Chapter Text
Katsumi knew Naruto’s seal was made quickly and was entirely experimental when she let him put it on her. She knew it might work or it might kill her or it might do something else entirely. She was prepared for all that. What she was not prepared for was getting deaged to fourteen and thrown to a new universe. Space-time seals are bullshit and she’s happy to be quoted on that.
She doesn’t remember much of what happens immediately following her arrival in the new universe, the injuries Obito gave her knock her out and the next time she’s awake she’s cuffed to a bed in what looks like a very expensive medical bay, and a tiny old lady is milling about and Katsumi feels like she’s been hit by a truck. She doesn’t get why it feels like the medics stopped healing her partly until she manages to recognize that the old woman isn’t a Konoha shinobi and this is not the Konoha hospital. So she might be a hostage. That doesn’t explain the lack of chakra suppression seals though. Any good captor would have those on her no questions asked. Katsumi glares at the old woman when she comes over to check on her, smiling and saying to Katsumi, “Hello dear, you’ve had quite the accident it looks like. A damaged trachea, broken clavicle, and damage to a few internal organs, but don’t worry, they’re healing nicely and soon I’ll be able to heal them entirely. For now though, don’t speak, you’ll strain your vocal cords.”
Katsumi’s mind is hazy even as she pulls herself together and manages to bare her teeth at the strange woman. She doesn’t know where she is or who this is and she does want to talk to the old woman anyway. She needs to know what’s going on though and that requires discussion at this point and not being able to talk is not good. She refuses to go back to sleep, no matter how tired she feels and how much the woman encourages it. She glares and glares and glares at everything in the room and tests the restraints on her wrists whenever the woman leaves the room.
Eventually, some time after she’s finally cleared to talk, a weird rodent looking creature walks in with a tired looking man that makes Kakashi look excited, a blonde guy with a voice loud enough she has to dull her hearing when he greets her and a man in a trench coat. Katsumi hasn’t done much in the way of speaking the the old woman who’d introduced herself as Recovery Girl. A stupid name in Katsumi’s opinion, but whatever. She’s sitting up in the bed, the restraints finally loosened enough for her to sit up and she greets the newcomers with bared teeth and an irritated snarl.
The rodent creature just shows it’s own sharp teeth in an expression that reminds her vaguely of Urami, and says in a weirdly bright voice, “Ah, you’re looking much better. Recovery Girl was kind enough to inform me that you’re able to talk now. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Nezu, principal of UA, the number one school in hero acedemics.”
Katsumi narrows her eyes and tries to wrap her head around what that implies. Principal of a school that sounds vaguely like it might be something like the Academy. Vaguely. So he has some power. A talking rodent-weasel thing is in charge of a school that might be for turning children in something like shinobi. She doesn’t say what she wants to say, which is what the fuck? Instead she jerks her wrists to rattle her restraints, “Let me out.”
Nezu’s sharp toothed smile widens, “I’d be happy to allow that once we discuss your situation and what we will do from there. As it is, you are a fifteen year old in our care with no record or family to speak of, which makes you our responsibility. If you would be amiable to answering our questions honestly, this will all go quicker.”
For once her hair is free of its ponytail and it falls around her face like a curtain, so she has to shake her head to get it out of her eyes, “And if I don’t?”
Nezu doesn’t lose his smile but it becomes something sharper and more dangerous, like an unsheathed sword, “You have no records whatsoever and appeared with injuries that were very nearly fatal and in possession of weapons that require licenses to own along with multiple illegal and expensive poisons. Cooperating with us will prevent far worse consequences than would normally be given, of course it helps that you’re a child.”
She bristles at being called a child. She’s a jounin of Konoha and she stopped being a child the day she earned her hitai-ate. That comment also reminds her that they said she’s fourteen. How they figured that is beyond her, considering she knows she’s seventeen. Her eyes flick to each of the men with the creature. None are letting killing intent loose and she can’t spot any weapons on them and they look more concerned than they should be. She looks back at the creature and lowers her lips over her teeth, hiding her desire to attack for now, “I understand.”
“Excellent! We’ll start with introductions, This is Eraserhead and Present Mic, pro-heroes and teachers here at UA,” Nezu gestures to the blonde and the tired looking man, “and this is—“
“Those are stupid codenames,” She cuts in, figuring out quickly that most of the names so far aren’t real, they’re codenames like Fox. Stupid codenames, but still.
Nezu continues like she hasn’t just insulted two of his subordinates, “And this is detective Tsukauchi, he’ll be the one interviewing you.”
She looks at the man in the trench coat. He looks far friendlier than Ibiki. Less like he has an entire torture chamber that he summons. She wonders if he’s closer to the Yamanaka in terms of methods. She supposes she’s going to find out. She tilts her head and listens to the heart beats of the people in the room with her as the man takes a seat in the chair beside her bed and smiles at her, “I’m sure this is all a bit confusing for you, but let’s start simple, alright? Can you tell me your name?”
She blinks slowly at him and lies, using her mother’s full name, “Shibata Hana.”
He sighs and looks extremely disappointed, “I know you’re lying, what’s your real name?”
She stares in bafflement at the man, she’s a good liar. She’s a shinobi. Lying is second nature. She immediately does not like the man, “How do you know I’m lying?”
“It’s my quirk, I can detect lies,” He offers like she should know what that means. She doesn’t know what a quirk is, but she assumes it must be some kind of special jutsu or a Kekkai Genkai. How irritating.
“Ishihara Katsumi,” She hisses out like a curse.
“Ishihara, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” He smiles at her like she’s done something impressive, “And your parents’ names?”
“Ishihara Satoshi and Shibata Hana,” She mutters, glaring balefully at the man.
“Alright, and your date of birth?”
“July twenty-eighth.” She doesn’t know the exact year considering most of the time she doesn’t even know what month it is. Dates have never mattered much to her.
“And the year?”
She shrugs and shows her palms in a who knows gesture. She knows her age, seventeen, or should be, but these people all keep saying she’s fourteen, and she doesn’t know the exact year unless she looks at her birth certificate. Which is in a different universe.
The detective sighs and jots something down on the clipboard he’s been writing her answers on, “Recovery Girl identified you as being fourteen, so July twenty-eight in the year two-thousand-one-hundred-and-twenty. And your quirk?”
She tilts her head, her kekkai Genkai? She doesn’t have one of those unless manipulating blood counts. She’s not sure if that’s what he means so she asks carefully, “Can you define quirk for me?”
“It’s a superhuman ability that a person can posses. Approximately eighty percent of Japan’s population possesses one, mine is Lie Detector,” He clarifies after a pause.
She hums and offers, “Chakra manipulation, I suppose. I don’t know if that’s true or not though. Its that or I guess I don’t have one?”
The detective stares at her for a long time in silence before sighing again, “Chakra manipulation, and what does that do?”
She blinks, “I use chakra? My chakra? To do things? It does a lot of stuff. It’s easier to list the things I can’t do with it than the things I can.”
She’s starting to realize just how much this is not her universe and she has no idea if she should tell them or not. If they’d help her get home or if they’d experiment on her or what. She does not like this.
“Alright, Ishihara, can you tell me how you were injured? The injuries were too severe to be an accident. If the villain who hurt you is still out there, we need to know so we can stop them from hurting anyone else,” Tsukauchi sounds so earnest as he says that.
“Was fighting. They were better than me,” She gives the worst mission summary in the history of mission summaries. Kakashi would be so proud. Shikaku would be at least a little impressed how how lazy it is.
“Who?” Here the guy the Weasel called Eraserhead cuts in.
“No one who’s going to be a problem,” She offers, trying to figure out how honest she should be without giving away the fact she’s not from this universe until she knows if they’ll help her or not, “He calls himself Tobi. Wears an orange mask.”
“All true,” The detective gives her a look that she thinks must be used to encourage trauma victims to talk, “Can you tell me anything else about him?”
She shrugs and says blandly, “It’ll be nice to kill him. He annoys me.”
This comment makes funny expressions pass across the face of the men in the room with her while the weasel looks almost entertained. The detective coughs and asks in a very delicate voice, “And you’ve killed before?”
She tilts her head and asks like the man is slow, “How else do you neutralize a threat?”
“Right, and how many times have you done that?”
She shrugs, “I never counted. I just followed orders. It’s what I’m supposed to do.”
“Who’s orders?” Tsukauchi presses.
Katsumi shrugs and says lightly, not like this tells them anything and it is true, “Tsunade’s. She gives me orders and I don’t get killed for treason.”
The blonde guy makes a noise and looks kind of like he’d like to wrap her in a blanket and hide her away. Eraserhead looks like he’d like to strangle someone with the weird scarf he’s wearing and even the weasel looks grim. The detective looks at her steadily, “And how long has this arrangement be going on?”
She shrugs and gives the most accurate estimate she can which sounds far worse once she realizes she’s apparently fourteen here, “Like four years? Then I followed the orders of Sarutobi Hiruzen before that for a few months.”
That gets another noise from the blonde and he’s looking at Eraserhead like he’s begging the man to do or say something. The detective exchanges a glance with Nezu before telling her gently, “Thank you for being so honest with me. I think that’s all I have for now. I may come by again, Ishihara. If that’s alright.”
Nezu cuts in before she can respond, “I think we can leave everything but the basics out of the official report, yes? No need for Ishihara to get into any trouble for things beyond her control.”
Katsumi raises an eyebrow. She’s surprised a principal has the power to request that, much less have the detective agree. Interesting. She immediately begins reevaluating the creature. She asks carefully once the detective is gone, “Did I do something wrong? I answered his questions honestly.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” The tired looking man finally speaks, “You’re a child and not responsible for what’s happened to you.”
She bristles a little at once again being referred to as a child, but she realizes there’s benefits. If they consider her a child, she may get some leeway. She looks at Eraserhead and asks, “Am I going to get my swords back? They were a gift from a friend who’s… not around anymore.”
Present Mic looks like he’s desperate to hug her or give her sweets or whatever it is adults here do to make kids feel better. Nezu answers before Eraserhead can, “Unfortunately you won’t be getting those back for sometime. They’ll remain in UA hands of course and maybe you can get licensed to have them again in the future, provided you become a licensed hero that is.”
Katsumi may not have the most refined social skills but she can smell the manipulation from a kilometer away. She wants her swords back though, “I don’t think I can be a hero. I’m not even sure what those do.”
“Well, you’ll have to pass the entrance exam into the heroics course and attend weekly sessions with our counselor Hound Dog, and then get your provisional license before graduating UA’s heroics course. Maybe take a few remedial ethics courses depending on how things go, but I see no reason you can’t be,” Nezu explains brightly, “Heroes protect the people of Japan from villains and save them when disasters strike. It’s a very important position.”
Katsumi thinks that sounds similar to shinobi without the murder if the expressions on their faces earlier had meant anything. She studies the three people again, “What happens if I refuse?”
“Right now you’re in UA custody. If you become a student here, that becomes permanent, though you’ll be placed with Eraserhead and Present Mic as your foster parents. Only as a student of UA are we able to offer you any protection,” Nezu stops there, presumably to let her piece the puzzles of that unspoken threat together herself.
“I understand,” She answers truthfully. She’s not sure what would happen if she refused, but she knows a threat when she hears one and she doesn’t particularly want to know what this one would specifically entail.
“Excellent, there’s ten months before the entrance exams are due to take place. It should give you ample time to prepare and settle in! Of course, you won’t be leaving today, Recovery Girl needs to make sure you’re ready and there’s paperwork that needs to be filed, but I’d say within a week you’ll be able to get out of here,” Nezu reminds her too much of Urami. She can’t feel her connection to any of her summons and that leaves her concerned about her prospects of going home now that she’s thinking about it. Nezu is still talking though so she forces her focus back to him, “I’m sure she won’t mind if you get to know Eraserhead and Present Mic a little today, so you aren’t living with total strangers when she releases you into their care!”
Katsumi looks at the two men and doesn’t comment or acknowledge Nezu when he departs and leaves her with the strangers. Present Mic practically throws himself into the chair beside her bed and nearly deafens her with his exuberant greeting, “Hey, Little listener! I know it’s all new and you’re probably confused, but don’t worry, we aren’t going to let anything happen to you! Since you’ll be living with us, you should know our names, I’m Yamada Hizashi and he’s Aizawa Shouta, he’s a lot nicer than he seems, don’t worry.”
Katsumi flinches away from the volume even as she dulls her hearing, and formally says, “Thank you for taking care of me, Yamada-Sama.”
Aizawa snorts at the title, “No need for the formalities, problem child. We aren’t that important.”
She eyes him warily, “Alright.”
Five days later she’s standing in a little two bedroom apartment trying to ignore the cat rubbing on her leg while Yamada shows her the room that’s been cleared out for her. He sounds apologetic as he shows it to her, “Sorry it’s so plain, we didn’t know what you’d like for decorations, tomorrow we’ll take you to buy some stuff for it, alright? And clothes too so you have things you want to wear instead of my merch.”
She takes in the room, small and without decorations. It’s got a dresser and a small single person bed, a desk and a nightstand and nothing else. The closest door is open and there’s orange shirts the same color as Yamada’s glasses and a few pairs of black exercise shorts. She turns her head to look up at the man, “This is acceptable. Thank you for allowing me to stay.”
“Stop thanking us,” Aizawa sounds bored as he picks up the cat trying to catch her attention, “That room was going to waste before now. It’s yours as long as you need it.”
Katsumi doesn’t know what to say to that so she doesn’t say anything. Just tries to help when Yamada makes dinner. She used to help Yoshino when the woman let her. Yamada seems to think it’s adorable that she’s helping and readily allows it. The Spicy udon is good and she eats two full bowls before asking where she can shower. She wants to get the smell of the medical by off her. She also wants to figure out why everyone is saying she’s fourteen.
She’s not pleased. She looks like she did shortly following her four month crash course ANBU training. She’s lacking scars she knows she should have and her body is definitely not the body of a seventeen year old. She looks like a child that hasn’t been well treated and okay, yeah, she seems why they’ve decided she’s fourteen. She’s pissed about it. She got deaged and she’s going to throttle Naruto for that once she figures out if she can get home. She glares at her image and wants to shatter the mirror. She would if it didn’t belong to the men keeping her hostage or acting as her hosts or whatever they’re supposed to be.
When they take her shopping the next day she expects them to pick out what she should have. It’s their home and she’s a guest or a captive or something. She doesn’t really expect to be fully allowed to pick her decorations and clothing and she’s a bit overwhelmed. In Konoha there were carpenters to purchase furniture from or order custom furniture or a person inherited it or bought it secondhand. Clothing stores didn’t have as many options as the ones in this world and the stores in Konoha weren’t near as big and it’s hard to take it all in. Aizawa just points out necessities while Yamada tries to get her to pick all sorts of ridiculous things.
Still unsure of what she can and can’t pick, she looks at the aisle of bed sheets at one store and points at a set that are the same obnoxious orange as Naruto’s old genin jacket, “If I wanted those, could I have them?”
Aizawa looks mildly pained looking at them, “If those make you happy.”
She blinks, “Are they supposed to make me happy? I just need sheets that won’t get holes easily and keep me sufficiently warm.”
Yamada looks like that answer is horrifying to him, “You should like your things. If they make you happy, if you like them, we’ll buy them for you.”
This reminds her of Yoshino when the woman would take her clothes shopping and Katsumi would only buy the most practical things. She looks at the orange sheets again and wrinkles her nose, “I don’t like orange. It’s very… loud.”
That gets a snort from Aizawa, “So which do you like? You need two sets, at least.”
Katsumi points at a set of sheets that are a pale sea foam color and made of some kind of fluffy material, “Can I have that set? They look soft. And I like the color.”
Yamada nearly snatches them off the shelf in his haste to get the set she asked for, “Absolutely! They’re a great choice, little Listener. You just want two of the same set or you want a different one?”
She runs her tongue over the edges of her teeth, not quite hard enough to cut herself and takes a set of bright blue, like Naruto’s eyes, off the shelf and looks hopefully at the men paying for her things, “Please?”
Aizawa takes the sheets from her and tosses them in the cart, “You need a bedspread you like too. And whatever decorations you want. And bathroom things and clothes. And shoes. Is there anything else you think you might want?”
She shakes her head and the pattern repeats with the bedspread. She ends up getting a grey one with cherry blossoms on it that Yamada is quick to tell her is an excellent choice. Katsumi doesn’t think any of this is necessary. The room is perfectly acceptable as it is, but the men seem determined to let her pick out things she likes so she obediently does so.
Decorations are an issue because she doesn’t know what she should decorate the room like. They suggest hero merch, apparently that’s popular, but she wrinkles her nose at the idea. It sounds weird and she doesn’t know any heroes anyway. She does get curtains, pretty white curtains since she has no idea how to decorate her room and doesn’t know if she’s supposed to just pick things she likes or things that go together. Yamada and Aizawa aren’t much help beyond telling her to pick what she likes. She finds a single painting she likes of the ocean and starts to ask if she can have it, but Aizawa is already picking it up before the words can even leave her mouth, “It’s a good painting, it’ll look nice in your room.”
Katsumi can’t stop the involuntary, happy smile from spreading across her face, and says, more childlike than she’s been since her first kill, “The ocean is my favorite thing. I love it.”
Yamada sounds and looks thrilled at her words, “I bet we can find more ocean themed stuff for you.”
Katsumi shakes her head, “I think that’s enough decorations. One picture is plenty. Can I get books instead? And a shelf for them?”
“You like to read?” Aizawa inquires as he pays for the stuff for her room and leads them out to the car to go get her clothes.
“I need to know things and books are important for that,” She answers. She can’t say she’s ever read fiction. The only fiction she’s really been exposed to is children’s books and Icha Icha and she refuses on principle to read Kakashi’s porn. Books are for learning and she needs to learn.
“Alright, Problem child, we’ll get you books,” Aizawa sounds like he’s bored as he agrees to her request, but he looks pleased that she’s voicing her wants.
By the end of the day she’s got a few sets of civilian clothes, a handful of shoes and bathroom supplies to go with the bedsheets and painting she’d chosen. She also has ten books, mostly history books, but one law book and one entirely about quirks. She practically barricades herself in her room as she pours over the books in a desperate attempt to figure out the world she’s in now.
Within the next week she’s formally tested on her knowledge and placed in online classes to keep up or catch up in her education. She doesn’t mind not going to an actual school. She doesn’t particularly want to go to school at all. She finished with the academy and up to this point thought formal schooling was over for her. She’s lucky that aside from history and English, she’s tested as being in the top percentiles of students. She doesn’t struggle with history for long though. It’s just memorization of facts and shinobi are expected to have excellent memories considering somethings can’t be kept on paper. She does struggle with English. It helps that Yamada, who tells her she can call him Hizashi, teaches English at UA and is willing to sit down with her whenever he has free time and help her.
Because they teach at UA and she’s taking online courses, most days she sits in the teacher’s lounge and does her class work while her guardians teach. She gets in trouble when she snarls and uses her deepest fear genjutsu on Midnight when the woman startles her on the second day of doing her classes there, Katsumi’s been keeping her hearing reduced so she doesn’t lose her hearing because of Yamada. Aizawa has to sit her down when they make it home that day and lay down ground rules.
He looks tired while she glares unrepentantly back at him, “Alright, I get she startled you. But whatever you did, you can’t just use your quirk on people whenever you want. If someone bothers you or tries to do anything to you that you aren’t okay with, I want to tell me or Hizashi. You legally can’t use your quirk publicly without proper licensing.”
She glares at the man, “I didn’t hurt her. Just scared her a little. I don’t like people startling me. I was being nice.”
“That wasn’t being nice,” He makes his voice soft as he explains, “You didn’t physically hurt her, but you made her see things that were very upsetting and that isn’t any less hurtful than if you’d hit her.”
She runs her tongue along her teeth and tastes blood, “So what happens if someone attacks me? I can’t defend myself?”
“No one is going to attack you, you’re safe,” Aizawa stresses, “Hizashi and I aren’t going to let anyone hurt you. If someone does attack you, we will protect you. And you do not kill anyone even if we can’t protect you.”
That’s something she still doesn’t understand. No killing clear threats. It seems so stupid to her and she huffs, “I wasn’t going to kill anyone. I know how to kill and how not to. If I was going to kill her, I would have cut her throat as soon as she was under my quirk.”
Aizawa closes his eyes like he’s searching for patience before opening them and looking at her steadily, “Do you know why we don’t kill?”
“Because it’s wrong,” She says flatly. That’s all she understands so far on the matter. This culture considers killing threats the same as murder. In Konoha there’s a clear distinction. Here it’s the same either way.
“Do you know why it’s wrong?” He presses.
She shakes her head, “Killing someone that’s a threat and killing someone who isn’t aren’t the same thing and you act like they are and I don’t get it.”
“So you know killing an innocent civilian is wrong,” Aizawa checks.
“Obviously, if they aren’t a threat and there aren’t orders to kill them, of course it would be wrong,” Katsumi argues, she’s never had to debate the morals she was raised on before and she doesn’t like it.
“So orders make it okay?”
“If I don’t obey the orders, someone else will. They die regardless,” She glares at him.
“I see. Killing is wrong no matter what, Katsumi, even if you’re ordered to. We don’t kill, even villains who would kill us, because it’s not our right to decide who lives or dies and if we kill, we are no better than the villains,” Aizawa says and he looks like he isn’t sure she’ll be able to comprehend any of that.
Katsumi sniffs in dissatisfaction, “I understand. Even if I think that’s stupid. And I won’t use my quirk on Midnight again.”
“Good, next time, if someone startles you, try asking them to not do it again,” He doesn’t look like he really likes what she’s saying but he’s not lecturing her further so she thinks he’s satisfied for now.
As the months pass she has to answer more questions from the detective and each time she has to be careful to tell the truth without giving away the fact she’s not from this universe. She trusts Shouta and Hizashi to keep her safe, she likes the pair, and even likes the cats, but she doesn’t trust anyone with that knowledge. She’ll find a way home on her own. She tries not to feel bad leading them to think she’s the victim of some kind of child soldier training program. She adjusts to calling her chakra a quirk and is constantly delighted at startling her guardians by doing something new with it. She thinks they’re genuinely shocked at how versatile her chakra is. Or her quirk as they call it. She doesn’t like when they go do hero things and come back injured. Doesn’t like at all that she can’t go with them. She knows she could help. Could keep them safe to, but in their eyes she’s a fourteen year old child and not a shinobi and they are very, very clear that she cannot do that. Her pack instincts in the months before she’s to take the UA entrance exam are well and truly triggered and she is driven up the wall not being able to help them and trying to figure out how to make her pack happy and what exactly her place in this pack even is.
The first time she has a nightmare about one of her past missions is a month before she’s due to take the entrance exam and she wakes up screaming. This causes both of her guardians to burst into her room in a panic. Which caused her to try and kill them with the lightning hound jutsu. She misses thank the Sage, but the damage is done. They aren’t angry with her, startled yes, angry no, and apparently Shouta’s quirk does work on her chakra, which makes her wonder if being able to use chakra is in fact some kind of quirk that’s just universal in her home universe. She is angry with herself and terrified of hurting her new pack and withdrawals sharply from them. Talks even less than before and keeps her distance and tries to make herself as small as possible. She doesn’t want to hurt them and she clearly could and she just knows she doesn’t belong here with these people who are too kind and good to even kill someone trying to kill them.
It’s three days before Hizashi sits her down on the couch and puts Bastard, the calico cat that’s Aizawa’s favorite, in her lap so she can’t run and sits down with her, “You didn’t hurt anyone, you know that? Me and Sho? We don’t even have a single scratch from what you did.”
“That would have killed you, if it hit you,” She tells him in a small voice, that jutsu is meant to be lethal, kakashi had deliberately taught her that justu for ending a battle quickly.
“It didn’t though, Little listener. All you did was take the electricity out for a day. It’s normal for people to lose control of their quirks when their emotions are high,” Hizashi doesn’t sound angry at all or even disappointed at how she’d lashed out, just worried, “You didn’t mean to hurt either of us, right?”
“Of course not,” She shakes her head and bares her teeth in distress at the thought. She may be trying to quietly figure out how to go home, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care to an extreme degree about the pair in charge of her.
“Exactly, you didn’t mean to try and hurt us and you didn’t hurt us. Could you have? Absolutely, but you didn’t. We can work on your control, help you find ways to use your quirk in less lethal ways, help you learn to control it when you’re scared. It’s okay to be scared, too. You’re a kid and you’ve been though a lot, it’s normal,” Hizashi sounds so genuine and his voice is the quieter tone he’s learned she prefers because of her sensitive hearing, “You’re not a bad person for trying to defend yourself. You have a really powerful quirk and you were terrified. But no one was hurt and you didn’t want to hurt us. It’s okay.”
Katsumi ends up hugging the blonde man, the first real physical affection she’s had since arriving here, and he allows it and even hugs her back and her pack instincts calm down when she’s able to press her ear against his chest and listen to his heartbeat. After that she gets a little clingy. As a shinobi, casual violence like sparing had been part of the physical affection between comrades, and she’d had a huge support network for the rest of it. Here she has only Aizawa and Hizashi and the cats and she becomes very cuddly now that she knows it’s okay. She’s willing to admit she may be a bit touch starved. Hizashi is more than happy to allow her to hug him whenever she wants and ruffles her hair, which she wears down now, when she does something right. Aizawa is less touchy-feely but he allows her to nap on him when he’s trying to catch up on sleep on the couch and even though he tenses up he lets her hug him too.
It’s not as much physical affection as she’s used to, more than from Shikaku but less than from her father, but it’s enough for the men who are quickly becoming new parental figures. She’s able to recognize that despite the fact she’s chronologically seventeen, her mind may have been deaged too if her pack instincts are so easily latching onto these men. She knows she’s going to miss them far more than previously expected if she finds a way home.