your hard work.”

“I’m more than happy to do it,” I replied.

She handed me a ballot and pointed me over towards a wall of booths. I found an empty one, picked up the pen inside, and looked over the sheet in front of me.

House of Representatives Election
Official Ballot, 20XX–05–19

You have two votes. Follow the instructions below.

Vote no more than once in each column.
Fill in the oval completely with black ink.
Do not write anywhere else on the ballot.

 

COLUMN A	COLUMN B
Vote for no more than one candidate listed below.	Vote for no more than one political party listed below.

Below that was a long list of candidates on one side, and an even longer list of parties on the other. I came prepared, though. I knew who I was supporting. I won’t say who—even if I wasn’t a hero, even if I didn’t have to stay away from politics, I don’t want to share my vote with just anyone. But it’s probably no surprise that Tetsunoten and his New Tartarus Movement were not my choice.

I filled in my choices and walked out of the booth to feed my ballot in the counting machine—and immediately, I saw a familiar hairdo.

“Himiko! I didn’t see you earlier!”

She turned around and looked at me shyly. “Yeah, it took me a while to fill out the ballot.” She rubbed the back of her head, embarrassed. “I never voted before, so…”

“Really?”

“I couldn’t before, remember? And besides, I wouldn’t have cared enough to vote anyway.”

I smiled at her. “Well, I’m glad you did this time!”

She held up her ballot and squinted at it. “It’s so confusing, though. Why do we have to vote twice?”

“Uh, it’s kind of confusing to explain…” Truthfully, I could have talked for a half hour about it, but I didn’t want to bore her. “Basically, there are candidates for a specific area, and those are the ones on the left. Then, there are other candidates on a list, and they pick those based on how many votes people cast on the right.”

She squinted further, like her brain was processing in real time. “So, like, if one of the parties on the right gets half of the votes, they get half of the seats?”

“It’s a little more complicated, but basically!”

“Huh. I guess that makes sense,” she said. “That sounds like a fair way of doing it.”

We fed our ballots into the machine and a poll worker pointed us to the exit.

“No sticker?” Himiko asked me.

“I think the Americans are the only ones who do that,” I said.

“Aww, I want one.”

I laughed and tapped her nose. Sometimes, she could be so childlike. Maybe it was because she had to leave middle school early? Whatever it was, it was kind of endearing. It made her cuter. “Maybe we should ask whoever wins the election to make stickers for the next one,” I suggested.

“Yeah!” She jumped a little, like she couldn’t be more excited to get a sticker.

As we walked outside to go back to the office, I thought I had avoided making a scene. People recognized me for sure, but nobody bothered me, and it seemed like nobody bothered Himiko either.

“Deku! Deku!” Oh no, I thought. That doesn’t sound like a fan. Next thing I knew, I had a voice recorder pushed in front of my face. “I’m with Heroes Unmasked. What are your thoughts on the election?”

A reporter—and a pushy one, too, from the most overly sensationalist hero tabloid. I couldn’t be rude, but I knew better than to answer his questions.

“It’s not appropriate for me to comment on the election,” I said, gently pushing the recorder away. He moved it back in my face.

“Who did you vote for?” he asked, looping around in front of me, as if he could stare at me for the answer.

“That’s personal,” I answered. I’m sure I could have said something wittier, like “the best candidate” or something, but I just wanted this to be over.

“Do you think your fight against the New Tartarus riot will affect the outcome?”

Please, just stop! This reporter wouldn’t give up. “You should direct questions about the riot to the police. They’re leading the investigation.”

“Do you have anything to say about the New Tartarus candidate in Niigata who called you a sellout for hiring a villain and protecting a mass murderer?”

My eyes went wide. They were coming after us because of Himiko? And because we did our job, stopping THEM from rioting?

I knew Himiko would say something rash if I didn’t stop her—I remembered what she told me earlier. Those people…they hate people like me, and people like that have made me miserable my entire life. If she lashed out again…

“We aren’t discussing the election or the candidates,” I said quickly, holding my hand out to shield Himiko’s face as if I could physically block the words from coming out. She didn’t say anything. Maybe she knew what I was trying to do, or maybe she was just too stunned.

I put my hand on her back and walked her away. The reporter kept shouting questions, but some other people on the street saw what was happening and shouted back as we left.

“Hey, leave him alone!”

“He’s a hero!”

“Don’t you have better things to do?”

We kept hurrying towards the office, leaving the reporter far behind us. Himiko was hiding her face in her hands.

“I…I’m sorry that happened, Himiko.”

She put her hands down and looked at me. “No… I’m sorry,” she said, sounding sad. “I was worried that you’d get in trouble if people saw you with me.”

I took her hand in mine. “You’re not getting me in trouble.”

“But I—”

“There are always people being nosy. There are always going to be people thinking that we’re doing something wrong.” I gave her hand a squeeze. “But that doesn’t mean we should stop doing things we know are right.”

She smiled at me and squeezed my hand back. “Yeah. You’re right.”

When we got back to the office, someone had turned on the projector in the conference room, and NHA News was on.

“Oh, you two are back!” Ochako called out from her office. She stepped out, already changed out of her hero outfit for the day. “Do you know who turned on the news? I figured one of you two did.”

“Huh? No, we’ve been out,” Himiko said.

“Maybe it was Sojo-san. Is he back?” she asked. “It looks like his office door is open, but I haven’t seen him all day.”

I hoped he wasn’t working—he was still supposed to be with his family! But I wasn’t in a position to judge, given how many times I overworked myself.

Before I could answer Ochako, we heard the news intro chime from the other room.

“This is an NHA News special report.”

The election! The three of us went into the conference room and looked at the screen.

“Good evening from the NHA studio in Tokyo,” a young news anchor on screen said with a bow. “Welcome to NHA’s special election night coverage. It’s eight o’clock, and polls have closed across the country. We can now share the exit polling results and initial projections for the National Diet.”

I must have held my breath. My chest felt tight. I was so worried that the New Tartarus Movement would get the most seats. Please, not them, I thought. Please, not them. Please, not them.

The camera panned to an oversized monitor on the wall, and a fan of dots—the 465 seats in the Diet—appeared on screen, grouped by color. Whoever got at least half of that total would get to run the country. Beside each color group, labels showed each party and how many seats they were forecast to win. Two stood out—the largest by far.

Constitutional Liberal Party (CLP): 201

New Tartarus Movement (NTM): 107

Phew! I let out a huge sigh. What a relief. One less thing to worry about—or so I thought. They still won almost a quarter of the seats, and they were the largest opposition party. Tetsunoten got his seat in the Diet, and so did a hundred and six other people who agreed with him. He was still dangerous, and now the government was weaker than ever. They didn’t have enough seats to govern on their own. But at least the New Tartarus Movement won’t be running the country, I thought. I looked at Himiko and Ochako. They were smiling, too. Maybe things will be okay.

For the first time since the mass stabbing and the riot, I slept well that night. We hadn’t solved all of our problems, but it felt like things were maybe, just maybe, getting back to normal. I rolled out of bed, stretched, and went to the kitchen to make myself breakfast. It was still early, maybe 7:30 at the absolute latest.

I heard my phone vibrating on the counter. Who would call me this early? I looked at the screen. Sojo, of course.

“Moshi moshi.”

“Good morning, Deku.” Even on the phone, Sojo insisted on using my hero name. “I have some good news for you.”

“Is your grandfather out of the hospital!?” I asked, excited. That had to be why he was calling, right?

“He is, but—”

“That’s wonderful!” I couldn’t contain my relief and happiness for him. “I’m so happy for you, Sojo-san.”

“Yes, he was released early this morning, and he’s staying with my sister until we find another care home for him.” Even over the phone, in his dry monotone voice, I could tell that he was relieved, too. I feel like I would have seen a smile on his face if I was there in the room with him. “But that’s not why I called.”

“What is it?”

“I have shortlists of candidates for eight roles at the agency—”

“Sojo-san! Were you working this entire time!?” I had a feeling he would…but still!

“Someone has to run the agency,” he answered. I heard the sound of an elevator ding in the background. Was he already at the office? “And besides, I told you that we spent a lot of time just waiting for news.”

“Okay, but you didn’t need to work this hard, especially when you had family in the hospital!”

“Well, this makes things easier for all of us, since we’ll have extra help in the office.” I couldn’t argue with his logic.

“Fair point. Well, thank you for your hard work, Sojo-san.”

“One other thing,” he said as I heard him open the door to his office. “It won’t be until next month, since they’re busy, but I was able to get a meeting on the calendar between the three of you and the lead examiner at the Hero Public Safety Commission.”

I think I gasped. So much had happened since Himiko’s first exam that I had forgotten about our plan to meet with someone from the Commission. “That’s incredible!” I shouted into the phone. “I’m so glad—thank you so much, Sojo-san!”

“It’s my pleasure,” he said. “I’ll send the appointment information to everyone shortly.” And with that, he hung up.

A meeting with the Commission, I thought. Himiko failing her exam felt so absurd to us when we saw it—but I knew there had to be some reason for it. I hope we can finally get some answers for her.

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Two years before the present

Himiko told us that we didn’t have to come up with her, but we wanted to. We were as shocked and confused as she was at how she could have possibly failed her license exam, and we wanted to hear from the commission ourselves. Besides, she needed our support, and I didn’t want to see her go by herself. Neither did Izuku. So while Sojo stayed behind and interviewed candidates to help run our agency, the three of us took the shinkansen up together. I made sure Himiko got the window seat on the side facing Mount Fuji. She had her nose pressed up against the glass to see the mountain peak poking through the clouds. I sat next to her. Behind us, I heard Izuku muttering as he was planning out how we’d get to the commission’s office.

“Okay, so we can transfer onto a Marunochi Line train at Tokyo Station, but if the weather is good, we could just walk out the main exit and head over that way. Mmmmm, but it’s a 25-minute walk, and if we don’t have enough time…”

Sometimes I didn’t know how much of Izuku doing this was him being interested and how much was him being nervous. But I knew I was nervous. What would they say to Himiko? What if it was a problem that she couldn’t fix? Or what if they refused to tell us anything at all? All of those thoughts were bouncing around in my head at the same time, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

We got off at Tokyo Station and headed down to the subway, and just two stops later, we were above ground. From there, it wasn’t a long walk to the Hero Public Safety Commission’s office. They had an incredibly plain office building that you would have no idea what it was for—it easily could have been for a bank or a newspaper or anything else—if not for the giant antenna on the roof to let them communicate nationwide from their building.

“How do you feel, Himiko?” Izuku asked.

She sighed loudly. She had been holding her breath—she was nervous, too. “I think I’ll be okay.”

I grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. “It will be okay,” I whispered.

We walked inside, and the security guard at the front desk scanned our IDs and printed visitor badges for us to go up to our floor. He escorted us to the elevator and pressed the button for us, and the doors shut. As the elevator rose up, I thought about what the examiners would say. I wondered if we were making a mistake. People trust us, I thought to myself. What if they think we’re trying to use our fame to bully the government? What if they think we’re calling in a favor? What will people say? What if we end up hurting Himiko’s chance of ever getting a license? But…we can’t just do nothing either! And we’re already here, so—

“Ninth floor,” the prerecorded voice in the elevator rang out. We stepped into the foyer area and walked up to the reception desk. A busy-looking young woman sat behind the desk, the words HERO PUBLIC SAFETY COMMISSION displayed in big letters on the wall behind her.

“Good morning!” she said, looking up from her computer. “Do you have a—”

The phone on her desk rang, and she jumped in her seat briefly before picking it up.

“Hero Public Safety Commission. Are you calling from a government agency?” We looked at each other while she listened to the response. “May I place you on a brief hold?” Down the hall, we heard the sound of ringing phones and typing on keyboards. “Thank you.” She pressed a button on her phone and put the receiver down, then turned back to us. “Excuse me, I’m sorry about that. Do you have an appointment?”

“Yes, I believe we should,” I said.

“We’re here to see the head of the examination board,” Izuku added. “Yuuto Sojo should have called.”

“Ah, okay.” She typed quickly on her computer. “And this meeting is about…”

“We wanted to ask about an applicant’s performance on the last licensing exam,” he said.

“And the applicant’s name?”

“Himiko Toga.” She spoke for herself.

Sitting behind her desk, the woman’s eyes widened, but she tried to stay composed. “Ah. Okay, I’ll let him know you’ve arrived.” She lifted the receiver and pressed another button. “Yes, your 10:30 is here,” she said into the phone before covering it and looking back at us. “You can take a seat. He’ll be out shortly.” Then, she was back on the phone, switching to the call on hold and fully engrossed in her work. “Thank you so much for holding. Could I please have your name and the reason for your call?” It was like we weren’t there anymore. All we could do was sit in the chairs on the far wall and wait for our meeting.

Sojo wasn’t kidding when he said the commission was busy. We heard phones ringing almost constantly from down the hall, and the woman at the front was fielding what sounded like a very angry call from a member of the public who apparently thought that heroes didn’t help him quickly enough. Back then, things might have felt calm on the streets a lot of the time, but being inside the commission’s offices, it felt like they were scrambling to keep a lid on…something. The Paranormal Continuation Front? Or maybe post-election chaos? The Diet still hadn’t formed a coalition, so a lot of things the government wanted to do were just stuck in limbo—maybe it was affecting the commission’s job? We had no idea. But there was definitely something they had their eye on.

“Midoriya-san. Uraraka-san. I’m surprised to see you two here.”

That voice, low and monotone and serious—it couldn’t be!

“Aizawa-sensei?” I was stunned! “We could say the same thing to you!”

“Are you not teaching at UA anymore?” Izuku asked, sounding just as shocked as I was.

“I’m reducing my hours there,” he told us, touching the scars on his face. “With all the injuries I sustained during the war, I can’t teach a full hero course like I used to.”

“But…you’re working for the commission?” I asked. “You’re in charge of testing? How did that happen?”

“I’m just the interim examinations director,” he told us. “The previous director was appointed to the World Heroes Association, and the junior examiners aren’t experienced enough to lead the department, so they asked me to do it. It’s less demanding than UA, and it gives me a chance to see whether working at the commission is something I can do.”

Someone, a young man in a suit, came running down the hall. “Aizawa-san, the scenario for the next exam…”

Aizawa sighed. “It’s still not ready?”

“The planning team is, uh…having a disagreement.”

He shook his head. “Tell them I’ll be there in a minute.” The younger man ran back down the hall, and Aizawa turned back to look at us. “It looks like I won’t be able to meet with you, I’m afraid, but I’ll ask one of the junior examiners to meet with you. You wanted to talk about the results of the last exam, right?”

“Yeah,” Himiko said. “I just want to know how I can do better.”

“Well, it might actually be better for you to speak with one of the other examiners, then, since I wasn’t with the commission when you took your exam.” He looked at the clock on the wall and frowned. “I’m sorry that I can’t stay, but I’ll ask the front desk to let you know when one of the other examiners can talk with you.”

“We understand, Aizawa-sensei.” Izuku and I bowed to him, and he walked back down the hall.

Aizawa, working for the commission! Who would have thought? But I guess having him in charge of the licensing exams shouldn’t have surprised us at all. He was a tough teacher and a tough grader. I still haven’t forgotten the quirk apprehension test on our first day at UA. Izuku told me how scared he was that he was going to be expelled. That kind of harsh realism was perfect for the commission’s licensing exam. But…that means that now Himiko’s going to have to face Aizawa’s harsh gaze, I realized. What if the next test is harder? What if he’s even more unforgiving than the last examiners were?

The woman behind the desk stood up. “If you three could follow me, please?” she said, gesturing down the hallway. “I’ll show you to the conference room.”

We filed behind her as we walked past cubicles of people. The sound of typing and phone calls was even louder as we went by. We only caught bits and pieces of conversation, but even those tiny fragments told a story of how chaotic things were:

“…I understand, but those activities aren’t recognized as reimbursable hero expenses…”

“…because the prefectural police want to request outside help, that requires a formal request from…”

“…there have been several use of force complaints against your agency, so we have to undertake a license review to determine whether…”

One of the business course students at UA told me once that every hour of hero work creates 20 to 30 hours of supporting work. I don’t know if that’s true, but walking through the hero commission offices, it definitely felt true. And we thought that we were busy. As hard as our job is, I’m definitely happy I don’t have theirs.

“In here,” the woman said, opening the door to a conference room and gesturing inside. We walked in, and as I walked in the door, I saw the whiteboard underneath the sign for the conference room. Someone had written 10:30 — Reserved for S. Aizawa , and then a different person hastily erased his name and put S. Hyokata in its place. So that must be the examiner we’re talking to, I thought.

As we sat down, the woman started to close the door. “I’ll tell Hyokata-san that you three are ready,” she said. Then, she shut the door, and we waited, the sound of furious typing and frantic phone calls outside transformed into a dull hum as the door and wall blocked out the noise. Our conference room didn’t have a window to the outside, just like ours at the office. All we could do was look around the room…not that there was much. A clock above the door, a whiteboard at the far end, and a couple of old posters from the early days of hero society, when the commission was still new and regulations on quirk usage were still in their infancy. That was it.

I could feel Himiko’s legs swinging under the table. She was nervous. We all were. I couldn’t think of anything to say to calm her down, because I couldn’t think of how to calm myself down. I looked at the clock. 10:31. He was late. Not by much, but he was late. Maybe he got busy? I thought. It’s pretty hectic out there, so he could have just been caught up with something. Or maybe he forgot about us?

There was a knock at the door, and a second later, it opened, and another young man walked in. He looked like he was no older than the three of us were. He had black hair, curly like Izuku’s but cut shorter than his, and some kind of red mark on his neck.

“Good morning,” he said, bowing deeply. “I’m very sorry to keep you waiting. I’m sure you saw that we’re very busy right now. I’m—”

He lifted his head back up, and he froze, like he just saw a ghost or a monster. He looked like a deer in headlights. I watched as the color completely drained from his face, and I realized what the mark on his neck was: a wide scar, as if a hawk had slashed him with a single talon. He spoke again, but his voice was weaker, as if his words wouldn’t do what his brain wanted him to.

“I…I…” He took a deep breath. “I’m Saito Hyokata.”

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Two years before the present

His hair was shorter. He was taller. But I didn’t forget his face—and if I had any doubt that it was him, seeing his scar proved that it couldn’t have been anyone else.

“I…I…” he stammered, looking pale. He’s scared, I thought. “I’m Saito Hyokata.”

I was stunned to see him. I couldn’t even speak. After what happened, I had no idea whether he was even still alive.

“Himiko, does he know you?” Ochako asked.

“He’s…uh…” I didn’t know how to tell her that this was the boy I had cut.

“I’m sorry,” Saito said. He was practically whispering. His voice was shaking. “Could the two of you wait outside?”

I looked at Izuku and Ochako sitting on either side of me. “You mean—”

“Yes,” he snapped. “You can stay, but I’d like them to wait at the front.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Izuku frown. “Well, in that case…” He put his hand on my thigh. “We’ll wait for you up front, okay?”

I nodded. I didn’t want them to go, but what choice did I have?

“Sorry, Himiko…” Ochako stood up with Izuku, and they walked out the door.

The air was tense, even while they were still with me, but now, I was all alone. I felt trapped, and I chose to go there. I wanted to melt into the floor. Saito had his palms flat on the table. He looked stiff, as if his body had turned to stone. He kept his head down, looking at the table instead of at me.

“Why are you here?” he asked, his voice low.

“W…what?” Isn’t it obvious? I thought.

“I never wanted to see you again,” Saito said, his voice still quiet. I thought he was going to cry. “It was bad enough that I had to see you in the exam, but at least I wasn’t in the same room as you. So I want to know: why are you here?”

Saito’s words stuck in my mind. The first boy I loved, and he hated everything about me. I just wanted to taste his blood, I thought. I couldn't help myself. Yeah, I was wrong, but couldn’t he understand that?

“I want to know why I failed,” I answered. “You said…you didn’t want to see me again. Is that why you failed me?”

What I said must have made him mad, because he snapped his head up to stare at me, his eyes wide and his mouth open. “You think I did that on purpose?” he asked. “Because I don’t like you? Is that what you think?”

“What else could it be?” I said, getting angrier myself. “You saw yourself, didn’t you? I did everything I was supposed to do in that test! So how else could I have failed?”

“I can’t believe this!” He pushed his chair back and stood up, pacing around his half of the conference room. “You stabbed me as a kid, vanished for like a decade, somehow didn’t go to jail, and then you not only show up again, you’re trying to become a hero—and now you’re in my office and accuse me of trying to… sabotage you? You tried to kill me!”

“Kill you? I loved you!”

It felt so clear to me, but Saito froze in place when I said that. He looked at me as if I had just said the moon was purple.

“You…what?”

“I was in love with you,” I repeated. “I didn’t know how to tell you, but I…I wanted to have some of your blood. And I knew, you’d say ‘no,’ so I—”

“So you stabbed me!” he shouted. I watched him put a hand up to the side of his neck, touching the scar. “You couldn’t just…talk to me like a normal person?”

“Saito, that—”

“Don’t call me ‘Saito’ like you know me,” he growled. He was mad, but more than anything, he sounded hurt. Like behind everything he said, he was about to cry. “We’re not friends.”

I didn’t want to call him Hyokata-san. It felt too formal. And besides, what he was saying hurt me. It felt cruel. It felt like he wasn’t hearing me. But the truth is, I knew he was right.

“Wanting blood…that is my normal,” I said, almost whispering. “And if you think I’m crazy like everyone else…well, I’m not, but I don’t expect you to believe that. But it doesn’t give you the right to fail me for no reason.”

“You keep saying that!” he yelled, sounding frustrated as he started pacing again. “You keep saying I went out of my way to fail you. Like I can’t do my own job. Like you haven’t hurt me enough already!”

“Well, then, how did I fail?”

“You know I can’t tell you,” he said—even though I actually didn’t know that. “We can’t release our rubric. We can’t have people gaming the exam.”

“Then how do I know you’re not lying?” I shouted back at him.

“Because I couldn’t fail you on my own even if I wanted to!” he yelled, turning to glare at me. “There are five examiners total, including our boss. They add up all of our scores for each candidate, and that’s how people pass or fail. If any one examiner’s rubric is different from all the others, we have to justify it in writing. What you’re accusing me of…I could be fired if I did that!”

I didn’t want it to be true. If Saito had just failed me because of our past, I thought, then I really should have passed that exam, and if I just took it again and someone else examined me, I’d go through just fine. But if he’s telling the truth…

“You said drinking blood…you said that was your normal,” he said, lowering his head. I could see teardrops land on the table in front of him. “Well, what you did in middle school…I lost a liter of blood before they got the bleeding under control. They had me in the hospital for four days, and I couldn’t go back to school for two weeks. I was too weak to go back. And even if I wasn’t, I was too scared to go back anyway.”

His hands were shaking on the table. From crying? Because he was scared to talk to me? I don’t know, and it didn’t really matter. Us meeting like this, it felt like my heart was burning—like I left it on a hot stove, and I couldn’t pull it off. Was he feeling the same way as me? It looked and sounded like he did.

“I lost so many friends, Toga-san,” he continued, tears still streaming down his face. “I couldn’t talk to them anymore. I was too afraid that someone else who liked me would attack me. It destroyed my trust, and I spent years in therapy just relearning how to live my life. I’m still putting the pieces together. I’ll never, ever completely recover from what you did to me. Even now, I still wake up with nightmares where there’s a girl standing over me holding a box cutter. Every time I look in the mirror, I see this scar, and I have to remember that day when I thought I was going to die. So when you talk about what ‘your normal’ is…this has been my normal. And it’s because of what you did to me.” He picked his head up and looked at me. His cheeks were wet, and his eyes were red. “Do you get that, Toga-san? Do you understand how hard my life has been because of you? Do you get how hurt I am that you showed up where I work and never apologized for what you did? That you just came in here and accused me of going out of my way to hurt you, as if only your feelings matter and my feelings don’t?”

What he said hit me like a rock thrown at my chest. I thought back to my diversion program, back when I had a case worker helping me understand my relationship with my quirk and with the people around me. I know how much you’ve been hurting, she told me. You talked about how other people haven’t understood what you want, what you need, to be happy. Have you considered that other people might feel the same way towards you? That they feel like you don’t understand their needs? She said it so gently, but it was the first time I had ever considered that. It took four months of constant therapy for me to even start to understand the connection I made between blood and love, but we talked a lot about how I had made other people feel, too. I remember feeling bad at the thought that I could have made someone feel as awful as I was feeling. I remember asking what I could do to make it okay. They may forgive you, she told me. They might not. But if you really feel sorry, and you feel like you can tell them that, you should feel comfortable doing it for yourself—as long as it feels true to you.

Sitting across from Saito, I knew I had to say it. Not because I thought he needed to hear me say it, but because I had to say it. For me. I loved this boy, and I hurt him. It didn’t matter that I didn’t want to do that. I did—and knowing that made me cry.

“You…you’re right,” I said. “I was only thinking about myself then. I was young, and I didn’t understand, and I had my parents and everyone my age pushing me away, but…that doesn’t mean I could just do whatever I want to you or anybody else.” I could feel the tears running down my own face as I pushed my chair back. “I’m so sorry, Saito. I really am. If I thought it would help you, I would spend my whole life proving to you how sorry I am for what I did. If you want me to get down on my hands and knees, I’ll do it, Saito.” I didn’t even wait for him to answer before I did exactly that. I hated making myself small for other people…but right then and there, I felt like I deserved to be small. “I know you don’t owe me anything. You don’t have to forgive me. But I hope you can see how truly, truly sorry I am.”

I felt my palms scratch against the office carpet as I waited for him to say something. I wanted him to say that he forgave me. Honestly, I half expected him to kick me while I was on the floor. I wouldn’t have blamed him. But he didn’t do any of that.

Saito sighed above me, and I heard the sound of him sitting back down in one of the conference room chairs. “Your quirk.”

I looked up. “Huh?”

“You didn’t use your quirk during the assessment,” he said. “I already told you that I can’t share the scoring rubric, but everyone is scored in four categories. One is about how well candidates use their quirk to accomplish their objectives. You need a certain overall score to pass, but you also need a minimum score in each individual category, and since you didn’t use your quirk, none of us could score you for that.”

“So I…” I couldn’t believe that it was really that simple. “But…what do people do if their quirks don’t work with the robot things that you use for the tests?”

“If they come out of a hero program, the school usually reaches out to us, and the commission sends a scout. But you were an independent candidate, and the commission is short-staffed right now. We don’t even have enough scouts for the schools—definitely not enough for people applying on their own.”

Great, I thought. Another way the rules are stacked against me. But at least Saito was helping me.

“So then why did my results thing have all of those job recommendations or whatever?” I asked, getting up off the floor.

“There’s not just a hero shortage right now,” Saito answered. “So many people were killed or disabled during the war, and so many more quit. There’s a backlog for every public service and public safety position you can think of. Firefighters, doctors, police officers, technicians, engineers…just because things look put together on the surface doesn’t mean that there aren’t serious problems. So the commission was asked to forward candidates to other agencies.”

I was amazed. Saito really wasn’t trying to sabotage me, in spite of everything—what I did to him, how he felt about me, how hard his life was…he really did treat me fairly.

“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked him. “Why are you helping me?”

For the first time since I saw him walk in, he smiled—barely, but I saw the corner of his mouth turn upwards. “After you cut me, one of our classmates saw the two of us, and when you ran off, she got a teacher who went and called an ambulance. A hero happened to be around the corner and heard the call, so he rushed in. He knew I would have died if he waited for the ambulance to get to me, so he scooped me up and hurried me to the hospital on his own. Doctors and nurses took care of me. Detectives talked to me to try to find out what happened and see where you would be hiding.” He looked at me. His eyes were red, and I could see where his cheeks were still wet, but he stopped crying. “A lot of people helped save me, Toga-san. So I decided that I wanted to make my career helping people, too. My quirk was useless for hero work, I was too traumatized to be a police officer, and my science grades were too bad for me to be a doctor, but I knew I could work for the commission.” He stood up again. “I’m helping you because it’s my job to help people who want to help others.”

I looked at him, wiping the wet spots off of my own cheeks. “So does that mean you—”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to say the words ‘I forgive you,’ Toga-san. But if you’ve truly changed…well, you helping other people may be as close as we can get to that.”

I smiled to myself. That was as good as forgiveness for me. It would have to be.

“You’re sure you don’t want to go into one of those other fields, Toga-san?” he asked. “Japan needs everyone they can get. You can do a lot of good doing something else.”

I shook my head. “I have to be a hero.”

“Well, then, whenever you take the test again, I’ll grade you just like I did last time. The same way I grade everyone.”

That made me smile again. “Thank you, Sai—” Right. No first names. “Thank you, Hyokata-san.”

He walked to the door of the conference room. “Oh, and I hope you understand, but…please don’t come back,” he said. “Or I guess, if you do become a pro hero, you’ll probably be back here, so I guess just don’t come to see me again. It’s…probably going to be emotionally hard for me to ever see you again in person like this, so…yeah.”

I nodded at him. “Okay, then.”

He nodded back and opened the door, and I walked back out into the main room, with all of the loud typing and phone conversations and everything else. I would never see Saito again after that. I wish I could talk to him again and make things better, even though I know it’s too late for that. But I think he knew I changed. Even if he couldn’t truly forgive me, he gave me what I needed to make the most of my second chance—and that meant everything to me.

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Two years before the present

“Order for Ochako?”

The young woman at the bubble tea shop called out my name. It wasn’t the first time Himiko and I went to the mall because she had something upsetting happen to her that she needed to get her mind off of. Izuku and I weren’t there for her meeting, but she told us about it afterwards. She explained that the person who met with her was her old middle school classmate—the one that she had cut. From what she told me, it sounds like he was actually really fair to her, but she was still really emotional from the whole experience. She told us what she learned about why she had failed her first exam, too. It made sense. Every day as heroes, we saw how everyone was stretched thin. The overworked paramedics who couldn’t cope with the number of injured people at Sunset Grove, the shell-shocked police who never faced violence on the job until the riot, the long delay in restoring electricity to Beppu after the typhoon…the signs were there if you knew what to look for. So of course the commission was going to try to plug as many gaps as they could. Of course they were going to send an amazing candidate like Himiko to another agency if they couldn’t see her quirk. But she didn’t have a chance to really show what she could do. She didn’t get a fair chance, again, and all the unfairness was landing on her shoulders. How much more could she take? She doesn’t deserve this, I thought. It’s not fair. It’s not—

“Order for Ochako!”

Oops. Himiko wasn’t the only one who needed to clear her head. I smiled to myself, embarrassed, and went to get our bubble tea. We each ordered the same thing—strawberry milk tea—but she swapped her regular tapioca pearls for red raspberry bursting bubbles. It made her drink look like there were giant drops of blood swirling around inside.

“Thanks, Ochako,” she said, grinning as she took her cup from me.

“Of course!” I handed her a straw. “Do you want to go to the rooftop garden? The weather’s nice today.”

“Ooh, I didn’t know they had one!” Himiko’s eyes lit up. “Let’s go!”

We headed up two sets of escalators and out a set of sliding double doors to a wood-paneled rooftop patio—and somehow, we were the only ones up there. The walls on either side had green ivy, and planters around the edges and in the middle of the patio really made us feel like we were in a garden. Over the ledge across from the door, we could see the train viaduct leading away from the station. We sat ourselves down on a bench there, looking out as trains came and went underneath us.

“Should we?” I asked, holding up my cup of bubble tea.

“Yeah! I’m excited!” Himiko said.

We both stabbed the plastic covers of our bubble tea cups at the same time. Himiko seemed really, really eager to do that. She took a sip, and I watched as a few red pearls traveled up the straw and into her mouth.

“Mmmm!” She pulled the straw away from her lips. “The raspberry pearls are tart, and they burst in your mouth!”

“Really?”

“Yeah!” She held her cup out towards me. “Wanna taste?”

I nodded and leaned in, but she pulled the cup away at the last second and took another sip for herself.

“Hey!” I shouted. “No fai—”

I couldn’t even finish before Himiko kissed me. I felt her push the tea she sipped into my mouth. The sweet taste of the strawberry milk tea hit my tongue, and then I felt the popping burst of tangy raspberry mixing in.

“Himiko…”

“I like to surprise you.” She tapped me on the nose. “And you’re cute when you’re surprised.”

I felt my face turn red, and I giggled to myself

“What did you think?” she asked.

“Mmmm…” I thought about it. The surprise of suddenly feeling her lips on mine had distracted me, but… “I really like the combo,” I said. “The way that the raspberry pearls are tart, it’s so different from the sweet strawberry, but I think that makes them perfect together.”

Himiko smiled. “I think so too, Ochako.”

We sipped our bubble tea, each of us stealing sips from the other’s cup, as another train rumbled into the station under us. Himiko kicked her feet back and forth. She seems happy, I thought. I guess us spending some time together was all she needed. But then her smile went away, and she turned to look at me.

“Do you really think I can do this?”

Her question caught me off guard. “You mean, like…passing your next exam?”

“I mean…do you really think they’ll let me be a hero?”

I wanted to cry and scream at the same time. “Of course you can do this,” I whispered, wishing I could shout it at her.

“I just…the way everything has been pushing against me…” Himiko stirred what was left of her bubble tea. The red pearls at the bottom swirled around in the pink tea. “People know me as a villain. The test is harder for you if you didn’t go to a hero school. I still haven’t even fixed my broken support gear.”

I put my hand on her thigh. “I know, Himiko, but you’ve been working so hard,” I told her, my voice hushed. “I know the conversation you had at the commission office was really tough for you, but now you know what they’re looking for, right? And the way you’ve been so dedicated, I feel like they have to take you!”

“But they don’t have to.” She sighed and took another sip. “They didn’t last time.”

She was right. I saw everything good in her, and not just because I love her. I was with her all the time. I saw all of her progress, all of the challenges she overcame—but the commission doesn’t care about any of that. They weren’t in this to help Himiko. They’re responsible for the safety of the whole country, and if she didn’t meet their standards, it didn’t matter how much she changed. Still…I knew she would be amazing at keeping people safe if given a chance. I just kept wishing that they would see that. And I could tell that it was wearing Himiko down and making her doubt herself.

“You know more now than you did then,” I said. “We all do. And you know that Izuku and I…we’re never going to stop helping you.”

Himiko looked at me and frowned. “What if it still doesn’t work?”

Her question hung in the air between us like cigarette smoke on a windless day. How can I make her see that she doesn’t have to feel hopeless again? It hurt my brain thinking about it, and it hurt my heart knowing that she was feeling like this.

“What those people at the riot said…when I got mad and went into the prison bus to yell at them…” She put her hands in her lap, still holding her bubble tea cup that was barely a quarter of the way full by then. “The things they said…what if they’re right? They said I’m stupid, and maybe it’s true. I don’t know all of the things that you and Izuku know. And when I said I changed, they just said that nobody changes. What if people see me as an evil girl forever? Even if I get my license somehow, what if nobody lets me be a hero?”

I nearly cried. Don’t, Ochako, I thought to myself. Himiko needs to see you strong. If she feels like she can’t do it, you need to be the one who can show her that she can.

“Himiko…” I rubbed my hand on her thigh. “You are so much smarter than people think.”

“But I—”

“You didn’t finish school, yeah, but…being educated isn’t the same thing as being smart.” I buried my sadness and smiled at her. She needed to know that things were okay. “You basically taught yourself combat skills and evasion entirely on your own. That’s really smart! Do you know how many lessons you’d have to sit through in hero school to know that? But you pretty much mastered it all by yourself! Who cares that you didn’t go to high school? Who cares that you don’t know the longest words in the dictionary?”

Himiko didn’t answer. She just looked down at the drink in her hands, like she was thinking over what I said. I brushed one of her hands with the back of mine, and she reached out and took it, her palm wet with condensation from her drink.

“You know smart concepts, even if you don’t know how exactly to phrase things,” I continued. “Your hero description? ‘Sanguiphile Hero?’ You didn’t know the word, but you didn’t need to! Knowing the concept was enough, and choosing to make that part of your identity is really courageous!”

“You think so?”

“I really do,” I said, smiling again—and really feeling it this time. “And I know you’re worried that people will think you can’t change, but I know you have. You’ve learned so much. And you probably don’t know this because you were in the diversion program during the war, but there were so many former villains who helped the heroes.”

Himiko was surprised; she made a small O with her mouth. She must not have heard. “Really?”

“Yeah. Lady Nagant, Gentle Criminal, La Brava…they were all criminals, but they all took a huge risk to help the heroes, and they saved us.”

“And people know about them?” Himiko still couldn’t believe me. I don’t blame her—she spent her whole life with people doubting her.

“It was on national TV! Everyone who saw them knows that they helped save Japan.”

She turned to look at me. “I…I had no idea.”

“And besides…” I took Himiko’s drink from her and put it on the bench, grabbing both of her hands with mine. “You’ll always have people who will help you be a hero—because you’ll always have us.”

Her eyes lit up, and she started to smile. “You…really?”

“Do you really think we were just going to have you as an intern and kick you out after you got your license?” I shook my head at her, still smiling. “Nuh-uh. We were always going to bring you on as a hero.”

Himiko looked down at her hands in mine. “That’s…I feel so relieved, Ochako.”

“I’m glad.”

“I guess I’m just worried,” she said. “This is really important to me, and I can’t fail again.”

“We won’t let that happen, Himiko,” I said, giving her hands a squeeze. “We’re with you the whole way.”

She took her cup off the bench and finished her bubble tea, slurping out the last of the ruby red pearls at the bottom.

“I want to ask you for something, Ochako,” she asked, her voice still quiet. “And it’s probably kind of weird, and you can say no.”

“Of course!” I answered, sipping the last of my bubble tea as well.

“I…want some of your blood.”

Now it was my turn to be surprised. I set my empty cup down, and it tipped over the edge of the bench, falling to the ground and rolling at my feet. “My blood?”

“I know it’s weird,” she said. “And like I said, you don’t have to do it. Actually, forget I even asked—”

“No, no, I think that’s really smart!” I exclaimed, cutting in. “And honestly, I feel bad that I didn’t think of it sooner—even if you can’t use someone else’s blood during your exam, if you transform using mine, they can at least see your quirk and how it works. So that’s a great idea!”

“Yeah, but…it’s not just that, Ochako.” She bent over and picked up my dropped cup of bubble tea, putting it next to hers. “I know other people don’t feel this way, but for me, I’ll never be able to separate blood from love. What I did in the diversion program…it helped me understand how to not hurt other people, but…I’m never going to be able to erase that part of me.” She folded her hands in her lap, looking nervous. “When we, uh…when I…tasted you that one day, when you came and saw me after class…I remember feeling so happy. And when you got cut outside the jail during the riot, I…I took a tiny bit of blood. I drank it after I ran off when you found me arguing with those people in the prison bus. It felt like I could have a part of you inside me. It feels so warm, and the rusty taste, and knowing it’s your blood—it makes me so happy…but I’m really scared that you’ll say no to me.”

My heart ached. She didn’t have to keep this from me, I thought. If only you knew, Himiko…

“And I don’t want to make you say yes,” she continued. “If you say no…if you say I can’t have your blood…I’ll understand. It’ll be hard, but I’ll understand. But I’ve never just asked someone for their blood, because I always felt like people would push me away if I did. So…I hope you know that I really trust you, Ochako.”

Now I really had to fight tears. I threw my arms around her and held her as tight as I could. “Himiko, even if I don’t have the taste for blood that you do…you mean so much to me.” She smiled at me, her face just a centimeter or two away from mine. “And the way you trust me, the way you’ve let me into your life, I feel so, so lucky. I know that blood means a lot to you, and if in your heart, blood means love…well, I’ll give you enough of my blood to last you a lifetime.”

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Two years before the present

I was in the bathroom of my apartment, putting on the nurse outfit I bought at LotusPop while Ochako waited outside. I unzipped the back and slipped the tight spandex costume on. It fit me perfectly. The short white dress went a third of the way down from my waist to my knees. If I bent over, I’d be flashing my panties—if I was wearing them. Ochako doesn’t know what she’s about to get, I thought, smiling at myself in the mirror and zipping my nurse outfit back up. I wonder if Izuku is gonna let me play nurse, too…

I thought about wearing heels with my costume, but if we were trying out needles, that wouldn’t be smart. What if I tripped or lost my balance? Not a good idea with sharp objects, that’s for sure. I settled for a pair of tall white boots that ended just below my knees, leaving maybe 15 centimeters at most between them and my minidress. They still looked cute with the outfit, and I wanted to be safe. Ochako was already doing a lot, trying something new with me. I didn’t want to mess it up.

I knocked on the door and opened it—dumb, I know, but since we were playing nurse, I figured I’d act like it. Ochako was sitting on my bed, but we both pretended we were at the doctor, and she was my patient. Doctors and nurses always knocked before they came in, right?

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” I said, grinning. My heart was pounding, but I wanted to be as good a pretend nurse as I could. “I’m Nurse Himiko. I’m going to be examining you, Ochako-chan.”

Ochako turned red. She looked so flustered! Is she nervous? Or is my costume just that sexy to her? “T-t-thank you, Nurse Himiko,” she stammered.

“Let me start by taking your vitals,” I said, putting two fingers to her neck. I wasn’t the only one whose heart was racing—her heart was beating faster than mine was! “Ooooh, you seem really flustered, Ochako-chan.”

“S-s-sorry, Nurse Himiko…I just get nervous when I’m at the doctor.”

I moved my fingers under her chin and tilted her head up to look at me. “Oh, really?” I smirked. “I looked at your chart, and your heart rate was fine last time.” With my free hand, I rubbed my side, from my chest down to my hips. “You sure it’s not because you have a pretty nurse who’s doing the exam?”

“I mean…you are really pretty, Nurse Himiko,” Ochako answered, her voice quiet.

“Don’t you worry,” I whispered, leaning close to her. “I’ll take very good care of you.”

“Mmmmmm…” Ochako moaned as I planted a long kiss on her soft lips.

“Here.” I grabbed her hands and pulled her up from my bed before grabbing a box of latex exam gloves. “Let’s get you undressed. I want to…examine you more closely.”

Her face was still bright red as I put the white latex gloves on my hands. “Do you, uh…do you have to watch me, nurse?”

She acted nervous, like she didn’t want me to, but we talked about our safe word. Either of us could say apple cider any time we felt like things were too much and we wanted to stop right away. If she wasn’t saying it, she was fine with it. It was all just part of our fun.

“Don’t be silly!” I spun myself around her and put my hands under her shirt. “Here. Let me help you,” I said into her ear as I lifted her shirt above her head. She put her arms up to help me. “Oh, you’re being such a good patient for me, Ochako-chan.”

“Mmmmm…” She leaned her head back, tilting her neck so I could kiss it. I let my fangs scrape it, just a tiny bit. Not enough to make her bleed, but enough for her to feel the point against her skin. “You’re making me feel so good, Nurse Himiko.”

“I can tell,” I answered, kissing her again as I ran my hands along her shoulders, my gloved fingers brushing against her skin. “Mmmm, but you’re still so tense…”

“I’m sorry, nurse,” Ochako whimpered. “You’re just making me so nervous!”

“Then let me help you relax,” I said, running my hands along her body. “Let’s find where you’re keeping all this nervous energy.” I massaged her shoulders. “Is it here?”

“Mmmmm, that feels good, but…maybe it’s somewhere else?”

“Maybe,” I whispered back, letting my hands fall to her chest. I pressed mine against her back as I grabbed her and gently massaged her. “How about here?”

She put her hands over mine, grabbing my hands as I played with her. “Ah! Nurse, that’s sensitive!”

“So you want me to stop?” I asked.

“No…”

I leaned over her shoulder and kissed her cheek. “Good. Now…” With my left hand, I kept playing with her chest, but I let my right hand slide lower and lower, under her shorts and panties. I had to fumble a little, and the latex gloves got snagged on a button for a little bit, but Ochako didn’t notice. She must have been too distracted by me sliding two fingers into her pussy. “…how about here?”

“Ah! Himiko—”

“Nuh-uh,” I said into her ear. “What do you call me?”

“…Nurse Himiko…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “If you touch me there…”

“Hmm? But I think I found how to relieve your stress, Ochako-chan.” Even with the latex glove on my hand, I could feel how wet she was as I spread her lips open and slid my fingers inside, brushing against her clit with the knuckle of my thumb. “Don’t you want me to do that for my favorite patient?”

“Ohhhh, I do, nurse,” she moaned. “But if you keep touching me like that, you’re gonna make me cum! You’re gonna make me soak my panties!”

“Mmmm, you don’t have to worry about that,” I whispered back. “I just want to help you feel better. Don’t you want your nurse to do that? To help you feel better?”

“Oh, fuck yes,” she panted. “Yes, I do, nurse…”

“Then keep being a good patient for me,” I said, resting my head on her shoulder, my cheek against hers. “Let me help you feel good. Let me help you cum.”

“Fuuuck!” I felt Ochako squirm between my arms. “The way you’re touching me, nurse…I don’t know how much longer I can…”

I could tell. The way her thighs pressed around my hand while I fingered her pussy and played with her nipples, she was really getting close. “Don’t hold back, Ochako-chan. Cum for me.”

“Oh, fuck!” Her knees folded, and she squeezed her thighs around my hand. Was she squirting!? I thought. Even with the glove, my hand is so warm! She plopped herself on the ground. “Sorry, nurse…I must have made a mess…” And she did. She had already soaked through her panties, but now her shorts were wet, too.

“Oh, don’t you worry,” I answered, starting to lick her pussy juice off of my glove. The way Ochako tastes…! I loved it. But I knew there was something even tastier waiting for me.

“Thank you for taking care of me, nurse…” she said, looking up at me from the floor. I loved that. Being on top of her…it made me feel powerful, and that’s what I wanted right now. Sometimes, it was the opposite. Sometimes I wanted someone else to be in control and make me feel safe. But not that night. I wanted Ochako to be mine.

“We’re not done with your check-up,” I said, pulling my gloves off. “Now that we took care of all that tension you had stored up, I need to get a blood sample from you.” I pulled her up from the floor. “Can you do that for me, Ochako-chan? Can you keep being a good patient for me?

“I’ll be good for you, nurse,” Ochako cooed at me.

“Good,” I whispered as I guided her to my bed and laid her down. I already put the first aid kit under my bed. It had everything we needed: sterile needles for drawing blood, alcohol pads to make sure her skin was clean, and wraps and gauze pads—small ones for the needle prick, and big ones if things got bad. Always prepare for an emergency if you’re playing with blood, the store clerk that Hasu sent me to had said. Don’t assume that someone doesn’t have a bloodborne illness—get tested. Don’t assume that nobody will get hurt—know how to control bleeding, and keep first aid equipment in a place where you can easily access it. Each needle was individually wrapped. Never reuse needles—everything needs to be medical grade. I didn’t need to be told. My old equipment didn’t pass that test, though, so I got new ones. I even got a little bin to put the used needles and safely get rid of them. I wanted to do this right.

“Make a fist for me?” I said, putting on a new pair of latex gloves. She did, curling up the fingers on her left hand and squeezing her thumb. I saw the veins pop in the bend of her arm and ran my fingers over them, feeling the bumps and imaging all of the tasty blood that was running through them. “Oooh, I’ll enjoy this, Ochako-chan,” I whispered as I stroked her arm.

“Don’t take too long, nurse,” she answered.

“Oh, I won’t.” I tore open an alcohol pad and wiped her arm, making gentle circles with it over her skin. Please don’t say the safe word, I thought to myself. Please don’t say apple cider. I’ll stop if you want me to. I’ll stop right away—but I really, really don’t want to.

“I trust you, nurse,” Ochako said, keeping her arm out for me.

“Good.” Now for the needle. I peeled back the wrapping and took off the plastic protective cap. “Just a pinch,” I said, lining up the point with her vein before sliding it in. Not too deep. Not too shallow. I saw Ochako wince out of the corner of my eye, but then, the look on her face softened. She looked at me like I was in control, like I was really taking care of her. Her blood filled up the vial attached to the needle. “Mmmmm…” Did I say that out loud? I couldn’t control myself. Ochako was letting me have her blood! This was a dream come true!

Once the vial was filled up, I slid it out of her arm. I knw that nurses normally put a piece of gauze over it right away, but I wanted to let some leak out and drip down her arm. I watched a liquid streak of red run down her forearm and stuck my tongue out, lapping it up, avoiding licking the spot where I poked her with the needle. It was so warm, so tasty…it felt like love to me. And I got to taste it straight from Ochako’s vein! Am I dreaming? This can’t be real! I couldn’t believe my luck.

“Good job, Ochako-chan.” I took a square of gauze and put it over her arm before wrapping it up. With the needle still in my hand, I got on top of Ochako and straddled her, holding the point of the needle up to my tongue. I’m sure my nurse minidress was short enough that I flashed my panties at her. “You have such tasty blood, you know. I can’t wait to have more.”

“You can do whatever you want to me, Nurse Himiko,” she said. “You can have my blood any time you want.”

“Aw, you’re such a sweet patient!” I chirped as I leaned over to the sharps bin and unclipped the needle, hearing it fall into the plastic bin below. “My favorite patient,” I whispered into her ear.

“You’re my favorite nurse, Himiko…” Ochako reached up to stroke my hair. I loved when she did that. I dropped down to my elbows, pulling the gloves off of my hands while I kissed her. This roleplay feels incredible! I thought to myself.

“Oh, but what’s this?” I sat back up and touched her neck again. “Your heart is still pounding! Do I still have you all worked up?”

“I’m sorry nurse! I just can’t help it when I’m with you…”

“Mmm, but it’s not healthy to keep all of that bottled up, you know!” I dug out another box from under the bed. The two-ended dildo from LotusPop. “I think I might have to use a more…intense tool to help you feel good, Ochako-chan.”

“I…well…only if you’re sure, nurse,” she whimpered.

“Don’t you worry, I said, holding it at shoulder height. “I’ll make us both feel good.”

“Okay, nurse…”

“But I need you to be a good patient for me and spread your pussy open,” I whispered. “Can you do that? Be good and open up your pussy for me, Ochako-chan?”

“Yeah…” She slipped her fingers down to her crotch and, with two fingers on each side, spread herself open. She was still dripping wet. She wants more, I thought. And I’m gonna give it to her.

“Let’s make you feel good.” I pulled my panties to the side. I was wet, too—between fingering Ochako earlier and licking up her blood, I was so horny. I wanted to feel good, too, and I couldn’t wait any longer. I stuck one end of the dildo into myself. “Mmmm! Oh, you’re going to like this, Ochako-chan.”

“Please…” She sounded desperate. “Please put it in, nurse…” She stretched herself wider, practically begging me to stick it in her.

I didn’t wait. I held the other end with my hand and tapped her clit with the top of it, then slowly guided it inside.

“Ahhh!” she shouted. “Nurse, it’s filling me up!”

“Does it feel good?”

“Yes…” she moaned.

“I feel good too, Ochako-chan.” I grabbed her hips. “Now, let’s make you feel even better.”

Holding her hips for support, I started thrusting into her. Every time I pushed, she let out a little moan—and the dildo pushed back into me, too, putting pressure on my G-spot. This feels amazing, I thought. How is Izuku’s dick going to feel?

“Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm…” The moans didn’t stop, and I thrusted harder. She got even louder. “Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!”

“Shh! We have to be quiet,” I hissed. “Do you want to disturb the other patients?”

“I can’t help it, nurse!” she moaned back. “You’re making me feel too hot!”

I pulled the toy knife out of my boot and put the tip to her neck, still thrusting. “Do I have to make an incision to get you to be quiet?”

“Noooo…”

“You sure about that?” I scraped the fake blade across her neck. Ochako wasn’t comfortable with us using a real knife, but honestly, this way was safer. We could do more stuff with a fake knife, and this one still looked and felt real without being dangerous like a real one.

“Yes!” she whispered. “I’ll be good! I’ll be quiet!”

“Good girl,” I whispered, setting the toy knife down by her head and thrusting just as hard. Ochako put her hands up to her mouth, pressing down to keep herself from shouting. Fuck…sex with Ochako feels so good!

“Nurse!” she whispered, her voice sounding frantic. “I think I’m gonna cum again!”

“Oh?” I stopped thrusting, just holding the dildo inside us both.

“What?” Ochako whined, disappointed and surprised. “But why?”

“I don’t want you to cum without me,” I said, crossing my arms.

“That’s no fair!” she shot back.

I leaned in close, my face right in front of hers. “If we both cum at the same time, it’ll feel so much better for both of us. Don’t you want that?”

“I do…”

“Then let me take care of you, Ochako-chan,” I whispered back.

“Okay. I will.”

I started thrusting again, slowly, letting the feeling build up as I listened to Ochako’s soft moans. Thinking about her under me, trying to buck her own hips up towards me with all of my weight on top of her, just got me even more worked up. Before I realized it, I was getting close to cumming.

“Nurse, please!” she whispered desperately. “Please let me cum again! I need to cum!”

“You do?” I asked, still thrusting. I noticed my own voice straining as I felt an orgasm around the corner. “You need to cum with your nurse pounding you with her toy?”

“I do, nurse! I do! Please!”

“Okay, Ochako.” I lowered my chest to hers. “Cum for me.”

“I’m…fuck, I—mmmmmm!”

I kissed her just as she started to scream. I would’ve screamed, too. I couldn’t control my hips as I felt the orgasm hit its peak. My body felt hot all over, and my pussy was dripping like crazy. Or maybe Ochako squirted on me? Maybe it was both of us? It didn’t matter. I felt incredible.

“Scene?” Ochako panted.

“Scene,” I whispered back. No more roleplay. Just us being ourselves now. I pulled the dildo out of her, then out of me, and tossed it to the side. The bed was already messy anyway.

“Fuck, I…wow, that felt so good, Himiko!”

I let my elbows fold and fell on top of her, totally out of breath. “You liked it? I was so scared that the needle thing would turn you off…”

“I trust you, Himiko.” She brought her head up to kiss me. After all that intense roleplay, just cuddling felt so nice. We were riding high earlier, but now that we both had our fun, we needed to just hold each other. “And that nurse costume…oh, wow, that really brought something out in me.”

“It made me feel really hot, too.” I rolled over and laid next to her, resting my arm across her chest. “And, uh, I know I probably already said it, but…thanks for letting me have some blood, Ochako.”

She smiled at me, tired but happy. “You know I wanted to, Himiko. And not just for your test.”

“I know.”

“Seriously, I wasn’t kidding.” She booped my nose, and I smiled back at her. “I’ll give you blood to last you a lifetime.”

I felt my eyes water. “Nobody’s ever said that to me before, Ochako.”

She wrapped her arms around me and put her nose against mine. “Well, then, I’m happy that I’m the first.”

Exhausted, we fell asleep in my bed, with me still in my nurse costume. A night with the woman I love, who loves me back, and a vial of her blood. Could I be any happier?

Two days later, Izuku and Ochako joined me for another trip up to Yokohama for the next hero licensing exam. Just like last time, I told them that they didn’t have to—and just like last time, they insisted on coming anyway. Even though I didn’t want to cause them trouble, I was glad they came. Knowing I wasn’t alone meant everything. Izuku sounded especially eager to come, but he wouldn’t tell me why. At least, not until we got to the testing site at the Kanto Regional Exhibition Grounds. Before we went into the auditorium and went our separate ways, they stopped me.

“You’ve got this, Himiko,” Ochako said.

“Thanks,” I murmured back. It didn’t feel like I did. I still had all of my old equipment, and the rubber tubing that connected my needles to the tank on my back was still torn. I didn’t have time to replace it, so I just wrapped it in FlexRepair tape. There was no way it would reliably hold blood, and the testers probably just had robots like last time, so I was sure I couldn’t snatch anyone’s blood even if they did work. And as for using them to pull down enemies…well, there was no way that would work with my equipment looking like it did. But at least I had Ochako’s blood. And…

“Himiko, I wanted to give you something.” Izuku reached into a pouch on his belt and pulled out a vial with red liquid. He held it in front of me and smiled.

“Is this…” I put my hand out to take it. No way, I thought. Him too? “Izuku! Did you—”

“Ochako mentioned that she gave some of her blood to you, so I wanted to do the same,” he explained. “I already had to go to the doctor for something, so I asked them to collect an extra vial to give back to me.”

“Wow, I…you didn’t have to do this, Izuku!” I took the vial from his hands.

“You don’t need to use it if you don’t want,” he said, looking almost embarrassed. “I mean, it might have been rude of me to assume that you even wanted it, so if you throw it out, I won’t mind, but—”

“Are you kidding!? I love this!” I was still holding the vial of his blood in my hand when I threw my arms around him. “This is the best! Your blood and Ochako’s? I’m so happy!”

A few people turned their heads at me, but I didn’t care. I was happy—and I was determined, too. I wasn’t going to let what happened last time happen again.

“Candidates, please take a seat in rows 1–24! Teachers, family, and friends, please sit anywhere in rows 25-32. Thank you for your cooperation!”

The same loudspeaker voice as last time. The same instructions. Things had better not all be the same, I thought.

Ochako grabbed my shoulders. “We’re gonna be cheering you on, Himiko.”

“Yeah!” Izuku nodded from over Ochako’s shoulder.

I nodded back. “I’ll do my best.”

The seats were emptier than before. Apparently, most people take the spring and fall tests, so the ones in the summer and winter were mostly for unusual candidates who didn’t go to a hero school, or for people who failed in the past. Guess I checked both of those boxes.

“Candidates, guests, please be seated.” It wasn’t the same guy as last time at the microphone. Now, it was Aizawa behind the podium, with his black hair, eyepatch, and tired expression. He was Izuku and Ochako’s teacher, right? I remember he was at the commission office, I thought. Maybe it will be easier with their old teacher running this? “On behalf of the Hero Public Safety Commission, I’d like to welcome each of you to this quarter’s provisional licensing exam. You have all worked hard, and your commitment to the safety of Japan and its people…”

Are you kidding me? They didn’t even rewrite the speech from last time, I thought. Is everything really going to be the same? They could have at least made the speech more interesting—come on!

“Now, allow me to explain the format for the exam.”

Please have real people, please have real people, please have real people…

“All candidates will be deployed together into a simulated city center. Training dummies will be scattered around, representing civilians, and there are also several key locations that must be protected. You will not be told in advance what these are, but when you reach the examination area, it will be clear which locations are of major public importance. As for your opponents, these will be combat robots. Most will be equipped with melee weapons, but some will have paintball cannons. The force that you use must be proportionate to the threat that you and the public face.”

Robots again? And there’s no stealth component to this test either? There’s no way—they have to be setting me up to fail again. I was so mad—and scared. What if Saito lied? Or what if he had the exam changed to work against me?

“Oh, and there’s one other thing,” Aizawa added. “I notice that the overwhelming majority of you are repeat testers who have failed in the past.” He looked up from his papers and stared out at us with his one good eye. “As of now, know that those who repeatedly fail the hero licensing exam will be barred from ever retaking it.”

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Two years before the present

I was blindsided. Everyone in the room was. It couldn’t be true, could it?

Know that those who repeatedly fail the hero licensing exam will be barred from ever retaking it.

“Can it really be?” I muttered to myself as Ochako and I walked up to the observation room. “Maybe the commission had too many applicants, and they need to make space for new people by barring people who keep retaking the exam. But why wouldn’t they announce it ahead of time? Did they not want people to know? That makes no sense! Maybe it was a last-minute decision? Or maybe it’s Aizawa putting pressure on the applicants? He did this at UA, too, so maybe it’s like that? But would the commission even let him do that? He just started this job—he’s not even full time! He’s just the interim exam director. And why would he—”

“Izuku.” Ochako squeezed my hand. “She’ll be okay.”

I sighed. “I’m just worried about her, that’s all.”

She glanced at me and smiled. “You really care about her.”

“Yeah.”

Ochako nodded. “Me too, Izuku.”

I squeezed her hand back. I still felt new to our little three-way experiment, but I knew I didn’t want either of them to get hurt. I wanted them both in my life. I wanted them both happy. I thought about Himiko being a hero alongside us. Would that even be possible? I couldn’t help but worry. The exam just wasn’t tailored to her strengths. Her quirk was best for infiltration, but this exam and the last one didn’t really let her do that. What could she do?

The commission set up the observation room right next to the examiner’s room, and we caught a glimpse of Aizawa inside with some of the other examiners. I saw the back of Saito Hyokata’s head, staring at one of the computer monitors that they had set up. Aizawa was talking to him. Another thing to worry about, I thought, even though it was all in my head. There was no conspiracy. Himiko said there wasn’t. But how could we have known for sure?

“This is us.” Ochako pointed through the doors of the observation room. They had set up chairs in an auditorium-style arrangement, just like the main room, but on the screen was a projection cut into different rectangles, each one with a different view of the exam area. The exam team put a lot into preparing the field for everyone—it was a very realistic-looking town center, with a fake hospital, school, train station, police station, and other buildings. All of the applicants looked tiny on the screen, but we could see Himiko in her messy hair buns and her blue skirt. The green tank on her back for processing blood stood out, too.

Ochako found us a seat in the front, closest to the view where we saw Himiko. The room was emptier than it was last time, but then again, so was the entire exam group.

“Candidates, be prepared.” Aizawa’s voice crackled through the speaker. “The exam is about to begin.”

I couldn’t shake my nervousness. Please…I just want her to pass, I thought to myself. She needs this. I need this. We all need this.

A short buzzer sounded. The exam had officially begun. On screen, we saw Himiko standing in front of a short building. The sign on it was tough to read, but the bigger letters clearly said “Rehabilitation Clinic.” We watched as her mask pipes filled up with blood and, just seconds later, her figure melted away, transforming into a perfect copy of Ochako.

“That’s smart,” Ochako said. “Even if it isn’t related to what she’s doing in the exam, they should at see her quirk”

But is that enough? I wondered. Just showing off your quirk without proving how it helps save people…the examiners wouldn't accept that, would they?

On another screen, robots poured out of an unlabeled building. There were dozens. Hundreds. They moved about as fast as a person could run, and they fanned out in all directions. A mob attack, I thought. Just like what happened at the jail. Were they testing heroes because of what happened before? Or because they were afraid it would happen again? The robots all had something in their arms. Most of them looked like they were holding metal clubs with spikes. From looking on camera, they seemed pretty realistic. Was the commission using real weapons in this exam!?

A small group of robots went towards Himiko. Most of the other hero candidates had grouped up around the areas they thought they needed to protect—the hospital, the train station, and the police station especially…but Himiko was all alone, and she had five robots facing her down.

“Come on, Himiko,” I whispered to myself. “You can do this.”

She was quick with the first one, jumping on top of it and pulling the club out of its hand. She swung at the second with it, bashing it in the center—its chest, or what was clearly meant to be its chest. It didn't break, but it did stop in its place. It was surreal, watching Himiko as Ochako fighting in hand-to-hand combat while the real Ochako was right beside me. For all my doubts about whether her quirk use was going to be enough, she seemed like she was holding up well. But it didn’t last. The other three robots rushed up at her while she was preoccupied, and one knocked the club out of her hand with its own. They forced her against the wall of the rehab clinic, and we could barely see her as she was on the ground.

“Himiko, no!” Ochako shouted. I curled my hands into fists. My fingernails were digging into my skin. Is this it? Is she going to fail again?

And then, impossibly, the robots began to float. First one, then another. We could see her touch the last one, a burst of pink light coming from her hand.

“That’s—is she using my quirk!?” Ochako was stunned.

“She is!”

“But I thought she can’t use other people’s quirks!”

“Well, she’s definitely doing it now,” I said, pointing at her on the screen. She looked around at the disarmed robots, then up at the three that she left floating in midair, before running down the street.

“This is unbelievable!” Ochako exclaimed. “I never knew she could do this!”

Maybe she couldn’t before now, I thought. Maybe this really is her first time.

She popped up on another screen, meeting up with a group of hero candidates outside of the train station. They were struggling to keep a big group of combat robots back. One or two of the robots were further back in the crowd with paintball cannons, like in the first exam. They were shooting at the hero examinees, who were taking cover behind a row of concrete blocks. Himiko’s appearance as Ochako melted, and a few seconds later, I was staring at a recreation of myself.

“Can she—” I started to ask. I didn’t need to finish it. She floated herself and, from out of her hand, released two Blackwhip threads directly at the two robots with paintball guns, completely ensnaring them. They shot uselessly at the ground.

“Yes!” I shouted. I couldn’t stop myself. She was doing amazing.

From the other side of the screen, though, I saw a swarm of robots—dozens more—heading towards her and the other heroes. Too many for Blackwhip, and she couldn’t punch them all out without hurting her score: the rules had said that the force had to be proportionate. This is just like what happened with the riot after Sunset Grove, I thought. What can she do that we didn’t?

We watched her raise her fists and strike the ground in front of the robot mob as she said something. I couldn’t make out exactly what she was saying without any audio, but I recognized one word: Smash! Cracks in the concrete spread out away from her and on either side of the swarm. At the same time, her figure—my figure—melted away. Ochako, or rather Himiko’s version of her, took its place again. She put her palms down against the cracked concrete, and it lifted up. The first row of robots couldn’t stop themselves in time and fell off, front first, swinging at the ground as if they were mad that they were foiled. The others must have detected the ground shifting beneath them and stopped in place, trapped on this concrete island in the sky.

“This is unbelievable!” I shouted. “She’s crushing it!”

“She really is!” Ochako said. And we thought her last exam performance was amazing. This was on a completely different level! We kept thinking she couldn’t impress us even more, and then she did. Simultaneously, on the other cameras, it looked like the rest of the candidates had basically dealt with what was left of the robot swarm. Is that everything? Is the exam almost over?

It was like the examiners were reading my mind. We watched an explosion on top of the fake railway bridge that led away from the train station—we could even hear and feel the rumble in our room. Of course the commission would throw a surprise their way, I thought. But Himiko didn’t seem fazed. We watched her point at the heroes with her and gesture in all directions. Maybe giving them instructions? It definitely seemed like it. Then, she ran off, still transformed as Ochako, to the collapsed span of the railway bridge. With her just out of view, we couldn’t see her any more, but we could see the collapsed railway span slowly rising up off the ground. She’s doing it—she’s really doing it!

More hero candidates rushed to the train station as they handled this new crisis. New swarms of robots appeared, but with all the examinees gathered in one place, they were able to hold them off while Himiko and some of the others worked on the bridge.

And then, it really was all over. “Candidates, the exam is now complete.” Aizawa again. His monotone was unmistakable, even with the staticky sound of the loudspeaker. “We are evaluating your performance. Please return to the main ballroom at 4:00 PM to receive your results.”

Everyone got up at the same time, eager to meet whichever friend or family member of theirs was taking the exam. We were no exception. We went to the door and walked past the examiners’ room just as Aizawa walked out.

“Aizawa-sensei!” Ochako shouted.

“It’s good to see you two again,” he replied.

“That was an incredible exam,” I said. “You’re amazing at this!”

“I had a team helping me,” he answered, shaking his head. “And besides, I don’t know if I’ll stay in this role. This is easier on me than teaching, but it’s no substitute for working with future heroes and helping them grow from the start.”

“Were you really going to bar people from retaking the exam if they failed?” Ochako asked.

“Nobody was ever getting barred from coming back.”

“What!?” I was stunned. I shouldn’t have been. He did this before. But still. “So you lied?”

He smiled at us, and we caught a glint of light in his good eye. “A logical falsehood,” he said. “The more they feel the pressure of consequences, the more seriously they’d take the exam.”

“I can’t believe you did this again, sensei!” Ochako was as irked as I was.

“My methods haven’t failed you, have they?” Fair point. “Success doesn’t come easy. If you don’t overcome hardship to reach your goals, have you truly achieved anything?”

He wasn’t wrong, but…Himiko did already overcome so much hardship. She didn’t need more added on top of what she already dealt with. How was this fair to her?

Calm down, Izuku, I thought to myself. Ochako and I are worried about Himiko, of course, but he has to grade everyone the same way.

“You two should probably head down and talk to Toga-san,” he continued. “I need to get water, and then I’ll be finalizing scores with the other examiners.”

“We’ll go there now,” I said, grabbing Ochako’s hand and heading down the escalator to the main level. The other examinees were streaming out of the testing area, and we spotted an exhausted Himiko resting along the wall.

“Himiko!” Ochako shouted, her arms stretched out for a hug.

“You guys!” She lifted herself up and fell into Ochako’s embrace, and I wrapped my arms around them both.

“We had no idea you could do that, Himiko,” I said, still in shock. “Using other quirks? That’s amazing!”

“I couldn’t before!” She shook her head at us as the other examinees found their friends and family, sharing hugs of their own. “I just…”

Her stare went blank. I let go of them as Ochako held Himiko away from her. We looked into Himiko’s eyes. They looked completely vacant. Her skin was pale, and she was sweating.

“Himiko?” Ochako asked, a hint of worry in her voice.

“I…fuck…” Himiko was practically whispering, like she was suddenly exhausted beyond measure. This wasn’t just tiredness from the exam. We could tell just from looking—she was sick.

“Himiko, you look really pale,” I said. “Do you need to sit down?”

“I don’t know, I just…fuck…I’m so dizzy right now.” She stumbled away from us. “I think…ugh…I think I’m gonna be sick…”

“Himiko!” Ochako shouted. It wasn’t just a hint of worry in her voice anymore. She was alarmed.

“There’s a bathroom right here, Himiko!” I pointed up the hall, and she half-jogged, half-stumbled to the door and went inside. Standing in the hallway, we could hear her sick in there. Poor thing, I thought. Just like how Ochako used to get sick when she used her quirk too much…

A minute later, we heard the faucet running—and then a thump of something heavy hitting the floor. Or someone.

“Himiko!”

We both bolted inside and saw her crumpled up on the tile floor by the counter, the faucet still running above her.

“Oh, no, Himiko, are you okay!?” Ochako cried as we both ran over to her.

“Himiko, please, say something!” I picked up her arm. Limp, but there was a pulse. Her skin felt clammy and cold.

“I need to…” She tilted her head towards us and mumbled something. “I need to go to ‘ostal.”

“What?”

“Hospital!” she moaned, a little louder but still almost slurring her words, barely audible. “I need t’go to th’ospital!”

We knelt on the floor with her. I cradled her head while Ochako got out her phone and called an ambulance. What the hell happened? Everything was fine, I thought. She was doing so well. Exhausted, sure, but to have her just collapse on the floor like this? I was scared for her. Having her suddenly get sick and collapse, almost passing out…but I couldn’t let her know that I was worried.

“It’s okay, Himiko,” I whispered as Ochako frantically described what was happening to the emergency operator. “You’re going to be okay.” It was all I could say while we waited for paramedics to get to her. She closed her tired eyes and put her head back. I put a finger beneath her nose. Still breathing. Good. Even though she was passed out in my arms, even if she couldn’t hear me, I kept repeating those same five words over and over again. She needed to hear them…and I needed to say them. “You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Two years before the present

It hurt to open my eyes, but I did anyway, and only saw blinding white light at first. Ow. What the hell happened to me? I still felt dizzy. My head felt like someone dropped a sack of rocks on it, and my arms felt like someone stretched and squeezed them a thousand times. Everything in my body hurt. Fuck. Okay, Himiko, focus. Think. The room felt like it was spinning, but things were starting to come into focus. I saw bright lights in the ceiling above me. All these lights shining in my face…no wonder it feels so bright, I thought. That and this headache that’s completely destroying my head right now. Something was poking my arm, too. I looked over and saw that I had an IV line in. I felt wires on my chest hooked up to a machine, and when I looked down, I wasn’t wearing my clothes—just a light blue hospital gown. Huh. So I’m in the hospital? Seriously, what happened to me!? And there was one other thing I could see, barely, as my eyes adjusted to the light: a person, sitting in the chair beside my bed.

“Oh, good! You’re awake!” Ochako’s voice called out to me. Even though I was still out of it, I could never mistake her voice. My eyes focused, and I could make out her brown hair and pink cheeks framing her smiling face. “I was so worried about you. I’m glad you’re up.”

“What…” I could barely talk at first, I felt so weak. “What happened? Where’s Izuku?”

“He’s still at the training place,” she said. “He figured that one of us should stay behind and get the results from your exam. I’m texting him right now to tell him you woke up.”

The exam. Fuck. It started coming back to me. When Aizawa said that people who kept failing wouldn’t be allowed to test again, I panicked. I thought it was my last chance ever. And the things they had me to…it was a terrible match for my quirk. I transformed into Ochako because I didn’t know what else to do, and when I saw those robots corner me, I was desperate. I knew I had no way to escape. What would Ochako do? I thought—and so I put my hands out and floated them. I had no idea it would work. It was so silly. I thought that was the end for me, but somehow, it was like I unlocked a power I never knew I had. And it didn’t just work with Ochako’s quirk, either. When the mob of robots swarmed the train station, I knew Izuku’s quirk would be perfect. I remember swallowing his blood and transforming into him, raising my fists, and slamming into the ground, shouting San Francisco Smash! I was amazed that I could even try to do it, but it somehow worked, completely shattering the concrete.

I remember floating the robot swarm on the concrete block I destroyed, and running back to help after the train station explosion, and seeing Izuku and Ochako after the exam…and then my memory got fuzzy again. I remember feeling sick—sicker than I’ve ever felt in my life, like everything hurt and my body was somehow hot and cold at the same time. And it came from out of nowhere. One minute, I was fine, and the next, I was in pain from head to toe, like my insides wanted to rip themselves apart. Like my muscles wanted to cut themselves to ribbons and my stomach wanted to tear itself out of me and dissolve. I ran to the bathroom and put my head in the toilet, completely helpless, and once my stomach stopped turning, I went to the sink to splash cold water on my face, hoping it would help. I didn’t last ten seconds before I hit the ground, too weak to stand. And now, I’m here, I thought. Wherever “here” is.

“So where am I now?”

“Yokohama University Hospital. We’re pretty lucky—it’s just down the street from the training center.” 

Bzzt! Ochako’s phone. It had to be, since I didn’t have any of my stuff with me.

“Oh, hey, Izuku is on his way over!” she said, smiling. “Apparently they gave out the results and he has your decision letter for you.”

My decision letter! I felt my heart start to race. I’m sure I would’ve seen lines spiking on the monitor they hooked me up to if I had looked at it. “Does he know? Did I pass?”

“He—”

There was a knock at the door, and then it opened. A dinosaur-looking doctor walked in with a clipboard in his hand and a serious expression on his face. Doctors. That figures—knocking and then coming in anyway without waiting. Who else does that?

“Toga-san?” He looked up from his clipboard. “Ah, seems you’ve woken up. How are you feeling?”

“Mmmm…” I tried to ignore my headache for long enough to concentrate and answer him. “I’m hurting all over, and I’m still tired and a little dizzy…”

“Hmm.” He flipped to another page on his clipboard. “Looks like they have you on intravenous paracetamol. I don’t want you on something as strong as morphine or oxycodone unless you absolutely need it, so if what you have right now isn’t working, we can try switching that out for ketorolac or ibuprofen, and if that’s still not enough, we can maybe look at adding codeine to the mix. If you’re able to swallow, we can just give you pills instead of an IV drip, but you’re probably still dehydrated, so you should at least have that saline solution for fluid replacement.”

I have no idea what any of these words mean, I thought. I knew about body stuff, especially blood, but medicine was a total unknown to me. Even if I weren’t dizzy and in pain, I didn’t know the first thing about what he was saying. “Just, uh…whatever you think is best.”

“Alright.” He scribbled something down. “I’ll ask the nurse to bring you some ibuprofen, and if you can’t take pills, we’ll try a drip.”

“Mmhmm.” I couldn’t even massage my head without hurting my arms, so I just laid there. “What happened to me?”

“Quirk exhaustion,” he said without hesitating. “But your case is unusually acute, like it happened all at once instead of slowly building up over time. I pulled your quirk report from the central registry, and it described you being able to transform into other people, but nothing about using their quirks. Have you always had that ability?”

“To transform?”

“No, I know about that,” he answered. “I meant using the quirks of people you transform into.”

I shook my head. Even that made my headache throb. “No, that literally just happened…I guess today? I came here today, right?”

The doctor nodded. “Just a few hours ago, it looks like.” Hours? How long was I knocked out!? I turned a little bit—as much as my aching head would let me—to look out the window. There was a tiny bit of orange in the sky. Sunset. Well, at least I wasn’t knocked out for a whole day, I guess.

“And you came from the hero licensing exam?” he asked.

I nodded, but just a little. I didn’t need my headache to get any worse. “Yeah, I did.”

“Hmm, very interesting,” he murmured, tapping his pen against his cheek. “I’d have to talk with our quirk studies department head, because this would be such a rare thing, but you might have just had a quirk awakening.”

“A…quirk awakening?”

“It’s not a concept that’s fully understood,” he continued. “There were a few very public cases of it during the war, but it’s extremely rare. Less than one one-hundredth of a percent of people with quirks experience it. We aren’t entirely sure why it happens, but when people with quirks undergo intense physical and psychological stress, they can effectively unlock an aspect of their quirk that was dormant. In your case, that would be using the quirk of whoever you’ve transformed into.”

“Woah…” So that explains it, I thought.

“What’s odd, though, is that virtually every known case involves a near-death experience.” He scratched the scales on his head with the cap of his pen. “I don’t know what the exam was like for you. I know they’re intense. But I don’t know of any candidates being severely injured or anything like that.”

“So my quirk awakening…is that why I got sick?”

“That part is easier to explain,” the doctor said. “From what I could gather from the report I pulled, I think I can piece together how your body reacts to using someone else’s quirk. While you’re transformed, your body basically creates a facsimile of the person whose blood you’ve ingested and who you’ve chosen to emulate. As long as you’re in that transformed state, it’s as if your cells are their cells, so your body has all of the resilience to their quirks as theirs does. But at the end of the day, it’s still your body, and when you transform back into your default state, your cells register all of the damage and trauma that you’ve subjected them to while transformed, all at the same time. That’s the blowback you felt.”

More big words I didn’t understand. That was the part that was easy to explain? “I…don’t think I get it,” I mumbled.

“Have you ever had your phone run out of battery for a long time?” he asked. “And when you plug it back in and it recharges, you get a bunch of texts and notifications all at once?”

“Uh…yeah, I’ve had that happen.”

“It’s kind of like that. Using someone’s quirk and then transforming back to being yourself is like your phone turning on after the battery was drained. All the notifications are like the damage that your cells take.”

“But…why would my cells get damaged?” I asked.

“Because your body isn’t resilient to all of these different quirks when you’re transformed,” he said. “If you transform into someone who has, say, an ice quirk, and you use that quirk, that person you transformed into might be resistant to frostbite, but you wouldn’t be. Add to that the fact that using quirks takes energy, and you end up with a recipe for severe sudden-onset quirk exhaustion. Instead of building up as you use quirks, all the damage and fatigue hits at the same time.”

“Huh.” My brain was still too out of it to process everything he said, but I got his main idea. Use other people’s quirks too much, get sick. “And that long thing you said at the end…you called that ‘blowback?’”

“That’s as good a word to describe it as any other,” he answered.

“How do I stop getting blowback?”

“It depends on the quirk,” the doctor answered. “That, and what your body’s tolerance is. Some of it can probably be managed just with endurance training, and if you can get support gear that has muscle compression and climate control, that can probably mitigate mild or moderate symptoms. But any quirks that cause surface damage or shock damage can be dangerous. The same thing goes for using other people’s quirks over an extended period. What’s so risky about this blowback is that your body doesn’t have any of the cues that it would normally get about being overworked or overexposed. It’s like when someone gets a filling and the dentist gives them anesthetic—a lot of times, people bite the inside of their mouth until it wears off because it doesn’t hurt while they’re on anesthetic. But once it wears off, it hurts a lot . Now imagine that, but a thousand times more serious. If you don’t manage your quirk usage appropriately, you could build up enough damage to reach a critical or even fatal level without any way of knowing.” He pointed at my arms. “You used a smashing-type of quirk like that hero Deku, right?”

“Yeah…”

“You’re extremely lucky that you didn’t break both of your arms,” he said, shaking his head at me like a parent who caught their kid stealing from the cookie jar. “Your body can’t handle that kind of strain without support.”

I felt a chill in my chest. This is crazy, I thought. I have this whole new power that was hiding inside my quirk this whole time, I just discovered it, it put me in the hospital…and if I use it wrong, I could burn off my skin or break all of my bones? If I’m not careful, it could kill me!?

“I don’t want to make you think that this means you can’t use this part of your quirk,” he continued. Does this guy read minds? It sure feels like he does! “The severity of your case is probably because it was novel to you. Training and moderation are your best bets to avoid a repeat episode, and since you said you’re a hero candidate, you might be able to get some support gear that would help you, too.”

So I really can use this new power, I thought. If I just learn how to manage it, and I can get support gear for it…but I’d need my hero license for that first, right? And I still don’t know if I passed…

“Let me give this script with your dosing instructions to the nurses’ station. I’ll make sure to check on you again this evening to see how you’re doing.” He put his clipboard under his arm and turned around. “Feel better, Toga -san ,” he said without looking back as he walked into the hallway. The door shut behind him, and Ochako and I were by ourselves.

“Guess it’s my turn to play nurse,” she joked, smiling and tapping me on the nose.

“Shut up!” I shot back playfully. She knew how to cheer me up. The thought of her in the outfit I bought, the roles reversed…now that was something.

“That’s really incredible, what the doctor said. A quirk awakening?” Ochako was still as surprised as I was. “But I guess it makes sense. Izuku and I were watching from the observation room, and it looked like you had your awakening when those robots cornered you. Did you really think you could’ve died?”

“No.” I shook my head again, forgetting that it made my headache worse. “I knew the spiked bats or whatever that the robots had were fake when I grabbed the first one. Those spikes were inflatable—they just looked real.”

“So what were you thinking?”

I turned to Ochako and thought back to that moment where I was on the ground, those three robots about to swing their bats at me. “I wasn’t afraid of dying—I knew I wouldn’t. I was afraid of failing.”

Ochako reached out and grabbed my hand, giving it a squeeze. “Himiko…”

“What Aizawa said, about never being able to take the exam again…I was so scared that I would never have another chance. That I’d never be able to truly become like you two. And in my heart…I guess that felt like dying.”

I felt my eyes burn. Ochako looked emotional, too. I saw her eyes get wet. “Himiko, you know we’d never stop fighting for you.”

“I know. I just worry sometimes that it’s not enough.” I blinked away my tears. No crying, Himiko. You cried enough already. “I know things are different than they were before, but…this is still a tough world for me to live in sometimes.”

I heard voices through the door. One I didn’t recognize: “…this is her room. The doctor said she just woke up a little while ago.” But the other one, I couldn’t possibly have mistaken for anyone else.

“Thank you, nurse!” A knock at the door. “Himiko? It’s me!”

Izuku! He came!

“Come in!” Ochako shouted back.

The door swung open, and a nurse came in with a tray of food and a tiny plastic cup with two pills in it. Behind her, I saw Izuku, his green hair poking out from behind the nurse in her scrubs. Man, that nurse costume I bought was really sexual, huh? Real nurse outfits don’t look anything like that!

“Himiko!” Izuku ran out from behind the nurse and rushed over to my side. His hands were full, holding a bouquet of roses and an envelope of some kind, and he dumped them on the side table next to my bed so he could grab my free hand. “I’m so happy you’re awake! How do you feel?”

“Everything still hurts,” I mumbled. “But I’m gonna be fine.”

“I’m so relieved…” Izuku looked like he was going to cry, too. “Did they say what happened?”

“They think I had a quirk awakening during the exam,” I explained.

“Right! We saw you using our quirks!”

“Yeah. Apparently, when I do that and transform back into my regular self, I get blowback.”

Izuku turned his head as he took in the new information. “Blowback?”

“That’s what the doctor calls it,” I said as the nurse set my food down on the side table. “He said that when I’m transformed, my body gets the strength to use other quirks, but when I transform back, all of that goes away, and the damage hits all at once.” I lifted up my arm with the IV line stuck into my vein. “That’s why I got so sick so fast.”

He stroked the back of my hand. “So…do they think this is going to happen every time?”

“They said endurance training might help,” I answered. “I really hope it does.”

“I bet.” Izuku nodded at me. “You’ll be such a powerful hero if you can get a handle on it.”

“Yeah.” But that’s not the reason why, I thought to myself. I want to be even more like you. Even more like Ochako. I want everything about you. That’s my kind of love, and I don’t want to miss a single part of you.

“Let’s give you your medicine,” the nurse said, handing me the plastic cup of pills and a small glass of water. With my free hand, I tipped the pills into my mouth, then the water. My mouth was so dry, and even just plain, room-temperature water felt so soothing.

“Thanks, nurse,” I said.

“Of course!” She smiled as she took a step back towards the door. “I’ll let the doctor know you’re doing better. If you need anything, just hit the call button on your bed.” And with that, she was gone. The three of us had the room to ourselves.

“I got you some flowers,” Izuku said, bringing the roses close to my nose. They smelled sweet, and seeing a bright pop of red in that cold, white room made me happy.

“Thank you, Izuku.”

“And…” He set the flowers down on the table and picked up the envelope he brought. “…I brought you this. Hopefully it makes you feel a little better.”

He handed me the envelope, and I unfolded the top flap. There were a few things inside, but the biggest was a letter. Better read that first, I thought. I unfolded it.

Candidate: Himiko Toga — Sanguiphile Hero: Toga

Date of Exam: 20XX-07-25

Decision: Based on your performance in the exam on the date listed above, the examination board of the Hero Public Safety Commission marks your performance as follows: PASSED

Additional Remarks: You have been issued a provisional license, effective immediately from the date of exam printed above. Provided that you remain a hero in good standing, this license will automatically convert to a full license one year after that date.

I passed! I couldn’t believe my eyes. After everything—all the pain, all the heartache, all the tears—I finally made it. My eyes started burning again, but with tears of joy. Then, I noticed the second thing in the envelope: a sticky note that someone had written on.

Congratulations, Toga-san. I hope you are successful as a professional hero.

— Saito Hyokata

I couldn’t stop myself from crying anymore. He didn’t forget me. He didn’t hate me. Or if he did, he didn’t let it get in between him and his job. He really did score me just like everyone else. He even wrote a note, even after he said he didn’t want to see me again. He didn’t have to do that. But he did.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to say the words ‘I forgive you.’ But if you’ve truly changed…well, you helping other people may be as close as we can get to that.

I held his note up to my mouth. “Thank you, Saito,” I whispered to myself. He was right—he didn’t say the words ‘I forgive you,’ just like he said in our meeting…but I knew he meant them.

There was still something left in the envelope—smaller, thicker, and heavier than everything else. I turned the envelope upside-down and watched a plastic card fall into my lap. A hero license. My hero license.

“Congratulations, hero,” Izuku whispered to me.

I smiled as hard as I ever smiled, tears still in my eyes, as I stared at the piece of plastic in my lap with my picture and my hero name. Who would have thought that the schoolgirl wanted by the cops for stabbing her classmate would get this far? Who would have thought that the boy she stabbed would be the one to give her that second chance? Even with the proof sitting in my lap, it still seemed impossible. It still didn’t feel real. But it had finally come true: Himiko Toga, professional hero.

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Two years before the present

The three of us were huddled on a bench at the ferry terminal, somehow trying to share two earbuds to listen to what Sojo was telling us. The terminal was packed. It was the peak of the summer season, and everyone wanted to go to the beach—us included. Himiko had gotten out of the hospital about a week earlier, and we had a promise to keep to her. We’ll make sure we can take you on vacation soon, too, I said to her when Izuku and I went to Beppu. Maybe to celebrate you getting your hero license? So the day Himiko found out she was going home from the hospital, Izuku and I booked a hotel and got ferry tickets for a beach getaway on Okuto Island. We wanted some alone time for the three of us…but being in this crowded place was already uncomfortable. A family of tourists took up the rest of the bench that we were sitting on, practically shoveling bento into their mouths before their ferry trip. The youngest kid pointed at us. “Mommy, daddy, look! They’re heroes, right?” That’s right, I thought. Heroes. All three of us.

“Sojo-san, I don’t mean to be rude, but…couldn’t this wait until we got back?” I asked. “Or at least until we got to our hotel?”

“I know, and I’m really sorry to disturb you three,” he answered, his face on Izuku’s laptop screen as he video called us from his desk. Sometimes it felt like he and Izuku were in a contest to see who could stay at the office the longest. He’s definitely got all of us beat this week, I thought. While the three of us went on vacation, he stayed behind to finish hiring more staff for our agency. “If I had more time, I wouldn’t call you right now, but I’ll have final round interviews with candidates for the rest of the day, and we need to get Toga -san’s employment paperwork finalized.”

She leaned in towards the screen. “But…didn’t I already do that?” she asked.

“For your internship, sure, but we need to get you signed on as a full-fledged sidekick.”

Sidekick! A real hero! That was always the plan, but hearing the words out loud made my heart want to leap out of my chest.

“Since your license is provisional, we can’t hire you above the level of sidekick,” Sojo explained, almost apologetic. We would have loved to do even more for her if we could, but she was still new. She still had a lot to learn. And besides, with a ton of new staff coming on, we had to make sure that we could pay everyone fairly. “But it shouldn’t affect your duties too greatly. I’ll list both Deku and Uravity as responsible parties for your conduct while you’re in the provisional period.”

“Responsible parties?” Himiko turned to her left and right, glancing at both of us as we squeezed on that bench in the ferry terminal.

“Anyone working on a provisional license needs to have at least one fully-licensed hero to supervise their work,” Sojo answered. “It helps make sure that they’re acting appropriately and are ready to perform hero work on their own.”

We knew we were taking a chance on her—whatever she did as a hero reflected on both of us, not just in terms of public opinion, but also in terms of our legal responsibility while she was still on a provisional license. But she was worth that chance. Her happiness, her success, her life… our life, together…that was more than worth it to us.

“I’m also running financial calculations for the agency,” he continued. “Based on our projected inflows, Toga -san , as a sidekick, we can start you at a salary of ¥16.1 million per year. Before taxes, that’s just over ¥619,000 on a biweekly basis.”

Sixteen million yen! She was quadrupling her pay with just her provisional license! And yet, it still didn’t feel like enough. Himiko deserves to be a full part of our agency, I thought. And I know she has to be a sidekick while she works through her provisional licensing, but…it feels so unequal. Like Izuku and I are above her.

“Sixteen million!” Himiko shouted. A couple of people turned to look at her. Well, she’s definitely not worried about what I’m worried about, I thought. “That’s more than plenty for me…I don’t even know where to start!”

“Okay.” Sojo clicked around on his computer while the bustle of the ferry terminal enveloped us. “Toga-san, I sent the contract to your agency email. When you can, digitally sign it and send it back to me, okay? You’ll have to stamp it when you come back to the office, but for now, a digital signature is fine.”

“Got it!”

“And sorry again for interrupting your vacation travel,” he added, waving at us through the camera. “Have fun on Okuto.”

We were relieved to be out of the crowded ferry terminal and on the hydrofoil ferry to Okuto Island, skimming above the water’s surface. Three hours off the coast by hydrofoil, Okuto was always a favorite spot for couples and families to enjoy relaxation on its white sandy beaches, but over the last fifteen years or so, it’s boomed into an even bigger tourist destination, with an aquarium and amusement park, resorts, and an active nightlife scene. Plenty of options to explore, or let loose, or just lay back and relax. Just what Himiko needed to continue recovering after her exhaustion episode at the exam—and just what she deserved to celebrate her success.

“Have you thought about what you want to do when we’re there?” I asked her as we stood on the deck of the hydrofoil as it glided over the ocean.

“It’s weird,” Himiko shouted over the wind whipping past us as we sped towards the island. “I want to do all kinds of stuff with you two—the theme park, the aquarium…but I’m also just super tired from traveling all day.”

“We have a few days there, Himiko.” I held her hand on the railing of the deck as Izuku appeared on the other side of her, holding three bottles of Bocari Sweat in his hands. “We can just relax today.”

“Yeah, I guess.” She turned to Izuku. “For us?”

“Yeah!” he answered, handing her a bottle. “You’re probably still exhausted, so you should keep drinking plenty of fluids.”

She opened the cap on her bottle as I reached across her to grab mine.

“Thanks, Izuku,” I shouted.

He leaned in between me and Himiko, putting his mouth against our ears. “You know…you’re both really pretty with your hair blowing in the wind.“

I’m pretty sure I blushed. Himiko did, too—I looked over and saw the locks of hair by her cheeks blown back, revealing more of her adorable face turning ever so slightly pink. Behind us, Izuku’s green curly locks bounced back and forth. I love these two so much, I thought. I want to bottle this feeling up and save it forever.

“Look!” Himiko jumped up and pointed, unable to contain her excitement. Sure enough, there was Okuto Island, just barely peeking over the horizon, the lush green treetops almost shimmering against the blue sky and blue water. As we got closer, we saw the brilliant white sand beaches along the crescent-shaped coast with glass and concrete buildings dotting the shoreline.

“Hey, I think that one’s our hotel!” Izuku yelled, pointing at one with a rose gold façade. Always observant, I thought. And the childlike enthusiasm he still has, even after everything that happened to us, to Japan… I looked at him, then at Himiko, both giggling like they were still schoolkids. They really aren’t so different. I smiled to myself. The last thing I wanted was for either of them to feel like they were just hangers-on in my relationship with both of them—like they each had to put up with each other because of me. But that wasn’t it at all. They really fit each other, and that made me happier than words could describe.

The ferry turned around the tip of the island to the far shore, the one that looked like the outside of a crescent moon when you look from above. This side was much more built up: houses, apartment buildings, a mall, a theater, and the aquarium and theme park were all here, plus the ferry terminal. I must have looked like I had stars in my eyes. This place really is beautiful, I thought. The three of us…we need this.

From there, it was off the ferry, into a taxi, and straight to the hotel. The receptionist took a look at the three of us, then back at the screen. “It looks like you’ve booked a room with a king bed,” he said to us. “We do have rooms with two queen beds available, if you’d prefer?”

Himiko shook her head no, and I put my hands out in front of me, as if I could physically wave away the suggestion. “We’d actually like the king bed, if that’s okay,” Izuku answered.

“Not a problem.” He tapped out a few more keystrokes and handed us plastic cards. “You’re checked in. You’re welcome to go straight to your room, or if you’d prefer, we can bring your bags up for you while you go to our beach.

A private beach!? Poor little Ochako living off her parents’ working-class income could never have dreamed of being on a private beach—and definitely not while having her luggage carried to her room for her while she relaxed! But there I was just five minutes later, too excited to say no to some relaxation in the sun.

“Ochako!” Izuku and Himiko ran across the sand to me as I stood on the beach in my pink frilly bikini. All three of us had changed into our bathing suits. Izuku had a pair of All Might swim trunks (because of course he did). His skinny yet muscular physique was like a canvas for the scars he got from dozens of fights, tracing lines across his biceps and calves and abs. Himiko must love how torn up he looks, I thought. In my own way, I do, too. I don’t like when he gets hurt—of course I don’t. But I love how hard he works, how dedicated he is…and how sweet he manages to stay all the while.

“Can you two help me put on sunscreen?” Himiko said, holding out a tube of cream. We each took a squirt of white lotion in our palms and started rubbing down her body. I gently massaged it into her skin, the pale white standing out against her ruby red bikini. Izuku rubbed her back while I put lotion on her torso. I looked up at her and caught a look at her face in between her breasts. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling, like she couldn’t believe this was happening to her. Me too, Himiko. Me too.

The three of us were so exhausted from traveling that we just spent the rest of the day laying in the sun, taking turns reapplying sunscreen to one another to keep ourselves from getting burned. It felt good to relax, listening to the waves gently lapping at the crescent shore, soaking into the white sand. Things were calm, and the three of us were together to soak it all in. It was the recovery we all needed. We completely lost track of time, and before we knew it, the sun was going down, bathing the three of us in soft orange light.

“I’m glad I get to be here with you two,” Himiko said, sitting up and smiling. Izuku rolled onto his side with a smile on his face, too. In the sunset’s light, they looked almost dreamlike. I don’t want this moment to end, I thought. I want to stay like this forever. Once the sun set, though, the temperature dropped fast, and we started shivering with just our bathing suits and nothing else. Time to call it a day. Back to the hotel we went, heading up to our room for the first time to find our luggage waiting for us. We ordered some food and scarfed it down as we looked out the window, down at the beach we had just been lounging on, before exhaustion took over and we crawled into bed.

We were beyond energetic for our second day on Okuto. Himiko practically leapt out of bed with excitement at getting to go to the amusement park with us.

“Have you ever been?” Izuku asked. “I mean, obviously not this one, but just, like, any amusement park?”

“Never!” she answered excitedly. “My parents never took me.”

Her parents. Those two were worse than useless. How hard was it for those two to love their own daughter? For them, it clearly must have been impossible. I never found out what happened to them, and honestly, I don’t care. Himiko was dead to them years ago. They’re dead to me now. And now, we got to be a part of Himiko’s future. It wouldn’t fix the past. But it would put it behind her.

“We’re gonna make sure you have the best time today!” I shouted, beaming at her. That was a promise, and I aimed to keep it.

We got two-day passes for the aquarium and the amusement park so that we could see and do what we wanted at our own pace. Himiko had a lot of pent-up energy, though, and she wanted to go on all the rides on our first full day. Fair enough, I thought. She has two decades of lost time to make up for.

“Let’s do that one!” she shouted, pointing at a drop tower. The Zero-G Plunge.

“Ooh, that one looks fun,” I answered. “Let’s go!”

Even at the height of summer, the line was pretty short, and in no time, we were strapped into our seats on the drop tower. The gondola crept up the tower, giving us a clear view of the entire park. I felt Himiko grip my hand.

“Are you scared?” I asked.

“A little bit,” she answered. I could see that she was grabbing Izuku’s hand, too. “I know it’s nothing compared to hero stuff, but—”

The gondola dropped, and our view of everything became blurry. I felt the drop in my stomach. I was used to it, but only because of my zero gravity quirk. Izuku and Himiko were a different story. Both of them were screaming at the top of their lungs. I hope we didn’t go overboard on her first ride, I thought. Is she going to be okay? I’d have to wait to find out as the gondola stopped halfway down the tower, then dropped again, raised back up, dropped…they really shook us around.

After the last drop took us nearly to the bottom, we slowly descended back to ground level, and they unhooked our seats. I looked over at Izuku and Himiko. Izuku looked like he saw a ghost. But Himiko?

“That…was amazing !” she said, giggling. “I wanna do that again!”

I smiled back at her. “I’ll get back in line with you.”

“I might need a break,” Izuku said sheepishly. “But I’m gonna go get something for us while you go, okay?”

I nodded, and Izuku waved at us as we got back in line for a second ride before walking off. When we got strapped into our seats again, we caught a glimpse of his curly green hair as we rode back up the tower before dropping again. I wonder what he’s up to?

Himiko practically danced her way to the exit the second time. She was having an absolute blast. I’m so glad, I thought. She needs this. I followed her out and saw Izuku waiting for us at the exit, holding the biggest crepe I’ve ever seen.

“Woah!” I shouted. “Is that for us?”

“Yeah!” Izuku held it out towards us with one hand, pointing with his other hand at a kiosk that just said GIANT CREPES. They definitely lived up to that! “I think they’re big enough for all three of us to share, but we can go back for more if we want.”

There was no need for that—we walked on either side of Izuku, sharing bites of our oversized crepe and wandering the theme park. Himiko kept excitedly pointing out rides for us to go on, and the three of us talked and laughed and hopped on rides all day. Their smiles are so precious, I thought to myself over and over again. I’d do anything to protect them.

At the end of the day, we spotted a familiar tuft of pink hair in a crowd. “Is that…” Izuku started to ask before the crowd moved on and we saw a clear view of her face. “Mina-chan!?”

She turned to us and waved. “Hey! What are you all doing here?”

We ran over to her. “Himiko passed her licensing exam, so we figured we should celebrate,” I said.

“Oh my gosh, that’s a-ma-ziiiiing!” she practically sang. “Congrats, Himiko-chan! And you two…” Mina smirked at us. “You must be so proud.”

We blushed. “Yeah, definitely!”

Mina grabbed my arm. “I hate to steal you away, but we have got to catch up, girl! What are the odds of us running into each other like this?”

Himiko waved the two of us off. “Don’t worry about us two—you have fun! I was thinking of going back to the hotel anyway.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty much done for today,” Izuku added. “We’ll see you at the hotel!”

They wandered towards the park exit, and Mina talked my ear off for who even knows how long. She wanted to gossip about who in our old class was dating, chat about hero life, and barrage me with questions about what it was like to date a boy and a girl at the same time.

“You don’t get jealous?” she asked.

“It’s not that it never happens,” I said. “I just don’t feel jealous at the same things that a lot of other people might. Like, the two of them being together right now…I like that.”

“Really?”

“It makes me happy that the two of them are happy—not just with me, but with each other.” I put my hands to my chest, as if I could cradle the feelings I held in my heart.

“You are the absolute sweetest, Ochako!” Mina practically jumped. “You make me want to cry!”

“Aw, you’re sweet yourself, Mina.”

We looked around. Once again, we let time slip away from us, and it got dark.

“Want me to walk back with you to your hotel?” she asked.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that!”

“Don’t worry about it!” she said, waving her hand at me. “My hotel is probably in the same area—and besides, I want to see how cool your room is.”

Always nosy. So typically Mina. We walked back to the hotel, took the elevator up, and went to our room at the end of the hall. “They might be sleeping,” I said in a hushed voice as I held my key card to the lock. It chirped and flashed a green light, and I slowly pushed the door open. Sure enough, the two of them were sound asleep. Izuku was curled up on the far side of the bed, with Himiko cuddling him from behind.

“And there was only one bed,” Mina whispered, giggling as quietly as she could.

“Shut up!”

“Seriously, though, I hope you know how cute you three are.” She smiled at me. “You all looked so happy.”

“Yeah.” We really were. With all of us together, how could we not be?

“Gonna head back to my hotel, Ochako-chan. You three have fun, okay?” She walked out, but not before turning around to crack one last joke. “And you’d better invite me to the wedding!”

“Shut up!”

The day had tuckered me out without me even realizing it. As soon as Mina left, I felt the fatigue hit again—in the best way. The kind of tiredness you feel when you’ve done the things you love, when your heart feels full even if the rest of your muscles have had enough and your head is begging for a soft pillow to lay on. I’ll shower in the morning, I thought as I slipped out of my clothes. No need for pajamas—I wanted to just feel their skin against mine. Izuku was at the opposite end of the bed, so I walked around, held his hands in mine, and kissed him on his forehead. He was snoring a little, but as my lips touched his skin, I heard the snoring stop, just for a moment, and he smiled ever so slightly.

Okay. I’m too tired. Gotta lay down. I walked back around and lifted up the covers, sliding over to Himiko and resting my chest against her back. I let my arm drape over her as I played with her hair with my free hand and kissed the back of her neck.

“Mmmmmm…” she moaned.

This is the dream, I thought. If the three of us could share a bed every night…

I let my mind play with Mina’s parting quip as I drifted off to sleep. You’d better invite me to the wedding! She was only half-joking, and we both knew how much truth there was in what she said. My life was wound up in theirs, and I could never imagine myself living a life without them both at my side. With the two of them on my mind, I settled easily into a calm, deep sleep.

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Two years before the present

Okuto was just what I needed. After laying in a hospital bed for a while, I wanted to get up and move , but I knew I was going to tire myself out traveling. Laying in the sun with Izuku and Ochako that first day felt amazing, and we practically had the whole beach to ourselves. I caught them both sneaking glances at me in my bikini, too. I had hoped they would. It made me feel wanted, like they just couldn’t help themselves—and it made me feel better that I was doing exactly the same with them. Ochako with her cute, lacy bikini hugging her body…Izuku with his swim trunks leaving his muscles and scarred skin totally on display for me to look at…they were more than eye candy for me. I wanted them in every way possible. I wanted to undo the knots on Ochako’s bikini and caress her naked body on the sand. I wanted Izuku to climb on top of me and put my body between his legs, running his fingers over my skin. I wanted them both, and I wanted them badly. But at least Ochako and I had gotten physical a couple of times already. Izuku, though…I still hadn’t tasted him beyond the quick kiss he gave me in the shower at the training center. I wanted more from him. So much more.

I had so much to look forward to the next day, and I was definitely not disappointed. Izuku and Ochako were shocked that my parents never took me to an amusement park. It’s funny—it never bothered me before, since I didn’t know what I was missing, but when I heard that there was one, I knew I just had to go. It was unbelievable—I didn’t know I could have that much fun! I must have screamed like crazy on the Zero-G Plunge the first time, but I was just having too much of a good time to control myself. Izuku must have been a little freaked out by the whole thing, because I felt him grabbing my hand way tighter than I was grabbing his. In between all the rides, he got us all a giant crepe full of sweets to share as we walked around the park. We took turns nibbling at it while he held it, and it made me think of when I told him at the training center that I wanted him to be my boyfriend.

Being your boyfriend…you mean you want to hold hands and go to an amusement park and share a crepe?

It’s so funny looking back on that now. Even though that wasn’t the idea of love that I had in my head, it was his, and he wanted to share that with me. And on Okuto, he did…and I loved it. Being next to him, together with Ochako, acting like a couple even if the clueless people around us thought we were just three young adults having a day to themselves…or is it even still called a couple if there are more than two people? It didn’t matter. It felt right. It felt like I belonged with them.

Izuku was already tired out by the time we ran into that pink-haired girl, Mina. I knew he wanted to go back to the hotel—and I knew I wanted to go back with him.

“Don’t worry about us two,” I said, waving at Ochako and Mina. “You have fun! I was thinking of going back to the hotel anyway.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty much done for today,” Izuku said, rustling his hair. “We’ll see you at the hotel!”

Me and Izuku, alone. I always liked spending time with Ochako, too, but he and I needed some alone time. We were way overdue for it. The two of us waved goodbye and walked towards the exit while Ochako and Mina stayed back and talked. It wasn’t too far to our hotel, and once we got away from the theme park, the streets emptied out. I glanced over at Izuku’s hand dangling by his side with all of his old scars from before he could control One for All. He was so cute ! I smiled and grabbed his hand.

“Himiko!” he whispered.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Nobody’s around, right? It’s just you and me out here.”

“I just…” He blushed. His face turning pink under that green hair of his was adorable. “I haven’t held hands with you in public before…and I like it.”

It felt like my heart was screaming inside my chest. Izuku likes holding my hand! I squeezed his hand back and flashed a toothy grin.

“You’re really sweet to me, Izuku,” I whispered back to him.

It didn’t take long for us to get back to the hotel, into the elevator, and up to our floor. By now, I wasn’t really holding his hand—it was more like clinging to his arm. I kept wanting to get closer to Izuku. Closer and closer and closer, like it was never enough. I want you so badly right now, Izuku, I thought. And I know it’s not just me.

He tapped our key card against the lock and it let us through with a beep. Someone from the hotel had made our messy bed and refilled the soap and shampoo in the bathroom while we were out.

“Did you want to shower first, Himiko?” he asked. “I was going to wash off before going to sleep, but we can take turns.”

I took his hands and mine. “Mmmm…but we don’t have to take turns, do we?” I asked, smiling like an imp. Playfully naughty—just how I wanted to be. “I mean, we already shared a shower once, right?”

His face turned red again. “Y-yeah, I guess that’s true!”

I pulled myself closer to him. “You know you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, Izuku -kun ,” I said, giving his hands a squeeze. I wanted to tease him, but I definitely didn’t want to corner him, even if younger me absolutely would have.

“I…” His breathing got heavier, and he dropped his hands down to my waist. His grip…the way he feels against my waist…I feel like I’m totally Izuku's right now! My heart was pounding as he kept talking, almost whispering. “I do want to, Himiko.”

I let myself lean forward, putting my hands against his chest for support and looking up at him. “You do?”

“I know I probably look nervous—I just…I’m not good with girls.” Izuku sounded almost…embarrassed? “I guess that sounds ridiculous to you, since Ochako and I have been dating for like five years now, but…she was actually the one who told me how she felt first. I’ve just, uh…never been good with dating stuff.”

I put my hands on his shoulders and lifted myself up to his height. “So…you’re saying you like when the girl takes the lead?”

“I, uh…yeah, I guess.”

“I can do that,” I whispered, leaning in and kissing him. Not like the peck he gave me at the training center—a real, long, passionate kiss. I felt him grip my waist tighter with one hand and move the other to the back of my head, pressing me into him, like he couldn’t kiss me back hard enough.

I leaned back and looked at him. He looked out of breath, as if me kissing him had sucked all the air out of his lungs. “Himiko…” he breathed.

I flashed a smirk at him. “How about that shower?”

“Oh yeah, s-sure!”

Before he even finished, I let go and slipped past him into the bathroom, pulling my shirt off. He followed behind me, taking his off while I unhooked my bra and slipped off my skirt. I’m getting Izuku all worked up! My brain was racing. I’m doing that to him? He thinks I’m that cute!?

I got naked first and stepped into the shower, turning the water on for us. The glass booth was more than big enough for two or three people at once. We could probably fit Ochako in with us, too, I thought. Another fantasy for me to add to my list.

“Coming in, Izuku?” He turned around, completely nude, and looked at me through the glass as his mouth hung open.

“Himiko, you look…” Izuku couldn’t even finish his thought! Did I just turn his brain off!?

“You gonna stand there and watch?” I asked as I lathered soap on my hands and spread the suds over my skin. “Or you gonna get in here and let me help you wash off?”

“I, uh…yeah!” he stammered as he opened the glass door and joined me under the warm falling water.

“You don’t need to be nervous, Izuku,” I said, putting some soap on him. “Here. Let me help.”

I twirled myself around his arm, spinning myself behind him, lathering his chest up as I pressed mine against his back. I worked my soapy hands all over his torso, letting myself feel how hard his muscles were, how every bump and scratch of his scars felt against my smooth skin. Little by little, my hands fell lower and lower, feeling my way down his abs until my fingers touched something else hard.

“Himiko, that’s…”

“Mmhmm?” I grabbed the shaft of his cock in my hands, peeking around his shoulder to get a better look through the swirling steam. “You like this?”

“Yeah…”

“I can tell,” I quipped, gently stroking him while I pressed my pelvis against his hip. Izuku’s cock, in my hands—and he’s hard because of me! I don’t know if Izuku could see me grinning, but I hope he could. Knowing that I was making him feel good made me feel so sexy, so desired…and I wanted to hear him say it to me. “Bet you were thinking about me doing this when I caught you staring at me in my bikini the other day.”

“Huh!?” He was totally caught off guard. Busted! Even though it was all just teasing. “It isn’t like that!”

“You don’t have to lie to me, Izuku,” I whispered as I stroked him faster. “You’re allowed to think I’m hot.” I spun around in front of him and got on my knees, keeping his cock in my hands. “Don’t you think I’m hot?”

“Himiko…yeah, I do…”

“Then you don’t have to hold back around me,” I said, taking my hands off of him and cupping my chest. “Were these what you were looking at?”

He looked like a deer caught in headlights. “It’s n-n-not just that, I just—”

I giggled. “You’re silly, Izuku. Here…” I leaned forward and put his cock between my breasts. “It doesn’t just have to be in your imagination anymore.”

“Himiko…!”

I thought giving a tit job would be easy—just put it in between them, squeeze together, and move up and down, right? But it kept slipping out! It’s not like my chest was small or anything! Dammit, Himiko, say something to make it less awkward! “Oooh, you’re just too big for them, huh?”

“I…I, uh…you think so?”

He’s so cute when he’s flustered! “Here. Let’s make it fit somewhere else.” I opened my mouth, stuck my tongue out, and leaned my head down, licking the head of his cock like a popsicle before taking more and more of the shaft in my mouth.

“Himiko, I—ngh!”

I felt his hand on the back of my head. Yes, Izuku, fuck my face! Make me taste every centimeter of this cock of yours! It didn’t feel anything like my toys. It didn’t taste anything like Ochako. It was totally different. Not worse, not better—they both tasted amazing in their own ways. Just different.

“It’s so good!” I said—or tried to, at least, with my mouth full. The head of his cock was hitting the back of my mouth. I must have been drooling so much on it, but with the water running, who could tell?

“Himiko, if you don’t stop, I…ngh, I can’t hold it in!”

Already!? Ochako said she liked to start with a blowjob and then switch to sex with him, but he’s already cumming? I took my mouth off his cock and put it between my tits again. “C’mon, then. Give it to me!”

“Fuck, Himiko, I’m gonna—”

He took my tits in his hands and squeezed them even tighter around his cock as it throbbed. I felt something hot and sticky hit me in the face. I’m making him cum! I stuck my tongue out, and the next rope of cum landed on my tongue. Salty…kind of a glue-y taste…but I like it! More spurts pooled on my chest, rolling down my cleavage as he kept squeezing me. Fuck, this is so sexy!

“Wow, I really had you worked up, huh?” I scooped up some of his cum from my chest and fed it to myself. Tasty! Not like blood, but still, so yummy. “Shame I didn’t get to feel your cock in my pussy, but you taste really good, Izuku—”

“Stand up.”

Woah—the shy, nervous, dorky guy was confident all of a sudden? I was surprised…and I liked it!

“Hmm?” I tilted my head, his cum still stuck on my face.

“Turn around, Himiko,” he said, catching his breath. “I want to, uh…I want to make sure you feel good too.”

“Aw, you’re sweet! But if you just finished, how are you gonna—”

He spun me around and, gently, pushed me against the glass wall of our shower, my chest squeezing against the misty glass. With his free hand, he put two fingers into my pussy.

“Izuku!”

“It’s not fair if I’m the only one that finishes, right?” He started thrusting his fingers in and out of me.

“Fuuuuck, Izuku, you’re so good to meeee…”

I rubbed my palm against the glass to clear off some of the mist, and saw myself and him in the mirror. Oh fuck, we are so sexy right now! I’m watching myself get finger-fucked by Izuku, and I’m still covered in his cum!

“Izukuuuuu…!” I moaned. “Mmmmm!”

“You like this?”

“Mmmmm…curl your fingers more,” I answered, coaching him to finger me how I wanted him to. “Curl them up like you wanna make a fist inside me!”

I felt his fingers curl up. Yes, Izuku! Like that!

“Is that what you want?”

“Fuck yeah! Mmmmmm!” I felt my knees squeeze together, and I saw my own blissed-out expression in the mirror. Izuku had a determined look on his face, like he was on a mission to make me cum. So. Fucking. Sexy!

“Want me to do this too?”

He flicked his thumb over my clit while his pointer and middle finger were curled up inside me, scratching that oh-so-horny itch I had. Fuck, at this rate, I’m not gonna last long either! “Izuku, that’s…ohhhhhh, fuuuuuck…”

“You cumming too, Himiko?”

“Yes, Izuku, fuuuuck! I’m gonna cuuuuum!”

Fuck! I couldn’t stand it anymore—I literally dropped back down to my knees and put my hands on my crotch. My pussy was throbbing. Holy shit, I thought. We really just did that!

“You…huh…wow!” It was my turn to be out of breath. “Fuck, you just made me feel so good, Izuku!”

He chuckled, almost embarrassed, like he couldn’t believe he just did that to me. “Hey, I made a mess on your face, so…”

“Nuh-uh!” I shouted back. “Do you know how sexy that was?”

He buried his face in his hands. I knew he had as much fun as I did, but he was still a nerd at his core.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said through his fingers.

“Guess I should wash this cum off me, huh?” I stood back up and got some more soap. “And then we should probably actually get some sleep.”

I rinsed myself and turned off the water for us before stepping out, grabbing two towels and tossing one back to him. Before I could dry myself off, he hugged me from behind and smiled. We both looked at ourselves in the mirror. So this is what it’s like having Izuku as a boyfriend, I thought. I’m so lucky. Ochako is, too.

“Did you have fun today, Himiko?”

“Yeah,” I sighed.

“Me too,” he said as he gave me a tight squeeze and kissed my cheek. “You were just…amazing.”

I closed my eyes and blushed. Middle-school me could never have imagined a boy telling me I was amazing, calling me cute, saying he liked my smile, stealing glances at me…never mind thinking I was hot enough to do what we just did. He really is so good to me.

As I ran my towel over my body, I thought about all the things we did that day, and all the things Izuku said he wanted to do as my boyfriend. Go to an amusement park? Check. Hold hands? Check. Share a crepe? Check. Have really hot sex in the hotel shower? Not on the list…but check. It definitely wore us both out, though—by that point, we really were exhausted. We just crawled right into bed, still naked. Izuku slept on the far side, and I slid into the middle part of our bed. Yeah, the sex was nice, but cuddling ourselves to sleep was a different kind of bliss.

“G’night Himiko!” Izuku said with a yawn.

“Night, Izuku!” I kissed the back of his neck.

He must have fallen asleep right away, because just a couple of minutes later, I heard the tiniest snores from his side of the bed. I kept my eyes shut for a few more minutes and almost drifted off to sleep when…

Beep beep! Click! I couldn’t see her, of course, but that had to be Ochako. And she wasn’t alone, either.

“And there was only one bed,” I heard someone say while giggling. It sounded like Mina.

“Shut up!” That was definitely Ochako.

“Seriously, though, I hope you know how cute you three are. You all looked so happy.” Us, cute! I thought so, and I knew Izuku and Ochako thought so, too, but hearing someone outside of our little love pod call us cute made my heart happy. Like it was somehow even more real because someone else could see it. “You three have fun, okay?” Mina whispered again. “And you’d better invite me to the wedding!”

“Shut up!”

I hoped Ochako couldn’t see my face, because she’d have seen me with the stupidest grin and known I wasn’t asleep at all. But maybe that wouldn’t have been so bad.

I heard the sound of a soft kiss from Izuku’s side of the bed, and he stopped snoring for a little bit. Ochako is such a sweetie, I thought. Then I heard the covers rustling, and the mattress dipped on the other side of me. She pressed her body against mine, put her fingers in my hair, and kissed my neck.

“Mmmmmm…” I couldn’t help but let out a happy little moan. I got to fall asleep between my two favorite people. How could I be anything but happy? I’m gonna sleep well tonight, I thought. Sandwiched between the two of them, that’s exactly what I did.

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Two years before the present

Our last full day on the island was a lot calmer. All three of us woke up late, and Izuku and Himiko told me why they’d tired themselves out the night before. Sometimes, I’m amazed at how worried I was that I’d lose the two of them to each other, as if they both didn’t see me and my love as a part of their own. Me from four years ago would have been floored at the thought that I would be listening excitedly to the story of my girlfriend and my boyfriend fucking in the shower without me. But I wouldn’t mind being invited next time, I thought to myself.

Going back to the amusement park, the three of us spent practically all of our time in the aquarium, wandering through the maze of fish tanks five times taller than us. Izuku and Himiko looked so pretty with the blue light from the aquarium reflecting off of them, the shadows cast by ripples of water dancing across their faces as we stared at schools of fish that floated by.

“That one is cute!” Himiko said, pointing at a yellow butterflyfish and baring her fangs as she grinned. People probably think she looks like she wants to eat it, I thought. But she looks so cute right now!

“Those are pretty, aren’t they?” I smiled and nodded. “I’m pretty sure I have that one in my museum in Animal Junction!”

“You play Animal Junction?” Himiko grabbed my shoulders. “You’ve got to invite me to your island!”

I laughed. “Hero work has been really busy, so I haven’t played in a while…the villagers probably think I’ve disappeared for good.”

“Well, I wanna see!” she beamed with childlike enthusiasm. That made me blush a little.

“Maybe when we’re done with our real-life date, we can go on a date in Animal Junction.”

We had made a reservation at the seafood restaurant on the top floor of the aquarium to celebrate our last night on Okuto. It was gorgeous—all of the tables were arranged around a giant fish tank column in the center, filled with beautiful tropical fish. It also felt a little weird, eating cooked fish while surrounded by very-much-still-alive ones. Maybe that was just my empathetic heart at work.

“Order whatever you want, Himiko!” I said as I looked over my own menu knowing full well that I was going to order the cheapest option they had. Dining out was a luxury my family never had growing up. The closest we ever came to that was the occasional konbini ready-to-heat meals my parents would get if they didn’t have time to cook. Even years later, even with a budding hero agency, spending money on myself still felt like an impossibility.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“We’re here to celebrate you,” Izuku said. “You don’t have to worry about anything with us.”

He wasn’t just talking about our dinner—I could see it in his smile and feel it in his intonation. Himiko, you don’t have to worry about anything with us. Not a single thing. Not if we have anything to say about it.

Our food came quickly, and even the fish filet sandwich I got looked like a work of art. Izuku’s seared salmon was so artfully garnished that he almost didn’t want to eat it because he didn’t want to ruin the hard work. And Himiko! She picked out a lobster tail, brought out of the kitchen steaming hot. It wasn’t in front of her for ten seconds before she cracked the shell open and went to work on the inside, practically tearing out the lobster meat. If the three of us were alone, she’d probably have ripped it out with her teeth. She’s so hot when she’s acting primal!

“I’m gonna get up and wash my hands,” Izuku said after he cleared off his plate. Himiko and I sat back and talked some more—about our early morning ferry ride back home the next day, about how much fun the island was, about what she wanted to do first with her hero license. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Izuku whisper to our waiter. Good job, Izuku. You read my mind. A few minutes later, he was back from the restroom and sitting back down at our table.

“Himiko, we didn’t want to finish up on Okuto without doing something first,” he said.

She tilted her head at us. “Hmm?”

“Look behind you.”

Over her shoulder, a waiter came over with a slice of red velvet cake and a single lit candle while Izuku and I sang her Happy Birthday. Watching the smile grow on her face was like a present all on its own. She grinned—fangs and all—as she inhaled deeply, then exhaled, blowing out the candle.

“Did you make a wish?” I asked.

She just smiled again and lowered her gaze. “What else can I wish for? Everything feels like a dream come true right now.”

I smiled so hard that my cheeks hurt. Izuku was grinning, too. Us, a part of her dream come true! I hope you know how happy we are to be a part of that, Himiko, I thought. And I hope you know that you’re part of our dream come true, too.

If I’m being honest, I wasn’t totally ready to go back to work after Okuto. I guess between our hero work and helping Himiko prepare for her exam, I didn’t realize how stressful things were until we all got to actually relax. I love my job, but I loved the moments that the three of us had to ourselves on the island, and we didn’t get many like that. Still, we couldn’t stay on vacation forever. The public needed us heroes—and Himiko having her first full day working for us as a licensed hero wasn’t something I or Izuku would have ever dreamed of missing. We wanted to be right by her side, literally and figuratively. So that day, when we all went back to the office, we met up at the train station first and all went there together.

“Are you excited, Himiko?” Izuku asked.

“It still doesn’t feel real,” she answered. “Honestly, I kinda wish I was still on the beach!”

I laughed. “I wish we could all lay on the beach some more, too, Himiko.”

We headed into our building and pushed the button for our floor.

“But still, this is fantastic,” I continued. “You worked so hard, and now you’re a hero just like us!”

That made her smile. “Just like you,” she parrotted, grinning to herself. “I really like that.”

Ding! We reached our floor and walked inside. I was still expecting a mostly empty office, but every desk in the bullpen was filled now. People were already typing away at their computers and talking on the phone. There was someone new at the front desk, too—someone young. As soon as we walked in, she stood up.

“Good morning Deku, Uravity, Toga!” she buzzed excitedly, bowing deeply and repeatedly. “I’m so honored to meet you! Sojo-san spoke so highly of you three, and Deku, Uravity…your reputation is incredible! I’m Hoshiko Miyagawa—I’m a second-year in the heroics business course at Ketsubutsu Academy High School. I’ll be interning with you. It’s such an honor! I am so excited!”

This girl is starstruck! I blushed—I wasn’t used to having this kind of reputation. Sometimes, I’m still not used to it. “We’re delighted to meet you too,” I answered, returning her bow. I saw Izuku and Himiko do the same.

“I’m so sorry, I got ahead of myself—I’m just so amazed that I get to work with you all!”

Sojo opened the door to his office. “Oh, excellent, you three are back! Looks like you got a little tan.” He gestured to the young woman we just met, now sitting back down at the front desk. “I see you’ve already met our new intern.”

“Yeah,” Izuku replied. “She seems eager—reminds me of my first internship!”

“You’ve been busy hiring people,” Himiko said. “This place is packed!”

“We do have a lot more people helping out, for sure,” he responded. “Your voice sounds a little off, Toga-san…are you feeling okay?”

“Just a sore throat,” she said.

“Are you feeling sick?”

Izuku covered his mouth with his hands, his eyes going wide. Not that kind of sore throat, Sojo, I thought.

“Nah,” she answered, shaking her head. “Just had a little too much fun on vacation, that’s all.”

Himiko!! I couldn’t believe she said that, and it looked like Izuku couldn’t either! Sojo and the intern didn’t seem to pick up on the hidden meaning, though.

“Well, it’s good to have you all back,” Sojo continued. “And I think having extra staff here will help us all out. It was overdue…and that’s on me. I took on too much work for myself, so now that we’re fully staffed, we should have an easier time running the agency—well, almost fully staffed.”

“Almost?” It was hard for me to believe that there was even room to hire anyone else. “Who’s left?”

“Originally, two positions,” Sojo said, holding up two fingers. “Both for the command center. We still need a communications technician, and we need a tactician to coordinate activities between multiple heroes now that we have three.”

I caught Himiko smiling at that. Three heroes. It still felt unreal in the best possible way.

“So why originally two positions?” Izuku asked.

“Because there’s one candidate who I think can fill both,” Sojo responded. “She’s actually coming in for her interview this morning, so if you’re willing, it’s a good opportunity for you three to meet—”

We heard the elevator ding as it reached our floor. Whoever this person is, I thought, they have amazing timing. I heard the click of kitten stilettos falling on the hard floor outside our office doors before stepping onto the soft carpet in the lobby, deadening the footfall. In walked a tall, pale young woman with long periwinkle hair. Her outfit, a white blouse and white blazer with gold trim, a burgundy-red bow, and crisply-pressed black pants, made her look like a cross between European royalty and new-money corporate wealth. The gold monocle that sat in front of her left eye, which she adjusted with a black-gloved hand, only added to her commanding aura. She strode in, stood in front of us, and bowed with what felt like pinpoint precision. Who is this woman!?

“Good morning, everyone,” she said, lifting her head. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance. My name is Saiko Intelli.”

As the five of us sat in the conference room, Intelli told us about her impressive resume. Her quirk was exactly what we needed: she already had a high baseline intelligence, but when she drank tea and shut her eyes, her intellectual ability ballooned to an absurd level.

“I was sure my planning ability was unparalleled,” she told us as she eyed a thermos she had taken out of her black shoulder bag and placed on the table in front of her beside her leatherbound notebook. “In my initial attempt to pass the hero exam, back in my second year at Seiai Academy, I was certain that I had analyzed your classmates’ quirks and devised countermeasures that would allow me and my colleagues to win almost unchallenged.” She closed her eyes and shook her head, almost seeming sad in spite of her smile. “In fact, I had failed to consider the emotional component of your colleagues’ determination. It was my biggest blind spot.” Intelli looked directly at Sojo. “I suspect that was going to be your next question, correct? ‘What is your biggest weakness?’”

“As a matter of fact, that was my next question, Intelli-san,” he answered. “I’m impressed.”

She smiled again to herself, seeming very pleased with her forecast. “It’s true. My greatest weakness is in predicting the emotional responses of others. But after that initial failure, I devoted many hours of study to emotional and psychological pursuits to repair that deficiency. I do not claim to be an expert—not by any means—but I do believe that I have incorporated enough knowledge in that category to be better prepared in the future.” She shifted her gaze to me and Izuku. “You know, after that first exam, I gained a tremendous level of respect and admiration for you and your classmates.”

“That’s very kind of you,” I answered.

“Yeah!” Izuku added. “And your skills are really impressive—the way that you analyze your opponents and come up with plans so quickly is amazing!”

Intelli leaned in his direction ever so slightly. “I’m pleased that you think so, Midoriya-san. I know that you spent your youth compiling your own records of quirk strengths and weaknesses.” I watched as she leaned in further, twirling her hair and smiling. “Perhaps at some point, you and I should…compare notes?” Is this woman flirting? With our boyfriend!? In the middle of a job interview?!?

“Oh, definitely!” Izuku beamed, practically jumping out of his seat. “I have my notes in my office—I’ll be right back!” And just like that, before anyone could stop him, he was gone.

The rest of us turned back to Intelli. “How familiar are you with the communications equipment that you would be using?”

“In your command center?” She closed her eyes and thought for a moment. “I would like to have a look at your setup, if that would be alright.”

Sojo looked at me. “Uravity? It’s your call, and Deku’s when he gets back.”

I smiled. “I don’t see why not! And it’s a chance for all of us to take a look, actually. We haven’t really seen it since it’s been finished, so—”

Izuku burst through the door with his arms clutching a stack of Campos notebooks, all labeled “Hero Analysis for the Future.” After all these years, he never threw them out, I thought. I love this man so much!

“Here they are!” he shouted with a grin on his face. “I don’t know if you wanted to start right now, but—”

“Deku, we were planning to go up to the command center as a group,” I interjected. I hated to cut him off, but I knew that if I didn’t, he’d be going through his notes with her for at least an hour. “Maybe we can do that and then come back down?”

“Oh, yeah, sure!” He dropped the notebooks on the table; the heavy stack landed with a thwump as it hit the surface. We all stood up and followed Sojo to the command center.

“There are stairs behind this door,” he told us, opening what looked like a closet door with his key card and revealing a hidden flight of stairs. We went up single-file up the narrow staircase and turned a corner at the top.

What we saw looked like something out of science fiction. The room was dark, only lit by the blue glow of a bank of what had to be a dozen monitors sitting above a keyboard and mouse. An earpiece was sitting beside them, like something you’d see someone wearing if they worked at a call center. Along one wall was a rack of servers; on the other, a backlit map of Japan. Behind us, there was a table with a screen for a surface that was also showing a map. This was state of the art.

“Woah!” Izuku looked as stunned as I was.

“Sojo-san, this is unbelievable!” I said, my own mouth hanging open.

“So cool,” Himiko whispered.

Intelli shuffled her way past us and scanned the room, her head sweeping from left to right.

“Hmm. Twelve OLED displays, custom wall-mounted and table-projected GIS displays for real-time planning and coordination, connectivity to the National Quirk Registry, NexTEN radio system with dedicated and patched channels, facial recognition software, geospatial intelligence downlinks, interoperability with body-worn recorders…”

She must have done this for a full minute at least, identifying and listing off equipment and features—half of which I could’ve sworn she made up. This woman is a genius.

“…you’re certainly very well-equipped here,” Intelli concluded. “This small command center is almost on par with the National Police Agency in Tokyo. Quite remarkable.”

“So, how familiar do you think you can get with these systems?” Sojo asked.

She turned and smiled. “Give me the user manuals, a cup of first-flush Darjeeling, and three minutes, and I can get myself situated without any trouble.”

I shared a glance with Izuku and Himiko. She wasn’t just smart. She oozed confidence.

“Well, I’m happy to hire you, Intelli-san,” Sojo said. “But I’ll turn that decision over to our owners—”

“I say yes!” Izuku shouted, clearly enthusiastic.

I nodded. “You’re very qualified, Intelli-san.”

She bowed, respectfully and precisely. “I would be honored to accept,” she answered, raising her head back up. “On one condition.”

Sojo raised an eyebrow. “A condition?”

“I presume that the expectation is that I primarily work here, in the command center,” she said. “I ask that a tea-making station be installed beside the main workspace, that I be able to keep my finest china here, and that I be able to have access to the teas of my choosing.”

He looked uncomfortable, rubbing the back of his head. “You know, I wasn’t even going to allow food and drink in here at all. This equipment is very expensive. I know about the requirements of your quirk, but can you not prepare it in the kitchen?”

Intelli shook her head. “You know better than anybody that seconds matter in this line of work. If you want me to be at the zenith of my performance, there can be absolutely no delay. And Sojo-san…” She glared and smirked at him, the blue light of the monitors reflecting off of her monocle. “…if you are afraid that I would spill even a drop of my most precious teas, then I must say, you truly don’t know me.”

Sojo put his hands up. “Point well taken, Intelli-san. You’ll have your tea station.”

She smiled and bowed. “Excellent. Then I happily accept.”

“Wonderful! When can you start?”

Intelli clasped her gloved hands behind her back. “If you all would have me, I could begin immediately.”

Izuku and Intelli spent what had to be an hour in the conference room going through his old notes—exactly like I thought they would be—while Himiko got settled in her new office. Her new office! I couldn’t shake the excitement. She might have been starting as a sidekick, but she was growing so much. A real hero! We knew she could, and yet every reminder of how far she came felt like a dream. If I could go back in time…if I could show that little girl that Himiko’s parents had mistreated so badly what her future would be like…

The pace of change was definitely overwhelming, though. I still remember the panic I felt when I saw how empty our office was when we moved in. Suddenly, overnight, we didn’t have a single empty desk across our two floors of the building—command center included, given that Intelli had just joined our payroll. But we couldn’t slow down. Hero work never could.

Sojo definitely agreed. After Izuku and Intelli were done comparing notes, he called everyone into the conference room for a quick all-hands meeting.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” he said, standing at the head of the table. Every other seat was filled. We’re a far cry from the days when it was just the four of us in here, I thought. “This won’t take long, but now that everyone is gathered, I thought it right to make sure that everybody is introduced. You obviously know our founding heroes, Deku and Uravity.” He gestured at us. “Joining our team, we have our lead finance associate, our government liaison and heroics contract specialist, our endorsement contract specialist, our…”

He listed their names, too, but I could barely even keep the positions straight in my head. Gotta make sure I go around and remember those, I thought. I need to be a good boss.

…I’m a boss!? Poor little Ochako, whose parents could hardly rub a pair of ten-yen coins together at one point, was a boss! Technically, that was true from the day we founded the company, but it was different when it was just Sojo. Yes, he reported to me and Izuku, but with his expertise, we deferred to him at least as often as he did to us. It felt different. This? This was what running an agency was like—and I really felt like I was sitting at the head of it! I’m glad I have Izuku beside me, I thought. And Himiko… I turned to glance at her and smiled. We’ll make sure you’re up at the front with us.

“…our intern, Hoshiko Miyagawa, and as of today, our tactician and communications technician, Saiko Intelli.” Sojo was wrapping up his round robin of introductions. “And last, but certainly not least, we have a new hero in the agency—Himiko Toga began as an intern, but after receiving her provisional license in the most recent exam, we are delighted to have her join us as an agency sidekick. A round of applause is in order for all of our new hires and our promotions. Congratulations to you all.”

In the small conference room, the sound of applause from everyone was overwhelming. They’re clapping for you, Himiko, I thought. Yes, it was for the whole company, but she was as much a part of it as anyone…and Sojo ending with her update, it felt like this was her celebration all over again. She earned it. She deserved it.

Sojo ended the meeting as quickly as he began it, and everyone filed out with the exception of Sojo, us three heroes, and the intern.

“Thank you for staying behind,” he said to us. The intern still had that star-struck and eager expression on her face. “I just wanted to let you know that we’ll have two visitors tomorrow, and I want you three to have your schedules open since you’ll be needed in the office unless there’s an emergency.”

“Sure,” I replied. “It’ll be nice to kind of ease back into things.”

“Certainly. And Miyagawa-san, you should know who our visitors are that we’re expecting, just so you aren’t surprised when they come by. One will be here for Deku and Uravity—that’s the writer from Shonen Leap who’s helping with the manga adaptation of the events of the war.”

“I was going to ask about that,” Izuku said. “Didn’t they ask us about that last year?”

“Apparently, contract negotiations got difficult,” Sojo answered. “They had to sign individual agreements with every UA student who was with you in Class 1-A. Rumor has it that the Yaoyorozu family kept going back and forth over the royalties, and supposedly, Katsuki Bakugo was also difficult to negotiate with.”

I held back a chuckle. Bakugo being difficult in a negotiation? No surprises there.

“Anyway, with all of the contracts signed, Shonen Leap is ready to start initial writing and sketching, and they want to interview you both.”

“That makes sense!” I chirped.

“The other visitor will be from the heroics division of Mitsubashi Industries,” Sojo continued.

“The car people?” Himiko asked.

“They make so much more than cars, Himiko!” Izuku beamed with the telltale excitement he had whenever he got to talk about something nerdy. “They make all kinds of stuff—everything from air conditioners to armored cars, fighter jets, trains, cruise ships, submarines…I’m pretty sure they make rockets for the space program, too!” Look at those two go, I thought, probably with the dumbest-looking grin plastered on my face. Curious Himiko and chatterbox Izuku…I want to sit back and watch those two forever!

“Yes,” Sojo interjected. “And of course, there’s their heroics division. We have a contract with them for the maintenance of hero suits and equipment.”

“Oh, I get it,” Himiko said. “So they’re coming to fix something for Deku and Uravity?”

He shook his head. “We send them the things we need repaired—they don’t come to us for that.”

“So if it’s not for them, then that means…” Her voice trailed off as the realization hit her.

I tapped her leg and smiled. “It’s for your hero suit, Himiko. It’s for you.”

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Two years before the present

A new hero suit! I knew I needed one. I barely fixed my old one, and honestly, I couldn’t even really call it “fixed.” The tubing connecting the needles to my blood processor were still just held together with FlexRepair tape, and everything that I had used to make it in the first place was just scrounged up from wherever I could find it. I’m amazed that it even worked at all! And besides, even if everything worked perfectly, people still knew what my old outfit looked like from my villain days. The handful of times I went out looking like that, with my old gear, I could see people’s faces go pale when they saw me. All those awful things that people wrote on the walls of my old room…DEMON GIRL…VAMPIRE FREAK…MONSTER CHILD…that’s how those people saw me. It was like I was in their minds, hearing the words instead of just reading them scrawled in red paint in my old room. I didn’t want to think like that. I needed a new costume if I wanted people to see me as a hero. And yet, at the same time, I didn’t want to hide who I was, either. I was done putting on an act and pretending that I hated what I loved. I wonder if they can do all of that with my outfit, I thought to myself as I went to the office the next morning.

“Hey, good morning!” I said to the intern at the front desk. “Do you know when the hero suit person is supposed to get here?”

“Hmm…the engineer from Mitsubashi?” She tapped at her keyboard. “No exact time, but she should be here in the morning.”

“I’ll wait up here!”

“Are you sure?” She leaned out from behind her computer screen. “You know I can just call your office when she gets here.”

“I’m just really excited,” I answered. “I wouldn’t be able to focus in my office anyway.”

Our intern just smiled and nodded at me before going back to whatever it was that she was doing. I didn’t have to wait long before I heard the elevator ding. Is that her? But it wasn’t.

“Hi, I’m Hasu Gakayama,” she said. “I’m with Shonen Leap—I’m supposed to be meeting Deku and Uravity.”

No way—it can’t be, can it? But then I remembered what she said earlier, when I visited LotusPop. “I work another job as a writer and manga artist.” Seriously? What are the odds that it’s her of all people!?

“I’ll call and let them know,” our intern replied. Hasu must have seen the stunned look on my face, because she walked over to me with a caring smile.

“It’s fine,” she whispered, knowing what I was already about to ask.

“What are you doing here!?” I replied as softly as I could.

She shook her head. “You can pretend you don’t know me. I know it’s awkward running into regulars outside the shop. If you ever see me in public, you can treat me like a stranger. I totally get it.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Hasu.”

“And I would never say anything about you without you giving me the okay first.” Hasu gave me a nod. “I promise.”

I nodded back. I’ll just have to trust her, I guess.

Izuku and Ochako came to the front to meet with her. I can’t believe this, I thought. My boyfriend and girlfriend are sitting down for interviews with the cashier of my favorite sex shop! I’ve told her about wanting to fuck them both—multiple times!

“You must be from Shonen Leap!” Ochako beamed.

“Yes!” she answered with a bow. “Hasu Gakayama. I look forward to being able to tell your story.”

Outside, I heard the elevator ding again, and the door to our office opened a few seconds later. A girl about Izuku and Ochako’s age walked in with pink hair that fell a bit past her shoulders and brass-rimmed goggles on her forehead, clutching a thick folder with the Mitsubashi logo. She gave a quick nod to the intern before locking eyes with us to the side.

“Izukuuu! Ochakooo!” She ran over, her arms wide, and wrapped them both in a hug. She’s pretty touchy, I thought. And pretty unrestrained—seems like the kind of person who likes doing her own thing. I like her already.

“It’s good to see you, Mei-chan!” Izuku grinned, his face squeezed under one of her arms.

“We didn’t know Mitsubashi was sending you today,” Ochako said.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of missing a chance to see your agency!” She was eager, and I like eager, passionate people. The blood running through them feels even more exciting to me. “Was I right? You’re totally killing it with this agency, aren’t you?”

“It was a bumpy start,” Ochako admitted. “But I think we’re finally hitting our stride!”

“I knew you had it in you—never doubted you for a second!” Mei glanced my way and bowed, smiling and still full of energy. “Sorry, got a little carried away there. Mei Hatsume, chief heroics engineer at Mitsubashi Industries. Glad to meet you!”

I looked at how close she was to Izuku and Ochako. “You know each other?”

“We graduated from UA together!” Ochako replied.

“Yeah—she was actually the one who suggested we start an agency in the first place,” Izuku added.

“It’s pretty rare for people our age to go straight into business without being a sidekick first.” Ochako twirled her thumbs nervously. “We weren’t sure if this would work, but I’m really glad it did.”

I noticed Hasu smiling out of the corner of my eye. She looked curious. Guess she’s the perfect one to interview them.

“I shouldn’t take up more of your time,” Mei said. “But I hope you know that I’m so freakin’ proud of you all!”

“Aw, that’s sweet of you to say!” Ochako answered shyly.

“We’re glad you encouraged us!” Izuku bowed to her. “We couldn’t have done it without you.”

Mei turned to me and locked eyes. “Now, you’re the star of the show today, Toga,” she said with a look of determination. ‘Let’s talk about how we’re going to dress you like a hero.”

While Izuku and Ochako used the conference room for their interview, Mei and I went back to my office for our own chat. I still hadn’t had time to decorate it with anything, so it felt pretty empty, but at least it was mine.

“So.” She dropped her folder on my desk. It was heavy—it landed with a thud, the thick stack of papers inside poking out the top. “I got some information on your past fights and your hero license exams. You’ve got a close-up fighting style, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re all about speed and evasion, right?” she asked. “So being flexible and able to move fast is gonna be super important.”

“Uh-huh,” I nodded, amazed that this woman already knew so much about me.

“You’re right handed? And your strength is knife combat, right?”

“That’s right, yeah.” It was almost creepy how much she knew! But I guess I couldn’t judge. I loved knowing everything there was to know about the people I love, so even if it felt weird to me, it was also nice to see someone be just as intense.

She scribbled some notes. “Hmm, okay. I’ve already got some ideas. Your old outfit was pretty bulky and baggy, so it’s amazing you were able to move around like you did.”

It really was, but that’s what I needed to fit in—or at least to try to. A schoolgirl outfit and a sweater over it, and people would treat a little girl with a lot more kindness than they otherwise would have…until they saw my fangs.

“Your transformations…” Mei flipped through some more papers. “I’m guessing your clothes didn’t change with you, right?”

I nodded.

“So you just, uh…got naked?”

“A lot of times, yeah.” I almost blushed. I didn’t like being naked in front of strangers. “If my clothes stuck out too much from my body, my transformation wouldn’t cover them up.”

“Yeah, we can fix that,” she said with a smile, scribbling down more notes. “We usually use a DNA sample from heroes so that we can generate a synthetic thread with their genetic code. We used to have to actually weave it using their hair, but now we have the technology to make it all artificially.” She smirked. “Just a little something my parents and I cooked up.”

“Your parents?”

“Yeah!” She leaned over the desk, excited. “My mom is an engineer like me, and my dad is the lead quirk studies researcher at Yokohama University Hospital. He got me a researcher’s pass and access to the DNA repository they have there, and I worked on a little baby of mine that could spit out DNA-infused thread. Pretty cool, huh?”

A little baby of hers? So her inventions were like her children?

“Oh, by the way, if you need anything from their DNA repository, I can put a word in for you,” she gushed, going back to the papers in her folder. “They have tons of blood samples from heroes and villains. Should be useful for you, especially since you can use other people’s quirks.”

Interesting, I thought. I wonder whose blood they have there…and I wonder if I’d really be allowed to use it.

“By the way, I heard you got some pretty serious pain and fatigue after you did that—you know, using other quirks,” she said, still going through her papers. “I think I’ve got a few babies that can help with that. Should make your body more able to handle the stress, and I can add in some things that’ll take the edge off the pain if it does get bad.”

I nodded. That would be nice, I thought. Not having to worry as much about passing out and going to the hospital every time I use Izuku and Ochako’s quirks. Izuku told me that he had a hard time at first with his quirk. He showed me how so many of his scars were from him not being able to get a handle on One for All. As sexy as it made him look…and it made him look so sexy…I knew it hurt him really badly, and he worked so hard to get better. I didn’t want to be like that, hurting every time I used this new part of my quirk. I’m glad Mei can help.

“Your fighting style. I know it’s mostly up close and personal, and you’re more focused on stealth and evasion,” Mei continued. “But it looks like you also used the tubes on your needles for takedowns and capture.”

“Mmhmm.” I nodded again. “It ended up ripping the tubing apart when I did it too much.”

“What made you want to do that?” she asked. “Not ripping the tubing—I meant using them to trap people.”

I smiled. “Maybe it’s dumb, but…I saw how Izuku used Blackwhip, and how Ochako used the grapples in her wrist guards, and it…just made me want to be more like them.”

As soon as I realized what I just told her, I felt embarrassed. Did I say too much?

“Aw, you three are so damn cute , you know that?” Mei teased. Great, another nosy pink-haired girl who’s gonna make fun of me over romance, I thought. At least they’re both nice about it. And she called me cute! She scribbled some more. “I like it! Very creative way of using your support gear. I can think of ways to toughen that up.”

I smiled. “I’d really like that.”

“I’ve got some medically-focused creations, too,” she continued. “I think you’re really going to like my babies.” Again with the babies! She pulled out another sheet of paper. “Now, I have some questions from the designer that they wanted me to ask you.”

“The designer?” I tilted my head. “Aren’t you the designer?”

“Oh, no!” she laughed. “I’m the engineer. My job is to build. I’m the one who makes everything work the way it’s supposed to. I tinker, I invent, but I don’t design. Designers are the ones who make you look like a hero. I’m the one who helps you fight like one.”

It felt confusing—why have two different people make the same thing? But I guess their jobs were different after all.

“Anyway! The thing they really want me to ask you is, ‘What is the message that you want this outfit to convey to people?’”

What message? I thought about what went through my mind earlier. A change from how I looked before, but not a change from who I am inside. “I want everyone to know how important blood is to me,” I said. “Because people thought it was gross and scary that I like it, and I’m tired of hiding it from people. I’m gonna be out and open about how much I like blood, and I’m gonna let people see how I’m using it to help people.”

Mei was frantically writing on that sheet of paper. “Perfect, perfect! The designer is going to love this.”

More intense scribbling. I saw the outline of a person on her paper, with arrows pointing to different parts of the body and labels for…well, I had no idea what. She went through more questions on her sheet. Favorite color? Red. Favorite job besides hero? Even though it was true, “I’d do whatever Izuku and Ochako do” probably wasn’t a helpful answer, so I just said I didn’t have one. Cape or no cape? That one was easy: no capes. And then, after a few more questions like those…

“Great!” Mei slammed her folder shut with all of her notes and sketches inside of it. “I think we’re done. I’ve got tons of ideas, and I think we can cram a bunch of my babies into your hero outfit.”

“Anything that helps.” I stood up. “I’m excited!”

“Same!” She was grinning as wide as I did when I was with someone I really liked. Maybe that’s how she feels about inventing, I thought. I guess that’s pretty cool. She started to turn and leave, but stopped herself. “Oh, before I forget! Can I get a DNA sample from you?”

“Huh?”

“For your suit! I think I told you, we can use your DNA to get it to transform when you do,” she explained. “Most people give us a strand of hair, but it could be blood, skin, even—”

Blood!? Say less! She didn’t finish before I bit my finger with a sharp fang. A twinge of pain in my left pinky, and then a satisfied feeling as I watched tasty red blood trickle out. I smiled staring at it, but part of me worried that I’d freak her out, and I wondered if I should have just given her a strand of hair like she suggested.

“You heroes are so metal—I love it!” she shouted, reaching into her pocket for a small plastic tube and collecting a few drops of blood from my finger. Mei was totally unfazed. Phew. “This is gonna be perfect. Gimme a week or so to get it ready. I’ll call your office when you can come to the workshop and check it out. I think you’re gonna love it when you see it!”

This girl works fast. I thought she was being optimistic with her promise to get the outfit done so quickly, but she called the office on Monday morning the next week to tell us it was ready, and our intern put her through to the three of us. “You’ve got to come to the workshop,” she bubbled. “Toga, obviously, but you two just have to come with and see this for yourselves. And I’ve got some extra babies I want you to test out!”

Mitsubashi had a bunch of workshops, but the one for their heroics division was at the docks near Musutafu. “UA doesn’t just have the country’s best hero program,” Izuku explained to me as the three of us took the train there, the two of them sticking out in their hero outfits while I just had on my comfiest clothes. Two heroes hanging out with an ex-villain-turned-sidekick sporting a “Support Women’s Wrongs” crop top must have been a sight to see for everyone else on the train. “Their support program is one of the world’s top five,” he continued. “It honestly might be the best one globally!” He went on and on for a while about the strength of the program and how Mitsubashi wanted to hire UA graduates, and all I could do was smile and blush. Him being so passionate made my heart race!

“You’re really lucky that Mei-chan is the one personally working on your outfit, Himiko,” Ochako told me. “She’s unbelievably talented—she basically designed the entire UA defensive system for the war in a couple of weeks!”

“Yeah!” Izuku nodded, holding up his fists to show off his forearms. “Mei-chan designed my Air Force gloves, and she remade the arm braces I use to protect my bones from the power of One for All.” He tapped his boots together. “And she’s the one who added reinforced steel plating to help me with my Shoot Style. Actually, she’s the one who suggested the Shoot Style move in the first place!”

So Mei really helped them a lot, I thought. And now she’s helping me. Another way I can be even more like the two of them.

We made our way to the building, past the security gate and two sets of chain-link fences topped with razor wire. It looked like a prison, even more than the actual prison in Musutafu did. Aside from one corner of the building, it had no windows—just three stories of raw, unpainted concrete with a sign out front for Mitsubashi Industries.

“Well, this seems like the place,” Ochako said as she pushed the button on a video intercom next to a big steel door. “Hello? We have an appointment to meet with Mei Hatsume?”

There was no answer at first, but we did hear a muffled explosion…and then another…and then another. What the hell is going on in there!? Then came the loudest, closest explosion, blowing the steel door wide open. Next thing we knew, Izuku was on the ground, lying on his back while Mei, covered in dust, wearing half a pair of coveralls and a tank top, was on top of him, her chest pressed against his.

“Not this again,” Ochako whispered under her breath.

I looked at her. “This happened before?” She just shook her head and smiled.

“You made it!” she beamed. “I’m so excited—I’ve got so many babies to show you! Come in!”

After she picked herself up off of Izuku, the three of us walked in behind her into an absolutely massive room. Engineers and technicians scurried around us, moving giant contraptions and testing various different gadgets. All around us, the sound of clanging metal and whirring electric motors echoed off of the concrete walls. Mei was grinning from ear to ear. This is where she feels at home, I thought. It must be like how I am with blood.

Off to the side, there were some smaller rooms, and Mei led us into one with a door labeled “Prototype Showcase.” Inside was a small conference table and a folder labeled T-DD-REQ, and at the back of the room was another door.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at the folder.

“Your new outfit!” she chirped. “The letters are just an internal code. It stands for Toga—Design and Development Requisition.” She picked it up and handed it to me. “Open it.”

I did, lifting up the cover. There were a few sheets of paper inside, but the top one was an artist’s drawing of me in my hero outfit—a tight-red crop top with a built-in half face mask and long sleeves that went all the way to a pair of white fingerless gloves that shot needles from the space between my knuckles. Over the crop top was another one, slightly looser than the red skintight one and completely transparent. I could make out a smaller, sleeker blood processing backpack on my back, too. In the drawing, I had a pair of leggings, red like the top. One leg ran all the way down to my feet, but the other leg was totally detached, leaving a good 15 centimeters or so of space between where the material ended at my hip and started again on my thigh. Both legs flowed down into a pair of thick-soled boots. Strapped on my right leg was a sheath for a combat knife, and tied around my waist was a white nurse-style organizer pocket.

“Oh, wow,” I whispered.

“Pretty neat, right?” Mei smirked. “The lead designer read what you said about wanting to show off your love for blood, so they took inspiration from a blood donation clinic to make your top look kind of like a blood bag.”

I always wanted to become like the people I loved, but the idea that I could become like the thing I loved made my heart so happy. I could really be the blood hero! I could literally wear it across my whole body and show everyone how much I loved it!

“Himiko, you’re going to look so good!” Izuku was grinning, and I could see a sparkle in his eyes. He was as excited as I was.

“Just wait until you see what it can do,” Mei replied. “See the needles? I put those in your gloves so that you don’t have to reach up and grab them off your shoulders anymore—just point and fire, and it’ll detect the motion in your fingers automatically. And if you’re trying to be stealthy, you can release needles manually and use them handheld.”

“Amazing…” Ochako looked stunned.

Izuku squinted at the diagram. “How do the tubes connect to the processor on the back?”

“That crop top is the connection!” Mei grinned, clearly proud of herself. “One of my favorite babies. When you put the gloves on, the wrists connect automatically to micro-conduits in the sleeves that feed into the blood processor on your back. That has a medical membrane in it, by the way—another one of my babies. It’ll automatically filter out any bloodborne diseases, and that processor can either store the blood for later use or feed it to your mask right away.” She tapped the see-through crop top on the artist’s drawing. “That clear top is a positive pressure chamber. Your processor has an onboard computer that monitors blood intake, and if it needs to flush out the blood in your outfit, it’ll pump just enough air into that top to push blood out of the outfit and into the processor. It should also help with any aches and pains you have in those areas with some gentle pressure.”

“So I’m gonna look like a pillow when it’s on?” I asked.

“Not at all!” Mei waved her arm to the side, like she was brushing the question away. “The material is semirigid, so it’s comfy and flexible to put on and wear, but it won’t puff up like a balloon.” She tugged at the corner of the artist’s drawing and ran her finger over the tubes that ran from the needles back to the gloves. “By the way, those tubes have extensible reinforcement built in, so they can yank on up to half a tonne without tearing. You can use them as grapples or restraints, and they’ll support all of that weight and then some without a problem.”

“This looks amazing,” I breathed.

Mei flashed me a smirk. “Wanna try it on?”

“You already have the outfit!?” I was amazed at how fast she was with her work!

“I’m the best there is for a reason! Now come on!” She walked towards the door on the other side of the room and waved me over to her. I put the folder down and followed her as she picked up two heavy-looking boxes and tossed them at Izuku and Ochako. “Oh! Almost forgot—I think these babies of mine will be good for you two!”

Izuku barely caught his box, and Ochako quickly put her hands up and used her quirk to float the one that flew at her before it could hit her in the chest.

“What are these?” Izuku asked.

“Propulsion nozzles for your boots to go with your Fa Jin quirk, and reaction control system thrusters for Ochako to use when she’s weightless.” She waved the two of them out of the room. “Took some inspiration from some of the space program guys. One of the techs outside will explain how they work, so just talk to one of them. Let me know what you think!”

They looked even more confused as they filed out, staring at the boxes in their hands. The door shut, behind them, and it was just me and Mei.

“Are you ready?” she asked, giddy. “I don’t think you’re ready. There’s no way you’re ready. Well, get ready.” She didn’t even give me time to get ready; she was still talking to me when she opened the closet door and pulled out a cart on wheels with a mannequin on it—wearing my hero costume.

“Woah!”

“Cool, huh?” Mei smiled. “And that’s not just a mannequin—it’s another one of my babies. When you’re done with a shift of your hero work, you put your outfit on this and it’ll automatically sterilize the needles and blood micro-conduits. Super hygienic.”

I walked over to the outfit. My outfit. Even looking directly at it, I couldn’t believe it. A hero suit? For me ?

“Can I…”

“Yes, definitely!” she shouted, eager to see me wear it. “Put it on!”

I took the top and bottom off the mannequin first and stepped behind the closet door. Mei was nice, but I didn’t want to get naked in front of a stranger if I didn’t have to. I tossed off my skirt and top and pulled the leggings on first. They hugged my hips and legs, but even though they looked tight, they didn’t feel tight. I could move and bend my legs really easily in every direction. Mei really is incredible, I thought. Next, the top, which felt just as comfortable. With how the material was cut, it really pulled my chest together. Izuku and Ochako are going to lose their minds when they see me.

“Looking good already!” Mei gave me a thumbs up as I stepped out to finish getting ready.

The clear top went on next, loosely sitting over the rest of my outfit but hugging the middle of my torso tight. Then came the blood processor, which weighed half as much as my old one and took up way less space, too—I could move around way easier with it! The only pieces of clothing left were the gloves, and they were a perfect fit. As they slid on, I felt them attach on their own to the crop top. There wasn’t any sound or anything, just a little bit of gentle pressure on my wrists to tell me that they were hooked up just fine. Just for looks, I pulled up the mask that was connected to the crop top.

“Nice, nice!” Mei smiled. “And don’t forget about the knife sheath.”

Right! I grabbed that off of the cart, attaching it to my upper thigh. I gave it a tug from the side, and it didn’t move. Nice and secure. Perfect.

“Take a look in the mirror,” she said. “I think you’re gonna like it.”

I walked over to the wall where there was a floor-to-ceiling mirror. I was stunned. This woman staring back at me was badass. She was sexy. She was a threat. And anyone who saw her would know that she was all about blood.

“Oh, fuck, I look so… good,” I whispered to myself as I pulled down my mask. I was grinning from ear to ear.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Mei replied. “We have a kickass designer, right?” She walked up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder. “But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We haven’t even seen what all these babies can do.” She pulled a remote out of her pocket and pushed a button. A few gel dummies with red liquid inside dropped down from the ceiling. “See that dummy on the far side? Try using your needles on it.”

“But how?” I asked, adjusting my mask back up.

“Just do what feels natural with your hand,” she answered. Huh!? That made no sense! But I tried anyway, gesturing towards the dummy and making a motion with my fingers.

To my shock, a needle flew out of my hand, racing towards it and sucking the red liquid into my processor and then my mask. It wasn’t blood, but it tasted pretty close to it.

“Woah!” I was amazed. “How did it know?”

“Trade secret.” Mei tapped the side of her head. “But it knows what moves mean that you want to release needles and what moves don’t. Try pulling the needle back.”

Another motion with my finger as I tugged back on the needle, and it unhooked and wound back up into the glove.

“No way!”

“Way,” Mei said. “And it has special proprietary technology to keep it from smacking you or anyone else with whiplash. Now try using two at the same time on those other dummies.”

It felt almost like a game. Another arm motion, another gesture, and two more needles flew out in a V-shape towards the other dummies, pulling whatever this blood substitute was out of them. After a few seconds, I felt my glove vibrate ever so slightly, and the flow of red liquid stopped.

“What happened?” I asked.

“The processor automatically detects the point when blood loss will make someone pass out and cuts off the flow,” she explained. “It’ll keep you from killing someone by accident, but you can override it if you have to.”

I tried to do just that with another twitch of my fingers, like I was beckoning more blood towards me. It worked—the flow of “blood” started up again.

“Oh, my babies are working perfectly!” Mei practically jumped up and down.

I looked at the dummies full of red liquid. “What did you fill them with?”

“Oh, I’m so glad you asked!” She was completely beside herself with excitement. “Just another baby of mine! That’s a rehydration formula—something to help with quirk exhaustion. There’s another variant that includes a mild painkiller, too. Your blood processor has a dispenser inside that has a stockpile of both. Those versions are ultra-concentrated, so they’re super fast acting. I made sure your outfit has passive compression to help with aches and pains, but those babies ought to help keep you in the fight for longer if that’s what you need.”

So many things I have to keep track of, I thought. But really, I didn’t—it was like my hero outfit thought on its own. No, that wasn’t right. It was like an extension of me. It did exactly what I wanted it to, without me having to do anything special. It would even help keep me from being in pain! Mei really is a genius!

“Okay, now let’s try manual blood collection,” she said. “Can you release a needle without launching it?”

“Uh, let’s see…” I made a different motion with my hand, and a needle came about 15 centimeters; I pulled it out with my other hand and held onto it.

“Great!” Mei held out her forearm. “Try pulling a little bit of my blood and transforming into me.”

She was just going to let me have blood!? “Mei! Are you sure about this?”

“Hell yeah, I’m sure!” She shifted her arm even closer to me. “I wanna see this for myself!”

“But you—”

“I test my inventions on myself all the time,” she continued. “C’mon! Go for it!”

I still couldn’t believe it, but since she said it was okay…I poked her vein with the needle and wiggled my finger, first to start the flow of blood, and then again to stop it before pulling it back out. Mei’s arm already had a little scab forming—no blood leaked out.

“Yes!” she said, looking at the spot on her arm where the needle had been. “The coagulant works just like I hoped. Another perfect baby of mine!”

Her blood had already flowed into the processor and up to my mask. It hit my tongue, and I swallowed it. Somehow, her blood tasted even rustier than normal blood. A second later, I turned into a gray gooey mass before I took shape as a copy of Mei.

“Looking good!” she teased. “Now try transforming back.”

I let my transformation slip away. The gray goo melted off of me, and I was back to being myself—still fully clothed.

“Great! The DNA-infused fibers worked exactly like I designed.” She pumped her fist, satisfied with her creation. “Have you tried the knife yet? Take it out. See if the balance is good.”

I pulled it out of its sheath. It slid out with a click, and the bright steel reflected the ceiling lights. I saw my reflection in it. I really like this blade, I thought, feeling the weight in my hand. It was perfect—light, but strong, with just the right amount of weight in the handle.

“Feels good, right?” She crossed her arms and smiled. “And I packed another baby in there—that sheath automatically sanitizes the blade every time you slot it back in.”

“Wow, you really did think of everything,” I said, still amazed at this new outfit of mine.

“Do you like it?”

“I love it,” I answered, grinning again. This was a dream come true—I could run, fight, and hide like a pro, and I’d look drop dead gorgeous doing it.

“What do you say we show the others?” Mei suggested, raising her eyebrows. She wants to see the look on their faces, I thought. Fine by me—I do, too.

I nodded, and we went to the door to walk back into the main workshop area. Izuku and Ochako were struggling with the support gear Mei had tossed at them. Ochako was in zero gravity, the thrusters on her wrists and torso bouncing her around in different directions. Izuku’s propulsion gear almost shot him into the ceiling! Definitely some bugs to work out with those, huh?

I strutted out, full of the confidence that a new outfit gives. I am so hot right now, I thought. I am fierce as fuck. Japan had better get ready for pro hero Himiko Toga. They must have caught a glimpse of me, because they both turned to look at me, and their faces turned beet red. Ochako turned off her quirk and fell to the ground with a thud. Izuku did the same, tumbling from the ceiling as he just stared at me instead of doing anything to slow his fall. They picked themselves up and stood there, mouths wide open, as I popped my hip to the side and rested one hand on it, the other one clutching my new knife and holding it at head height.

“Well?” I purred. “How do I look?”

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya

Two years before the present

I couldn’t get over how good she looked in her outfit. I’m still not over it, honestly. I was obsessed. On the ride back to our office, at dinner that night with Ochako, on our first patrol with Himiko as a fully licensed hero, my mind just kept snapping back to that first moment when Himiko walked out of the demonstration room and made me and Ochako tumble out of the air just by looking as sexy and confident as she did. I was catching myself getting distracted more and more when I was out on patrol with her, letting her walk a few steps ahead of me so that I could catch an extra glance. I definitely caught myself staring at Ochako’s outfit when she first debuted it at UA, and I had to snap myself out of it. I must have been ten times worse with Himiko. She looked incredible, and she knew it from the second she put that outfit on. I thought back to when she first walked out with it.

“Well? How do I look?” I recalled her asking with one hand on her hip and the other on her blade. Like you could fight the world and win, Himiko. And I want to be there to watch you do it.

“Deku!” Himiko turned around and grinned at me, her mask down around her neck. “You’re not falling behind again, are you? You’re supposed to be the one in charge!”

She was teasing me, but she was right. I wasn’t being very hero-like. Even if things were quiet, we had a job to do as heroes, and me ogling her instead of keeping my eyes on our surroundings wasn’t helpful to us or anyone else. Focus, Deku. Focus!

I’m glad I did. Himiko’s new arrival on the hero scene was already making waves. I picked up little snippets of conversation. “That’s that Deku hero, right? From the war?” “Who’s the hero with him? I’ve never seen her.” “She looks hot.” “Her hair is kind of like that Toga villain…” “I think she looks cool!”

Himiko must have overheard, too—as I caught up with her, I caught her expression changing with each remark we overheard, smiling at the positive ones and ever so slightly gritting her teeth at the nastier ones. Just another downside of hero work—the eye of the public, constantly on you whether you’re out saving lives or out trying to enjoy a quiet moment. Most people are nice, but there are always people who criticize or gossip, too. There wouldn’t have been a market for tabloids like Heroes Unmasked if there weren’t. It was one thing to be accountable to the public—heroes ought to be—but it was another thing for people to take that to mean that the public could tell heroes what to do in every part of their lives. What to wear. How to act. Who to be friends with. Do you know what you’re getting into, Himiko? I wondered. You spent so many years hiding, but being a hero means having a spotlight trained on you all the time. Are you ready for that?

“Woah, you’re a cool-looking hero!” A little boy ran up to Himiko, and she smiled at him.

“You look pretty cool, too, little guy!” she chirped, crouching down to his level while his parents ran after him.

“Are you that Toga girl?” he asked. “You look like her.”

“Yeah!” She put on a smile, but I could see from her face that the question made her a little uncomfortable, poking at her past.

“Aw yeah, you’re a hero now!” He jumped up and down. “That’s so awesome!”

“Now, now, let’s not bother the heroes,” his mother said, gently tugging on his shirt. I wondered how much of that was genuine and how much was them covering for their own fears and conceptions about who Himiko was in her past.

“No, it’s okay!” Himiko replied, waving the boy closer to her. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Shuumei!”

“That’s a nice name!” Himiko grinned again. “Do you want to be a hero, too?”

“That would be so cool!” he answered, pumping his fist. “My mom and dad say I keep getting into trouble, but it’s not my fault—I don’t start fights, I just hate seeing stuff that looks wrong, and I end up fighting with other kids.”

“Aw!” I interjected, bending down next to Himiko. “Well, your heart is definitely in the right place. You’ve just got to think about how what you do hurts others.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he huffed. He clearly didn’t want to talk to me; he was focused squarely on Himiko. “But like, I’m so happy you’re a hero now, Toga! It’s like, if you can go from people thinking you’re bad to being a hero, then I can totally do it, too!”

That put a huge smile on her face—and mine, too. “You bet, Shuumei!” she said, putting her hand out for him. He gave her a high five before his parents gently urged him along.

“Sorry to bother you two,” his mother said.

“No bother at all!” I answered, waving back at them before glancing at Himiko again, standing back up in her new hero outfit. She didn’t just look the part. She acted like it, too. And sure, there were people who might have kept seeing her as a villain, but people were already seeing her evolution, too. Her past was as much a part of her as her present, and to that little boy, they both mattered. I guess you really are ready for the spotlight, Himiko.

“What did you want me to try out, Izuku?”

Himiko was sitting on her desk in her office while I, along with Ochako and Intelli, stood across from her. After a few weeks in her new office, Himiko had started to make it a little more her own, bringing some pictures of the three of us from her apartment to decorate her desk and shelves. In a frame behind her, she had a pair of trading cards—our trading cards. Every year after the hero rankings go live, Kaado Kaisha releases a new set of trading cards for everybody who made the cut. I had dropped from the number one spot after the war, but Ochako and I both still made the top 25 that year, so our hero names were printed in silver foil at the top. Those cards aren’t cheap, I thought. She bought those because she really likes us! Given that my room at home and my office here were both completely covered from top to bottom in All Might merch, I could definitely relate.

I pulled a few vials out of a pouch on my belt. “Well, since you had your quirk awakening, I wanted to test whether you can use other quirks, too.”

“Yeah!” Ochako smiled and nodded, excited. “I mean, if you can transform into other people and use their quirks, you could literally be any hero at any time! You’d be unstoppable!”

“Well, only if I don’t pass out,” she responded. “And, uh…does Intelli have to watch?”

She crossed her arms and gave a tiny, knowing smirk. “If I am going to be as effective as possible as your tactician, I need to know the capabilities and limits of your quirks.” She gestured at me and Ochako. “I know theirs from the quirk registry and from video footage of their fights. But you? Your awakening just happened. We need all the information on your abilities that we can get.”

“She’s right,” I added. “We’re all a team, so we need to know each other’s abilities as much as possible.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Himiko slid herself off of her desk and walked over to me. “So I’m guessing you brought some blood?”

“I did!” I held the vials up. “I asked some friends of mine from UA for blood samples, and five of them agreed.”

“They didn’t think that was weird?” Himiko asked.

“Most of them figured I was asking because of you.” I held up one vial. “Bakugo had a lot to say about it being ‘super weird’ that I wanted his blood, but when I mentioned it was to help you, he came around. He wanted me to tell you he thought it was ‘hard as fuck’ how you went to ‘chew out those pricks at the jail’ after the riot.” I felt everyone’s eyes on me, staring in shock at what I just said. “His words, not mine.”

Himiko smiled and chuckled. “So that vial you’re holding up is his?”

“Yeah!” I handed it to her. “Want to start with this one? Let’s see you transform first, then we can test out his quirk.”

“Sure!” She grinned as she took the vial, unscrewed the cap, and swallowed the blood inside like a shot of hard liquor. A few moments later, she was covered in gray goo for a split second before she reemerged as Bakugo in his hero uniform.

“Cool!” I shouted. “Now, can you use his quirk?”

“Isn’t this space kinda small for that?” she asked.

“Just a little pop of his explosive quirk should be enough. If it works, we can test it for real at the training center.”

She held her hand up and flexed her fingers. Nothing happened.

“Uh…” Himiko stared at her hand like it was a broken kitchen appliance.

“Well, uh…” I scratched my head. “His quirk comes from nitroglycerine in his sweat, so, umm, maybe try exercising a little?”

The rest of us watched as ‘Bakugo’ did jumping jacks in the middle of the office for a good minute, looking very silly all the while. Would this be enough? She held her hand out again. Nothing.

“Seriously!?” Himiko grumbled in her own voice. I knew she could copy other people’s voices if she wanted, but hearing Himiko’s voice coming out of Bakugo was very disorienting.

“Hey, we still have four other vials!” I held out another one. “Try this.”

“Whose is this?” she asked.

“I want to see if your transformation will work if you don’t know whose blood it is,” I said as I tipped the vial closer to her. “Give it a try.”

Still looking like Bakugo, she took the vial from me and downed it, melting into that strange gray sludge before emerging as Kyoka Jiro…completely nude.

“Fuck!” Himiko covered her chest and crotch. “Intelli, don’t look!”

“What’s the matter?” Intelli asked. “This isn’t a logical thing to be reserved about. We’re all adults. It’s nothing that we haven’t already seen.”

“Okay, but it kinda is something you haven’t seen, y’know?” Himiko snapped back. “Just…I don’t know, look away while I get a shirt or something.”

She dug around in a drawer and pulled out a sweater, beige like the one she used to wear when she was younger, and slipped it on. Jiro was a few centimeters shorter than Himiko, so her sweater covered her hips—barely.

“Intelli, you can turn around now,” Ochako said once ‘Jiro’ was clothed. “Uh, Himiko, is there any reason why you couldn’t make Jiro’s clothes?”

“I mean, I can do it if I know what the person wears or what they look like,” she explained. “So even if I take blood from a stranger, I can copy their clothes if I see them. But if it’s mystery blood, then the only thing I know about that person is, ‘This is their blood.’ That’s it. And I can’t just make up clothes out of nothing.”

“Sorry about that, Himiko,” I whimpered, embarrassed that I had basically made her get naked in front of a stranger. “If you feel ready, do you think you could try using Jiro’s quirk to listen in on what’s happening in the other room?”

She tapped her earphone jacks against the wall separating her office from the bullpen next door. If Jiro’s quirk transferred, I thought, she should be able to pick out what’s happening on the other side.

Himiko shook her head. “Nothing. I could probably hear better if I literally just put my ear against the wall.”

Ugh. Another dud! We tried again with another vial. “This one’s Mina’s,” I said as I handed it to her. She swallowed it and transformed, a perfect facsimile of Mina in her hero outfit, complete with her pink hair and skin—but no acid quirk.

“Maybe Denki’s blood?” Another vial of blood swallowed, and another transformation. She sported Denki’s lemon yellow hair with a black bolt zigzag on the side, and she had his full hero outfit copied down to his sunglasses. When she tried to make sparks come out of her fingers, though, there was absolutely nothing.

“Let’s try this last one,” I said. “This is Toru Hagakure’s blood.”

“I don’t think I met her.” Himiko took the vial from me. “And is this vial empty? Where’s her blood?”

“Oh, it’s in there. Give it a shake.” I watched as she did; we could hear the swish of liquid inside. “Her quirk is invisibility, so she’s basically always invisible. Even if you haven’t seen her, you should be totally out of sight to us once you transform.”

“If you say so…”

She seemed unsure, but she opened the vial and swallowed the invisible blood anyway, disappearing into the gray goo before reemerging, completely visible to us, as a pale girl with pearlescent yellowish-green hair falling past her shoulders. And, once again, no clothes.

“Are you kidding me!?” She hurriedly covered herself up again.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I bowed as deeply as I could bow. “I really thought you’d be invisible!”

“I don’t get it…” Ochako put her finger to her chin as Himiko transformed back into her ordinary self. “Mina told us that when she overuses her quirk, her skin loses that pink color. She said it happened in the war once. So why was she able to transform and stay pink as Mina, but she couldn’t stay invisible as Toru?”

“By my estimation, it is likely a question of what the core component of her target’s quirk is.” Intelli adjusted her monocle and sat up as she spoke. “Mina’s pinkness isn’t her quirk per se—it’s just a byproduct of her core quirk, which is producing acid, so Toga-san can replicate her pink skin. Toru’s quirk is her invisibility, so Toga-san was unable to replicate that part of her appearance because it is the very essence of the quirk.”

“So why can’t she use those quirks here when she could use them in the exam?” Ochako asked.

“I have several theories…” Intelli smirked. “…but I want to test them—and for that, one of you two needs to give her some blood.”

Ochako and I looked at each other and nodded. “Himiko…here.” I held out my left pinky finger. “You can have some.”

I watched her eyes glisten as a smile spread across her face. This is what she loves, I thought. It must be a dream for her. She bit down on my pinky with a satisfied chomp, drawing blood and lapping it up with her tongue before vanishing into a gray mass and reappearing as me.

“Now, try using Blackwhip,” Intelli said, holding up a pen.

We all watched as she shot Blackwhip out of her hand, ensnaring the pen that Intelli was holding and wrenching it away from her.

“Woah…” I was amazed. After all of the duds, it was like being back at the license exam and seeing her use other quirks for the first time.

Intelli flashed a wry smile. “Looks like that confirms my primary theory,” she said. “Like I suspected, your ability to use quirks is tied to your knowledge of and closeness to the person whose quirk you want to use.”

“But she knew the quirks of almost everyone else we tried,” Ochako responded.

“It isn’t knowledge of the quirk—it’s knowledge of the person.” She turned to Himiko. “Does that sound right, Toga-san?”

“I think it’s…almost right,” she answered as she transformed back once again. Intelli scowled, clearly not happy with being almost right. “When I think about the things that made me able to use your quirks…I think about all these emotions inside of me when I think about you. About becoming you. And I feel something that’s totally different than with other people. So I think when it comes to using other quirks…” She took a deep breath and smiled. “…I think I can only use the quirks of people that I love.”

“Only the quirks of people that I love.” I felt my heart racing. That’s Ochako. That’s me. She really does love us!

“Hm. I guess that makes sense.” Intelli tapped her cheek, clearly still grumpy. “In any case, I still would like to get a better sense of exactly what makes you able to use some quirks but not others. If you undergo any training, I likely won’t be able to be there in person, but I would like to see notes and recordings.”

“We can definitely do that,” I answered. “And that reminds me, Himiko! Since you didn’t have any formal training, it’s probably a good idea to make sure you get that, especially since we need to figure out how to make the most of this new side of your quirk.”

“So more sparring!?” Himiko almost jumped when I said that. “I’d love to! Let’s do it!”

“Well, we definitely can spar some more, but I meant having an actual teacher.” I brushed my hair as I worked through my thoughts. “And as much as I’d love to do that, it really wouldn’t be possible with me and Ochako both working full time. I mean, I spent a lot of hours just coming up with ways to help you for your HeroSET and license exam. I don’t think I could put together a whole training course for you.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Himiko answered. “I still wanna spar with you two, though.”

“We’ll do that, Himiko,” Ochako reassured her, laying a hand on her shoulder.

I nodded. “Definitely. And I might not be able to run your training, Himiko…but I can think of someone who could.”

More staff at the agency meant more meetings. Every Monday, Sojo had a bunch of us gather in the conference room to talk through important information for the week ahead, and he insisted that all of the heroes be there. I didn’t mind so much, but Himiko was definitely not a fan. Ochako and Himiko always sat on either side of me at every meeting, and while Ochako and I took notes, I always caught Himiko doodling in her notepad. I glanced over that day and saw her drawing a little sketch of her getting kisses on her cheeks from me and Ochako. She’s so cute!

“Okay, let’s go ahead and get started.” Sojo leaned forward in his seat. “We have a lot to get through. Miyamoto-san, did you want to start us off with government affairs and heroics contracts?”

He gestured to one of our office staff, who opened up her portfolio and pulled out a couple of news printouts. “Absolutely, Sojo-san. The big update on the government affairs side of the ledger is that there’s finally a coalition in the Diet. It took a few months, but Murayama managed to pull in the center-left Alliance for Harmony and the center-right Popular Democratic Party. Hopefully, this should straighten out some of the chaos that’s been happening at the commission, but to be honest, I don’t expect that this coalition will hold for long, so don’t be shocked if we get more political turmoil in the next twelve months, especially with the New Tartarus Movement leading the opposition.”

A new cabinet—finally! Ever since our first encounter with Tetsunoten, I’d been worried about him and his followers. After the election, everything was in limbo while the parties argued over who should be in charge. It’s bad enough that he sent an angry mob to try and kill people and basically got away with it, I thought. But at least they didn’t give him a cabinet position on top of that.

“Will this affect our contracts?” Sojo asked.

“Not directly,” she answered. “The biggest barrier is just how busy the commission has been. I’ve kept an eye out for private contracts for things like security, but those tend not to pay as well. Deku and Uravity aren’t small-time heroes, so they can make more just from rescues and captures while they’re on patrol, and since Toga is just a sidekick, it would take something pretty out of the ordinary for her to get a contract on her own.”

I saw Himiko frown out of the corner of my eye. Just a sidekick. The word just lingered in the air like cigarette smoke. She wasn’t “just” anything.

“A fair point—thank you for that.” Sojo nodded, then turned to our staffer in charge of finances. “Ikeda-san? Do you have updates on our cash flow?”

He picked his head up. “Right now, we’re ever so slightly net positive—Deku and Uravity’s hero payouts are sufficient to cover our operating expenses while we arrange other contracts and wait for merchandise sales and royalties from Shonen Leap’s project.”

As soon as he mentioned merchandise, Himiko picked up her head and smiled. She wants to get her hands on more merch of us. That made me smile, too.

“Projections are difficult without any movement on contracts, since the payments from ad hoc hero work aren’t forecastable,” he continued. “Still, by my estimate, we can expect just 2.1 percent annualized growth over the next fiscal quarter…”

As he spoke, Himiko’s head dropped back down. She didn’t like meetings, but she hated the numbers the most. Ochako, though, was scribbling notes down as he rattled off financial numbers. She still wants to send money to her parents, I thought. She never forgot about giving back to them.

“Thank you for that report.” Sojo tapped his finger on the table as he thought. “You mentioned the Shonen Leap project. Their writer, Gakayama…she’ll be back a few more times for interviews with Deku and Uravity. I’d like scheduling for that to run through communications. Kawakami-san, can you handle that?”

At the other end of the table, our communications associate nodded.

“Good,” Sojo continued. “What about endorsements, Hidaka-san? Any word on those?”

Now it was Ochako’s turn to perk up. Endorsements were where the big money was in hero work.

“I’m working on a few promising leads, but I don’t want to jinx anything.” Our endorsement contract specialist tossed her hair back over her shoulder and smiled as she spoke. “All I’ll say is that we could have two deals in the works—one around a major sporting event, and another around a cosmetics company—but that’s all I’ll say until we have a draft agreement. Some others are still basically in the rumor stages, but I’ll keep working on those”

“Fair enough,” he replied. “Keep me posted if anything comes through. Do we have anything else?”

I put my hand up. “Sojo-san, with Himi-” No first names here, Izuku—strictly business. “With Toga coming on as a full-time sidekick, I was wondering if we could bring on someone to help put together a training plan for her. Uravity and I had three years of formal training, but I think she would do really well if she had someone to help her train like the two of us did.”

Sojo rubbed the side of his head. “Hmm…based on what we just heard from Ikeda-san, with our finances, I don’t know that we have the funding for another full-time hire right now. Even if we did, we don’t even have office space to give them.”

“It doesn’t have to be full time,” I replied. “Even having someone for just a few hours a week would be a huge help.”

He raised his eyebrows and looked at the ceiling as he thought. “A part-time hire? I think that can work.” He opened a notepad and started writing. “I can ask HR to put out a vacancy notice today, but—”

“Actually, Sojo-san, I already had someone in mind.” Ochako and Himiko gave me a knowing look. We had already talked about who I was thinking of. “If he’ll do it, I say we should bring him on right away.”

“Who did you want?” Sojo asked.

As soon as I gave his name, everyone at the table started murmuring in agreement. “Oh, that would be amazing .” “Would he do it?” “If anyone can bring him on, it’s Deku.”

Sojo put his hand out, signaling for everyone else to settle down. “If that’s what you want to do, Deku, we can get moving on that and see if he’s willing to join. Did you want to give him a call now?” I nodded. “Well, if there’s nothing from anyone else, we can end this meeting now—but I’d like HR and all of the heroes to stay here for this call. So Deku, Uravity, Toga, and Shimada-san, please stay behind. Everyone else, check your emails in the next hour for a recap. Thank you, everyone.”

The others stood up, bowed, and filed out, leaving just five of us: me, Ochako, Himiko, and Sojo, plus our HR specialist. I leaned over to dial a phone number on the conference telephone in the center, and listened with everyone else as it rang. Please pick up, please pick up, please pick up…

I heard a click, and then a familiar monotone voice. “Moshi moshi.” Yes!

“Aizawa-sensei, this is Izuku Midoriya,” I said, smiling. “Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

“Ah, yes, Midoriya-san.” He sounded tired, like he had just woken up…but then again, he always sounded like that.

“First of all, I was wondering if you ended up taking that job at the commission full time.”

I heard Aizawa’s tired sigh through the phone. “No, I didn’t. It wasn’t for me—I can’t just score exams and not be a part of students’ growth. I’m back at UA, but I’m in a reduced role as a training counselor and planner. I just don’t have the strength that I used to have to actually lead training.”

“I wanted to ask you about that, Aizawa-sensei.” I took a breath, nervous. If he’s taking a step back from training at UA…what if he doesn’t want to train Himiko? Or what if he physically can’t? “Do you remember Himiko Toga from the most recent license exam?”

“Ah, Himiko Toga!” His voice picked up, like he was genuinely happy or intrigued at hearing her name. “Yes, of course. I couldn’t possibly forget. She’s at your agency now, is she not?”

“I am, yeah!” Himiko chirped.

“Congratulations again,” he said. “I was very impressed with your performance—and I’m sure Midoriya-san and Uraraka-san can tell you that I am not someone who is easily impressed.”

“Well, the thing I wanted to ask you…I think you know this, but Toga-san didn’t get the same kind of training that all of us at UA got, and we wanted somebody to help her train and improve her skills.” All eyes were on me as I made my ask. “And I wanted you to be that person, sensei.”

The line was silent for a moment or two, and I was worried that we had lost him. “Hmm…you know I can’t do anything full time while I’m working at UA. And I absolutely can’t do any kind of sparring or physical training with her—that’s out of the question.”

“That’s fine, sensei!” I interjected. “Even just a few hours a week would be a huge help, and all you’d have to do is plan out her training and observe from time to time. We’d pay you as well, of course.”

Silence again. Is he thinking of whether to accept our offer? Or just mulling over how to say no to us? I was so nervous. That silence felt like a weight hanging over all of us.

“I’m not doing this as a favor to you, Midoriya-san,” he answered. “But I do want you to succeed. And I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to continue to be a part of helping the next generation of heroes. So to answer your question: yes, I will help train Toga-san.”

I jumped up from my chair and punched the air above me, holding back a shout. Ochako was all smiles, too. He said yes!! This is going to be just perfect for her!

“I likely can’t do more than ten hours a week,” he continued. “Probably two weekly three-hour training sessions, plus another four hours a week on my own to build out her training plan and study her progress. But if she is willing to put in the work—and it will be a lot of work—I’ll gladly do it.”

“Thank you so much, Aizawa-sensei,” I beamed, absolutely relieved.

“I won’t let you down!” Himiko added.

We said our goodbyes and hung up, and as soon as I ended the call, the three of us cheered. Himiko was getting the kind of training that only a UA teacher could give—the very best there was, for the very best hero at our side. You’ve got this, Himiko, I thought. You’ve got this.

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Two years before the present

The three of us always split up on our patrols. Every other day, I’d switch from being paired up with Izuku to being paired up with Ochako. I wished the three of us could all patrol together, but it wouldn’t be smart, and I knew it. If heroes were all buddied up in the same place, it wouldn’t make the rest of the city very safe, would it? But they both still wanted me to be with at least one of them, since I was still technically a sidekick. Besides, it meant spending more time with them, and I always wanted that. It’s the one thing about being a sidekick that I wished would never end. I knew that, as soon as I went from my provisional license to my full one, we wouldn’t really be going on patrols together—at least, not every day, like we did back then.

It was an Ochako day, so the two of us waved goodbye to Izuku in front of the train station before heading our separate ways. Once we got to the farthest part of our patrol area, Ochako put her hand up to her headpiece.

“Intelli, this is Uravity. Radio check—how do you copy?” Even when she was speaking in such a buttoned-up way like she did on the radio, she still sounded so graceful, as if her words themselves were smiling.

Her voice came over our earpieces. “Uravity, Intelli copies you loud and clear from HQ.” She always sounded so polished. Her voice sounded like money and power. At first, I didn’t like that at all…but I learned to hear her voice and know that I had another person looking out for me, and that felt pretty good.

“I’m starting my patrol with Toga,” Ochako continued, her voice still like honey as it reached my ears. “We’ll radio in with any updates.”

“Understood. I’ll advise on any incidents near your location. Intelli out.”

Ochako smiled and nodded at me, and we started walking our route, heading up a busy shopping street as people walked past us on either side. Some people stopped and looked at us, and I could overhear little bits of conversation. They were talking about us, gushing about seeing heroes in their neighborhood. That put a smile on my face. It was nice to be seen in public and not have to worry so much about what people thought. Sure, there were going to be some people who saw me and still looked at me as a villain, but I could already feel it changing. Maybe it was the new outfit, or maybe it was being seen actually patrolling with heroes, but amazingly, people were starting to like me. I almost couldn’t believe it.

“You ready for your training session this afternoon, Toga?” I wish she could call me Himiko when we were out, but being in hero outfits meant using hero names. Nothing cutesy.

“I think so!” Even though I had no clue what to expect, I felt ready.

“It’s just…Aizawa-sensei…he’s a tough teacher.” She lowered her gaze. “He worked us really hard at UA, you know. He’s notoriously tough. Apparently, he expelled a whole class once.”

“Really?”

“He threatened Deku with expulsion—on his first day.”

“Really!?” The thought of Izuku being expelled was unbelievable to me. How? Izuku is so great!

“He has really high standards for his students, Toga. And he’s really committed to us improving as much as we possibly can.” Ochako pushed the crosswalk button as we waited to cross a busy road. “That training camp—you know, the one where you, uh…where we first met you?”

“Yeah?” I frowned. I still didn’t like thinking about how I had attacked them back then.

“Well, that was an intensive program for all of us as students to improve our quirks. Aizawa worked us like crazy then. He made me float the heaviest things that I could float without any support gear until I got sick, and then I had to do it all over again. He made Aoyama fire his laser into the sky until he got sick. He made Jiro shove her earphone jacks into solid rock, he made Mina produce as much acid as she possibly could to build up the strength of her skin, he made Kaminari shoot electricity into a battery again and again to increase his energy output…the things he made us do wore us all out.”

The light changed, and we stepped out into the intersection. I listened to the sound of Ochako’s heeled boots clicking against the pavement. I always liked that sound. Her sound.

“I’m just saying, it’s gonna be tough,” she continued. “And it’ll make you a much, much stronger hero, but I just want you to know what to expect.”

I smiled back at her. “Don’t worry, Uravity. I got this. I mean, you know how tough my life has been so far. What’s the worst he can do to me?”

She closed her eyes and winced. She doesn’t believe me, I thought. Does she think I’m not tough enough to take it? After all I’d been through? She ended up being right, but I didn’t know that.

“I said don’t worry!” I insisted. “It’s not like it’s gonna—”

We heard the sound of tires screeching and a car horn honking—a car was speeding towards the crosswalk, and it didn’t look like it was going to stop.

“Out of the way!” Ochako shouted as we both hurriedly shoved people onto the sidewalk. Not a second too soon. It slammed into the back of another car that was waiting for the light to change, and that one lurched forward and into a light pole. The metal crunched as the first car hit the second, and as the second hit the pole. A couple of people on that side of the street screamed as they dived out of the way. Then, it was silent. For half a second, everyone just stood around, in shock at what happened. Including me…but not Ochako. I saw her looking around at everything, sizing up what had just happened immediately. That’s why you’re the pro and I’m the sidekick, Ochako. I still have a lot to learn.

I followed Ochako’s lead, and we looked at the damage. Luckily, nobody on the sidewalk was hit, and the guy in the car that was waiting at the light was able to get out on his own…but the light pole he hit was barely staying up, and the car that had lost control and caused the crash was smoking. The driver wasn’t getting out.

“Oh no…” Ochako ran up to the light pole and put her hand up to her communicator. “Intelli! Two-vehicle crash, my location. Start rescue!” She turned to me. “Toga, check the other car!”

“Got it!”

As I heard Intelli radio something back to us, I ran over to the car as it sat in the middle of the street, black smoke coming from under the hood. The driver wasn’t moving. I tried the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge. Dammit. We have to get him out of there! No time to waste—I pulled out my knife and flipped it around, bashing the butt of it against the window and shattering it before using the dull side of the blade to clear away the broken glass. On my left, I heard the sound of metal heaving. The light pole!

Before I could do anything, Ochako was already there, jumping up to touch it with all five fingers. “I’ve got it, Toga,” she shouted at me as the light pole floated in midair. “Keep doing what you’re doing!”

I nodded back at her and reached into the car, opening the door and using my knife to cut his seatbelt. He wasn’t moving, and his face was all smashed, but when I put a hand against his wrist, I felt a pulse. Okay, that’s good. Now let’s get him out. With one hand under each armpit, I heaved him out of the car and onto the ground while Ochako talked to the other driver. That one looked confused and scared, but pretty much okay. My person, though…he was bleeding from his chest. Not good. I cut his shirt open with one hand as I unzipped the storage pouches on my costume with the other to pull out bandages and gauze. Looks like it’s not a deep cut. No organs damaged that I can see. Lucky guy. As I started to bandage him, his eyes slowly opened.

“Shuumei…”

The kid from before? Fuck—this is his dad! I hadn’t recognized his face with how messed up it was in the crash, but it was definitely him.

“My son…he’s in the back…is he out?” he murmured, barely conscious.

Dammit! I never checked the back seat!

“Don’t you worry,” I said as calmly as I could while I finished bandaging him. “We’ll help him.”

“Mmmmm…” He didn’t say another word as his eyes closed again.

I need to move fast, I thought to myself. “Uravity! Look after him—there’s someone else in the car!” I jumped back up and rushed to the back seat of the wrecked car as Ochako took my place. “Intelli, where’s the ambulance?” I radioed.

“They’re dispatched,” came her calm reply. “You’re patched in on Fire Ops Channel 1.”

Another voice came over the radio. “Engine 15 to Toga and Uravity, en route, one minute away. You have two medic units en route to you as well.”

Not too much longer. I just have to find that boy. Make sure he’s alive. Keep him okay until more help gets here. But that meant I had to move, because now it wasn’t just smoke coming from under the hood now. Orange flames poked out, and there was a pop from the engine that made the crumpled hood of the car jolt up, making the fire at the front of the car even larger. I’m running out of time! Luckily, the back door opened without a problem, and I looked inside. Shuumei wasn’t in his seat. He was crumpled on the floor with an awful gash in his head. Come on, come on, please don’t be dead…

I felt his neck. Still alive, thank goodness. But he can’t stay in this car if it’s on fire! I thought through what to do. I couldn’t let him die in the back of that car. Think, Himiko, you know what to do. You know first aid. You know how the body works. Head injury means you gotta keep his head as still as possible, but he needs to move, so…

I needed Ochako’s zero gravity, but she was still looking after his dad. Well, then, it has to be me. My blood processor had Ochako’s blood already stored, and I toggled it to feed a tiny amount up to my mask—just enough for me to transform for a minute or two. That would be plenty. I morphed into her and put my hands on him again, and he floated, weightless, off the floor. “Let’s get you out of here, little guy,” I whispered. In the distance, I heard sirens getting closer. Soon, Shuumei. I gently lowered him back onto the ground and took out my bandages again.

“Agh…” he moaned as I started to wrap gauze over the gash in his head. “Are you…”

I let part of my transformation slip away, showing my face to him while keeping Ochako’s body. “I’m Toga. You’re gonna be okay, Shuumei. I’m here.”

“Toga…” Shuumei’s face looked like he was in pain, but when he saw me, I swear he smiled. He remembers me from before!

“That’s me,” I said, leaning over him and smiling back as I wrapped his head in bandages.

“You…nnngh…” He was definitely fighting to stay awake through the pain. “You remember me…?”

“Wouldn’t ever forget, Shuumei.”

I turned around as I heard the sirens right behind me. An ambulance pulled up, followed by a fire truck and another ambulance. The doors flew open, and paramedics and firefighters rushed out. I finished transforming back into myself. My work here was done.

“Fuck, is that…!?” One of the paramedics dropped his bag as soon as he saw my face. Guess I still have a bad reputation.

His partner wasn’t so scared, though. He saw me and Ochako and put the pieces together. “You heroes did well,” he said. “Can you brief us on injuries?”

I pointed at the father. “A cut on his chest, but it didn’t look deep. He’s not conscious, but he was talking earlier.”

“And the boy?”

I frowned. “Big gash on his head. He was talking earlier, but he’s out now, too. I found him on the floor—he might’ve been messing with his seatbelt when they crashed.”

“Got it.” The paramedic who dropped his bag picked it back up and ran over to Shuumei. He looked at me and smiled. “You heroes did well. We’ll get it from here.”

“Heroes.” Me, a hero. Not just on my license, but for real, in an actual emergency. Me! A hero! I couldn’t believe it!

Ochako pulled the light pole that she floated down to the ground before releasing it, letting it fall the last few centimeters to the ground. Once the police arrived, we gave them our story about what happened before moving on, finishing out the rest of our patrol a few hours later without anything else wild happening.

“How’d it feel?” Ochako asked me as we got close to the training center. “You know, your first pro rescue?”

“I mean…” I thought about it. It was nothing super world-changing—just a nasty car crash. But I was still scared. Not for me, but for the people I was trying to save. “It’s nothing like what you and Deku did during the war, but it still felt like a lot.”

“Hey, you did really well, though.” She smiled at me, and I felt warm even in that cool October air. “Seriously, I’m proud of you.”

“Well, you’re the one who stopped the light pole from collapsing on us,” I shot back, bouncing her praise back at her.

“And you’re the one who actually got those two people out of that burning car!” Okay, Ochako, you win this round. “And you even got to use your quirk to do it!”

“I got to use your quirk, Uravity.”

She smiled at that. “That’s pretty cool, huh? You know, it made me really happy to see you using my quirk and Izuku’s that first time.”

“It did?”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “You always talked about loving someone so much that you become them, so…I just thought about how happy that must have made you.”

You have no idea, Ochako. I couldn’t have been happier.

“Anyway…I have a couple more hours of patrolling to do, but you have training,” Ochako said as we got to the main doors of the training center. “And Aizawa’s gonna track me down and smack me on the head if I make you late, so don’t be late!”

“You’re silly!” I stuck my tongue out at her. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

As I went in, she took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Do your best, okay?”

I nodded. “I will, trust me. I’ll be fine.”

Doubled over on the floor of the training room we were given, throwing up into a trash can, I was definitely not fine.

“When you’re recovered,” Aizawa said, “get a drink, then come back here and run through the reps again.”

Again!? This was the third time in a row, and I just made myself sick! Ochako wasn’t kidding about him. She tried to warn me. Aizawa had me drink a full vial each of her and Izuku’s blood, then switch as quickly as possible transforming between the two of them while using their quirks. 30 seconds of floating as much weight as I could with Ochako’s quirk, transform, 30 seconds of swinging around using Izuku’s Blackwhip, transform, and repeat. We cycled through a bunch of Izuku’s One for All quirks: Blackwhip, Smoke, Fa Jin, and even Danger Sense (he brought a pitching machine and shot baseballs at my head at 150 kilometers an hour!). I was on my third cycle when my body couldn’t take it any more.

“Are you finished?” he asked, standing over me once my stomach had finally settled and I pulled myself off of the lip of the trash can. He handed me a bottle of Bocari Sweat. “Rehydrate. You need fluids if you’re going to continue.”

“I can’t even think about that right now,” I murmured, still in pain.

“Well, we’re only halfway through our session, Toga-san, and I need to see what you’re capable of. So once you’ve had enough to drink, get moving.”

I barely had time to swallow the light blue liquid I had been given and wash out the gross taste in my mouth before I was back on my feet. Aizawa really is working me hard, I thought as I stumbled over, still feeling weak. Ochako was right. I wasn’t ready.

“From the beginning,” he said. “Start with Uraraka and zero gravity.”

I sighed and transformed, for yet another time, into Ochako. It stopped being fun, and I didn’t even think that was possible.

“Thirty seconds. Float as many weights as you can. Go.”

I sprinted around the room, activating zero gravity on the ten 200-kilogram weights that were scattered around. When I was transformed, it was fine—Ochako could use her quirk up to three tonnes, so while I was her, I could too.

“Time’s up. Release and transform back.”

Okay, Himiko, deep breath, and… “Release.”

The weights tumbled down and clanged on the hard floor, echoing off the concrete walls. Then came the bad part. I transformed back, and moments later, the fatigue hit me in all my muscles. I fell to my knees.

“Now, transform into Midoriya. We’ll do 30 seconds of Fa Jin.”

Come on, Himiko, pull it together! I focused and morphed myself into Izuku. How did Aizawa manage to take me transforming into my favorite people and make that feel like punishment!? But I had to go through with it. I bent and extended my legs ten times, then jumped, touching the ceiling with my hands before dropping back down.

“Transform back.”

I knew the pain that was waiting for me. I didn’t want that again.

“I…I can’t, Aizawa.”

He scowled—he was mad. I saw his one good eye glow red ever so briefly as he stared at me, and my Izuku form immediately melted off my body as he canceled my quirk for a split second. Just long enough to force me to switch back to my normal form. Fuck, here comes the pain…

“I am not your friend, Toga-san,” he lectured. “I’m not here to be your friend. I am your teacher. Just because you aren’t a UA student, just because you’re an adult and not a child, doesn’t mean I don’t expect you to listen to my instructions and act like you’re here to learn.” He walked over to me while I was still on all fours on the ground. “You’ll address me as sensei or Aizawa-sensei when you’re with me. Understood, Toga-san?”

Just say it, Himiko, I thought to myself as another wave of aches and pains hit me. You don’t have to like saying it, but just say it. “Yes, Aizawa-sensei.”

He crossed his arms. “You impressed me during the exam, Toga-san. Was I wrong to be impressed?”

“No, Aizawa-sensei.”

“Is this really the best you can do?”

I picked my head up and let myself flop backwards, lying on my back and staring at the ceiling. “Right now it is! My body can’t take it!”

Aizawa kneeled down to my level. “Then we’ll build your body up until it can. That’s why we’re here.”

“But I—”

“You don’t have to be here,” he said, pointing at the door at the far end of the room. “You’re not a prisoner. You can walk out of this room at any time and go back to the agency. You can go home. You can do anything you want.”

He paused, as if he actually expected me to get up and walk out. A part of my brain, the part that didn’t want to be dizzy and nauseous and in pain, honestly wanted to.

“But I don’t think you actually want to leave, Toga-san,” he continued. “Do you want to stay a sidekick forever? Or do you want to be a hero?”

I took a deep breath. “I want to be a hero.”

“You want to be like Midoriya and Uraraka?”

“As much as I can be,” I said.

“Then we need to build up your endurance,” he said, extending his hand to me. “Expand and push against the limits of your quirk. Make new limits. That is how you will improve. Did they ever tell you about UA’s motto? ‘Go Beyond…’”

“…‘Plus Ultra,’” I replied through gritted teeth as I took his hand and he pulled me up.

He nodded. “Exactly. We don’t let ourselves be defined by our limits or our constraints. I know you don’t. You didn’t let yourself be bound up by your past or by people who told you the things you can’t do. So don’t do the same thing to yourself, Toga-san. Keep pushing.” He put his hands in his pockets and tilted his head. “Now. We’re doing this set of reps again, from the top. Transform.”

He didn’t go easy on me that day—or any day after that. It was painful. It was brutal. But when Izuku said that he knew the perfect person to train me, he was exactly right. My body might have been screaming in pain, but Aizawa made me do exactly what I needed to do to be the best hero I could be.

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Two years before the present

Denki leaned back, sticking his head through the curtains separating our table from the rest of the izakaya to call out to our waiter for more alcohol. “Hey! Let’s get another round of beers!”

A bunch of us were huddled around a table in an izakaya side room—I had already planned on going with Izuku, Himiko, and Intelli, but it morphed into an even bigger gathering when Denki and Jiro tagged along, then Toru, then Bakugo. All eight of us just barely fit around the table, and it was hard to figure out spacing when we literally couldn’t see one of our friends at all.

“Another round of beers, coming up!” our waiter shouted back before disappearing behind the crowded bar.

Jiro turned to him. “You do know we have hero work to do tomorrow, right?”

“Come on!” he whined back. “We never get time to ourselves, and this is probably the first time we’ve all been together like this since UA!”

“Yeah!” Toru chirped. She was at the far end of the table, only identifiable by the blouse and office slacks she was wearing—of course, they looked like they were floating in midair. “So much has happened—we’ve just got to talk about it!”

“It’s true.” Jiro leaned across the table while Bakugo alternated between nursing his beer and ferociously tearing at his yakitori skewer next to her. “How’s the agency going? You seem like you’ve been really successful!”

I could feel myself blushing. “Oh, you know, we’re just pretty lucky…”

“You’re much too modest,” Intelli said, leaning over to smirk at me while swirling a wine glass. “Do you know how rare it is for independent hero agencies to succeed? Do you know how much rarer it is for people our age to even start them?”

Now I was really flustered. I never did compliments well. “I mean…”

“And you’ve been training a bunch, right Toga-san?” Toru asked.

“Just Himiko is fine!” She smiled and took a bite of her yakitori.

“Yeah, how has your training been going, Himiko?” Izuku leaned over my shoulder to ask her.

“Ugh. Ochako-chan, you were right—Aizawa is such a tough teacher,” Himiko groaned as she leaned her head back. “I’m still sore.”

“Woah, woah, back up. You have our Aizawa teaching you?” Denki asked, shocked.

Izuku ignored the question and asked his own. “What’s your training focused on?”

“He wants me to work on three things,” she said, sliding the rest of her yakitori off of its skewer. “The first thing is just getting stronger to avoid quirk exhaustion. That’s what he said was the most important thing, so I’ve just been using your quirks as much as possible before I get too tired.”

I frowned at that. We saw how ruined that left her when she was in her exam. But Aizawa knows what he’s doing, I thought. He made all of us work super hard at the training camp, and yeah, I got sick a lot, but I wouldn’t be as strong a hero as I am now if it wasn’t for that.

“Second, he wants me to try and extend how long I can stay transformed with the same amount of blood,” she continued. “That’ll make things easier for missions where I have to go undercover. I can’t just take as much blood as I want, so I’ve gotta make the most of what I can use.”

“That makes sense,” Jiro said.

“And the third thing?” I asked.

“We don’t know if it’s possible, but…” Himiko leaned in and told us about Aizawa’s ambitious-sounding plan for her training.

“Oh, if you can do that, you’d absolutely kick ass!” Bakugo shouted.

“For sure!” Izuku looked excited. “You’d be unbelievably powerful!”

“Well, we still don’t know if I can actually do it,” she said. “It’s just his theory—it hasn’t actually worked yet. But since I can transform part of myself, he thinks it could work, so we’re gonna keep trying once I’ve done more with the first two things.”

The waiter came through the curtain with a full tray. “Another round of beers for the table! Plus another glass of wine for the lady right here, and some takoyaki for the table.”

He passed out the drinks and set the octopus balls in the center. I caught Himiko glancing at her half-empty beer glass as the waiter set down another full one next to it. Bakugo scoffed when Intelli got her second glass of wine.

“What’s with you? Who the hell orders wine at a place like this? You too fancy for us?”

She lifted her glass with a gloved hand and shot him a glance as she smiled. “Some of us just have standards. Something I’m sure you know very little about.”

“The fuck did you just say to me!?” I swear I could see a vein pop in his forehead. “I’ll blast you right through the wall if you don’t shut your mouth!”

We all laughed at that. Some things never change.

“Oh, Toru!” I turned to her, wiping my eyes after crying from laughing so hard. “You got promoted from your internship right?”

“Yeah!” We couldn’t tell if she was smiling, but from her intonation, she sounded like she was. “She said she was super excited to make me an associate at her agency.”

“That’s huge!” Izuku exclaimed. “Let’s toast to that!”

We all raised our glasses towards the center of the table. “Kanpai!”

All of us took a long drink—or in Intelli’s case, a dignified sip.

“I’m really happy about this,” Toru continued. “Cirrus is such a talented hero and a fantastic boss. I really want to keep working with her.”

“Cirrus?” Himiko turned to look at us, confused.

Intelli didn’t miss a beat. “Kenuna Kumosei. Hero name: Cirrus. Quirk: Vapor Form — She can transform herself into water vapor, making herself able to fit through any opening large enough to allow air to pass through.”

Bakugo rolled his eyes at her. “Okay, Miss Exposition, got anything else obvious you wanna say to us to show how fuckin’ smart you are?” Yikes—we’re definitely not seating those two across from each other if we do this again.

“Kacchan!” Izuku sounded defensive, like he was hurt on Himiko’s behalf. Honestly, I kind of was, too—I wasn’t going to just let that slide.

“I get that all the rest of us are familiar with Cirrus,” I said, “but Himiko’s been focused on her HeroSET studies and her training—she’s not going to know every single hero.”

“It’s really impressive, Toru,” Izuku said, scooting forward and leaning over towards our invisible friend. “Ranked eighth in the country, and the number one hero in the infiltration category. Her agency is perfect for you, and being an associate must mean a huge pay bump! Plus, you’ll get to run way more solo missions than any intern could!”

“Ugh, you’re both such fucking nerds!” Bakugo grumbled. “Intelli and Izuku, just a couple of walking encyclopedias. Fucking perfect for each other.”

That made me cringe a little, and I didn’t know why. I was okay with him and Himiko dating—no, I was actually hoping for it, so that all three of us could be in a relationship together. He said I could date other people, and I said he could. So why did even the suggestion that he and Intelli might be interested in each other feel like someone zapped my heart with a cattle prod?

“Dude, come on, can’t you lighten up?” Denki said, patting Bakugo’s shoulder. “This is supposed to be fun!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, battery boy.” He took another drink.

Toru leaned forward—or at least, from what we could see of her clothes, she looked like she did. “I just feel really lucky I get to work with her.” Her voice sounded so wistful. I’m sure if we could see her face, she would have been blushing. “That internship came from out of nowhere, and I was so unbelievably happy—and now this? It’s like a dream come true!”

Hearing Toru say that made me smile, and I noticed Himiko smiling next to me, too. We’re all following our dreams, I thought. We’re all making them come true together.

“Maybe we’ll be working together someday, Toru-chan!” Himiko answered excitedly. “I mean, both of our quirks are really great for stealth.”

“That’s true!” she shouted back, waving around a couple of takoyaki balls that looked like they were floating in midair in her invisible hands. “Maybe someday we can do a team-up mission!”

Himiko flashed a huge smile at that. It felt so good to know that she was making friends aside from me and Izuku. See, Himiko? People really do like you!

As we all kept talking and drinking and snacking, Himiko finished off her first drink before sliding herself off the bench. “Gotta pee!” she shouted back at us. “Don’t let them take my stuff, okay?”

She slipped through the curtains into the main room to find the toilet. As I watched her leave, I sighed as I put my hand on Izuku’s thigh.

“I love her.”

We turned and looked at each other as soon as we said it, both at the same time under our breath. Izuku was blushing. I could tell I was, too.

“Izuku…”

“Ochako, it’s not any more than I love you—”

“Silly!” I tapped his nose and smiled. “You don’t know how happy that makes me…I always hoped you two would get close. I never wanted this to just be me and her with you watching from the sidelines. You being in love with her…it’s like it’s a whole other thing that I get to be in love with.”

Izuku looked like he was about to cry tears of joy before Bakugo spoiled the mood. “Oh my god, can you three get a fucking room already? Holy shit!”

“Kacchan…” Izuku smiled and shook his head.

“Seriously, you three are pretty cute,” Jiro said. “And good for you for staying out of the tabloids, too—you just know Heroes Unmasked would totally eat up a story like that.”

“Well, we try to keep things professional,” I answered, still blushing.

“I’m kinda jealous, honestly!” She grabbed a takoyaki ball from the center of the table and popped it in her mouth. “Ever since that rumor started going around that I was gonna sign with Fujiyama Recordings, I swear I’ve had someone from the tabloids following me around!”

“Well, are you?” Denki teased.

“Yeah, but they don’t know that!” she shot back.

We all laughed as Himiko made her way back to the table, sliding in next to me.

“Did I miss anything fun?” she asked.

“We were just talking about you,” Toru said half-jokingly.

“Ooh, spreading gossip?” Himiko smirked and stuck her tongue out, and we all laughed again.

Izuku leaned on my shoulder and turned to her. “It’s a lot more fun with you here, Himiko.”

She and I both smiled. They really do care about each other, I thought. And I get to be here for all of it!

We heard the sound of a phone buzzing, and Jiro reached into her bag. As she saw the screen, her eyes got wide.

“You guys!” she shouted. “Fujiyama Recordings wants to sign me for a record deal! And they want my first single to be a re-release of ‘Hero Too!’”

“No way!” I shouted.

“Your song from the school festival?” Izuku asked. “That’s fantastic!”

“Hell yeah, you deserve it!” Denki said, grabbing her shoulder before leaning back through the curtains. “Hey waiter! Let’s get another round of beers!”

Half of us cheered at that, and the other half put our heads in our hands…including me. I guess going out drinking with them is just going to be like this every time.

As we got deeper into November, the air got colder, and the days got shorter. That day happened to be one where Himiko and Izuku were on patrol together, which meant I was on my own. It was always lonely when I was by myself. I found myself missing their company. I wished I could see Izuku’s curly green hair or Himiko’s messy blonde buns out of the corner of my eye, hear their voices, feel their arms brush up against mine…it would make things so much less lonely. But we couldn’t just use our patrols as a social outing for ourselves. Our lives crossed over when we were at the office together, or when we carved out what little space we could for the three of us to just exist—not as Uravity and Deku and Sanguiphile Hero Toga, but as Ochako and Izuku and Himiko. We didn’t get many chances like that, but we definitely tried to.

Still, I just couldn’t stay away from them. Towards the end of my route that day, just after sunset, I detoured and joined the two of them for the last kilometer or two of their beat.

“Uravity!” Izuku called out. “What are you doing here?”

“I wrapped up my patrol, so I figured I’d join up with you before Himiko goes to her training.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me!” She rolled her eyes. I knew Himiko was getting a lot out of her training, but I also knew that it was a massive pain for her to do every day. Even though Aizawa could only supervise her for two days out of the week, his training plan had her doing after-work sessions nearly all of the other days of the week to build up her strength. He knew when she skipped a day. She learned that lesson once and never needed to be told again.

“You’re gonna do great, Toga.” I raised my eyebrows at her and pointed at her biceps. “You’re already getting more muscle.”

“Stop!”

Izuku and I laughed as she blushed. Every little moment of joy that the three of us could have together warmed my heart. I love seeing smiles, and theirs are my favorites. I’m glad I make you two smile, I thought to myself.

Our little moment didn’t last. Intelli’s voice came over our communicators, and we all picked up our heads as she spoke.

“Deku, Uravity, Toga—we’ve picked up a bank holdup alarm at 3-10-1 in the Nishi-Nagawa district, 450 meters away from your position. Multiple alarm activations.”

A holdup alarm with multiple activations? Just one could be a false alarm, but multiple…that’s definitely an armed robbery. The three of us looked at each other and nodded. Time to go.

“Intelli, all three of us are responding now,” Izuku replied. Himiko grabbed onto his back, and I grabbed onto hers. We’d practiced this.

“Float!” I tapped the two of them and pressed my fingertips together, and the three of us lifted off the ground, weightless. Izuku launched Blackwhip up to the side of a building to swing the three of us towards the bank. I felt Himiko squirming in between us, and even though I couldn’t see her face, I knew she had the biggest smile. She must love being sandwiched in between the two of us right now!

“Intelli, do you have additional information?” I asked.

“Quirk usage is unknown but suspected,” she answered over the radio, calm and matter-of-fact. “We also now have an audible alarm from the bank, and there are emergency calls coming in reporting injuries.”

I scowled at that. People getting hurt always made me sad, but there was something even more painful about it being over money. My family struggled a lot, and we always just barely got by with what little money we had, but my parents and I would have never even dreamed of hurting someone else to take money that wasn’t ours.

“Who else is coming?” Himiko asked. Good job, Himiko! You’re getting more comfortable talking on the radio! Small things like that showed me just how much she was picking up on the job, and communication was super important, even if it wasn’t as glamorous as daring rescues or dangerous villain captures. We couldn’t do our jobs well if we went solo on everything. Good information was worth as much as a dozen of the most powerful quirks, and we knew that having Intelli in our corner back at the office made us all stronger.

“I’m showing Earphone Jack and Invisible Girl en route to you, and police are responding as well,” Intelli answered. “I’ll patch you in on their tac channel.”

We heard more radio chatter as we got closer, but the police knew way less than Intelli did. I got a look at the building from the air. Nishi-Nagawa is the business district in Musutafu, so I figured we weren’t heading to just a tiny bank branch, but even from a distance, this place seemed important.

“Intelli, what else can you tell us about the building?” I asked.

I heard a couple of keystrokes on the other end. “You’re going to the Yaoyorozu Finance Corporation’s Musutafu office and main branch. The ground floor is retail banking. First floor above is commercial banking and private wealth management. Above that, all the upper floors are office space, and there’s a vault in the basement.”

This could be bad, I thought. Now it’s not just tellers at the bank window—everyone who works in the building could be in danger.

Izuku pulled us to the ground, and I turned off our zero gravity as we landed in front of the bank just a few seconds before the first police officers arrived. From the outside, there wasn’t anything obvious to show that there was a problem except for the alarm going off inside, but the plate glass windows were darkly tinted—all we could see were our own reflections.

“Let’s take a peek,” I said, waving Izuku and Himiko over to me as I shuffled towards the front door and pulled it ever so slightly open.

If the outside seemed relatively calm, the inside was definitely not. The alarm inside was blaring, and the lobby of the bank was totally empty. Someone had pulled down the thick glass partitions that separated tellers from customers and left them strewn on the floor. A service door in the back was torn off its hinges.

Himiko sniffed. “That smells like…”

As soon as she started talking, I noticed it, too. A rusty smell. Blood. I turned my head, and there it was: a pool of red blood with a trail of droplets leading to the stairs up to the first floor mezzanine.

“Dammit,” I swore to myself. The bank area was empty, and there was obviously at least one person hurt, if not worse. Are they gone? Are we too late? And then, as more police arrived behind us, we heard a frazzled voice.

“Heroes! Oh, thank goodness you’re here!”

All three of us turned to look at him as he ran down the sidewalk towards us. He looked like he was our age, or maybe a year or two older—and he looked panicked. He was sweating, and his hands were shaking.

“Calm down,” I said, putting my hand out. “It’s okay—we’re here to help. What’s happening?”

“I just…I…they…” He was so frightened that he could hardly get the words out. “I barely slipped out the back when they came in. They have everyone else in there.”

Izuku’s eyes went wide. “What do you mean?”

“Hostages,” he whimpered. “They’ve taken everyone inside as hostages.”

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Two years before the present

It took us ten minutes to get the teller to calm down enough to actually talk to us. All five of us—Jiro and Toru had hurried over to us as soon as they made it to the bank—crouched down with him as he was wrapped in a foil blanket in the back of a police car. That police superintendent, Tsukauchi, was there, too.

“Can you, uh…kinda gimme some space?” he said, his voice still shaking. “There’s a bunch of you, and it kinda feels like a lot of pressure right now.”

“Sorry!” Izuku stood up and bowed to him. “Maybe just Uravity and Toga can talk with you?”

“We can do that,” Ochako said.

“I’d like to stay as well,” Tsukauchi added. “The STARS team needs as much information as it can get about these hostage-takers.”

“Makes sense to me,” Jiro said as she got up. Izuku followed her lead. Toru left, too; I watched her gloves seem to float away, leaving the rest of us with this scared boy to explain what he had just seen to us.

“Okay.” Tsukauchi took a small notepad out of his vest pocket and flipped it open. “The most important things we need to know are how many attackers there were and what weapons or quirks they had.”

“I…” The young teller’s hands shook. “I didn’t get a good look, but…there were four guys that came in. Two of them were big guys. One of them could turn his arm into a big metal hook, kinda like an oversized fishing hook or something, and he used that to pull down the plexiglass that we have protecting us. That’s when I pushed my panic button and left.”

I heard the rumble of an engine as a big armored police van pulled up. Further down the street, it seemed like some reporters had shown up, and a police officer was trying to shoo them away.

“The other big guy had, like, a baseball bat for an arm or something,” he continued. “As soon as he walked in, the first thing he did was bash the security guard in the face, and then when he went down, he just kept hitting him, and…fuck, I…” His voice trailed off. Whatever happened to the guard had him shaken up.

“Intelli, are you getting this?” I asked over my radio.

“Yes. Keep going.” Seriously!? Fuck me for checking with you and trying to do my job, I guess! Intelli definitely took some getting used to for me.

Ochako leaned in. “You said you saw four people come in…what were the other two of them like?”

“The other two were smaller,” he answered. “One of them had a golf club or something, and he put his hands against the glass and darkened it so nobody could see inside.” Well, that explains that piece of it, I thought. “And the last guy…he didn’t have any weapons or anything, and I didn’t see him use a quirk, but he seemed like he was in charge. He told everyone else what to do, and they all listened. But that’s all I know.”

“Do you know if the guard is still alive?” Ochako asked. “Is anyone else hurt?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea.”

The guard—that was his blood on the floor. I wonder… “Do you know the guard? Like, could you get a picture of him or something?”

The teller looked at me, confused. “I mean, uh…I didn’t know him, and I don’t have a picture or anything, so…”

“I think I know why you’re asking, Toga.” Intelli’s voice came over my earpiece loud and clear. “We don’t have live camera footage from inside, but I can pull old footage and get you a picture.”

I smiled at that. “That’s perfect. Once you do that, I can transform into him and sneak inside.”

“Let’s wait on that.” Tsukauchi held his hand out. “We should negotiate first. If we can end this without violence, that’ll be best for everyone.”

I knew from my HeroSET prep books that he was right—but I also knew it was a waste of time. I ran with people like this before, I thought. They don’t want to talk.

All of the heroes huddled in a police command van with Tsukauchi. Mandalay had joined us, too, so with seven people in the back of that van, it got cramped fast.

“Himiko Toga.” She raised her eyebrows at me and frowned. “I didn’t expect to see you again after we captured you.”

My stomach turned. How many times am I going to have to relive the fact that I attacked the UA training session and got myself captured? At this rate, it’s gonna follow me forever. I sighed and looked at the floor, shaking my head. “Well, I’m here now, so, uh, guess we should try and start over?”

Mandalay’s frown disappeared, and she stuck her hand out towards mine for a handshake. “Well, I’m just glad you’re on our side now.”

I looked at her hand for a second or two. Does she trust me? Is she just acting nice because she has to? But I guess it didn’t matter. We both had a job to do.

“Me, too,” I answered, reaching out and shaking her hand.

Intelli’s voice came over our radios again. “I checked quirk descriptions against the national registry. Not enough information for our fourth hostage-taker, but I’ll send you the information I have on the other three.”

Tsukauchi looked at one of the screens in the van and nodded to himself, then turned to Mandalay. “Is this enough for your telepathy?”

She nodded.

“Make the transmission,” he said, tapping another screen. “Send this, verbatim. And include  the other heroes and myself, too.”

Mandalay took a deep breath, and a second later, I heard her voice ring in my head as she sent her message.

‹Michi Kurahari, this is Mandalay. The police want to talk to your leader. In two minutes, we will call a phone on the second floor. Please have your leader answer it when it rings.›

Tsukauchi looked at her. “Thank you, Mandalay. Now, we wait.”

“They won’t answer back?” I asked.

Mandalay shook her head. “My telepathy only works one way,” she explained. “I can send messages, but I can’t receive them. We’ll only know if it works if he picks up the phone.”

Intelli managed to get the phone audio connected to our earpieces, so all the rest of us heroes listened in as Tsukauchi dialed a number. The phone rang and rang—and then…

“Yeah, I got your message, cop.” A young-sounding voice. And he was not happy.

“Good evening. This is Superintendent Naomasa Tsukauchi with the Shizuoka Prefectural Police Department.” He was smiling as he spoke, and his voice got softer. “What’s your name?”

“I’ll give you a name. ‘Fuck off.’ How’s that?”

He put the phone against his chest and let out a deep sigh before raising it back up to his ear. “I just want to know who I’m talking to, that’s all. Just so we can get this whole thing sorted out without anybody having to get hurt.”

“Look.” The voice on the other end got even snappier. “I know how this works, cop. I’m not stupid. First you give your name, then I give my name, then you want to know the hostages’ names, and now we’re bargaining over who gets released and when. We’re not doing that.”

Tsukauchi frowned. So I guess negotiations aren’t supposed to go like this, I thought. He grimaced, then started to speak again. “Now, there’s no—”

“You interrupt me again, and I’m tossing a hostage’s head out a window. Got it!?”

Everybody in the van turned to look at each other, eyes wide and mouths shut.

“You dumb or something?” The voice on the other end spoke again, still angry. “You got it? Say yes or no. Nothing else.”

Tsukauchi closed his eyes and sighed again. “Yes.”

“Good. Now listen up.” The voice still sounded mad, but at least it was quieter. “Nobody’s dead yet. Whether anybody dies is up to you. Got it? Say yes or no.”

“Yes,” the superintendent replied.

“Here’s what you’ve got to do,” the voice inside the building continued. “You have twenty minutes to withdraw every cop and every hero that has this building surrounded. We see you. We know you’re out there. We’ll know if you’re lying to us. If you aren’t gone at the end of twenty minutes, we kill a hostage, and we’ll kill another every five minutes after that until you leave. Got it?”

Tsukauchi was sweating at this point. Even in chilly November, the van was getting stuffy with all of us crammed inside…but I bet it was because he was nervous, too. “Now, I know you’re—”

“Suzuki, bash his head in.”

Suzuki? One of the other hostage-takers? Are they gonna kill someone right now!?

“Yes! Yes, I understand!”

I never heard him afraid. During my interrogation, at the prison riot…really every time I saw him before, Tsukauchi always seemed in control. But now, he definitely wasn’t in control of anything.

“Very good. Suzuki, you can stay here. For now.” Phew. Guess that kept things under control for a bit. “You have twenty minutes, officer. Don’t call this number again.” And then the line went dead. Tsukauchi slammed the phone down and swore.

“Stand by for planning,” Intelli said over the radio. Right. Her quirk. If she said that, it meant she was preparing some fine tea (that I didn’t get the importance of because they all taste the same to me) and expanding her brain or whatever. We all heard a slurp, and then a few seconds of silence—then, her voice again. “Plan set. Himiko, Invisible Girl, you two will make entry. Earphone Jack, you will provide external support. Mandalay, you will be communication support. Deku, Uravity, one of you two should stay to observe Toga’s performance as a sidekick.”

“I want to stay here,” Ochako answered.

Deku pressed his earpiece in. “Same with me”

“Okay.” I heard Intelli typing furiously on the other end. “You can both stand by outside, but if there’s an emergency somewhere else, one you might have to divert. Now, we don’t have much time—I’ll explain the plan, and then you’ll need to deploy right away.”

“Team, check in with your positions.”

I glanced back at Jiro, crouched around the corner with a headphone jack pressed against the wall. “Earphone Jack in position.”

“Invisible Girl in position.” Toru’s voice was the only clue I had that she was next to me—she had already taken off her shoes and gloves to become completely invisible.

“Toga in position.”

“Mandalay in position at the command van.”

“Setting up a ten-second loop for the cameras, ” Intelli told us. “Toga, Invisible Girl, stand by for entry.”

Just ten seconds, I thought as I crouched by the door next to Toru. Not a lot of time for both of us to get in and for me to transform, but I guess it’ll have to be enough. I released a needle from my glove and held it, ready to get blood from the puddle that was still all over the bank floor.

“Go.”

She pushed the door open and ran inside. I followed, dipping the tip of my syringe needle into the pool of the security guard’s blood. Thank goodness Intelli was able to pull a clear photo of him from earlier in the day. If it wasn’t for that, I’d be a naked stranger in the middle of the bank lobby. The processor on my back silently whirred as it sucked the blood through the tube and up to my mask. The liquid touched my lips, and I swallowed, transforming myself into a fifty-something-year-old bank security guard. Not very cute, I thought. But right now, it’s what I have to be. Now move yourself, Himiko!

Intelli’s voice came back on. “Back door, then right. Four seconds.”

I rushed to the back door that had been taken off its hinges. How does Intelli know where to go? This had better work! Through the door and to the right, there was a door marked ‘Security.’ This has to be it. I ran through.

“Don’t hit me!” Toru whispered. She must have beaten me there, and I almost barreled right into her. Oops.

“Sorry!” I whispered back.

“Intelli, this is Invisible Girl. We’re in the security room. All of the screens in here are blank.”

At least nobody was watching us—but that meant we couldn’t see them either. We stared at the black security screens around us waiting for a response from Intelli. “Interesting…but no change to the overall plan. Earphone Jack, what are you hearing?”

“Footsteps on the upper floors,” she said over the radio. “Two on the second floor, one on the third, and one on the fourth. Lots of heartbeats on floors three and above, but my quirk can’t pick up anything in the basement vault.”

“Okay. Intelli to Invisible Girl, same assignment as we discussed. Go to the vault and make sure nobody is down there. Toga, start on the second floor and work your way up.”

“Got it!”

I went to the stairwell and jogged up two flights of steps, feeling a little winded when I got to my floor. This guy isn’t very in shape, is he? Can’t wait to get rid of this disguise.

As I stuck my head out of the doorway and into the hall, I saw two human-looking shapes at the far end. “Toga here on the second floor. I see two people.”

“I hear them,” Jiro replied. “One’s moving your way!”

Shit. I looked around for somewhere to hide, but there wasn’t anywhere except back in the stairwell. Well…this had better work. I got rid of my transformation and hid behind the door, my knife ready in one hand and a needle ready in the other. The footsteps got closer and closer until the big metal door to the stairwell swung back towards me. He has no clue I’m here, I thought. Perfect.

I watched him walk right past me. He was skinny, carrying a golf club in his hand just like the bank teller said he was. It looked bent at the tip, and I could tell there was some dried blood on it. Well, that won’t be me. I pounced on his back, wrapping my arms and legs around him and putting the knife to his throat.

“I think you should drop that golf club, mister,” I whispered in his ear. “This knife is right against the artery that brings blood to your brain. If you try to hit me with that club, I’ll slice you open before you get a chance to swing, and I really don’t want to do that, okay? Because you’re pretty ugly, and I bet your blood tastes awful.”

“What the fuck!?” he whispered back. I could hear the fear in his voice. My heart was racing. This felt like old times, sneaking around with a blade in my hand, trying not to get caught—but this time, I wasn’t the one being hunted. They were. And I was hunting.

“Put it down, mister.”

He dropped it. The sound of metal hitting concrete echoed in the stairwell.

“Good. Now stay put.”

I swung my leg around and kicked the back of his knee, bending him down and forcing him to kneel.

“Intelli, I’m capturing one now,” I radioed as I fished a set of plastic handcuffs out of my storage pouch.

“Good work,” Intelli responded. “But we need to keep moving. Only seven minutes until their deadline expires and that person’s voice doesn’t match the one on the phone.”

“Intelli, Toga, this is Invisible Girl.” She sounded calm but a little confused. “I’m at the vault. There’s nobody here.”

“As I thought.” Intelli always sounded so sure of herself. So annoying, I thought back then, even though now I know how good it is to have someone as smart as her on our side. “Move up to the second floor and collect Toga’s detainee. You’re in charge of guarding them.”

“Understood!” she said, cheerful despite being in a building with people who wanted to kill us and everyone else in it.

“Good. Toga, keep moving.”

“Got it.” I slipped out the door, bringing back my security guard transformation. Now, let’s see who’s down the hall…

“Toga.” Jiro came back over the radio. “If you’re moving, I hear another set of footsteps coming towards you.”

I couldn’t answer without breaking my disguise—and besides, I saw the guy. He was looking right at me, and he was mad. He jabbed a finger towards me. “The fuck are you doing down here?”

Good. He thinks I’m a hostage. I put my hands over my head. “Sorry!” I said in the voice of whoever that security guard was. “I’ll go back, I promise!”

“Not on your own, you’re not,” he said, shaking his head. “Gimmie your wrists.”

I did as he asked and heard a zip as he pulled a cable tie shut around them. Bingo.

“Do not let him get to the stairwell,” Intelli said. “Invisible Girl still needs to move the one you detained.”

Way ahead of you, Intelli. I transformed my hands and shot a syringe at my captor. He shouted briefly in pain, then fell over as he quickly lost blood. My glove vibrated. Just enough blood to keep him passed out for a bit. Perfect.

I completed my transformation, and the zip tie slid off my wrists. Having a supply of blood pretty much means handcuffs and shackles can never work on me—either I transform into someone smaller and wriggle myself free, or I transform into someone bigger and just snap the cuffs right off. I got myself captured once, and it ended up being the best thing that happened to me…but I know that if it ever happened again, I wouldn’t be so lucky.

“That’s him,” Intelli said. “His voice matches what we heard on the phone.”

“Perfect.”

I put my finger under his nose and felt warm air against my skin. Still alive. Younger me would’ve just taken all his blood, but those days are done. Now, let’s keep him here. I grabbed another set of plastic handcuffs and secured his wrists. I sure turned the tables on you, didn’t I?

“Intelli, Invisible Girl, I have another one for you,” I radioed.

“Bring him to the stairs,” Toru answered. “I’m here!”

With him out like a light, I didn’t feel like hauling him on my shoulders, so I just grabbed his cuffs and dragged him behind me into the stairwell. The only clue I had that Toru was waiting for me was the door swinging open seemingly on its own.

“You need to hurry,” Intelli urged. “We’re down to four and a half minutes.”

“But we caught the leader, didn’t we?” I said.

“They could still be keeping track of the clock,” she answered. “We have to assume the worst. Don’t slow down. Check the third floor.”

She was right. We couldn’t act like we were out of the woods. I had to keep going…but now I had a much better disguise handy. My processor had kept his blood in the tank, and now that I needed some, I released it to my mask, drinking it in and transforming myself into the villain I had just cuffed. Hope this works.

In my disguise, I made my way to the third floor. No need for me to hide, since as far as the hostage-takers were concerned, I was one of them. This is working perfectly, I thought.

“One other person up there with you,” Jiro said. “Sounds like a lot of computer noises close to him.”

“That’s the server room,” Intelli added. “I have the floorplan. Make a left out of the stairwell and then a right.”

How did she get a floorplan so fast!? But I had no time to ask. The clock was ticking. I jogged down the hallway and rounded the corner, and found myself face to face with a huge villain with a baseball bat for an arm. So this guy is the muscle.

“You had me worried, Nuruichi-san,” he said. “Thought I’d have to go down and get you.”

I didn’t know enough about this Nuruichi guy, but I had to act as best I could. “Don’t worry about me,” I said in his voice. “How are the hostages?”

“Locked up in the fourth floor conference room like you asked.” You moron. You just gave me everything I needed.

“Head up there.” I tilted ‘Nuruichi’s’ head back towards the stairwell. “I’ve got this.”

“Good. Server room is all yours.” He walked past me, his back turned as he headed down the hallway. Got you.

I let my transformation slip, turning back into my own form and extending my hand to shoot a syringe at him. It hit him in the back.

“Fuck!” He was loud. Very loud. And he didn’t go down right away. “Get it off!”

He swung behind himself to try and unstick the syringe, but he couldn’t knock it loose. It just made him stumble backwards into the wall, knocking a large framed painting off—which crashed on the ground, shattering the glass.

“They heard that!” Jiro said, clearly worried. And I was, too. I fucked up. It had been so long since I took blood from people who weren’t willingly giving it, and I had forgotten that larger people take longer to pull blood from before they pass out. If I had used more needles, it wouldn’t have been a problem. But I didn’t. Fuck!

Finally, my glove vibrated. He was out. No time to waste—cuff him and move on.

“Got a third,” I said as I bound his arm to his ankle—I had no idea how my cuffs would work on his baseball bat arm.

“Good—now move.” Intelli was still calm, but there was urgency in her voice. She was talking faster than usual. “75 seconds until their deadline. Fourth floor, now.”

I tried transforming into the guy I had taken down, but in place of his baseball bat arm was a regular one. Shit. Intelli’s theory was right—core quirks won’t be part of my transformation unless I love them. That disguise was out. All I had to fall back on was being the scrawny Nuruichi guy I took down outside the server room.

“50 seconds.”

My earlier excitement was gone. This wasn’t a game of cat and mouse. This wasn’t like when Izuku and Ochako had me show off my fighting style at the training center, or like the first license exam. I didn’t mess up then, but if I did, nothing terrible would happen. The training dummies would get reset, and everything would be fine. Not here. Messing up meant people dying, all because I wasn’t careful. That can’t happen, I thought. I won’t let it. I can’t.

I burst through the door. Halfway down the hall was the last hostage-taker, who had been running in my direction.

“Nuruichi-san!?” he shouted, looking surprised—and panicked. “What’s going on down there? What’s with the noise? Why aren’t you in the server room? Where’s Suzuki?”

Suzuki must be the baseball bat guy, I thought. “He’s hurt, bad. You’ve gotta go down and help him.”

His eyes went wide. “Why didn’t you help him? You just left him and came here!?”

“No time to explain,” I hurried, desperately wanting him to stop asking me questions.

I didn’t realize it until it was too late, but saying that must have blown my cover. He squinted at me. “Nuruichi would never say that,” he hissed. “And he would never leave Suzuki hurt and alone.” Fuck! He shoved me backwards with one arm and transformed his other one into a giant hook, swinging it at my head. I ducked just in time. “I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you’re not him!”

He turned and ran, ducking into a room a little ways down the hall. The conference room—that’s where the hostages are! I quickly transformed myself back. If I hadn’t hurried, if I had been even a second later…

I raced in behind him. His hook arm was still transformed, and he was swinging out at the hostages cowering in the far corner. No! I have to do something! He was too big for me to use my syringes and bleed him unconscious—he would’ve still had time to hook one of them and do serious damage. But I knew I could still use them another way.

With only a few centimeters separating his hook from some scared bank employee’s throat, I shot three syringes from my right hand and kept the needles retracted. They wrapped around his shoulders and chest, and I yanked back with as much force as I could. Not a moment too soon. His hook just barely pulled away from the hostages as he flew backwards, struggling against the strengthened tubing that Mei had designed for me so I could do exactly this. Got him!

“Intelli, I have the last one!” I shouted into my communicator as he squirmed.

“Copy.” As annoying as she still was to me back then, it felt good to hear her voice and know that I did my job. “Mandalay, transmit. STARS-1, your team is good to enter.”

Seconds later, I heard Mandalay’s telepathic transmission in my head. ‹Everybody in the Yaoyorozu Finance office: stay where you are. Heroes and police officers are coming inside now to lead you to safety.›

The hostages huddled at the far corner of the room—there must have been at least a dozen of them—looked at me, seeming scared, relieved, and confused at the same time. One of them spoke up.

“You! Are you…are you a hero?”

“I am.” I lowered my mask and smiled at them while the guy I had restrained kept wriggling around, trying to free himself. “I’m Toga. Once the police take this guy away, I’ll bring you all outside.”

Even in the dark room, I could see everyone start to smile. A lot of them breathed a huge sigh of relief, and a few of them started crying.

“We’re gonna make it!”

“I thought I was gonna die!”

“You saved us!”

That stuck with me. “You saved us.” I did. I really did! It was close—probably way closer than it should have been. I had a lot to learn. But this feeling, with all of these people looking up to me…it felt amazing. Is this how Izuku and Ochako have felt all this time? Because if it is…well, then, I want to save as many people as they do for the rest of my life.

It didn’t take long for the police to find us in the conference room. A bunch of guys with guns and shields and armor came in and surrounded the guy I had wrapped up in my syringe tubing.

“We’ll take it from here,” one of them said. “Thanks for your good work, hero.”

There’s a sight that would’ve made younger me’s head explode—heavily-armed police bursting into a room where I was and thanking me as a hero! But that was my life now. It would take getting used to, for sure. But it made me smile.

“You can look after him,” I answered. “But I want to bring these people outside.”

“You got it.” The officer gave me a thumbs-up. “We’ve cleared the lower floors, so you’re all good to go.”

I nodded, then turned to the group that was still huddled in the corner. “Follow me. I’ll get you out of here.”

As the police took the guy I caught earlier, I led everyone else to the stairwell. Some of them were still crying, like they couldn’t believe they’d been saved. Part of me still couldn’t believe I had saved them. Believe it, I told myself. You saved these people, Himiko. You’re a hero. You’re THEIR hero.

Chapter Text

Ochako Uraraka

Two years before the present

Izuku and I barely did anything. We didn’t have to. Between Himiko, Jiro, and Toru, they had everything covered—and really, Himiko did the heaviest lifting out of all of them, taking out every last one of the hostage takers. We might not have been looking at her with the same kind of critical eye that the examiners in her license exam did, but looking from the command van outside and listening on our radios, Ochako and I saw Himiko deliver a picture perfect performance. I felt so excited—and so proud, too. Oh, Himiko…you went from a lonely villain schoolgirl to an incredible hero, and you’re only a sidekick right now! I can’t wait to see what else you have in store!

She led a group of hostages out the side door of the building as another set of heavily-armed police went in through the front to make sure it was clear. Himiko held the door open as the frightened bank employees ran down the alley towards Mandalay and Earphone Jack, who were waving them over to lead them to a safe place where they could recover, decompress, and get interviewed about what happened when they were ready. Himiko didn’t leave until everyone she led out had gone outside. Just like a hero should, Himiko, I thought. You’re doing so well!

“That was amazing, Toga!” I could hardly hold back—I must have practically leaped to her as she walked our way.

Izuku reached out and grabbed her hands. “You did amazing work!” he said, grinning.

“I know I could have done better,” she answered with a half smile. “And being in there definitely got my heart rate up.”

“It’s your first time doing hero work without one of us next to you,” Izuku noted. “That’s a big moment for you!”

“I didn’t even know sidekicks could do solo work.”

“Honestly, ‘sidekick’ is kind of an outdated term,” I said. “I mean, yeah, there are plenty of agencies where all the sidekick does is support the main hero, but that’s not really what that term means in pro work nowadays.”

Izuku nodded. “Yeah, the only requirement is that a hero with a full license is responsible for your conduct. That’s why sidekicks were expected to just support the hero that hired them, since they had to watch their sidekicks all the time.”

Behind us, I heard footsteps. I glanced back and saw Superintendent Tsukauchi standing in the alley.

“Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to thank you, Toga, for your good work.” He bowed to her. “I could never have imagined how successful you would be after finishing your program, but you continue to do remarkably well.”

“Thanks!” She returned his bow and smiled. “I’m trying my hardest to become as good a hero as them.”

“Well, you’re certainly making strides towards that.” He turned towards me and Izuku. “We’ll update you on the status of the investigation, but it may take a while as we collect and analyze the evidence.”

“Oh, that’s alright!” Izuku said, brushing the back of his hair with his hand. “Knowing Intelli, I’m sure she’ll have her own assessments about what happened.”

There it was again—the same anxiety I felt when we were at the izakaya. Why is this bothering me so much? What is it about her that’s making me so uneasy? But in that moment, I put it aside. I’m letting myself get worked up for no reason, I said to myself. She’s our coworker. It’s okay.

“We’re all proud of you, Himiko,” Izuku continued. That put a smile back on my face. We really were. She grew so much since the day I saw her walk out of her diversion program. She was doing what she wanted to do, on her terms, and making other people’s lives better. What was there for me to worry about?

“You did amazing work, Toga,” Intelli said. “But I know you could have done better.”

After debriefing with the police, we all made our way back to agency headquarters and huddled with Intelli in the command center around the strategy table. She had theories, just as Izuku thought she would, and she also wanted to give her feedback on how the operation went. I saw Himiko scowl at her out of the corner of my eye. Even though Intelli was saying literally what we had just said earlier outside the bank, Himiko wasn’t happy hearing it come out of her mouth.

“I already have Aizawa-sensei needling me about stuff I’m doing wrong,” she pouted, crossing her arms. It’s not fair that she’s this cute even when she’s mad! “Do I really have to hear it from you, too?”

“Toga, as the agency’s strategist, it’s my job to know the performance of every hero in our employ—all their strengths, all their weaknesses, and all the areas where they can improve.” She crossed her legs and adjusted her monocle. “That’s all the more important for you, since you are in your provisional license period and undergoing ancillary training.”

Himiko sighed and grumbled, and I gently patted her shoulder. “Intelli is right, you know,” I said. “We’re always improving. Even Deku and I are still picking up new things.”

“I guess,” she muttered, rolling her eyes.

Intelli tapped the screen embedded into the table’s surface, pulling up some notes that she had typed. “I’ll start with my observations on areas for improvement before discussing what went well,” she said. “I’ve read that that’s an optimal way of conveying criticism.”

Wow, she wasn’t kidding about being clumsy about people’s emotions, I thought. At least she’s aware of it and trying her best. I guess we’re all still learning.

“In terms of areas of improvement, I have two in total,” she continued. “The first has to do with the use of your equipment to siphon blood—”

“I know, I know,” Himiko interrupted. “I messed up. The bigger guys take longer to take blood from. I should have used more needles to speed it up. I get that.”

“Ah, so you’re already aware,” Intelli answered, smiling. “I’m pleased that you’re critically assessing your own performance and thinking of ways to improve in the future. Your proposed solution is the same as mine, so I actually have nothing to add on this.” She scrolled through her notes. “There was another major lapse, however—I suppose it’s best described as a limitation of both your quirk and the situation at hand. It may seem basic when I say it, perhaps even obvious, but there are limits to the efficacy of copying only a person’s appearance without knowing anything about their personality.”

It’s true. Izuku and I glossed over it in the moment, both because everything ended well and because we were both so proud of Himiko for her first mission without us, but that conversation with the last hostage taker completely exposed her. I thought back to what Izuku and I heard, listening in on our communicators as Himiko tried to bluff past the last villain.

“Nuruichi would never say that. I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you’re not him!”

I don’t know how she could have avoided it, but we had to at least talk about it. She couldn’t rely on luck or fast reflexes every time.

“Situations like this one, where we can’t gather psychological information on your target in advance and where time is of the essence…those are going to be the most complicated,” Intelli continued. “To be honest, in those cases, it may be better to think about how to shift the situation to one that allows you to rely more on your physical appearance.”

“I mean, I tried,” Himiko answered. “I wanted to get out of the conversation as fast as I could, but that’s what gave me up.”

“I’m aware.” She frowned and adjusted her monocle again. “Unfortunately, psychological analysis is my weakest knowledge area, so I am limited in my ability to help you here. If you deploy on a mission where I can research the target, I can attempt to coach you on responses—but again, we would be working in my weakest area.”

Himiko sighed. Were Intelli’s critiques grating on her? Or was she doubting her own performance?

“Having said all of that,” she continued, “your work in this mission was exceptional. In many ways, this was practically tailored to your strengths. You were versatile in your use of disguises, you leveraged stealth to gain an advantage over your adversaries, you gathered actionable intelligence on the hostages’ location, and you worked to quickly stop the last intruder from actively causing harm to his captives. You did all of this without further injury to the hostages beyond those incurred in their initial break-in, and the only injuries to the hostage takers was temporary unconsciousness from exsanguination.”

“Uh…exsanguination?” Himiko tilted her head, looking confused.

“Blood loss,” Intelli explained. “All of that is to say, you were the optimal hero for this work, Toga. I’m confident that you will continue to do incredible work.”

All of us smiled at that. Intelli might feel cold and calculating, but that makes what she said just now mean so much more, I thought. She’s not saying that to be nice. She’s saying that because she believes it.

“Now.” She tapped the table screen again, pulling up a different set of notes. “The police will take days, if not weeks, to collect evidence, and months to develop a case, and they may not even inform us of the developments, as I’m sure you all know.”

Izuku sighed and nodded at that. I know how much he likes being in the know, how much he likes finding out new things. He’d probably make an amazing detective if he never got One for All from All Might.

“What’s more…” Intelli gave her monocle a gentle twist between her fingers. “…I imagine that their investigation will leave a lot of evidence either inadequately examined or entirely overlooked. So I’ve taken the liberty of compiling findings of my own.”

“Intelli, you really didn’t have to—” I started.

“Assessing trends in crime and villainy is part of my duties,” she said, cutting me off. “Besides, I enjoy finding what others miss.” I caught Himiko rolling her eyes again. “Now, when this call had first come in, I had assumed that it was an amateur attempt: a bank robbery in the late afternoon, when the teller drawers are usually close to empty and long after any deliveries of cash and valuables to the vault have concluded. A more seasoned robber would try to time their attack with the morning armored car delivery and get in and out as quickly as possible. Hostage-taking is often a desperate attempt at stalling for time after a robbery gone wrong.”

Another couple of taps from Intelli, and four pictures appeared on the wall screen behind us: the police’s booking photos for the four that Himiko had captured.

“Indeed, looking at the four that were arrested, it would seem to indicate that they were in fact amateurs. Two of them had lengthy arrest records for minor crimes: breaking and entering, simple assault, vandalism…things of that nature. One had just one prior encounter with law enforcement who served him with a court injunction for running an unlicensed business. Their apparent leader, Hideki Nuruichi, has no apparent criminal record at all. And yet…”

“…you don’t think these are amateurs,” Izuku mused, cutting into her monologue.

“I do not,” she answered. “For two reasons: first, they deactivated the security system after entering the bank. Second, they made no attempt to access the vault.”

“I don’t get it,” Himiko said.

“Most people wouldn’t,” Intelli answered. That made Himiko’s pout even more pronounced. “But this tells me that they knew what they were after and how to get it. The vault’s security system is a mechanical time-delayed lock that’s separate from the rest of the building’s systems. Shutting down the security system does nothing to get them in there, and it doesn’t silence the alarm either, since only the security company can do that once they get an alert. What it did do, though, is two things: it kept me or anyone else from accessing the camera feed in real time—”

“Because they knew they’d be watched,” I muttered.

Intelli flashed me a smile. “Exactly. And second, it put the rest of the building’s facilities into failsafe, as if there were a power outage. Useless to access the vault, of course. But not the server room. They weren’t after the ¥400 million sitting in the bank’s vault. They were after the ¥65 billion sitting in the accounts stored on their servers. Amateurs wouldn’t have thought to access that, but they did.”

“But why…” Izuku started muttering. I glanced over. He had a very puzzled expression on his face as he pondered the information that Intelli had given us. “Why break in during the day? If they want what’s on the servers, why not sneak in at night? Why take hostages at all?”

“One of two reasons,” she answered. “And they aren’t mutually exclusive. The first is simpler: they really are amateurs, and only received information about the bank and its vulnerabilities from someone who was not as involved in the planning.”

“What’s the other reason?” Himiko asked.

Intelli looked at the wall monitor out of the corner of her eye, a neutral expression on her face. “The chaos and publicity of taking hostages was always part of their objective.”

The sound of computer servers humming filled the silence as we sat with this possibility. This seemed like a straightforward mission: stop bank robbers in a heist gone wrong, free hostages, and that was it. Is Intelli seeing patterns where there aren’t any? Or did the rest of us miss all of these clues from the start?

“In any event, I need to actually draft up this report for the police, which I’m sure the detectives will never read,” she concluded. “So I need to remain up here and finish working. I do hope that this debrief was of use to you all.”

“It was—thank you so much for all of your help!” Izuku said excitedly as he bowed. I bit the inside of my cheek and bowed, too. She’s our coworker, I thought. She’s talented. She’s helpful. I can’t let my jealousy get in the way of that. Himiko didn’t bother with a bow; she just stood up, still sulking. She was more bothered with Intelli than I was—or at least, she cared a lot less about hiding it.

The three of us left Intelli behind in the command center and headed down the narrow flight of steps to the main floor of our agency. With the start of winter around the corner, it had long since gotten dark, and even the overhead lights were dimmer, both to save electricity and to try and nudge our employees to head home instead of overworking themselves. As we walked over to Himiko’s office at the far end of the hallway, I saw that the bullpen was empty—every chair pushed in, every computer screen turned off. Guess everyone really did go home, I thought.

“I know I already said it, Himiko, but…we’re really proud of you,” I sighed.

“We are,” Izuku added. “You’ve grown a lot.”

“You guys…” Himiko turned around, blushing and smiling. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Well, we wouldn’t think of doing it without you either,” he said.

Himiko put an arm around each of us. “Have we ever been in the office together like this? Just the three of us in our hero outfits? Nobody else?”

I thought it over, and she was right—ever since she got her license, we’d never been alone in the office. As soon as we got back from Okuto, the office was packed with new hires, and we’d been so busy getting Himiko caught up on hero training and patrols and everything else that it was next to impossible for us to have a moment to ourselves.

“We’re always working so hard,” she continued. “There’s always so much work to do. We don’t get many moments like this, do we? Just us?”

Himiko, you practically read my mind. “We really don’t…”

“Then let’s make the most of it,” she whispered.

Before I knew it, Himiko had pulled my face to hers and kissed me. Her lips felt so soft against mine, her face warm. Then, she let me go and tugged on Izuku’s mask, drawing him in for a kiss of his own. I watched and smiled as he closed his eyes and let her take the lead, a serene look on their faces. Just the three of us, in the office, kissing…I love this so much!

“Himiko…” I whispered, my lips brushing against her ear.

“Mmhmm.” She turned around. “Let’s enjoy this.”

Izuku stood behind her, his hands wrapped around her midriff as he planted kisses on her neck, while I stood in front of her, holding her hips and letting my thigh wedge itself between hers as I kissed her again.

“I love this, you two…” she breathed in between kisses. “You make me feel so special.”

“You are special, Himiko,” Izuku whispered back.

“Mmmm…!” She moaned and leaned to one side, letting Izuku crane his neck around hers so that he could kiss me, too. The force of his lips against mine, it felt different from Himiko, but no less electric, no less satisfying. As we kissed, Himiko brushed her cheek against our heads. I love these two so much.

I heard the sound of an opening door and a flicking light switch. Fuck. We weren’t alone after all. I spun around, panicked. So careless of us. Dammit!

Sojo stood in the doorway of his office, looking at us, trying to keep a neutral expression on his face—but I could see the surprise in his eyes.

“Oh. I, uh…” He seemed like he was at a loss for words. That’s a first for him, I thought. “Are you three…?”

“Uh, yeah,” I answered sheepishly. I could feel my face burning up. I was mortified.

“I was hoping I’d catch you before you went home,” Sojo said. “I wanted to congratulate Toga on her performance today. But it looks like I’m interrupting something.”

“We didn’t realize you were still working, Sojo-san.” Izuku’s face was fire engine red. He bowed deeply and apologetically. “We didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable or anything.”

“Oh no, I’m not bothered at all.” He waved his hands at us. “Your lives are your business, not mine. But it’s probably for the best to not make a habit of it when everyone is in the office.”

“Oh, we’d never do that,” I said, still unbelievably embarrassed at being caught.

“And I’m sure you know how vicious the tabloids can be,” Sojo continued. “So anything we can do to keep your private lives from getting dragged through Heroes Unmasked…”

“We know, we know.” Himiko nodded vigorously, blushing just as much as we were. All of us just wanted this conversation to end.

“Okay. Well…” Now it was Sojo’s turn to bow and apologize. He probably feels just as bad for walking in on us as we do for getting caught, I figured. “Like I said, I didn’t mean to disturb you three, so I really am sorry about that.”

He left quickly, and the three of us were left standing in the office hallway, absolutely mortified. There we were, three grown adults, caught making out like horny high schoolers in an empty classroom. It felt so embarrassing. I wanted to melt into the floor.

“I, uh…” Izuku finally broke the painfully awkward silence, even if what he said was just as painfully awkward. “I guess we should head home, huh?”

“Yeah…” I murmured. “I kind of just want to shower and sleep now.”

“Uh-huh.” Himiko nodded, not looking either of us in the eye.

All three of us shuffled back to our own offices to change out of our hero outfits and head home. I still couldn’t believe what had just happened. We let our guard down because we felt like we could, and we got completely caught out in the open. Lucky that it was just Sojo, I thought. But still! We were so caught up in the excitement of Himiko’s success that day, and so absorbed in the joy and bliss of working with the people we love, that we never truly stopped to think about what it meant for us to mix romance with our work lives. And this was just one person, and just an employee of ours, I thought. What will we do if we become a gossip story in the press? Sojo’s comment about the tabloids stuck with me—and I thought back to Mina texting me as I was on rescue duty during Typhoon Koto.

“Hiring your own girlfriend? Am I gonna see you on the cover of Heroes Unmasked?”

Himiko talked so much about not wanting to hide who she was. I hated the feeling of the three of us having to guard our affection for each other against prying eyes. And yet…I also knew how being in the public eye could cut right into your soul. I saw it in Izuku, when we brought him back to UA and the evacuees there wanted him gone. I’m not letting you go through that again, I thought. Not either of you. Not if I can help it. I sighed. “Nobody ever tells you how hard it is to date when you’re a hero,” I mumbled to myself as I pulled on my street clothes and closed the door to the wardrobe in my office, leaving my hero suit there for the night.

Chapter Text

Himiko Toga

Two years before the present

Christmas decorations had been going up in stores and shopping malls for a month already, and it was just too early for that. It’s ridiculous, I thought. Doesn’t this holiday already basically get an entire month? We’re not even Christian! But once December rolled around, I let myself smile a little more at the red and green decorations going up all over the city. Izuku and Ochako gave me a reason to actually like the holidays. Christmas and New Year’s had either been filled with bad memories with my parents or no memories at all. It’s nice that things feel different now.

Ochako didn’t waste a second once December 1 came around. When I got to the agency office, she was floating herself, using one hand to push along the ceiling as she hung up tinsel with her other hand. At least she waited until December, I thought to myself.

“Toga!” Ochako called out from the ceiling. “Can you help me decorate? Sojo-san ordered a bunch of decorations for the office, and Deku is bringing them up from the mailroom. Maybe you two can put up the Christmas tree?”

“Oh, uh, sure!” I’d never decorated for Christmas before. Volunteering at that food drive with Izuku four years earlier was probably the most Christmas-y thing I had really done up to that point—but I wanted to be more like them. I wanted to like more of the things they liked, and spending time with them decorating for the holiday felt like a perfect way to do it.

I didn’t have to wait long for Izuku to show up with a long, heavy-looking box hoisted over his shoulder. “I have the tree!” he said, shuffling himself and the box through the door to the agency. “Oh, good morning, Toga!”

“I asked her to help us decorate,” Ochako said, still floating along and hanging up tinsel.

“Yeah!” I smiled and jumped. “Lemme help you put the tree up!”

I sliced the box open, and Izuku and I pulled out the pieces to a collapsible fake Christmas tree. He read through the directions, and we took turns slotting each part of it into place, making sure that the fit was just right and that all of the wires were plugged in like they were supposed to be. Once Ochako finished with her decorating, she came over to us and floated herself and the top part of the tree, drifting over our heads and gently sliding it into place. Look at us, decorating for the holidays, I thought. As if we’re a normal, happy family. The thought made me sad and happy all at once. I was sad at the childhood I never had. The one my parents never gave their freak daughter. To know that I could have been happy like this, but wasn’t…those were years of my life I would never get back. But I had that happiness now, and that made me so unbelievably happy.

“Perfect,” she whispered, putting a star on top of the tree before floating herself back down.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “This is gonna look great!”

Izuku picked up a wire running out of the back of the tree. “It’s supposed to come with lights already built in, so let me just find a plug for it…”

“Oh, I almost forgot to ask you two!” Ochako pulled a small folded-up pamphlet out of her pocket. “Did you see that there’s going to be a Christmas market outside the train station until the 24th?”

I watched Izuku poke his head out from behind the tree; his green hair almost perfectly blended in, and it looked like he just appeared out of the tree itself. “Really?”

“Yeah, and it looks really cute!” She smiled as she showed us the paper she was holding. “You two are patrolling together today, right? You should swing by!”

“Ooh, that would be fun!” I chirped.

“Hmm…” Izuku’s face scrunched up a little as he thought. “I guess it could be good to be there, maybe help people feel a little safer during the holidays.”

Ochako tapped his nose with her finger. “See? No reason we can’t enjoy ourselves a little bit when we’re on the job.”

Izuku and I smiled at that, but I also thought back to Sojo catching me sandwiched in between the two of them in the middle of a three-way makeout. We couldn’t enjoy ourselves too much.

“Found it!” Izuku shouted, bending down to plug the tree into an outlet. Our skin was bathed in a soft multicolored glow as the lights turned on, brightening up the tree that we had set up and casting pretty shadows on the floor.

Ochako grinned. “It looks so pretty,” she said, her eyes sparkling as she looked at the decorated office lobby. “We did a good job, didn’t we?”

I nodded. We sure did, Ochako.

Izuku and I took Ochako’s advice and finished out our patrol at the Christmas market outside the train station. The plaza out front had been totally transformed, with wooden stalls decorated with ornaments and fake snow. I looked at the signs out front to see what they were selling: spiced cider, mulled wine, gingerbread cookies, hand-blown glass ornaments, stockings…they had really turned the place into a picture-book Christmas village. In the middle of it all was a tree, probably at least three stories tall, with glistening white lights that lit up the whole market in the early winter darkness.

“This looks amazing!” Izuku said. He had a look of amazement on his face. “It’s like they took a European village and just dropped it into Musutafu!”

“It does, doesn’t it?” I had no idea if it did—I had never left the country before. But it felt like it.

The two of us walked through the market, Izuku staying a few steps ahead of me. When I first got my hero outfit, I saw him lagging behind, and I know he was definitely staring at me…but I was just as guilty of doing the same thing with him and Ochako. Sorry, Izuku, but you and her are just too cute! I let the sounds of the conversations around me drift into my ears.

“Honey, you have to be good for Santa to leave you presents!”

“Hey, they’re selling nutcrackers over at this stall!”

“Do you know what you want for Christmas?” “Honestly, I just want to get my crush to kiss me.”

Some Christmas music was playing on the speakers, too. I didn’t understand the English lyrics—I’d left school before we really started learning it. Even though I didn’t really care about learning it, it did make me sad that it was just another thing that I didn’t have a chance to learn like everyone else.

“Hot cider and hot chimney cakes! Come get them warm and ready!” One of the stall vendors was shouting for people to come and buy food, and with the crowd that was gathering, it definitely seemed popular.

“Are you hungry, Toga?” Izuku asked. “We can get something to snack on.”

“A little.” I rubbed my arms, trying to warm them up. “I’m more cold than anything.” My hero outfit wasn’t exactly cold-weather friendly—with how skin-tight it was, and with my belly and part of my leg totally uncovered, it was definitely meant for summer. Gotta ask Mei and her team to make a winter version, I thought to myself.

“Well, let’s get something to eat and drink. That should warm us up!”

We made our way to the crowd, scanning the market stalls for anything unusual—we were still working heroes, after all. As we waited our turn to be served, I heard murmurs from the crowd. They were beside themselves that the famous pro hero Deku was there with them. I heard my name come up, too. One person was scared, but another talked about how cool I looked. I hope I’m changing people’s minds about me.

“Ah, you two, come on up!” The vendor, an older guy with a white mustache, beckoned us over when our turn came. “Deku and…Toga, right? I’m so grateful for what you did during the war, young man. And you, miss! You saved all those hostages at the bank, right?”

I nodded. “I had help, but yeah.”

“Japan is lucky to have you two.” He smiled. “What can I get for you?”

Izuku ordered us a cinnamon-covered chimney cake, and the old man took a metal spit wrapped with a thin layer of dough that had been rotating over some red coals. He brushed some butter over the dough, then took the spit and rolled it in some cinnamon and sugar before sliding it off, putting it into a paper holder for us to share.

“For the two of you,” he said, handing us the cake. “And something extra from me.” He took two disposable cups from behind the counter and filled them with hot cider before handing those to us, too.

Izuku looked confused. “Huh? But we didn’t buy that.”

“Just a small token of my appreciation,” the old man replied, smiling. “You two have done so much for us.”

I smiled. I really am changing people’s minds about me! To think that I’m getting the same kind of gratitude that Izuku—no, that famed pro hero Deku, the person who saved Japan—was getting? This is unbelievable!

We thanked him and walked back through the market, pulling off bits of the chimney cake to nibble on. Hot food and a hot drink was just what I needed. The cake was crispy on the outside, but the hollow inside was soft and chewy. It tasted amazing. I washed it down with some cider, hot and spiced. It burned a tiny bit as I drank it. Is there alcohol in this?

As we wandered, I thought back to that summer, to us walking around the amusement park on Okuto and to how Izuku described his idea of a date. “You know…holding hands, going to an amusement park, sharing a crepe?” How could I forget, Izuku? And this—walking around in this Christmas market, side by side, sharing some weird but tasty European-style cake thing—felt just like that. Or at least it would have if we weren’t still working, and if Sojo hadn’t warned us about how other people would see our relationship after he walked in on us. I didn’t like having to hide. I didn’t like making things difficult for Izuku and Ochako, either.

We got to the outer part of the market, where the crowd was thinner, and I turned to Izuku. “Hey…can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” he answered, giving me a slightly puzzled look.

“So, uh…when we were sparring that one time, and I was on top of you, and I asked you to, uh…” I looked around to make sure people were far enough away, and whispered. “…to be my boyfriend.”

“Yeah?”

“You said that it was too fast, right? And that you wanted to take things kinda slow?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I remember that.”

“Well, on Okuto…” I glanced around again, checking whether the coast was clear. “We had sex in the shower the same day that we went to the amusement park. And, like, I’m not complaining—I really, really liked it—but I didn’t think you would say yes to me, since you had talked about going slow and all. I didn’t…pressure you, did I?”

Izuku smiled and shook his head. “Not at all, Himiko.”

Even in the cold December air, I felt warm hearing him say that. Even though we’re in our work outfits, even though we’re on the job…for this conversation right now, I’m not the Sanguiphile Hero Toga. I’m just Himiko.

“So what changed?” I asked.

He sighed. “It’s funny. There’s when I should have realized how I felt about you, and there’s when I actually realized. I should have known what I was feeling all the way back when you were working at FamilyMart, back when you asked me if I felt different saving somebody I cared about.”

I looked at Izuku, staring into those big green eyes of his. “So…when did you actually realize?”

“After your second exam,” he said. “When you were in the hospital.”

The sound of Christmas music drifted over from the center of the market as we stood there. I thought back to that moment, waking up with Ochako next to me, seeing Izuku come through the door with flowers and my exam results.

“Do you know about what happened when I left UA?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “Not really.”

“When Shigaraki was after me, trying to steal One for All, I knew everyone in my class would be caught up in the fighting, and I didn’t want them to get hurt. So I left.” Izuku frowned. I could see that he didn’t like telling this story. “Everybody at UA was shocked, but nobody was more sad than Ochako was. When I came back, I had nightmares, and I woke up with her sitting right next to me…and that’s when she asked if we could date.”

Somehow, I hadn’t heard the story before. Maybe asking Izuku to be my boyfriend in the middle of a sparring session wasn’t really that weird.

“She told me that she was scared of losing me, that she wasn’t going to get the chance to say what she was feeling and to do what she wanted to do,” Izuku continued. “I understood what she meant. And after what happened with Bakugo getting stabbed in the chest during the war, almost dying, I thought I knew the feeling. But seeing you like that…it just felt so different to me. Like I could never forgive myself if I didn’t let myself enjoy every moment I possibly could with you.”

I felt my eyes starting to sting. Izuku feels that way about me? He cares about me? He doesn’t want to lose me? He really must love me!

“I’m glad we did that, Izuku,” I whispered back. “And I know you like doing things a little slower…but I like those slow moments, too.”

That put a smile back on his face. “Every moment with you is a good one, Himiko.”

I finished the last of my cider and crumpled the cup in my hands. “Patrol time is wrapping up soon,” I said. “Wanna walk back to my apartment with me?”

He nodded, and the two of us headed up the street, leaving the festive air of the Christmas market behind us.

There was definitely alcohol in that cider. As soon as we got back to my apartment and I shut the door, I practically leaped into his arms.

“We got interrupted last time, Izuku,” I whispered.

“Yeah…” As he spoke, I smelled the cider on our breaths. Definitely alcoholic. Whoops…didn’t mean to drink on the job.

“Let’s make up for that,” I said, brushing my lips against his and starting to kiss him.

“Himiko, be a little gentle, okay?” He pulled his face away from mine ever so slightly. “My lips get cracked when it’s cold outside, and I think I cut myself a little…”

“Aw! Poor Izuku, Japan’s big hero, got a cut on his lip?” I teased, giving him the best puppy dog eyes I could do. “Lemme make you feel better.”

I leaned back in and kissed him, slowly and gently, taking his upper lip in between mine before switching to his lower lip as I searched for that cut…and then I felt it. There you are. Slowly, I slipped my tongue out, letting it run along his lip, tasting the tiniest bit of blood from this tiniest cut. So yummy—even just this little taste sent me into overdrive. Tasting him, having a little bit of him inside of me…it just felt so good.

“You should lay down on my bed,” I whispered into his ear.

He pulled back again to look at me, smiling. “Should I get out of my hero outfit?”

I shook my head. “Nuh-uh. I’m not getting out of mine. I want you just like this. And besides…” I hopped out of his arms and walked to the foot of my bed, looking over my shoulder at Izuku and making sure that my ass looked as good as I thought it did in my hero costume. “…I keep catching you staring at me when I’m wearing this.”

Izuku turned bright red as he sat himself on my bed. “Himiko, I…it’s, uh…”

“You’re so silly.” I put my palm on his chest and lowered his back onto the sheets. “You think I don’t see you being a perv?”

“I’m not a—”

I shut him up with a kiss as I straddled him. “Silly Izuku. You can be a perv for me. As long as I can be a perv for you, too.”

“Himiko…”

“You think I don’t stare at you, too?” I asked, slowly grinding my pelvis against his. “And I’m not the only one, you know. I see people stare at both of us when we’re patrolling. They wish they could have what we have right now.”

“Fuck, Himiko…you’re making me feel so…”

“Oh, I can tell,” I cooed. “I feel it. Did your little sidekick get you all worked up?”

“I can’t help it with you, Himiko…” Izuku was still blushing as I maneuvered him into a better position on my bed.

“Does this view remind you of anything? That night at the training center, maybe?”