Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You shake off your backpack by your bedroom door and flop face-first into bed. Why does this school start their year so early? If you were back at your old school, you’d still have at least another month of summer vacation left, not to mention the friends that you had to leave behind.

God, you miss them so much. After being around the same people for so many years, your ‘meeting new people’ skills are rusty as hell. The people at this new school weren’t necessarily mean, but you doubted your abilities to find a good friend when most of these kids were in established friend groups anyways.

Warm blankets stifle your groan as you begin to spiral into self-pity for your situation once again. At least you’re somewhat aware of your own mental state? That’s a good trait to have, and it gives you the strength to roll over and grab your phone. A distraction is in order, you decide. You swipe away the notification begging you to begin your homework and make a digital beeline for your email. An update from one of your favorite authors seems like it would be just the thing to swerve you away from your bellyaching. Awwww yes, it looks like one of your favorite fics has updated! This fic usually puts a smile on your face, so it’s a great choice for this sort of situation. You lick your lips and shift on your bed as the page loads itself up, and then begin to immerse yourself into a world less lonely than your own.

-~-~-

Hours later, you wake up to a dark bedroom and a blanket thrown over your body, your phone still in your hand. Mom must have come in and decided you needed sleep more than dinner after your first day back to school. You close your eyes and figure that she’s usually pretty good at judging that, and so you don’t feel too bad about missing dinner. However, your stomach disagrees, so you decide to go grab a snack.

While contemplating your snack attack plan, you hear something foreign moving around in your room. You perk up at the sound and ensure your breathing is steady to feign sleep. Best case scenario, it’s your mom or dad checking on you again. Actually, that’s just the most likely scenario, and the idea that it might be anything else makes your chest sink with anxiety.

“So this is his bond? How interesting that they aren’t from the same dimension!” The unfamiliar and sing-songy male voice makes your breath hitch slightly. Oh. Just your luck. There's a goddamn psycho in your room.

You hear the figure step closer and now you’re scrambling to think of what you could use as a weapon. You could throw your phone? Or toss a pillow to distract him and make a run for it? Or you could just straight-on tackle the guy? No, that’s not wise. You don’t know if he has a weapon or not, and so some sort of ranged attack would be better right? But your throws are mediocre at best, and your phone is fairly expensive ammo. Maybe you could grab-

You don’t finish the thought. “She doesn’t look bad, a bit plain though” he’s silent something for a moment, and then laughs. “I suppose they share that in common! How hilarious!” the intruder moves closer and now you’re pretty sure that he’s at the edge of your bed. Now is the time to act, not to spiral. You go with the phone throw- your parents would understand it being broken if it was in self-defense, and your life is worth much more than the hunk of technology.

You take a deep breath and open your eyes. You locate the figure next to your bed, sit up, and move to throw the phone, but your arm is stopped short by a hand gripping your wrist. Your eyes follow the hand up the man's arm to a masked face. Oh, shit. “Well you’re feisty aren’t you?” the man leers into your personal space and you flinch at the proximity. Even though you can’t see his face, you can imagine the type of twisted face this guy is making. “Who are you?” you manage to grind out through clenched teeth. Your voice wobbles and is still scratchy from sleep. It doesn’t allow you any illusion of control in this situation, and you both see right through it.

“You can call me the matchmaker, sweetheart, and be assured: I’m not here to hurt you!” You can hear the smile in his sickly sweet voice as he replies, and it makes you crinkle your nose in disgust. You shift your other hand, which you’re using to brace yourself on the bed so that you can support your weight without it. He hasn’t noticed yet. “Then what the hell are you doing in my room, you creep?” you manage to say with a bit more courage.

As you say it, you bring up your free hand to slap his away, but just as quickly as before, you’re apprehended. “Touchy, touchy!” he croons, gripping both of your arms tightly. He adjusts his grip with ease until he’s clutching your wrists instead, doing so as if to show you just how powerless you are against him. Your legs are still trapped underneath you, and the force he’s exerting on you from just your wrists keeps you from using them against him. “Fuck” you breath, staring down the empty eye sockets of his mask. They stare back at you, and this guy’s childish demeanor doesn’t diminish the apathy that those sockets emanate. “That’s a bad word little (y/n), you shouldn’t say it! Besides,” his grip tightens further, and a glowing blue light begins to manifest where his skin meets yours “I’m just trying to add a little fun into your life!”

The blue light tingles at your skin, quickly enveloping your body inch by inch. At the angle he’s holding you at, you can’t see what the light is doing, but you can feel it. The parts of your body that have already been touched feel like they’re being dipped in icy cold water, and you can’t move them an inch. As the line reaches up and past your nose, your vision goes dark.

-~-~-

You jolt awake when your back hits soft bedding. Unfortunately, you were thrown into these blankets against your will, and they definitely aren't yours. You groan and hold your head, which has begun to throb in pain. “What the heck did that ‘Matchmaker’ guy do?” you wonder aloud.

As you try to sit up, your head throbs in earnest, forcing you to lie back down again. You push through it though and force your eyes open despite the hammering in your skull. The bright visage of All Might on all sides of you throws you off and your eyes widen. Ouch, those colors are bright.

You close your eyes again for a moment and take a deep breath. Why is this room covered wall to wall in the merch of a fictional hero? As you push yourself up, you wonder who would take an anime that seriously. You groan and open up your eyes again, glancing down at your hands. You’re still holding your phone? That’s surprising, but you’re not about to complain. Squinting to prevent blinding yourself with patriotic colors, you lift your head and begin to scan the room. Something feels familiar about the room. It’s small, and the furniture looks like the sort of mediocre but sturdy stuff that you’d expect to see in a dorm. You keep slowly swiveling your head, marveling at the sheer amount of merchandise on the walls- until your eyes land on an all too familiar head of green hair. Your headache falls to the metaphorical back burner on your stove of problems as you make contact with wide green eyes.

Yeah, you have a much bigger issue now. Because that’s Midoriya Izuku, a fictional character who currently looks somewhere between asking if you’re ok and calling the police. He’s sitting at his desk, probably in the middle of doing some homework, and it’s so strange and ordinary that you can’t help but let your brows furrow. You look down at your hands again, gingerly pocket your phone, and then give your arm a firm, no bars-held pinch.

“OW!” you yelp, and suddenly Midoriya is scrambling out of his seat to make sure you’re ok. Through the sharp pain in both your arm and head (which decided to make a comeback. Thanks, head.), you swear your mind comes up with something along the lines of ‘too pure, too good’. Because jeez, this kid is worried about his intruder’s safety and that’s probably the height of wholesomeness. He’s still keeping his distance, but he’s hovering over you worriedly.

“I’m fine, I’m ok” you manage to choke out. The pain on your arm is beginning to subside, leaving you with watery eyes and an angry pink welt where you pinched yourself.

He stops about a foot away from you, still looking concerned. Giving you a once over and verifying that you’re physically okay otherwise, his concerned expression shifts into a serious one. “Who are you? How did you get in here??” he demanded. The shift from concern to mistrust made you flinch away. Logically, you could completely understand his apprehension. Just a few minutes prior you had dealt with a similar situation, and he and his class have been targeted by unsavory people in the past. But your emotions were welling up, and all of your fear from dealing with the ‘matchmaker’ was making a comeback. Your chest aches with swirling emotions of confusion, fear, and distress. A couple of tears spill over the dam, and a hiccup escapes your mouth before you can help it. Oh god, you don't want to cry in front of him- but it's already happening, and not being able to stop only makes your shoulders slump in shame.

You look up through your tears, to meet his eyes. Midoriya looks mollified now, obviously not expecting this reaction. His eyes are wide and filled with shame, probably for making you cry. That doesn’t belong there, you think. Because it doesn’t. He may have been a catalyst, but he has a right to know what's going on, and goddammit if you aren’t going to give it to him. You compose yourself by taking a shaky, gulping breath and bring your arms up to hug yourself.

“I-i don’t think I belong here” you chuckle wetly. He still looks so concerned, but he’s obviously listening now. You look down and begin to stumble your way through your anxiety.
“I was in my bed, asleep, and then this man came into my room. He made enough noise to wake me up and when I tried to defend myself he got ahold of me and-” a hiccup pushes its way out of your throat to interrupt. The pause forces you to take another wobbling breath before you continue.

"When he grabbed me, there was this blue light that wrapped around me and then-” There are tears heading in your eyes again, and you don't intend to allow them to fall. You stop to take more deep breaths.

“And then you were here?” he asks softly.

You bring your knees up to your chest and hug them, the motion comforting you slightly. You bring yourself to meet his eyes again, tears still unshed. At some point, while you were stumbling over basic speech, he moved to sit on the bed next to you. The ‘yeah’ that you reply with sounds so small. It doesn’t sound like you, and you hate it. His eyes are full of understanding and determination though, and you can tell that he believes you.

After a moment of silence, he places a hand on your back and speaks again. “I’m really sorry that that happened to you, miss…” you realize you never introduced yourself. “Oh, um” you wipe at some snot under your nose. Ugh, that's embarrassing.

“I’m (f/n) (l/n). I'm sorry I was thrown into your room. What is your name?” you manage a weak smile at him, and he gives you a soft one back. “I’m Izuku Midoriya."

Huh, you've gotten so used to hearing his name in Japanese that his given name proceeding the family name sounds odd. Come to think of it, why can you understand him perfectly? He seems to be able to understand you well too. If you called him by his given name like you would in America, would he be phased? You shake yourself a little bit and push the thoughts aside. You have bigger fish to fry right now.

Save for the slightly shaky breathing and occasional hiccups, you feel fairly composed now. In your head, you’ve decided that you’re not going to reveal that their world is nothing but an anime in yours unless it becomes absolutely necessary. That sort of information wouldn't do any good for these people’s state of mind. But that means that you’ll have to play dumb. Really dumb. A glance over at Izuku shows that he's in the throes of a mumble rant about your intruder, and thinks that they were likely a villain of some sort.

“Sooooo,” you glance around the room, admiring the posters and rocking back and forth lightly. “Where exactly are we? This room looks kind of like a dorm, but I don’t recognize the guy on all of these posters.” you pull a confused face and lower your voice “they’re all in Japanese too…” you look over at him. He's broken out of his pondering now, and is looking at you like you're some sort of alien.

"Could you repeat what you just said please?" He asks with a tone you can't identify.

You clear your throat and lift your arm to point up at one of his posters. "I don't recognize this guy" you move your finger to point at the characters below him "and this looks like it's in Japanese, so I can't read it. I'd assume he was just obscure and foreign, but you have a lot of different merch of him so it doesn't seem likely."

His brow furrows, and you can see his mind moving at a million miles a minute. He meets your eyes again after a moment. "His name is All Might, the number one hero in Japan. That doesn't ring a bell at all?" You shake your head no. You could hear the admiration in his voice when introducing his hero, and can visibly see him deflate at your admission.

"You can understand me, right?" he asks.

"Perfectly"

"And you don't understand Japanese?"

"Yup, I'm only fluent in English"

His confusion only seems to build, and you can't blame him. He looks like he's about to start mumbling again, but he picks himself out of the pit before he can fully fall in.

Suddenly standing up from the bed, he turns and extends his hand to you. As you take it, he begins to explain. "I don't know exactly what happened to you, but I think that there's more to that villain you met than we initially thought. It seems like you're far from home, and also we can understand each other despite speaking different languages!"

He smiles at you now that you're both standing. "I've been speaking Japanese this whole time you know, and if you're actually speaking English as you said, then that villain must have a really weird quirk!"

The probability that your attacker was from this world and used a quirk suddenly hit you like a truck.

Obviously, normal people couldn't do what he had done to you without some sort of complicated technology. That meant that you probably couldn’t get home without the villain and his quirk. And if the villain wasn't interested in getting you home anytime soon, then how would you get home at all?

Instead of voicing your internal monologue, you decide to keep it quiet. “What is a quirk?” you ask instead.

“Maybe it’s different in English? I mean your power, like this!” he holds his arm up at his side and activates his quirk, allowing arcs of green lightning to dance across his skin. Seeing his quirk animated and through a screen was one thing, but standing right in front of him while it was activated was electrifying, pun totally intended. Strands of your hair begin to stick up from the static that was rolling off of him. You watch in amazement as the electrical discharge moves around from his elbow to his wrist to his fingertips and back again before he puts his hand back down.

“That’s really incredible! But I still don’t understand how you were able to do that, it looks like magic!” You know that you have to sell that you really don’t know what quirks are, and the longing that is pooling in your stomach can probably help with that. Just because you’re here in this world now doesn’t mean you automatically get one, after all! You pull your eyes off of his arm to peek up at his face. Realization is dawning on his face, so he must have figured out the same thing you did.

“We should take you to my teachers, they can explain what I think is going on better than I can”

-~-~-

And that’s how you found yourself hiding behind a wall at eleven pm while Izuku explained what had happened to his teachers in the common room. Izuku wanted you to stay out of sight while he explained the situation, not wanting them to assume you were an intruder. Apparently, they had been grading papers in there when you two snuck down the stairs to try and find them. Based on the tone of voice alone, you can discern that All Might is one of them. You sigh in relief because you know that All Might trusts Izuku near-implicitly, and Izuku seems to trust you a lot so far too. There's one more voice in the room, which is gruff and monotonous. That must be Aizawa.

You scoot a bit closer to the corner of the wall so you can hear a bit better, and your heart sinks. Izuku is summing up what he knew and giving his thoughts on what must have happened. Words from Izuku like “possible time-travel” “no quirks” and “different dimension?” you follow just fine, but the teachers are replying back to him in Japanese, and you can’t understand a thing. Would that mean Izuku would have to translate everything you need to say? You don’t want to be a burden to him.

Just great.

“Hey, (l/n), you can come over now” you hear Izuku call.

Just your freaking luck.

You swing around the corner and take a seat next to where Izuku is sitting across from the teachers. All Might, who is in his smaller form, looks curious and all shades of the word ‘worried’, the poor guy. Meanwhile, Aizawa tiredly shifts his eyes over to you from Izuku. You clear your throat and bite the bullet.

“Hi, my name is (f/n) (l/n). I’m really sorry for intruding, but I don’t understand what's happening either. One moment I was in my bed, and the next there was this guy in my room. He sent me here somehow, and now I just want to get home.”

Aizawa hesitates for a moment and then says something in Japanese to All Might and Izuku. Izuku nods and then turns to you. “Aizawa sensei said that you were speaking English, but he didn’t understand all of what you said. Could you understand him speaking in Japanese?” You shake your head no “not at all.”

“I noticed the same thing as well, young Midoriya, young (l/n)” All Might’s kind voice cut in. You look to him in surprise. All Might’s English sounds a little off, probably from lack of use, but despite that, you can understand him just fine. Your heart lifts in appreciation at his consideration.

“You speak English, sir?” you ask eagerly.

“I spent a few years after graduation in America, so I learned the language. It has been a while since I've been able to practice though, I hope you aren’t having too much trouble understanding me” he chuckled.

“You’re fine, sir! I can understand you really well!” you exclaim, waving your hands in front of your face. Now that you think about it, calling him ‘sir’ might get confusing. For now, it’s just a formality, but you don’t know if he’s reconciled with Nighteye yet. The teachers still haven’t introduced themselves though, so you don’t have much else to call them. “What should I call you two?”

All Might begins first; “My name is Yagi Toshinori, but you can call me Yagi or All Might! I teach foundational heroics here at UA.” you nod along and look to Aizawa.

So far, he seems to have been following along with the conversation in English but hasn’t spoken in it yet. He probably knows just enough to get by, which is how you passed Spanish class. When he speaks, it sounds a bit unsure, but otherwise still bored and tired. “My name is Aizawa Shouta, I am Midoriya’s homeroom teacher. Call me Aizawa” you smile at both of the teachers.

“Thank you both for speaking English, I don’t know any Japanese. I picked Spanish for my foreign language class because we border Mexico” you explain. “I really appreciate the accommodation though, so if I stay here for very long, I’ll do my best to learn some Japanese!”

Your thank you garners you two bright smiles and a gruff nod from Aizawa, Who says something to Yagi under his breath. All Might straightens in his seat on the couch and looks at you a bit more seriously. “Speaking of you staying here, we need to figure out what happened to you and how we’re going to get you home. Aizawa, you said that you might know who the culprit is?” he asked the man, turning his way.

Aizawa rubbed at his eyes. “Yes, but I need more information. I’ll be asking you some questions. Is that okay?” You nod yes, and they begin the questioning.
-~-~-

Aizawa had a tablet balanced on his lap as he filed a written report of the situation, and Yagi was hunched over his laptop sending emails to other teachers with an explanation of what had happened. Aizawa had done most of the questioning, asking Yagi to translate the more complex questions to you.

So far, they had established that yes, you were likely pulled here with a Time or Dimension-based quirk, both of which were super rare. Aizawa apparently thought there must be another layer to the quirk, but he made it clear that he wouldn’t be willing to share until he was absolutely sure. For now, they were mostly done with questioning. It was nearly 12:30, and you and Izuku had been deep in conversation for a while, only interrupted when Aizawa or Yagi needed to clarify something.

“So 80 percent of the population here has quirks?” you parroted. “Yeah, but that statistic is a few years old now, and they’ll probably update it soon."

“That makes sense” you mumbled.“but if quirkless people are becoming rarer, that means that most of that 20 percent is made up of older generations. I bet that if you compared population pyramids between the quirked and quirkless, that they would be inverse! The quirkless population pyramid would be heavier at the top and dwindle down through the younger populations. Meanwhile, the quirked population pyramid starts smaller and gets bigger each year. That probably means that quirkless kids are a growing minority, huh? Ugh, and unless you guys have angelic kids here or something, I bet that kids get incredibly cruel about it. Wait, fuck, I’m a quirkless kid here. Are people gonna be mean to me?” you turn to Izuku and shake his shoulders gently “Are people gonna be rude to me?” you let go and put up your fists in a fake boxing stance. “I’ll fight. I don’t have a quirk but I'll make them feel bad about themselves for being rude. Does that count as fighting? They’d deserve it anyways, quirkless people are just as deserving of respect as the quirked!”

You’re broken out of your rant by laughing from the couch across from you. You turn to see Yagi trying and failing to hold in his laughter, and a slightly amused look painting Aizawa’s features. “You mumble and rant just like young Midoriya! Aizawa, your theory might just be right!!!” Aizawa says something in Japanese that makes All Might laugh harder.

You feel a light blush on your face, but you can’t bring yourself to be super embarrassed. You only thought out loud like that when you were really on a roll with a line of thought, and saying things out loud helped you organize your thoughts more than letting them swirl around in your head did. “I’ll take that as a compliment then! Midoriya seems really smart and dedicated to his goal, so being compared to him is pretty high praise!"

You hear a sharp intake of breath from next to you and find yourself looking at a very red face. You feel laughter bubble up your chest. Oh my God, he looks like a strawberry.

"I look like a WHAT?" Midoriya exclaims, somehow turning redder. Did you say that out loud? Oops. All Might is laughing even harder now, and it's incredibly contagious.

As you both laugh, you find yourself hoping the dorms are soundproofed. You ask Midoriya, and he confirms it as his blush and your chuckles both begin to die down.
-~-~-

It’s nearing 2 am now, and Izuku is growing sleepier by the minute. Your game of 20 questions has devolved into idle conversation sprinkled with Izuku's yawns. You still feel wide awake, despite the time. You’ll probably make him go to sleep soon. But, for now, it’s funny to watch him stumble over his eager questions about your world.

“So you’re saying that the technology from your home is about the same as it is here?” He asked sleepily, leaning back against the arm of the couch a bit more snugly. You were both sitting on the couch facing each other, legs up on the couch but not quite touching.

“Yeah, as far as I've seen. Didn’t you say that technological advancement stagnated for you guys after quirks began manifesting?”

“Something like that.” he yawns and eyes Aizawa’s tablet on the coffee table. “There’s a theory that if quirks never came about, we’d be vacationing in space now.”

“That would be pretty cool, to take a vacation on the moon or something.” you lean back against the armrest more, and now you’d have to peek around your knees to see Izuku. He hasn’t responded yet, so extend one leg to tap against his.

“Hey, Midoriya?”

He groans sleepily, but manages to respond “yeah? Wh’s up (l/n)?”

He’s close to drifting, but you want to ask this now so that you don’t slip up and embarrass yourself later.

“Would you mind if I called you by your given name? I know it’s a little personal here in Japan, but it would make me feel more comfortable. Calling people by their family names isn’t super common back home…” you can feel yourself shrinking in on yourself a bit. The implications of that here were usually super close friendship or something more intimate, right? You didn’t want him to take it the wrong way-

“Yeah, sure! Would it make you more comfortable if I called you by your given name too?” He sounded marginally more alert now, and not embarrassed at all. The tension melts out of your shoulders.

“I’d appreciate that a lot Izuku. I know I’ve only known you for a few hours, but you’ve been a good friend to me. So, thank you.”

“You’re welcome (f/n). I’m happy to help!” you can hear the smile in his voice, and it makes you feel relaxed. You both lie in comfortable silence until you hear his breathing even out.

As soon as you’re sure he’s asleep, you sit up and wave All Might over from his perch at the kitchen table. As he treads towards you, you observe his face. He looks tired, and you wince thinking about how much sleep he’s missing right now.

“Is there anything you need, young (l/n)?” despite his obvious state of fatigue, he gives you a bright smile.

“Do you think we could move Izuku up to his room? I don’t think it would be great for his back if he slept here on the couch all night” you respond with a smile.

He turns to regard Izuku’s sleeping form. “Yes, that seems like it would be wise. I’m sure he’d appreciate it too. I can carry him if you don’t mind opening up some doors along the way?”

You beam up at him. “That sounds great! Thank you for helping me!” you say as you stand up from the couch. As you open some doors and watch All Might tuck Izuku into bed, you allow yourself to wonder about your situation. Is this your life now? Living quirkless inside of the world of your favorite anime? Or will you wake up in the morning and cry that it isn’t real?

All Might closes Izuku’s door and turns to you. He somehow picks up on exactly what you’re feeling and places a hand on your back. It’s comforting, and instantly reminds you of your parents. What if you never see them again? They were your one constant during the move to your new home, constantly reassuring you that you’d love your new school and make good friends. You brushed them off because you weren’t keen on leaving your friends behind, but you know that they were doing their best to provide a better life for the family.

“I miss them.” you choke out. You’re not crying, but the sadness in your voice is palpable.

“Your family?” All Might asks.

You’re both silent as you descend the stairs back into the common room.

At the end of the stairwell, you slow down. You look down at your feet and take a steadying breath. “Yeah. I hope they’re ok. For all I know, that guy is still in my house back home. I don’t want him hurting my parents or anyone else back there.”

“Young (l/n). Look at me please?” You look up, and he lays a large hand on your shoulder as he speaks.

“I can’t promise you, in good faith, that everything will end up perfect. But myself, Aizawa, and all of the staff on campus promise to do everything in our power to get you home, and to make you feel welcome and safe here for as long as you stay.”

The hand lifts off of your shoulder, and All Might opens up his arms for a hug. You take a step forward and sink into the hero’s embrace. Despite his thin stature in this form, the hug is warm and encompassing. It reminds you of your parents even more than the hand on your back did. You don’t know when you started crying, but All Might doesn’t seem to mind as you wipe your tears on his chest.

“As long as you’re here, you won’t be alone, problem child.” You feel a hand settle on your head and ruffle your hair. “My class will make sure of that” Aizawa grumbles.

You chuckle and turn out of All Might’s hug, keeping your arms out in invitation. Aizawa seems somewhere between impressed and confused that you’re offering a hug to him. You wiggle your arms a bit up and down to emphasize the offer.

Maybe it's the tears that still linger on your face or your eagerness to show affection, but his walls open up for just a moment, and he opens his arms up to you as well. His expression stays tired and apathetic as you hug him, but the way that he protectively hugs you back betrays the emotions he chooses to display on his face.

“Thank you” you mumble against the embrace.

“Thank you both so much”

Chapter Text

Its been about an hour or so now since you pushed All Might to go get the sleep that he desperately needed. He argued a bit at first but relented easily.

Next, you had attempted to persuade Aizawa to do the same. After a moment of one-sided pleas for the teacher to rest, he got up from his seat. Success!- or so you thought. Instead of packing up and walking to head to bed, he strolled to the kitchen. A moment later, the distinct sounds of a pot of coffee beginning to brew filled the first floor. You came into the kitchen a moment later, intending to glare at him disapprovingly, and instead, you heard your stomach grumble.

Aizawa looked over at you, unamused, and waved his hand towards the coffee pot. “Do you want a cup too, Problem child?”

I guess this is his way of saying ‘fuck off, I’m staying up’

“Maybe,” you say with a sigh. ” Do you have anything I can eat for breakfast first?”

“There are leftovers in the fridge, but don’t trust them. There should be cereal in there.” he vaguely motions over to what looks like a pantry, and turns around to pour his coffee.

Opening up the pantry, you found a few boxes of Mighty-O’s. Were these like… All Might Cheerios? There was an ‘original’ flavor, as well as chocolate and honey. Hopefully, these didn’t belong to anyone specifically, because you’d feel bad about stealing someone’s favorite cereal. You grab the honey-flavored Mighty O’s and make yourself a bowl.

Turning around, bowl in hand, you head back into the common room. You deposit your bowl on the coffee table just as Aizawa comes back into the room. He eyes you for a moment as you dig into your cereal. By the way, it does taste just like honey nut cheerios. Maybe just a little less sugary though? The lack of sugar does help the flavor of the honey come through a bit more, and the honey tastes wilder than processed honey. Okay, damn- you guess you have a new favorite cereal.

Aizawa clears his throat and you stop mid-bite to look up at him. “The students aren’t allowed to eat in the common room here, but you don’t seem nearly as irresponsible as some of them.” He says while motioning around the common room with his free hand.”Don’t make me regret allowing you to eat in here.”

“Yes sir!” you say a bit too loudly. And around a mouth of half-chewed cereal. Oops. Manners, where did you run off to??

You’re a bit mortified, but Aizawa doesn’t seem to care one bit. Then again, this is the same teacher who sleeps in front of his students on a regular basis. And regularly deals with students like Bakugo.

He’s dealt with worse manners than someone speaking with their mouth full.

After washing your bowl and setting it to dry, you walk back into the common room and plop down on the couch. You shift uncomfortably for a moment because something has squished itself between the couch and your butt.

You reach an arm behind yourself to find the culprit and pull out a phone. Hey, wait.

Your phone!!

Glancing over at Aizawa, you swipe your password into your phone, momentarily cringing at your BNHA lock screen and wallpaper.

You slip into your gallery and pick out two random memes to replace them- Spongebob should do just fine, right? Who knows if they even have Spongebob cartoons here. It should be safe enough.

You open up your browser and go back to the fic you were reading. You begin to read, but something feels off.

It’s… too quiet. With just you and Aizawa in the room, there's no one else talking, and the only sound you can hear is the groaning of the refrigerator in the kitchen. Maybe some music would help?

You fish around in your pocket for a few moments and find your trusty earbuds. After the obligatory minute of untangling them, you plug in and swipe over to your playlists. After choosing the last thing you were listening to, you settle back into the nook between the arm and back of the couch and settle in to read until morning.

Unbeknownst to you, Aizawa raises an eyebrow at you from over his tablet, surprised your phone still works after whatever inter-dimensional portal you were tossed through. He goes back to his report and adds a note to his email drafted out to the staff.

Note: Powerloader, the girl’s phone seems to work just fine, I figured you might be interested in investigating. Please make sure you ask her before dismantling anything. Teenagers do tend to be attached to their devices.

-~-~-
5:15 am

As you bring your arms up above your head to stretch, your back pops delightfully, like a zipper up your spine. Glancing over at Aizawa, you notice that his face has lost most of its tension.

When he conked out an hour ago, you managed to find a blanket to throw over him. It’s Crimson Riot themed, and you’re sure that Kirishima would agree that it’s a super manly blanket. Assuming it belongs to him, you assume that he wouldn’t mind donating to the cause that is making sure his teacher sleeps enough.

That is if what you know about him is correct. Who knows how much this world adheres to the canonical timeline of the Anime and Manga back home? Not assuming anything about people will be important, come morning time.

Glancing around the common room, you can see things everywhere, scattered in a slightly messy way. It makes the dorms feel alive and lived in, and if you weren’t sure that this was real before, this is what makes you absolutely sure that it is.

On the couch’s side tables you can see a stack of well-organized blue notebooks, with a pencil case perched on the top of it. Even though you can’t read the neat Japanese characters on the notebook’s cover, you figure out almost immediately that the study supplies belong to Iida. next to the table is a small woven basket with rolled-up blankets in them, where you grabbed the Crimson Riot one from earlier. Some are more worn than others, but they’re all soft and loved. The urge to grab one is tempting, you think as you look at them longingly, eyeing the particularly soft Present Mic blanket you brushed your hand against earlier. However, it doesn’t feel right to use the blanket of someone you don’t know personally. You’re already causing this school enough trouble, crashing into their dorm like this.

A muffled stomping noise to your right shocks you out of your thoughts, and you can hear Aizawa stirring awake as well. Out of the stairwell, one Bakugo Katsuki steps out. You can feel your eyes widen in your head. He’s wearing workout clothing and has both of his earbuds in while he swipes through his phone.

He doesn’t pay you or Aizawa any mind as he walks past you both and out of the dormitory.

Well then. Bakugo Katsuki just stomped past you and didn’t even see you.

You look up at the ceiling, realizing that the other students would be getting up soon as well. Well, depending on the day. You remember seeing on the kitchen calendar that today would be a Sunday, assuming that someone actually periodically updated it. So it might be later than expected.

Aizawa stretches his arms above his head, making the blanket fall down him slightly. Picking up the corner between his fingers, he looks over and raises an eyebrow at you. Catching his movements, you look away and resist the urge to whistle.

5:45 am

Soft footsteps break the silence of the morning, and you probably wouldn’t have heard them if you hadn’t been on edge for the past half hour. Another 2 pairs join the first, one of which is louder and from a higher floor, nearly drowning out the first two sets of steps.

You buzz in place from your spot next to Aizawa, having moved there so you could allow the students some room to sit on the opposite couch, and so that you could see the stairs better when people came down from their rooms.

First through the door, a sloppily done bun that still manages to look fabulous on top of Yaoyorozu’s head. From right next to her, a surprisingly mussed up head of red and white hair.

Todoroki and Yaoyorozu, despite the early hour, look focused and ready for the day. Ugh, Morning people.

They seem to be carrying a fairly lively conversation as they make their way to the kitchen. Unlike Bakugo and his one-track mind, however, they both take notice of you and Aizawa sitting on the couch.

You make eye contact with Todoroki first, and instead of the cold glare you were expecting, you receive something softer.
You can see curiosity etched slightly on his face before moving to meet Yaoyorozu’s gaze. She also looks curious, but doesn’t stare, and instead turns back to her conversation with Todoroki.

Todoroki returns to the conversation as well, and you look back to your phone, realizing that you were staring at them. Hopefully, you didn’t embarrass yourself too much, you really didn’t intend to be rude.

As they sit at the dining room table, you look back up at them and catch them both looking up at you again. Instead of allowing yourself to be embarrassed, you lift your hand and give them a tentative wave. Yaoyorozu smiles at you and waves back. Todoroki gives you a nod, and you think you can see a small tilt to his lips.

Down the stairwell, the 3rd set of footsteps makes an appearance, and Iida makes his way into the common room. Noticing his friends, he makes a beeline for their table and speaks with them briefly, probably to exchange morning pleasantries.

You return to your book until you begin to hear him step towards you. You continue looking at your book, and really, really, really hope he’s not coming over. Bringing your phone closer to your face and avoiding eye contact is probably rude, but oh well. You're not ready to actually talk to anyone. Especially anyone that energetic.

Aizawa shifts to catch Iida before he can confront you, noticing your discomfort. Yaoyorozu’s voice calls him back to the breakfast table (at least you assume that’s what she’s saying) and chides him softly about something. She probably noticed how shy and uncomfortable you were too, the angel.

As you relax, the tightly wound ball of anxiety in your gut begins to lessen. When you look up at the table of teens again, you can see Iida glance worriedly at you. After a moment, he moves to grab himself a bottle of water, speaking across the kitchen to the others all the while. Then, just like Bakugo, he’s out the door. Probably for a morning workout or run, then.

Aizawa grunts from next to you, stretching as he gets up from the couch. He turns around to collect his tablet and to roll up the blanket you had placed over him earlier.

“I’ll be back in an hour. If they give you trouble-” he jerks his thumb behind him at the stairwell “-tell me when I get back. If you need me, tell Yaoyorozu. She’s the girl at the table over there. She’s not fluent in English but should understand what you need. Got it?”

“Yes sir.” you nod. He grunts before heading to Todoroki and Yaoyorozu’s table, probably giving her the basics of the situation. She looks over at you sympathetically before saying something in the affirmative, a look of determination passing over her face.

While Aizawa and the class vice president speak, a few other people descend the stairs. You do your best not to stare when Tokoyami makes his way down with dark shadow coiled around his shoulder. Dark shadow lets out a small yawn though, and it’s adorable.

Just as Aizawa makes his way out of the dorms, Sero hops down the stairs and nearly trips. He glances at you, announces something. And then flops down face first on the couch. Is he- asleep? Yes. yes he is.

6:30

Most of the class seems to be up and awake now, excluding Bakugo, Iida, Uraraka, Izuku, and Shoji. You’ve got a couple of confused looks thrown your way (that you’ve seen), but no one seems upset that you’re here. Which was illogical to think in the first place, but it was still something you were worried about.

After finishing the last chapter of the fic you were reading, you realized you had nothing left to read. Everything you had been reading this morning was something you had downloaded ages ago for a rainy day sometime, and you weren’t planning on relying on them.

You sigh and close out the pdf reader on your phone. A glance up to the top of your screen tells you that that the phone only had about 25% battery left. Fine, no games then- that would be a waste of battery.

You still don’t feel like socializing though, so you see what you have downloaded on Spotify.

You smirk when you remember the day your day that your parents announced they got Spotify premium for the family. The day before starting the road trip to your new home in Denver, they bought it so that you could download as much music as you’d need for the trip, and could be the DJ of the car for most of it. You made a playlist for each leg of the trip, organized by genre and how energetic they were.

Scrolling through the road trip playlists, you mull over what’s best for the moment.

You pick phase.1 because it was the playlist that started you and your family off from home.
It’s pretty laid back, but won’t let you fall asleep. Settling back into the couch again, you close your eyes and focus on the music.

For now, you needed to figure yourself out. Feeling this anxious wasn’t common for you, even though it was probably mostly a result of the craziness of the current situation. You just hope it’s not because of anything the villain that sent you here did to you.

As ‘Tribute’ by Tenacious D plays through your earbuds, you hold back a giggle. That would be a weird thing to do out loud right now, right? You settle for mouthing along to the silly words.

'All of a sudden, there shined a shiny demon.
In the middle of the road.
And he said:
"Play the best song in the world, or I'll eat your soul." (soul)

Well me and Kyle, we looked at each other,
And we each said. "Okay."

And we played the first thing that came to our heads,
Just so happened to be,
The Best Song in the World, it was The Best Song in the World.

Look into my eyes and it's easy to see
One and one make two, two and one make three,
It was destiny.
Once every hundred-thousand years or so,
When the sun doth shine and the moon doth glow
And the grass doth grow’

Hopefully, Aizawa would be back soon.
-~-~-
7:10
The last few people from the class seemed to have filtered into the room, turning the first floor into a buzzing atmosphere. The teens were each going about their various activities, whether it be eating breakfast, conversing in fast-paced Japanese, scrolling through their phones, or doing laundry. Iida and Bakugo had both come back from their respective workouts a while ago and went upstairs to get ready for the day.

Izuku was one of the last people down, not that you had seen him at first. You’ve been chilling and listening to your music, eyes closed and fully engrossed in the music, for the last half hour (with the exception of occasional loud noises, such as Kaminari falling out of his chair or Bakugo saying something loudly when he re-entered the common room.)

As a result, you didn’t notice Izuku until he sat down next to you on the couch. As ‘Such great heights’ by the postal service began to play you pull out the earbud closest to him to be polite.

“Good morning, (y/n)!” he greets you cheerfully, attempting to balance a bowl of cereal on his lap.

“Hey Izuku” you reply, watching the bowl teeter between his hands.

He glances up at you. “Have you gotten anything to eat yet? Or slept?”

“I had some cereal earlier, but I haven’t slept. I’m not tired at all yet.” Izuku nods, bringing his attention back to the bowl on his legs. Deeming it safe, he lifts his hands back up

“That's a bit weird, but I’m glad that you got something to eat. Did you like the cereal? My favorite is the chocolate kind.” He says, gesturing to his bowl of chocolate Mighty-O’s.

“Yeah, I had the honey Mighty-O’s. Funny name, by the way!”

“Mmh hmm!” He says, his mouth now full of cereal.

“Oi, Midoriya!” you hear from across the coffee table. Izuku whips his head up at the mention of his name.

He swallows before speaking. “Yeah, Sero? What’s up?”

Sero says something in Japanese, and suddenly you can only understand one side of the conversation. He and Kaminari are sitting on the opposite couch and looking at you curiously.

“Oh! This is (y/n), from America!” Izuku motions to you. You give a small smile and a wave. This is quickly becoming your signature move.

Jirou comes up behind their couch with a cup of coffee, contributing something to the conversation.

Izuku blushes lightly “No, no! She asked if she could call me by my given name because it’s more common in America! formality makes her uncomfortable, you know?”

She sips from her mug, looking mildly amused. Kaminari just looks even more confused and says something to you.

Your jaw drops open slightly, at a loss for words. What do you say in this situation? You glance at Izuku before looking back at them.

Doing your best to maintain eye contact with Kaminari, you swallow.

“I don’t speak any Japanese, sorry.” you frown, and allow yourself to turn your gaze back to your lap.

You hear the three begin to question you and Izuku, but you don’t respond. You hear a couple of people who were milling around begin to ask questions as well.

“She’s telling the truth guys, She can only understand me because she got hit with some sort of weird quirk! She’s stuck here for now, and we need to make her feel comfortable!”

The voices quiet down a bit, they sound a bit more questioning. “We don’t know exactly what’s going on, but Aizawa sensei and All-Might sensei are sorting it out now”

“We are.” Aizawa’s gruff voice sounds from the doorway, making everyone jump. He grumbles something at Izuku, after which, Izuku panics and grabs his bowl. He moves to the kitchen table, muttering out apologies for eating his cereal in the living room. Present Mic appears behind Aizawa, with his hair in a bun and wearing a bright yellow t-shirt.

You watch Izuku go before Aizawa and Mic make their way over to the couch you’re on. He clears his throat and speaks to you.

“Did anyone give you trouble?”

You smile reassuringly at the grumpy teacher. “Nope! Izuku and I were just beginning to explain what’s going on to his classmates!” you say as you gesture towards Sero, Jirou, and Kaminari.”

Aizawa gives a satisfied grunt before turning to the other students. He calls the rest of the class to gather around the couch opposite yours.

While the students find spots to sit or lean around the area, Present Mic bounds over and sits next to you. “we’re going to tell them about your situation, is there anything you’d like us to omit, little listener?”

Woah, his English is really good. Even better than All Mights! You're pretty sure that he’s the English teacher here, so that makes sense.

“Uh, Nothing I can think of?” you bring your head up to scratch at your scalp. “Actually, please leave out the part where I fell into Izuku’s room.”

Present Mic chuckles lightly before getting up to whisper the message into Aizawa’s ear. Aizawa gives you an understanding nod and begins to address the class.

Mic plops back down and begins to speak to you softly. “Yeah, we wouldn’t want those kiddos getting the wrong idea. My name is Yamada Hizashi, I’m the English teacher here at UA high school!”

“Ah! That’s why you’re speaking it so well!” You fidget a bit with the hem of your shirt. “My name is (f/n) (l/n), though I’d prefer if you and everyone else called me by my given name”

Yamada gives you a big thumbs up “You’ve got it, little listener!” He glances up at Aizawa before continuing.

“Now, don’t be alarmed, but we’re going to take you into the main school building to sort some things out: mainly to have you examined by the nurse, give your report to the police, and to speak to the principal. Are you feeling up to it?” His voice is softer now, and his eyes shine with sincerity.

You feel the same vibe of parental protection from Yamada now as you did from Aizawa and All Might last night, despite only having known him for a few minutes. Damn, if these teachers have already taken to you, a foreign girl from a different dimension, then the fan theories about them adopting their whole classes really don’t sound too off base.

You take a moment to think over the question. Even though you’ll be talking to the police, you aren’t in trouble here. They’re searching for the villain who did this and your testimony may be invaluable. Recovery girl will probably just ensure that the villain didn’t do any lasting damage. And finally, Nezu will probably talk to you about your options while staying in this dimension.

“Yeah...” you finally reply.

“Yeah, that sounds doable”

-~-~-
While Aizawa continues to explain the situation to his class and answer questions as needed, Yamada leads you out of the dormitories. Izuku catches your eye and gives you a quick wave when you go out the door, which you happily return before the door cuts you off.

The sun peaks over the horizon, pink light painting the landscape of UA’s extensive lawns. In the distance, you can see students on morning walks, and the atmosphere is blissfully quiet, only interrupted by the occasional birdcall.

Yamada immediately begins to fill the silence, though not in an annoying way. He begins by asking you about what you occupied your time with during the early hours of the morning.

“I spent most of it reading stories that I already had saved on my phone, actually! After my battery depleted enough, I switched over to listening to music”

Yamada hums thoughtfully. “We’ll have to see about finding a way to charge your phone. Power loader -he’s another teacher here by the way- would know more about that than me.”

“What does he teach?”

“He’s the head of the support department, which is basically just hero focused engineering!”

You hum, your mind turning back to the sports festival arc. Mei was a force to be reckoned with. However, the other support students were likely just as clever as she was, and she was just the most ambitious about her future,

The teacher clears his throat, drawing your attention out of your thoughts. “Hey, little (f/n), you mentioned having music on your phone?”

“Yeah! I have an app called Spotify that streams music, but there’s a feature that allows me to download my favorites.” As you both continue to walk towards the school, you produce your phone from your pocket.

You can feel Yamada’s curious presence just behind your shoulder as you swipe your way to the app. “This is the playlist I was listening to this morning!” you say, handing him the phone.

He’s careful as he takes your phone in his hand, swiping through the playlist with wide eyes. After a moment, he squints at it a bit.

“What’s the name of that artist?” He asks, pointing to the song in question on your phone screen.

“Uhhh, Gorillaz?” you ask. Why does he want to know about them?

“That band exists here too. They’ve been around for a few centuries because the band is
Virtual. Different vocalists every so often, and the style has faded into obscurity a bit, but I play them on my radio show on classic music nights!”

Your eyes widen to match his. “In my world, Gorillaz was created around 20 years ago, in the year 2000.”

“Really!? That’s crazy! I wonder if their songs are the same, little listener!” He hands you back your phone, and you shove it back into your pocket.

“Or if there are other bands that exist in both worlds?” you exclaim. “also, you have a radio show, sir?”

“I sure do! As a voice hero, it fits right in with my theme!”

“So your quirk is voice related?”

“Yeaah! I can adjust the volume and pitch of my voice.”

“No offense, but how do you do hero work with a quirk like that?”

“Ha! I can yell really, really loudly” he replies with an exaggerated wink.

“Getting to yell at villains for a living must be fun!” You laugh out. Your laugh cuts short as you begin to feel an uncomfortable tugging in your gut.

You ignore it. It’s probably just because I haven’t had much to eat today, you assume.

“It sure is! We’re more than halfway to the main building now, listener.” He jumps a couple of steps ahead and pivots to face you.

“Welcome to UA high school!” Yamada throws his arms up towards the sky before continuing his spiel.

“We’re going to talk to the police first, so we can catch your report of the situation straight from the source: You! Toshinori’s friend Naomasa is a detective, he’ll be the one conducting it-”

You nod along as he continues to reiterate what you’ll be going over when you get inside, but the pulling at your gut is getting harder to ignore. Now you’re accompanied by a sinking feeling that digs itself deeper with every step that you take forward. Yamada’s voice is just a buzzing in the background now

You feel yourself slowing down, too weighed down to continue. Your ears are swimming in static. Yamada’s face swims in front of you, his lips moving frantically. I can see him, but I’m not really, uhhhh, seeing him, something in the back of your mind says.

Hmm, that’s fun.

You’ve dropped to your knees now, and are only vaguely aware of the blood beading out of your palms. Something is wrong. You can’t put your finger on exactly what it is, but now that you’ve found the correct word, it drowns everything else out. The static you were hearing before just sounds like Wrong now. The taste in your mouth can only be described as wROnG.

Nothing around you is right. But what could possibly take this burden of WRONGNESS away from you?!

You comprehend just one last thought before you finally fade out.

With Izuku, it would be right.

Chapter Text

Aizawa went over the basics:

“The girl you all just saw Mic leave with will be staying with us for a while, she’s in a bit of a tight spot right now. She is likely from a different universe, one where quirks don’t exist.” A chorus of gasps and whispers erupted among the class. Aizawa waited for them to calm down before continuing.

“Last night, while sleeping in her bed, she was ambushed by a villain from our universe, and she appeared here in the dorms. She is from America, and she does not speak any Japanese.”

“This will be a good opportunity for us all to improve our English, and learn how to deal with foreign victims! As Class Rep, I will personally do my best to help her adjust to her situation!” Iida says, chopping his hand in the direction of the door outside.

Aizawa nods tiredly. “That’s good Iida, but you will all be expected to do what you can to make her feel welcome, as long as it does not interfere with your schoolwork or training.”

“Yes sensei!” the class responds.

“Sensei!!”Ashido whined “Will the new girl be part of our class now? She’s super cute and I want her to stay with us!”

Aizawa rolls his eyes and brings his hand up to the bridge of his nose. “She will be staying in our dorms, but whether she will join our class proper is up to the principal. She is quirkless, after all.”

Mina's fist pumps the air, her nose scrunching up as she smiles. “YES! We can make her feel more like this is a vacation if we have a sleepover tonight!”

“If we have the sleepover in the common room, then the boys can join as well.” Tsuyu points out.

“I can make her a sleeping bag and night clothing since it’s unlikely she has any of her own right now!” Yaoyorozu smiles. She then gains a thoughtful expression and turns to Jirou. “Jirou, do you know of any popular American music that she might enjoy?”

Jirou looks up, surprised. “Uh, sure? I don’t have a ton though, and most of them are older bands from the 20 and 21st century” she replies, toying with her ear jacks.

“Pre-quirk era shit? How do you even have anything that old?” Bakugo asks. Izuku glances over at him, surprised he would speak up about something like old music. Before he can speak up and ask him himself, Izuku feels a twinge in his gut.

He takes a moment to adjust to the internal pain, but he’s broken his fingers twice over before. This is nothing. However, the pain is persistent. While he tries to find the source of it, Jirou speaks up.

“My dad works in the music industry, he loves stuff from that era. Rock, Pop, Rap and a ton of other genres wouldn’t be anywhere near what they are today without the influence of artists from that period.” She huffs defensively.

Bakugo nods, his face thoughtful.”Still doesn’t explain where he got it, but whatever, jacks”

Izuku can feel the pulling getting worse, and the pain begins to manifest itself on his face as his eyes water and his eyebrows pull together. There aren’t many people around him, but Uraraka notices his discomfort from her perch on the couch and leans closer to him.

“Deku-kun, are you feeling alright?” she asks tentatively, the concern in her voice evident. “You’re turning kind of red…”

Aizawa Ahems, getting the class’s attention. “I don’t care what you do, as long as you’re all ready in time for class tomorrow. Remember that-”

“SHOUTAA” someone screams from outside. “SHOUTA, YOUR HUNCH WAS RIGHT. GET THE HELL OUT HERE”

The nausea is getting worse now, but the pain has stagnated. Izuku is keeling over slightly, and the feeling of wrongness clouds his thoughts.

He’s still aware of the commotion around him, though he’s not too keen on moving from his current position. He already had to shampoo the carpets in the dorms once, he doesn’t want to have to do it again.

Aizawa, still looking towards the door, swears softly under his breath. “Midoriya. You’re coming with me, problem child”

“unghhh” Izuku groans weakly.

“Sensei, something’s wrong with Deku-kun! He looks like he’s about to puke, sir!”

Aizawa’s head whips around, and his face pales imperceptibly. “Then this is a more serious case than I thought.” he murmurs under his breath.

After the initial shock wears off, Aizawa leaps into action. Ordering Uraraka and Tsuyu to get Izuku onto the couch, he begins to unwind his capture weapon from around his neck. Once Izuku is on the couch, Aizawa begins to wind the cloth around his prone form, careful not to jostle him too much.

In less than 30 seconds, Izuku is hoisted onto Aizawa’s back in a sort of Psuedo Child-carrier.

“SHOUTA, N O W PLEASE” Mic’s voice rings out from outside.

Aizawa stomps over to the door and swings it open, the students parting for him without a word. “Eughhh” Izuku vocalizes, looking queasier by the second.

“I’M RIGHT THERE, ‘ZASHI, HOLD ON.” The man screams out onto the school lawn. He turns to the class. “Stay here, I’ll have midnight come as soon as I can.” he rasps before running out to Mic and his newest charge.

-~-~-

Hizashi is panicking.

Why wouldn’t he be! He was having a perfectly delightful conversation about 300-year-old American music with (y/n), before she dropped like a fly!

Shouta was going to kill him. Plain and simple.

He was kneeling next to (y/n) now and found that she was still breathing properly. Still, the kid was conked out on the sidewalk and looked like she was in pain.

Hizashi’s eyes flitted around the school’s lawn, panicked. It was early enough in the day that not many people were out and about, but most of them were milling around the dormitories and the paths that winded between them. No one was close enough to help immediately, so screaming would just have to do.

Muttering out a mental apology to the few students who were still sleeping, he covered your ears with his hands and began to yell.

“SHOUTAAA”

Hizashi *knew*, when he saw Shouta this morning, that he had found a new kid that needed help. He’d felt it earlier in the year when they took in Hitoshi, and just a few weeks ago with Eri. Granted, Hizashi knew that they were both wonderful kids and that he wouldn’t give them up for the world; He was just becoming concerned that his husband was starting to collect kids like fanboys collected merch.

But in the end, Shouta was hard to say no to, especially when his reasoning was sound, and the threat of a kid on the streets loomed behind him. They were both soft, Aizawa was just better at hiding it from his students.

Now, Yamada still only knew the basics of the situation, but he knew that he and Shouta would take this girl in faster than she could say help if it was what was best for her. Aizawa had stayed awake throughout the night (again) to file reports and reference past cases for any figment of the villain who stole her away from home.

He’d found a few leads, but the biggest one was an escaped mental hospital resident with a soul-bond type quirk. Shouta hadn’t told him the exact reason why the man was his number one suspect, but he warned Hizashi about the unpredictable nature and side-effects of the quirk, to watch for any symptoms, and not to move her if she started noticing any.

Hizashi was no doctor, but this seemed like the symptoms of something bigger, and it terrified him to no end.

“SHOUTA, YOUR HUNCH WAS RIGHT. GET THE HELL OUT HERE” he yelled in the direction of the dorms, closing his palms over the girl’s ears again.

He releases his hands and leans back over her, observing.

(y/n)’s face was scrunched up in pain, with sweat beading at her hairline and her mouth twisted into a thin, trembling line. She had fallen onto her back and then curled up into half of a fetal position, trembling slightly. Hizashi wishes he could whisk her off to recovery girl, but he doesn’t, remembering the warning tone in Shouta’s voice. The underlying assumption of “it will only make her symptoms worse” weighed heavily on Hizashi’s heart.

She’s shivering now and begins to curl in on herself further. Hizashi’s eyebrows pull together further, and he sheds his studded leather jacket to lay out over her torso. It’s not particularly cold out this morning, but he’ll be damned if she catches a cold while under his watch.

“God, where the fuck is Shouta?” Hizashi mutters out loud, removing his glasses to wipe at his eyes tiredly. He’s called twice, and it’s not like him to take this long.

“SHOUTA, N O W PLEASE”, He calls again, nearly forgetting to cover (y/n)’s ears in his haste.

In the distance, he can see the door of 1-A’s building open, and can vaguely make out Shouta’s harried form in the doorway. “I’M RIGHT THERE, ‘ZASHI, HOLD ON.” he hears his husband screech out. It’s much fainter than his own quirk enhanced voice, but Shouta learned how to scream for distance a long time ago.

As Shouta’s form races across the greenery of UA’s lawn, Hizashi notices that his back looks disfigured somehow. Before he can ponder how his husband became a hunchback in less than 10 minutes, a distinct head of green hair makes an appearance over Shouta’s shoulder. All of Hizashi’s previous frustration dissipates when he realizes that Midoriya looks nearly as bad as (y/n) does, he just hasn’t lost consciousness.

Shouta stops just a meter or so in front of him, panting a bit and mouth agape as he takes in the scene of Hizashi kneeling next to an unconscious (y/n).

“(y/n)!” Midoriya cries out weakly from behind Shouta. He looks feverish, and he’s shaking like a leaf in Autumn. Despite this, His eyes shine with Concern as he looks at his new friend on the ground.

“HIzashi, you can pick her up now. If it’s what I think it is, then she should be okay to move her now.” Aizawa says, adjusting his hold Midoriya.

“We need to get them both to Chiyo, Right now.”

-~-~-

You come to consciousness slowly, not opening your eyes just yet. Under your arms, you feel thin but soft sheets, and the air smells a little bit like antiseptic. Like the doctor's office or the school nurse’s office.

“Is she gonna be okay, All Might?” you hear someone’s voice quietly ask to your left. Izuku, your mind reminds you. He sounds concerned, and you wonder why. All Might’s rumbling voice replies to his question in Japanese, and Izuku hums softly in reply.

You allow your eyes to open just enough so that you can see through your lashes, still too tired to move the rest of your body just yet.

“You said that Aizawa Sensei will Explain what’s happening to both of us once she’s up, right?”

All Might says something affirmatively, and you hear Izuku sigh.

*What the heck happened* you think as your eyes open further. Without your permission, your Stomach lets out a loud grumble.

“You must be hungry little listener” you hear Present mic say quietly to your right.

“I guess I am” you mumble sleepily, pushing yourself up with your forearms. You glance around noticing the light blue curtains of the infirmary pushed back between your bed and Izuku’s. His eyes are wide and his mouth is curved into the brightest smile you’ve ever seen.

“(Y/N)!” Izuku exclaims, trying to scramble out of his bed, but getting caught on the sheets covering his legs.

The curtains in front of you swing open, revealing a fuming Recovery Girl. She begins to yell at Izuku, probably for getting up. His face casts downward in embarrassment, and He stops climbing out of bed.

Unfortunately, He still has forward momentum and tangled legs, so he begins to fall towards the ground.

Before he can crack his head open on the white tile right in front of you, Izuku manages to catch himself on his arms. Recovery girl starts yelling at him louder, and you can’t help but chuckle a bit. He shoots you an awkward smile as he pulls himself back up into his bed. He apologizes quickly to recovery girl, and you can tell that she’s a hair’s breadth away from smacking him upside the head with her cane for pulling something that dumb while he’s still hurt.

“I’m glad that your head is still intact,” you say once Recovery Girl leaves. He chuckles at that, looking down at where he nearly fell.

“So am I, I don’t need to give her another reason to be mad at me,” he says, looking wearily towards the curtains. He looks back at you “By the way, how are you feeling?”

“I’m, uhh” You shift your weight against the metal headboard of the bed and take in your surroundings. “I’m okay, I think.”

To your right, sitting in an uncomfortable-looking chair, is Present Mic. He’s scrolling through his phone and trying to look like he’s not listening to your conversation. He’s not very discreet, but He sounded worried earlier, so you don’t really mind.

Izuku is sitting up in a bed similar to yours to the left of you. Behind him, you can see All Might doing the same thing that Mic is, but hiding it even worse. He keeps looking up at and between you and Izuku, his bony face soaked in worry.
You focus back on the conversation at hand and look back at Izuku.

“I don’t really know what happened though? Why are we in the nurse’s office?”

“You conked out, kiddo,” Mic’s voice says from behind you. You look over to him as he repeats what he said in Japanese for a confused Izuku.

“The last thing I remember was walking towards the school and talking to you about music…” you say, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear.

“And we DO need to get back to that conversation at some point. I can already tell you have great music taste, listener!” You blush a bit at the compliment while he continues. “However- we still need to have you and Midoriya here talk to Recovery Girl, Aizawa, the Police, And the Principal!”

“Wait, wasn’t that list shorter before?” You ask ”Why did you add Aizawa to it?”

Mic looks uncomfortable for a second, his mouth opening and closing silently. After a moment, he closes his mouth. “He thinks he knows who the villain that attacked you is. I don’t know why, or how, but apparently it involves both you and Midoriya.” He says quietly, and then repeats in Japanese for Izuku again.

You look over at Izuku, locking eyes with him. He looks confused and scared, just like you.

How the hell did you drag him into this?

-~-~-

Recovery girl gives you a fairly thorough check-up, noting that you still have your pinky toe joint, are quirkless, and otherwise healthy. She couldn’t find a definite cause for the way that you Passed out, or why you and Izuku both began to experience fever-like symptoms. She wrote a note to pass on to Aizawa though, on how it might relate to the villain’s quirk.

At the moment, You, Izuku, Present Mic and All Might are headed to the teacher’s lounge to talk with Aizawa and Tsukauchi. It was quiet as you all walked there, and your collective footsteps rang throughout the school’s empty halls.

All Might opened the door for everyone, and you filtered into the room. On one side of the large room, the Year 1 teacher’s desk areas were lined up, Green potted plants dotted around the space. On the other side, a Lounge area outfitted with couches and a small kitchenette sat.

Aizawa stood in front of the coffee maker, talking quietly to Tsukauchi and nursing a steaming mug. Two guesses as to what’s inside of it.

“Well, Mic and I will be leaving you four then,” All Might says, giving Tsukauchi a handshake, and Aizawa a nod.

“You little listeners be good, alright!?” Mic says, Ruffling both your and Izuku’s hair before dipping out of the doors to the hallway. All Might gives you both a reassuring smile before doing the same, gently shutting the door behind him.

You look away from the door and back to the two men, who are situating themselves on one of the couches. Tsukauchi pulls out a pad of paper and a pen with 3 kinds of ink in it. One of those clicky red, blue and black ones that always end up broken when you hand it to anyone under the age of 10.

“Let’s get down to business, then” Aizawa says, setting his mug of down on the coffee table.

You begin to move towards the couch, but pause when you don’t feel Izuku do the same. You begin to turn towards him before hearing Tsukauchi say something in Japanese to him.

Izuku breaks out of whatever state of contemplation he was in with a chuckle, and looks embarrassed again. He begins to walk towards the couches.

When he passes you, you lightly nudge him in the side with your elbow. “What did he say to you?” you ask, keeping in step with him.

“He said ‘I don’t bite, I promise. But I can’t say the same for your teacher’” He whispers to you, trying not to laugh harder.

“PFFTT” a huff of air makes its way out of your mouth before you swallow, trying to yourself under control. You’re grateful that Tsukauchi is making the situation a bit lighter, and Aizawa doesn’t seem too annoyed by the comment, which is good.

He probably realizes how much it’s helping you both, and that’s why.

You and Izuku both plop down on the couch across from the men, having mostly reigned your chuckles in.

The playful tone that the joke provided dissipates, leaving you all with the heavy air of the situation surrounding you.

Tsukauchi asks you (through Aizawa) to recount the events of the night before. You do so, noting that he switches between the black and blue ink In his pen at seemingly random intervals. He doesn’t touch the red. He has to ask for clarification a few times, obviously a little embarrassed at his English skills. He seems to understand you pretty well but is reluctant to speak it himself, which you understand wholeheartedly.

After you’re done, he asks Izuku to tell his side of the story, which Izuku does animatedly. This time, Tsukauchi uses the red pen, but just once. He doesn’t look concerned when he does it though, and it was when Izuku mentioned something about your shared conversation from last night. You weren’t tuning into Izuku’s voice very much, but now you wish that you had been.

When they finish the interrogation process, Tsukauchi proposes a 10-minute break. Aizawa nods tiredly and gets up to make another cup of coffee, swinging around the couch and making a beeline for the kitchenette. Tsukauchi laughs and goes back to his pad of paper. He then goes into his bag for a moment and pulls out a sleek-looking tablet.

You realize you’ve probably been staring a bit, so you shake your head a bit and turn to Izuku. He’s got his head in one of his hands, mumbling quietly. Instead of muttering out in one long stream of conscious thought, he seems to be a lot more thoughtful, only speaking out loud every few moments. You decide not to bug him so that he doesn’t lose whatever thread of information he’s contemplating at the moment. You decide to simply sit back and close your eyes for a minute. You’re not tired enough to really sleep, but you don’t have much else to do. So you lean back against the couch, allowing your head to rest on the faux leather of the couch. The ceilings are surprisingly tall for a teacher’s lounge, you think. Then again, UA is absolutely LOADED when it comes to cash. They have heroes for teachers and entire fake cities made to be destroyed.

Tsukauchi hands Aizawa the tablet once he sits down, whispering quietly about something. Aizawa nods solemnly and opens it. He reads for a moment or so, before clearing his throat to get everyone's attention. Tsukauchi stuffs his pad of paper into his bag and Izuku snaps out of his own head. You stretch your arms up into the air, before sitting at attention. Aizawa makes sure that everyone is settled before scratching at the back of his neck and beginning to read from it.

“Tengei Toru. Male, 27 years old. Red hair, 179 cm tall, last weighed in at 160 pounds. Noted for having a rare quirk and substantial mental health issues” He looks up at you and Izuku before continuing.

“Escaped from Hosu Mental Hospital 8 months ago, has been spotted on security cameras near bars and areas where high villain activity is common, Though usually seen wearing a mask with very distinct eyeholes. Has affected at least 26 people with his quirk since his escape.”

He sets the tablet back down on the table and motions to Tsukauchi.

“We believe that this villain is the one that brought you here, and that ‘the matchmaker’ is the name he has chosen for himself” Tsukauchi says calmly, Aizawa acting as the buffer between you two.

“Tsukauchi-san, Aizawa sensei- What is his quirk?” Izuku questions.

When you look over to him, you can see that his eyes are shining with determination. His voice is unwavering and calm, and somehow you know that it’s because he’s here for you, and not just himself. His confidence is a sight to see, and you can’t bring yourself look away when he continues to speak. “How did he bring (y/n) here, how do we get her home, and how is it affecting both of us in such harmful ways?”

When you look back over to the adults, you can see Aizawa’s eyebrow raised, and Tsukauchi pulling the tablet over to him from in front of Aizawa. “Well, Tengei’s quirk is very strange, and it falls into one of the rarest categories of emitter quirks around.” Aizawa translates for you while the detective opens the tablet, and turns it around for you both to see, zooming in to the top of a page full of information. Tsukauchi points to a specific line of Japanese characters.

“A bond quirk?” Izuku breathes.

You’re genuinely confused now, because, despite all of your previous knowledge on quirks just from reading and watching BNHA, You’ve never heard of anything like this. They did say that it’s incredibly rare, but how rare would it have to be to slip under the noses of hordes of fans?

“What does that mean?” You ask.

“Well, there are only 4 known people in the world with bond-type emitter quirks, and this man has the strongest out of them.” Aizawa supplies, unknowingly answering the question you had just been thinking of. He says something to Izuku in Japanese, sounding mildly amused.

Izuku’s eyes get big and he takes a deep breath. Oh gosh, he’s about to- “Only that people with bond quirks can perceive the strength of bonds between two people, and sometimes the compatibility of people’s possible relationships. But that definition is so vague, you know?? Does it relate to romantic or platonic relationships, does that mean that these people can-”
“Midoriya.”

Izuku blinks, pulled out of his mumble rant. He blushes and looks down at his hands, beginning to twiddle his thumbs instead of continuing to talk. “Sorry Sensei, I didn’t mean to get carried away.”

Aizawa sighs and Tsukauchi lets out a small chuckle. Tsukauchi says something to him, and Aizawa nods.

“I’m going to do my best to explain the quirk to you in English, while Tsukauchi does the same for Midoriya in Japanese. Its a lot to take in, so this should help with the confusion.” Aizawa explains, getting up to lead you to the other side of the room.

“Actually!” a new voice exclaims whimsically, “I’d like to talk to (y/n) in my office, instead!”

Your eyes flit around the room, wary of high pitched voices after your encounter with the matchmaker. They land on a short, furry figure by the door. Huh.

“Am I a mouse? A rat? A bear?? I’m the principal of UA, Nedzu!!!” he says in perfect English.

Aizawa seems stiff, his hand landing on your shoulder as he asks the principal something.

“She’ll be fine, by my calculations! My office isn’t too far away. And I can explain the situation to her a bit more fluently than you can. No offense, of course, Shouta.”

Aizawa looks tired, but he motions towards Nedzu. “He’ll be taking you from here, then. He’s going to explain the quirk to you and talk to you about your options while staying here.”

You look up at the scraggly man, surprised by his reluctance to hand you over. It’s just the principal, after all! Sure, he always seemed a little strange and mischievous on paper, but he wouldn’t put you in danger.

“I’ll be okay, sir!” you smile up at Aizawa, before turning to the principal.

“Let’s go, sir!” You say to him.

“Follow me then, young ma’am! My office is right this way!” He turns on his heel and begins to make his way out into the hallway. As you follow after him, you catch Izuku’s eyes following after you. You give him a wave before leaving and smile when he gives you one back.

-~-~-
“You can take a seat here” Nedzu motions to a plush grey seat in front of his desk, making his way around the mahogany to his own seat. His seat is a darker grey than yours, and It’s Proportionately sized to him, so he’s not sitting on something completely oversized.

There are potted plants dotted around the room, just like in the teacher’s lounge, and He sits with his back to large floor to ceiling windows, where you can see students milling around in front of the dorms.

Nedzu plops himself up and into his seat, scooting it forward a bit so that he can lean his arms on his desk, tenting his fingers.

“So, I’m going to begin by explaining everything that we currently know about the villain’s quirk. It’s quite a lot, so please pay attention!”

You nod, leaning forward in your seat.

Nedzu jumps right into the explanation. “Tengei Toru’s quirk is one of the rarest types in the world, which you already heard about from Tsukauchi and Aizawa. Bond quirks are characterized by the user being able to see the bonds and the strength of bonds between people. There are some people, such as the man who took you, who can see the potential bonds between people instead of the current ones, and can *activate* these bonds when they are incredibly strong.”

“What exactly *activate* means in this context is confusing, but by his own definition, it can only happen between people with incredibly strong potential bonds. These bonds are also not bound by things such as dimensions, which is perhaps the most interesting part of his quirk.”

Your eyes widen, realizing the implications of what Nedzu is saying.

“ The symptoms of his quirk almost always seem to include some form of basic understanding despite language barriers, A basic understanding of each other’s emotions and demeanors despite never having met each other before either.”

You look up as he pauses. He’s looking at you intently before speaking. His voice is kinder now, less clinical. It’s a bit odd, because he doesn’t have the range of facial expressions that humans do, but you can tell that he’s doing his best to make you comfortable. “ You’re probably wondering about how exactly you got here though, Am I correct, ms (L/n)?”

You look down at your shoes and nod. This quirk makes a certain amount of sense if it’s just confined to this universe, but substantially harder to understand when applied to how you got here.

“In short, when the matchmaker focuses on his target, he can be transported to their strongest potentially bonded person. When he activates the bond fully, It snaps the person in question to the person that he was initially focused on. This can happen regardless of the distance between these people. This interdimensional hop is one that he has made many times before, but we only have one record of him fully activating the connection between two inter-dimensionally bonded people.”

He leans forward in his chair to reach into his desk, producing a sheet of normal notebook paper. He places it on the desk between you, smoothing it out with one hand and motioning you to get closer with the other one. You scoot the chair closer to the desk, wincing at the screech across the wood flooring that the movement produced.

When you turn back around to face the principal, he has a pencil in his hand and is drawing something on the piece of paper.

He draws a stick figure and gives it fluffy hair. He draws a second figure on the other side of the paper, with hair vaguely resembling yours. He points at the one with fluffy hair.

“This is Midoriya. “ He drags his pencil across the paper towards the other figure.” and this is you.”

He draws a line spanning from the top of the paper to the bottom, closer to your figure than his. ‘ This is the barrier between dimensions. Obviously, it is more complicated looking than this in practice, but it should do, for now, no?” he chuckles.

“So” he starts again. “This dot here, that I’m drawing right now” He doodles a dot on the side of the page with Midoriya on it . ”can represent Tengei. He found that when he focused on Midoriya, that he had a very strong bond with you” Nedzu draws a line between you and Izuku, making it particularly bold.

“So he followed that bond line into your dimension, tapped you to activate the bond, and sent you into this universe.” He draws an arrow from your figure to a space near Izuku and then draws a smaller you in that space. He draws another bond line between Izuku and the You on his side of the page, but it’s not quite as thick as the original.

“Now,” he says, placing the pencil down. You look up from the drawing to meet his eyes. They’re black, but shine with something that you can’t quite discern. “This is going to sound rude, and I apologize for that, but you don’t belong here. If you were here under most circumstances, you would be utterly torn apart.”

You pale significantly as he continues. “However, as observed with the inter-dimensional pair that Tengei activated before, something very Miraculous is happening here! Midoriya is acting as a bond to your dimension. This means that as long as you stay moderately close to him at all times, you can be here with no negative repercussions heath-wise!”

Oh. Ohhhhhhhhhh. That must be why that incident happened this morning. When you were walking with mic, you must have passed whatever invisible threshold is making sure you don’t get too far away from your connection back home. Wait, then why…

“Why did Izuku get sick too though, If he’s from here and I’m the one who needs to stay close to him?” you demand to know, pointing at Izuku’s stick figure.

“That’s a very good question! And also very admirable that you’re worried about Mr. Midoriya!” Nedzu claps his paws together. “The answer is likely that He was feeling sick because you were feeling the side effects of leaving his radius so intensely! There are a multitude of unknown factors when it comes to this quirk, and some of the pairs that have had bonds activated have noted similar occurrences.”

Nezu fishes a phone out of his pocket while he continues. “For example! A local hero that Tengei activated the bond of was gravely injured by a villain while on duty. His bond, who was in Paris with their fiancee at the time, felt the same intense pain as the hero!” He hands you the phone, which shows an article about the incident. “Japanese villain ‘Matchmaker’s’ victims feel each other’s pain; from across the world! More on page 6.”

“There are other occurrences of the victims he has bonded where they have read each other’s thoughts, or located each other in times of crisis! I believe that this phenomenon was increased by the fact that he is literally your link back to your world!”

The way that he’s wording that is funny, you think. You’re still a little bit in shock about the whole bond quirk business, but something still sounds off when it comes to the principal’s explanation. Handing Nezu back his phone, you ask “What exactly do you mean by that, sir?”

“I mean that you aren’t actually here! This isn’t your normal body, and in your world, you’re still safe and asleep in your bed!”

You bluescreen for a minute while he exclaims “Oh! The hot water is ready! What kind of tea would you like?”

“Excuse me, what?” you say once you’ve come to your senses. Nedzu is standing on the right side of his office, where you can see an electric kettle and a spinning stand that probably has types of tea on it. When did he start brewing the water for tea, you wonder.

“I asked what kind of tea you’d like, Ms.(l/n).” He replies innocently.

“Uh, green please. With lemon.” you say without really thinking about it. “What do you mean I’m not really here. Like I’m in a dream or something?”

He hums while plopping the tea bags into your respective cups. “I suppose you could look at it that way, but I highly doubt that is how this situation is actually going to work.” He walks back to his desk.

Pushing your green tea across the top of the desk to you he continues. “The previous Inter-dimensional pair found that the resident from the other universe actually only came here when they went to sleep in their world, and vice versa to return back to their world. The scientists assigned to the case were absolutely baffled, of course. But in short, your consciousness is the only thing transferring between dimensions, not your whole body. I could get deeper into the transfer based on sleep cycles, but we already have plenty of other things to cover, so I will not.”

You nod slowly, shocked into silence for the nth time this morning.

“I’ve compiled a short FAQ guide for you and Mr. Midoriya here, on what we know about the quirk and things that may happen while you’re both under the influence of it.” he pushes a new sheet of paper across the desk until it’s in front of you. “The back of that page is in Japanese, so you can properly share it with Mr. Midoriya. But there is one last thing that I should mention.”

You look up, feeling a little faint. “None of Tengei’s victims have ever had their bonds broken, terminated, or deactivated, except for in the rare occurrence that one in the pair has died. So, you’re stuck here for the foreseeable future!” He places a pamphlet in front of you on top of the quirk FAQ. It reads ‘Welcome to U.A, new foreign exchange student!’

“Welcome to U.A, (y/n)! We need to talk about your class and sleeping arrangements before you leave my office today” he says, all too cheerfully.

Chapter Text

Toru tumbled face-first out of the portal, and onto the rough concrete floor. His mask dislodged itself slightly, and he felt a draft of air brush along his jawline. He slid on his chest for a moment before coming to a stop, groaning from both the impact and the headache that was beginning to brew. There was no way he’d ever really get used to dealing with the effects of interdimensional bonds, but it made money, so he couldn’t bring himself to care too much.

He sat up on his haunches, squinting around at the warehouse he had appeared in. Currently, this is where the League of Villains was staying, it seemed. He had been inside of the old old bar in Kamino that they had used as a front once or twice before, but that was surface level. This was the heart of their base now, as far as he knew.

“Back already?” Shigaraki’s raspy voice said, sounding a little surprised. Or maybe angry. Hopefully the former? For all of Toru’s mental issues, this guy probably had the trauma to back his up. Toru’s mental health was solely the result of interdimensional trips like this, and therefore his fault. But even without knowing this Shigaraki guy for long, he knew that there was a story behind that dismembered hand, and likely an emotional manipulator behind the scenes.

He’d met too many other former villains back at the mental hospital with stories like that, where they were properly manipulated into the wrong path because their quirks were useful, or their family was full of jerks who wanted to make extra cash. Tengei was unstable, sure- but he wouldn’t let himself get manipulated into something like that. He was making money this way because it was convenient, and he had people that he needed to support.

Even after All Might’s retirement, and the subsequent rise in crime, under the table dealings like this still paid better than a part-time job. Not that anyone would hire him legally- all it would take is one search of his name, and they’d be calling the police.

But in the underworld, there were plenty of people eager to find their soul bonds, the people who would love them like family no matter what. That was where he made most of his money, offering Yakuza members with a decent paycheck a person they were meant to be with. There were also people willing to pay to use other people’s soul bonds as blackmail, like Shigaraki and his goonies here. A grudge against a UA student was interesting to learn about, but who was Toru to judge, in this line of work?

“I told you it would only take a moment, Shigaraki.” Toru replied. “She was sleeping anyways, It wasn’t hard to get a hold of her!” Toru got up bouncily, brushing off his clothes and pushing his mask back into place.

“Do you have his bond’s information? I did tell you, matchmaker, that it would be imperative for us to find this girl.” Shigaraki said. He was sitting comfortably in an old and worn out easy chair, about 15 feet in front of Toru. The villain’s iconic handy face-piece was currently resting on a side table, leaving his face exposed.

“I do, I just need to write it down.” after digging through his pockets, Toru found a battered up notebook and a pen, and began writing down (y/n)’s information.

“By the way, you should know that his bond is a super special case.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Shigaraki’s voice rose a bit, raspy and menacing. “Is the kid’s bond someone important or something?”

“Hardly!” Toru exclaimed “the girl seems just as plain as he is, but with even less ambition! Just know that you won’t find her in any databases here.”

Shigaraki’s eyes narrowed, before sitting up straighter. “In Japan?” he asked, annoyance creeping into his voice.

“Nowhere in the world!” The matchmaker laughed, his signature high pitch creeping into his voice. “She came from a different one, I’m pretty sure they don’t have quirks there!”

Shigaraki’s brows raised, stretching the abused skin of his face. “So she’s quirkless?”

“Yup!” The matchmaker says. He smiles widely as he rips a page out of his notebook. Holding it out towards Shigaraki, he slips easily into a showman-esque pose. “Now that I’ve held up my side of the bargain, are you ready to talk payment? Giran may be a sleaze, but I asked him to give me lucrative opportunities for a reason, you know!”

-~-~-

Closing the large office door, you slump and lean your forehead against it. Note to self: Don’t let Nezu drag you into another long-winded conversation if you can help it.

“Heeeeey little listener! You’re finally out of the principle’s clutches!” a loud whisper says. Looking up at Yamada, you see him and Izuku waiting on a sofa. Izuku is curled up into the left side of it and clutching a pillow, snoring lightly. Yamada is on the other end of the sofa, with his phone in his hand.

Suppressing a snort, you move to sit in between them. “He looks comfy.” you say, looking over Izuku. He’s really cute, you think to yourself, watching as the morning light plays over his green hair. It feels weird to think of him romantically though. The bond between you two is interesting, in that it isn’t inherently romantic; The best way you can think of him at the moment is a brother. There’s a fondness there that you can’t think of any other way to describe.“I’m not too surprised, you all stayed up pretty late last night.” Yamada stretches his arms up above his head, yawning. “We should head off in a bit, Midoriya has an appointment to make in about” He checks his watch as he brings his arms back down “45 minutes? But I think we should let him sleep a bit before we head off.”

“Sounds good” you reply, settling into the couch a bit more. It was comfortable, and you could totally see why Izuku was able (and probably willing) to fall asleep on it. You set the Nezu assigned pile of papers in your lap, and begin to look over them. The principal had already gone over each of them with plenty of detail, but it wouldn’t hurt to familiarize yourself with everything that you’d be needing to stay here.

It was kind of interesting that he had organized everything into an FAQ type format, you think to yourself. Especially considering that you would be the only person ‘frequently asking’ these questions. He gave you an FAQ on the quirk itself, common info about Japanese culture and customs, one on quirked society, and finally, where you would be fitting in until further notice.

The last one was titled: Your Custody and Schooling with UA High School; an FAQ.

You knew the basics of this sheet already: UA would have custody of you under the VVPI clause. VVPI stands for Villain Victim Protection Initiative, and it allows institutions such as schools, hero agencies, or even the government to take custody of a child under specific circumstances. Villain attacks resulting in orphaning or displacement fell under those circumstances, so UA would be taking care of you and your needs for the time being.

Custody under the VVPI lasts at least one month, but Nezu had haggled with some lawyers and extended it to 2 because of the situation. If you weren’t fully home by that expiration date, then someone here would adopt you. Because you physically have to stay close to Izuku, Nezu implied that they would talk to Midoriya Inko about it, but one of the teachers might snatch you up if she was unable. On top of that, the police would have to sort out some papers for you so you aren’t completely undocumented. They would come on Wednesday to give you the papers officially and be back on a bi-weekly basis to check up on you.

It was really interesting to learn about all of this, but you still can’t believe that you’ll be taking classes and living here! Tomorrow, on Monday, you’ll be taking both physical and academic aptitude tests, so they know where to place you on the class roster. Speaking of which, Nezu leveled with you. He let you know that though you’d be with class 1-A for the most part, you wouldn’t be an official part of the hero course.

It made sense, sure, but it still didn’t sit quite right. It hurt a bit, to remember that you’re now in the minority. A person without power in a sea of people with so much of it. He did mention the caveat that If you’re able to prove yourself, you could make it into the hero course officially. For now, though, you’re just a general studies student who happens to be placed with 1-A. You shake your head, trying to get rid of those pessimistic thoughts. You have an opportunity here, after all! To do what exactly, you aren’t quite sure, but at the very least, you have some friends to make! Izuku may be your soul-bond or buddy or whatever, but that doesn’t mean you have an automatic friendship pass. Any good friendship is based on trust and respect, after all!

Anyways, you’d be staying on the girl’s side of the dorms, and Nezu mentioned that UA would help you properly furnish it at some point. At the moment though, It has a dorm standard bed, dresser, and desk. Hopefully, the bed would have proper sheets on it already, but maybe Yaoyorozu wouldn’t mind making you some if there weren’t? She’d have to excuse your shyness this morning, but honestly, she doesn’t seem like she’d turn down a simple request like that!

Absent-mindedly shuffling the papers in your hands again, you consider the rest of the class. You really hope that they’ll like you. They seemed curious this morning, which was valid, but not necessarily rude or weary when they saw some random newcomer in the common room. You would probably still be nervous around them for now, especially with the language barrier, but now that you understood your situation, and would have to live with them for the foreseeable future, the task of actually meeting and interacting with class 1-A didn’t seem anywhere near as daunting anymore.

You stop shuffling the papers as Yamada gets up from his space next to you, pocketing his phone as he does. He turns to you and points at Izuku, who is now drooling, but only slightly. Getting the hint, you turn to Izuku and poke his cheek lightly. He doesn’t stir at first, but after a few more good pokes, he uncurls and rubs at his eyes.

“It’s time to go, listeners!” Yamada calls to you two, before saying something specifically to Izuku in Japanese. he smirks knowingly as Izuku suddenly becomes much more alert than he was just a moment before.

“We aren’t late for it, right??” he questions, blinking worriedly. “I’m sorry for falling asleep, but I really don’t want to disappoint her!” Izuku scrambles out of his seat, leaving his phone on the cushion in his haste to go ask Yamada more about his ‘appointment’.

You grab his phone for him as you stand up. “Late for what, exactly?” you ask as you walk over, feeling pretty lost. Yamada had mentioned something about an appointment, but you were still so caught up in what you and Nezu had talked about that you hadn’t bothered asking.

Before Izuku can answer, Yamada shushes him. By slapping his hand over his mouth. “We’ll tell you on the way there! It’s not common knowledge, so talking all willy nilly in the halls like this isn’t super wise!” despite his use of English, Izuku seems to have gotten the gist of what he said.

“Mic-sensei is right, but I promise you won’t be disappointed!” he says, breaking out into a wide smile. Yamada starts walking down the hall with long strides, and Izuku grabs your wrist before bounding down the hall after him.

The gesture makes you smile, and you take bigger steps to keep pace. After a moment, the two of you have left renowned voice hero, Present Mic, in your dust. You laugh at the thought, and Izuku joins in because he’s decided in his head that your laugh is infectious. Jogging down the halls of one of Japan’s most prestigious hero schools, you both make your way outside.

Chapter Text

Ever since Aizawa vaguely entertained the idea of a class sleepover in the common room, Mina’s mind started racing with ways to make it the best ‘welcome to our class’ slumber party ever. What can she say? She loves planning a good party, and she’d been itching to have one with everyone in the class for a while.

“I think that she’s helping Sato in the kitchen right now, Ashido.” Yaoyorozu said helpfully from the couch. Oh, Yaoyorozu, Mina’s saving grace. Not just because she had just located Uraraka, but also because of her help with the slumber party! Yaoyorozu has been spending the last half hour making various decorations and items to give the new girl as ‘dorm-warming’ gifts. The dorm rooms themselves weren’t terribly well-stocked, and from what sensei had said, this girl only had the clothes on her back right now!

“Thanks Yaomomo!!” Mina sang, whirling through the dining area and into the kitchen. Stopping herself on the doorframe before she can slam into anything, Mina takes inventory of the Kitchen.

Aha! There she is! Tasting bits of frosting behind Sato’s back as he carefully scoops cookie dough onto a baking sheet. When Mina knocks on the door frame, Uraraka looks up, bashful at being caught in the act.

“Urarakaaaaa, I need you to use your quirk to decorate in the common room! The ceilings are too high and I can’t find the step stool!” Mina whines out.

She licks the last bit of frosting off of her fingers before responding. “Fine, but I’m coming back to the kitchen afterward so I can help Sato cook!”

“Bake” Sato corrects gently. He turns towards away from the two girls so that he can deposit his cookies into the oven. “By the way Mina, you can take her. I’m just waiting for the cupcakes to come out so that I can frost them. Also, I don’t need Uraraka stealing more frosting!” Uraraka’s jaw drops a little bit.

“I was so careful about it though! How the heck did you see me?” Mina and Sato both share a chuckle before Uraraka gets dragged back into the living room.

In their absence, Jirou had come back from her room with some cords and was contemplating something on the screen of her phone. Kirishima stood behind her with a few speakers, looking lost. Yaoyorozu had made a couple of boxes for the new girl’s gifts and was beginning to wrap them up with blue wrapping paper. She seemed a little distracted though, glancing over at Jirou every once in a while. Mina stops for a minute, looking pointedly in between Yaoyorozu and Jirou. Kirishima finally looks over at Mina, and follows her line of sight. Then they both make eye contact and smile in a way that would scare anyone unfamiliar with them.

Uraraka notices all of this and sighs as loudly as she can. She can’t help but smile, though she hopes that their matchmaking antics won’t end badly.

Mina walks over to the table, grabbing the streamers and shoving them into Uraraka’s hands. “Over there,” Mina says quickly, before skipping over to Yaoyorozu. At the moment, she is in the middle of a break from wrapping, which she very obviously took just to admire Jirou.

Plopping down next to her, Mina pokes Yaoyorozu’s side, which she learned was ticklish in the middle of sparring last week. It was pretty funny, especially since Aizawa ruled it as a valid battle tactic. “Better to fight dirty than to end up dead. It’s not a common tactic or one that works on everyone, but it can be undeniably effective. Ashido wins.” She lets out an undignified yelp and nearly slaps Mina in the face, which Mina dodges easily.

Yaoyorozu turns red, realizing what she had done. “I’m so sorry Ashido! But I didn’t realize that was you, I was too distracted!” she says, frantically getting back to the package in front of her.

Mina leans into her space a bit more, pretending to examine the present “What got you that distracted though, Yaomomo?” she asks, faking curiosity. “You’re usually super focused!” Yaoyorozu’s hands falter over the present, which she had just created a white ribbon for. She glances over at Jirou for a second. This is a mistake.

Mina looks over too and sees The delightful sight of Jirou turning bright red and looking away. Kirishima is right behind her, looking slightly mischevious and giving Mina a nod. They were in this together. Yaoyorozu turns red too and fumbles with the ribbon in front of her. It ends up looking a bit lumpy, and she has to untie it and try again.

Mina decides to stop torturing her friend and get back to work, giving Yaoyorozu a hug before leaving the comfort of the couch. She has pillows to collect and classmates to haggle with if she wants to build a proper pillow fort! And she wants to take a poll on what activities they should do! She’s going to rig karaoke so that it happens, of course- but everything else is free game!

-~-~-

Izuku slides to a stop in front of a building not far behind the rest of the dorms. You’re absolutely winded, jogging along slowly behind him. Once you catch up to him, you brace your hands on your knees and pant heavily. The running was fun at first, sure, but you didn’t realize he was going to sprint the whole way!

There's a painful stitch in your side and an ache in your lungs, and your legs feel like jello. It’s not fun, but now that you’ve stopped you can feel that it’s all balanced out slightly by a foreign ache.

“Are you ok (y/n)?” he asks, finally looking back at you. Looking up, you can see that he’s holding his side, looking confused. The ache you were feeling before is easier to identify now if you focus on it. It feels nice?

“Uhh, sorry.” you say dumbly, realizing that he’s probably feeling how out of shape you are. “I will be. Soon. Hopefully,” you say in between deep breaths.

He laughs “We can get you some water once we get inside! We should wait for Mic-sensei though, he’s the one with the key card to get in!” You nod, and move to sit down on the ground.

“Ugh, I’m sorry that you’re having to feel that though,” you say, resting your forehead in your palms. You know that it must not suck as much for him, because of his crazy pain tolerance, but it’s still not fun.

“Don’t be!” he says all too cheerfully. “We’ll just have to go on more runs!”

“More runs?” you ask incredulously.

“Yeah! The more you run the more you’ll build up your stamina, and you won’t feel this terrible after doing it!” He had a point, you guessed. “Besides! Physical fitness is important for a hero, so it’s important to work on your stamina and your strength alongside one another!”

You contemplate his words for a moment, still catching your breath. You take your head out of your palms, and find his face hovering above you. “I guess you’re right. I’m not exactly a hero though Izuku- They did tell you about how school is going to work for me while I’m here right?”

Izuku frowns a bit, biting at his lip.

‘Well, yeah, but Aizawa-sensei said that there’s still a possibility that you could get into the hero course later, even though you’re quirkless! You just have to work hard at it.” He says passionately, bringing one of his fists into his open hand.

“Yeah, you’re right” You sigh, deciding to let it go. Honestly, being in the hero course sounds like a dream, especially if you’re going stay in this world in some capacity for the rest of your life. But how realistic is it, especially if you still have to worry about your career choice for the rest of your life in your world? Not to mention the fact that you don’t have a quirk, and therefore nothing to properly defend yourself or fight with.

You’re snapped out of your thoughts when Yamada calls out to the two of you.

“Hey Mic-sensei! Sorry for running ahead!” Izuku says once the man gets closer. You gently get up as they keep talking. The stitch in your side is mostly gone, and you’ve stopped breathing so hard, but your legs still feel wobbly.

Following behind them to the door, you finally get a good look at the building in front of you. It looks a lot like the dorms, but slightly shorter. Looking to the left, you can see two more of the same buildings, and another one to the right.

“Hey, Izuku?” You say, leaning closer to him as Yamada fumbles with his wallet. “Where are we?”

“Oh! We’re about to go into the teacher apartments area!” He says, buzzing with excitement. After Yamada finally finds his key card and opens the door, he continues explaining.

“A couple of weeks ago, I rescued a girl from a group of villains. She was being used for her quirk, It was a really bad situation.” You nod slowly, realizing about where in the timeline you must have been placed. “Her name is Eri, and she’s really sweet. She was recently adopted by Aizawa and Mic sensei! She’s doing a lot better now than she was before, but strangers still make her a bit antsy. Please don’t be too hurt if she’s, you know…” He twiddles his fingers for a moment before giving up on the words he was looking for.

“It’s okay, Izuku. I’m not going to be offended if a child I just met doesn’t trust me. Especially if she’s been through some tough situations,” you say, resting your hand on his shoulder as you both follow after Yamada.

He smiles, leaning into the touch a bit before pulling away to walk properly. The three of you clamber into the elevator at the end of what seems to be a sort of lobby/common room area. Yamada whistles a tune as he punches in the number 3 on the elevator wall and slides his key card into place again.

You’re not sure what you expected to see upon entering the Yamada-Aizawa apartment. But it certainly wasn’t Shinso Hitoshi getting his hair done by a very focused Eri. Mirio Togata’s sitting on a couch nearby, snickering as he hands Eri various barrettes and bows. His short hair looked like it had already gotten the ‘Eri special’, adorned with as many barrettes as she could fit, and sprinkled with mounds of glitter. You hope he doesn’t have to sneeze anytime in the next week, lest everyone around him be sprinkled in glitter as well. Mirio and Shinso looked up when they entered, but Eri stayed focused on her task.

Yamada announced his presence, breaking Eri out of her focus. Within a moment, Eri had run up to him and latched onto his leg tightly. Picking her up, Yamada twirled her around. Stopping, he crouched down and tightened the hug, sighing deeply with his daughter in his arms. Eri hugged back, scrunching up her face and digging her hands into the leather of Yamada’s jacket. She wasn’t smiling, per se, but she seemed content.

After a moment, he pulled away and began to speak. “Hey my littlest listener, guess who’s here?” he said softly. Looking over her father’s shoulder, Eri’s eyes widened, and she sprinted past him to give Izuku the same treatment.

Izuku kneeled down to meet her at her height, wrapping his arms around her gently, despite the pace that she ran into them. “Deku.” you heard her whisper into his curls.

You look away, feeling a bit like an intruder on their tender moment. You end up meeting eyes with Mirio, who is looking at you very intently, head cocked near imperceptibly to the side. Embarrassed at being caught staring, he coughs into his hand gives you a nod before looking away. You nod back, amused at his reaction.

In the center of the room, Shinsou and Yamada are talking. You quietly excuse yourself from Izuku’s side to go join them.

They’re speaking quietly in Japanese, but Yamada stops once he sees you appear beside him.

“(Y/n)!” he begins. “This is my son Hitoshi, Eri’s big brother! He can speak about as much English as Shouta, so you two should be able to talk” He says, looping his arm around his son’s neck. Hitoshi looks a little uncomfortable, but he lets it happen anyway.

“Hey” he says, a little clipped. Yamada tries to tighten the grip, but Shinsou wrestles himself out of his arms, playfully pushing him away as his father fakes a pout.

He slinks away from Hitoshi, who is smirking a bit. “Do you see that?” Yamada asks emphatically. “He thinks its funny! To push away his father!! I’m HURT!” he overdramatizes his movements as he makes his way back over to your side. You chuckle a little at his antics.

“Over there is Mirio,” Yamada continues morosely, motioning towards the couch. “He’s a third-year here at UA, He’s one of the young heroes that rescued Eri!” Mirio waves at you, smiling brightly. “He knows a bit of English too, just barely enough to get by if his scores last year are any indication,” Yamada says, a hint of teasing sneaking into his voice. You laugh then, but not maliciously, because of course, Present Mic would be the type of teacher to mercilessly tease his students like this.

Mirio looks almost offended for a second before smiling at you again. “He’s joking! I know some!” Mirio laughs, his voice a bit hesitant. “Mr. Mic talks too fast…” he trails off, laughing at himself good-naturedly. Your laughing peaks again before calming down.

You should probably talk now, you think. It’s only polite, right? You take a little more time to talk than you might normally out of consideration for them, and introduce yourself.

“Hello, I’m (f/n) (l/n). I’m… stuck here for the time being. It’s nice to meet you both!” you say, smiling.

Mirio returns the smile easily, right before you hear a small voice from behind you. You turn around slowly, meeting Eri’s bright red eyes. She looks confused, and she tugs at Izuku’s pant leg beside her, saying something else.

“Eri, this is my friend! She was attacked by a villain last night, so we’re trying to help her.” Izuku says gently. “She doesn’t speak any Japanese, but she’s super nice! I promise!”

Eri gazes up at him, contemplative. A reassuring smile sits on his face, right at home among his kind features. His eyes sparkle with sincerity and the small creases next to them show the genuineness of his smile. She turns back to you, and you wave at her gently. You squat down a bit to sit on your heels so that you’re right at her height.

She stays where she is, still holding on the fabric of Izuku’s running pants. searches your face, eventually landing and staying on your eyes. For a moment you think that she’s stopped blinking before tentatively, she takes a step forward. And another.

As she closes the gap, you slowly move to sit criss-cross, after beginning to feel a bit wobbly in the previous position. She stops for a moment, like a deer that’s been spooked. You worry for a moment that you’ve screwed up before she begins to move again. You breathe a small sigh of relief.

She stops again once she’s about a foot in front of you, before turning back to Izuku and saying something.

You look up at him too, just as he meets your eyes. “She wants to know if she can play with your hair?” he says, his mouth curling into a silly smile. You feel the corners of your mouth pull up as you look back at Eri.

You nod excitedly, beginning to brush through your hair with your fingers to get it ready for her. Her eyes sparkle as she gets closer, circling behind you and asking someone for her hair things.

You hear Shinsou laugh, and he sits in front of you, right next to where Izuku has pulled a pillow from the couch to sit on. He plops onto the pillow before noticing that Shinsou doesn’t have one. He frowns and turns to Mirio. “Hey, Senpai? Can I have anothe-”

He’s quickly cut off by a pillow to the face, and a collective laugh from everyone in the room. “There you go!” Mirio hollered, clearly pleased with himself.

You chuckle too, but try not to move your head too much. After all, Eri was silent and focused, and you don’t want to mess with her work! You feel her brushing through your hair methodically, if a little too heavy-handed. You find that you don’t mind too much though, but resolve to ask her to be a bit more gentle next time, if this happens again.

Yamada calls for Mirio just as Eri slips a barrette into your hair, pulling it away from your face. They disappear out of the room. You watch them leave until you can’t turn your head under Eri’s ministrations. “They’re going to make lunch, I think.” Shinsou comments.

Then he turns to you, one eyebrow raised. “You know that she’s going to use glitter at the end, right?” he asks, humming amusedly.

Your eyes widen as you remember the sparkly mess that was Mirio’s head when you entered. “Oh, fu-” you begin, lurching a bit as Eri calmly slides something just above your ear. Right. Children are impressionable.

“Fudge.” you correct yourself, sighing.

Izuku cracks up. “What?!” he says through his laughter. He’s covering his mouth, but you can see mischief in his eyes. Oh boy, he definitely knows what you just did.

“Fudge?” Shinsou asks, incredulous. “Isn’t that food?”

“She was” Izuku begins, trying to stop laughing. He fails miserably, and it takes another few tries before he’s properly coherent- even to you, who is supposedly able to understand everything out of his mouth.

“She was- using it as-” he heaves a breath “a substitution for a cuss, I think!” Izuku finally spits out.

You scowl at Izuku, wishing you had a pillow to throw at his dumb, smiling face. You resist the urge to turn away from him and brood but resist out of respect for Eri. It’s been a while since anyone played with your hair, after all, and it does feel really nice. You settle for closing your eyes and tuning the boys out, and focus on what Eri is deciding to do with your hair.

Eri sections off a seemingly random portion of your hair, and brushes through it again, before, braiding it? You think? The section of hair is at the far back of your head after all, so you cant see what she’s doing.

She does this with a few more sections of hair before you open your eyes back up and begin to converse with the boys again. Izuku holds up most of the conversation, and Shinsou has slipped back into Japanese to make the occasional comment. Izuku translates for you when he does this, and does the same for Shinsou when you decide to participate again.

At first, the conversation Is about your situation, before turning to mundane things like homework and how the move into the dorms has been. You begin to open up about your recent moving situation back home before Mirio and Yamada come back with lunch.

Eri takes a break from your hair (which she has undone and redone a lot of) to eat from the Edgeshot themed bento box Mirio hands her. The rest of you get bento boxes with onigirazu, and it’s delicous.

Later, when lunch is done and so is your hair, everyone chuckles at the sheer amount of glitter in it as you leave and say your goodbyes.

-~-~-

“WHAT!” mina yelled into Todoroki’s face. “What do you mean you’ve never been to a sleepover before?”

“I mean that I haven’t, Ashido.”

She looks back at him again, incredulous. “I get that it’s more of a girly thing, but every guyhas to have at least one sleepover in his life!”

Todoroki looks the same as usual, stoic and not very talkative, but he’s gotten more open with the class in the last few months. He looks down at Ashido, who is still freaking out. “You can still have my pillow if you want, Mina. let me go get it.”

Mina, who had been twirling around and grasping at her hair for the last minute, stops in her tracks.

“PILLOW? as in, NOT PILLOWS? PLURAL? Who lives with jut one pillow??” She follows after him and into his room, still whining.

“I do.” he responds. “Here.” he grabs his (unfortunately singular) pillow and hands it to Ashido.

“Thank you for your contribution! Our future pillow fort thanks you” she says, cheering up right away as she takes it.

“You’re welcome” Todoroki replies. Ashido stalks out of his room to deposit the pillow into the laundry bin that she’s been collecting them in so far.

She’s about to leave when Todoroki speaks again. “Hey, Ashido?” he asks calmly.

”Yeah, Todoroki?”

“What is a sleepover?”

Ashido’s eyes bug out of her head. “WHAT?” she asks, near hysterical.

“What is a sleepover” he repeats again.

Ashido closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. How the hell? He’s easily the most popular boy in class, how did he not know?

Putting aside her thoughts, she began to answer the question. “Well, usually it’s when you invite someone else to your house, and you spend the night together doing stuff like watching movies and playing games!”

Todoroki blinks, his brows furrowing. “You said usually. What will be different about this sleepover, other than it being in the dorms?”

“You’re catching on Todoroki! Come downstairs with me and help out a bit, I’ll tell you more on the way!” Ashido exclaims, picking up her laundry bin and balancing it on her hip. She begins to stalk down the hall confidently.

Todoroki glances back into his room before shrugging and closing the door. He follows after Ashido and catches up to her just as she knocks on Sero’s door. When she looks up at him, he raises an eyebrow.

“This isn’t downstairs, Ashido.” She laughs aloud, setting the hamper down. “I knew you had a sense of humor, pretty boy! I still need to harass Sero for his pillows before we go back down!” Todoroki blushes nearly imperceptibly at the nickname. “Pretty boy?” he whispers to himself.

Sero answers the door just then, hair a bit disheveled. “Mina?” he says questioningly. He glances at Todoroki and then rubs his eyes. “Todoroki?!” He says, suddenly seeming much more awake than before. The door opens a bit more as he takes a step back, but he catches it before the two can see much of his room. He brings the door closer to him and blocks the way into his room. “What do you two need, again?” he asks innocently

“WE ARE THE PILLOW POLICE!” Mina announces. “We are?” Todoroki says as she bursts past Sero. She stomps into his room, completely oblivious to Sero’s now panicked expression, and the conspicuous bump on Sero’s bed. She makes to jump onto his bed before finally noticing it and stopping her siege.

Todoroki lets himself in and observes from the wall near the door as Ashido turns around, grinning at Sero widely. “Oh? What’s this??” she says, sidling over to the side of the bed, lifting up the edge of the patterned blanket.

“Mina” Sero whines. “Just let him sleep, ok? He’s been burnt out lately, he really needs it.”

Ashido sighs. “Fineeeee. He’s gonna suffocate under the blankets like that though. Grab me your pillows while I help him” she says, gently pulling the sheets back to reveal a sleeping Kaminari. “I’m surprised that Denki didn’t wake up when I yelled…” she says, gently pulling her friend farther up the bed. He’s wearing a bright yellow Pikachu onesie, and grunts as his position is adjusted.

Sero seems a bit embarrassed, but gathers up his pillows from around the room, trusting Ashido not to wake his friend up. Dutifully, Todoroki picks up the basket of pillows and holds it while Sero deposits the pillows into it. “Hold on-” Ashido says. “Toss me that circular one, Hanta.” Wordlessly, he throws it over, and Ashido catches it. She tucks it gently under Kaminari’s head, cooing a bit as he says something under his breath.

She backs away slowly, patting Sero on the back with a smile. “Make sure he’s all ready for the party tonight. He’s already dressed for it, after all!” she giggles. She shoos Todoroki and herself out of the room and back into the hallway.

As the two begin walking towards the elevators, Todoroki coughs a bit, careful to turn his face away from the pillows in his arms. “So, um.” He starts, obviously unsure.

“They’re only friends If you were wondering” she says with a sly smile. “They were just cuddling, Denki does well with physical affection”.

Ashido pushes the button as Todoroki clears his throat. “And it’s ok to do that? With friends?” He asks. “Absolutely! Humans need human touch and comfort, It's natural to cuddle people platonically!” she says brightly as the elevator doors open for them both. Sato steps out of it, apologizing and mumbling something about cake flour.

They step into the elevator, Ashido punching in the first-floor button for them both. “Will people be cuddling, at the sleepover?” Todoroki asks, looking nonchalantly into the pillows. Mina smiles softly, catching onto his nervousness. “Yeah, for sure! Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the class devolves into various cuddle piles, seeing as that’s how half of our movie nights have ended so far!” She says, scooting closer to him until they’re shoulder to shoulder. She puts her hand on his shoulder gently, giving him a moment to tell her if he didn’t want that before continuing.“If you want to cuddle with anyone, all you have to do is ask, and make sure they’re ok with it!” she says in a lower voice.

Looking down a bit to meet her eyes, Todoroki smiles. It’s just a small tilt of the mouth, but Mina can tell. She’s always had a talent for reading people, and that right there is a bonafide, Todoroki Shouto genuine smile.

He looks back up before the doors slide open, letting the sound of conversations from the common room trickle into the elevator. “But you were telling me earlier about how this sleepover is different from normal ones?” He remarks, stepping out of the elevator.

Ashido smiles and steps out after him “Well, for one, this whole thing is to welcome our new classmate!! She’s in a tough situation, and hopefully, this will help her feel welcome!”

Chapter Text

Walking back to the dorms with Izuku by your side is quiet. Every other step you take is punctuated with a small cloud of glitter separating itself from your head, and the one time you look back, you can see a visible trail sparkling behind you in the afternoon light. Chuckling a bit, you look around more at the campus.

The design for each of the class dorms are the same: practical and blocky, but with neat classical touches to the exterior that makes you wonder how much creative freedom Cementoss had when creating the dorms. Light bounces around each of the red buildings and plays on the grass, casting everything in a beautiful orange light. It’s golden hour, you think to yourself.

“It’s what?” you hear Izuku say curiously from your right. Oh, you must have said that out loud.

“It’s golden hour right now. The school counselor placed me in a photography class by accident, so I learned about it” you remember. “Basically, It’s a time of day right before the sun sets where the sunlight is great for taking pictures. It makes everything look golden, and shadows are longer and darker.”

“Oh, I think that must have been around the time that Mr. Tokuda took a selfie with me- It wasn’t quite sunset, right before he left the dorms!”

Looking to your right, you listen to him continue to talk about the types of twilight and their scientific names, spiraling into a rant about the hero in the UK with a quirk that’s dependent on light levels. It’s interesting, for sure, but he’s jerked out of his thoughts by a notification from his phone. Not wanting to be rude, you turn away from him while he reads the text, instead of looking around the manicured school lawn.

There are a few older students (2nd or 3rd years, maybe?) walking away from the dorm system’s gym. Izuku pointed it out briefly on your run over to the Aizawa-Yamada household, but you were more focused on breathing properly than on the architecture at the time. The gym’s outside is mostly glass, allowing students to look out over the beautiful UA campus grounds as they work out. You can see a small yoga class being held on the lawn out front of the gym, with colorful mats and even more colorful people performing downward dog on top of them.

“We should get there quickly, Yaoyorozu wants to show you your room!” Izuku says, pointing up ahead to the 1-A dorms.

“My room?”

“Yeah! Since you’ll be staying with us indefinitely, you’ll have your own room! Apparently it’s on the 5th floor, right next to Yaoyorozu’s. That makes sense since she’s the class vice president, you’ll be able to go to her right away if you need anything!”

“Yeah, I guess that does make sense. How about the showers though?”

Izuku laughs, a sweet jingle hanging on the wind. “What, not liking Eri’s style?”

“You know it’s not that, Izuku! It’s! well. um.” Izuku laughs more heartily as you struggle to find the proper words. “Stop that! It’s very sparkly. And prone to contaminating the dorms with glitter. But I like it, I promise!”

Izuku’s expression shifts immediately into something more serious. “Oh god, you’re so right. Kacchan once called glitter the herpes of craft supplies. He’d smite you as soon as he saw your head.”

“On sight?” you ask, chortling loudly.

“On sight.” Izuku repeats morosely. “I’d be burying you within the hour.”

Approaching the 1-A dorms, the two of you see Yaoyorozu loitering by the side of the building. Noticing your confusion, she laughs, not unkindly. “Midoryia told me about the glitter, so we’re going through a side door,” she says in slightly wobbly English.

“Wait” you realize, turning to Izuku. ” You were serious??”

“Very. But Yaoyorozu is going to take you through a side door to avoid Kacchan and show you your room!”

“You can shower and get ready before dinner. I have some toiletries for you as well.” Yaoyorozu says, waving for you to follow her.

You feel a little weird parting with Izuku after having spent the day together, but you’d rather not be attacked by an angry blond at dinner, so showering sounds like a good idea. Yaoyorozu leads you around the right side of the building, opening a small door you wouldn’t have noticed without her help. Is it disguised so that villains can’t take advantage of it, perhaps?

Wandering in after Yaoyorozu, It opens up to a small stairwell with metal steps that clang with each step.

“These are the emergency….” she trails off for a second. Politely, you wait for her to finish while you both continue to clang upstairs. You note that if you listen closely enough, you can hear talking and the clanging of dishes from the first floor. As the two of you continue upstairs, the ambient noises of the class get fainter and fainter. “Stairs! That was the word I was looking for.” she exclaims somewhere around the 3rd flight.

She looks back at you, blushing a bit. “My English isn’t very good, I’m really sorry”. Wait, what?

“Sorry?” You say incredulously. “I really appreciate that you’re speaking English at all, you don’t need to be sorry for it! I barged into your class dorms today, you honestly shouldn’t feel forced to speak anything other than Japanese.”

Her mouth gapes open a bit “I-” she starts to say. “But for, erm, hospitality’s sake, I-” She’s blushing harder now, but you continue on.

“Thank you so much for going out of your comfort zone to make me feel more comfortable, Yaoyorozu. I appreciate it more than I can say.” you finish.

The stairwell is quiet now as she leads you out onto the 5th-floor landing, red as a tomato.

Before leading you down the hall to your dorms, she takes a deep breath and turns to you. “Thank you,” she says, with indisputable sincerity. Her eyes are shining, and a soft smile sits on her face, lifting her cheeks and creating wrinkles by her eyes.

“You are kinder than I would have imagined, (y/n). We are still learning English in class, and I am…” she looks down and bites her bottom lip, rolling it back and forth between her teeth. “Glad.”

She takes another deep breath. “I am glad that you are the person who was sent here.”

Before you can respond, she shoots you a bright smile. “Let’s go to your room! I made some things for you, and then I can show you the showers!!!” she grabs your hand, and you’re pulled off down the hall.
-~-~-
1-A had set up a few movie nights and a few study sessions since the new semester has begun, but this would be the first-class sleepover to grace the common room of their dorms. Mina took the job of party planner with grace, if you could call commandeering pillows and hassling classmates planning. That said, things were going swimmingly.

The pillow fort itself was being set up in the corner by the TV, Kaminari and Sero working in sync to make something of the blankets (many of which were hero themed) and assorted pillows that were helpfully donated from around the dorms. One of the couches and an armchair had been moved, and now served as the walls of the fort. Kaminari was working on the exterior and had plenty of tape stuck to his forearms, ripping them off when he needed to attach a blanket to a wall or pillow. Sero pulled tape straight from the source where he needed it and was currently working on the inside. He had produced some string lights from somewhere as well, and was artfully hanging the lights around the inside of the fort. Mina stuck her head through the opening to observe his handiwork, narrowing her eyes and nodding in approval at the decor.

“Hey Sero, make sure to line the floor on the inside with pillows! Great work so far though, It’s gonna be so comfy when we’re done with it!!” she said, patting the ground by her knees.

“You got it, Ashido!” he said, still focusing on the lights. “Do you know when the new girl will be down here?”

“We got her upstairs by telling her to shower and get ready for the night, so probably 20 minutes or so?”

Sero nodded, carefully taping the end of the lights onto an exposed section of the wall. “That should be just enough time to finish this up.”

“Perfect” mina purred, crawling out of the fort. She flicked denki on the forehead (“Ashidoooo! What was that for?”) before skipping to the center of the room to observe the festivities.

Iida had left a while back, citing that “bringing class 1-A and 1-B together will be greatly beneficial for both parties involved! We should take this opportunity to mend the bond caused by the unnecessary rivalry we have!” Mina let him do it, figuring that it wouldn’t hurt to have some more people to welcome the newbie to their world. As long as monoma (who was as feral as he was pissed at class 1-A) didn’t screw anything up. Just because (y/n) would be in class 1-A didn’t mean that he immediately got to whale on her and be rude. Especially since this party was intended to WELCOME her to their world.

Jirou had commandeered one of the kitchen tables and set up her computer on it, ready to blast tunes for the night. Mina watched as Kirishima worked on connecting the speakers to it, and Jirou set up a karaoke machine next to the table. Apparently she had a way for people to play whatever song they wanted to for karaoke, which could lead to a lot of awesome shenanigans later.

Peeking into the kitchen, Mina watched Sato plate sweets and slide them into the fridge, maneuvering around Bakugou carefully. She had pulled in a huge favor to get him to make dinner for the whole class, and didn’t regret her decision at all when she took in the smell of alfredo sauce and cooking seafood. Bakugou's cooking was delicious (smelling, she hadn’t gotten a chance to taste it yet), but so far he had only cooked for himself and left the rest of the dorm to fend for themselves at dinner time.

Lunch rush apparently made dinner in the cafeteria for students, but class reps were also given an allowance for groceries. Most of 1-A had been eating frozen dinners and instant meals in the evenings, too lazy to trek to the cafeteria for a meal. However, because of their skill in the kitchen, Sato and Bakugou were the only students in 1-A to take advantage of the weekly groceries and eat actual meals.

Anyways: the party was almost done!!! Mina had already texted Midoriya and had Yaoyorozu wait outside, and apparently they already had an alibi that would keep (y/n) out of the commons until the party started! In fact, according to her party planning instincts, Yaoyorozu should start stomping up the emergency stairs with her in…..

Mina stuck her ear to the wall behind the TV. Sure enough, she could hear the tell-tale clanks of feet on metal, and the vague sounds of voices. Then the front door opened, and she spun like a top, coming to a stop with her eyes focused on her target.

As Mina broke out in a smile, Izuku started to sweat. When Mina smiled at you like that, it wasn’t often out of goodwill. She saw you as prey, and it usually meant that she wanted something or that you needed to run.

Away, preferably.

“Midoriya,” she said, stalking towards him.

“Hey Ashido,” Izuku looked to Uraraka for help where she was fastening streamers. “Uhhh” he said, watching as she glanced at him apathetically before going back to her task.

Izuku looked like he was panicking more now. Uraraka abandoned him?! What did Mina want from him!

Mina reveled in the slight panic he had. She didn’t want anything actually sinister, of course. She was just excited!! They had a new classmate for an unforeseeable amount of time. One who lived in a whole different world! She was incredibly curious, but didn’t want to scare off the new girl. That said….

“So,” she stopped about a meter away from Izuku. “You’re going to tell me everything before she gets down here.” she grabbed for his hand and began leading him towards the couch. “People are curious, you know!”.

That said, she had absolutely no problem grilling her friends.

-~-~-

Yaomomo had shown you to the showers and shoved a bundle of clothes and toiletries into your arms before allowing you inside. She then stood to the side of the door and waved you in. “I’m going to wait here. There is a boy who likes to try and get in while we shower,” she said, producing a metal staff from her arm and winking conspiratorially. “I’ll make sure he stays away from our newest member.”

Blinking from the staff in her hands and at the bundle in yours, you slowly nodded. “Thank you” you replied, looking into her grey eyes. She was beautiful, but incredibly capable. She had to be, as a recommended student. You hadn’t thought about Mineta yet, surprisingly, but you were incredibly grateful that she had, AND was kind enough to stand watch. You shuddered at the thought of that grape getting into the showers, but the determined glint in Momo’s eyes reminded you that she wouldn’t let that happen.

Pushing the door to the showers open, you began to go through the bundle. Wrapped in a fluffy blue towel, you find a small basket with body wash, shampoo, conditioner, and a loofa. Setting the basket aside, you find a set of soft pajamas. They’re also blue, and look strikingly similar to the UA physical education uniform. You might have thought she gave you the iconic workout clothes if the soft and stretchy cotton blend hadn’t given it away as something to sleep in instead.

Shrugging, you make your way towards the wall of curtains (where you assume the showers are hidden) and begin to strip. Just before you turn on the water, you hear a clang and a shriek, followed by the sound of padding footsteps.

“Damn, that quick?” you think aloud, before yelling out to Momo. “Did you get him good?” you ask, unable to hide the smile in your voice. “I don’t think he’ll be coming back for a bit, (y/n). It should be safe to shower now.” oh she wasn’t even trying to hide the laughter. It was a pretty laugh, all chuckles and suppressed snorts.

Turning on the water, you find yourself smiling. Hopefully the stay at U.A will continue being like this: welcoming and full of laughter. Despite the circumstances of your stay, and even the language barrier, everyone had been pretty nice so far. Then again, you still hadn’t met the whole class directly yet.

“Better make a good impression,” you think aloud, before grabbing the shampoo to tackle the glitter in your hair with. Hopefully, you could enough out that Bakugou wouldn’t kill you. Keeping some would be unavoidable though, with the way glitter works. Maybe Aoyama would appreciate it though?

~-~-~

After your shower, you dressed into your new pajamas and met Yaoyorozu outside of the showers, and thanked her again for standing guard. Apparently that little perv had tried a *second time* to get in, but Momo kept a sharp eye on the doorway.

She led you back to your room, but you noticed her checking her phone every chance you could. “Dinner is soon,” she said, noticing your curiosity, “we’re going to set some things up in your room first though.”

Back at your room, she made sheets for your bed in your favorite color and made small talk about some of the things that were going on in your world. She seemed very interested in the political aspects of early 2000’s USA. She kept asking you questions about the government and then mentally comparing what you told her what she knew about the time period. She was quiet about her findings, and for that, you were glad.

She made you 3 sets of casual clothes, another pair of pajamas, a UA uniform, and a UA gym uniform. She was about to create another pair of socks when her phone buzzed. Forgetting about the socks, she reached for her phone.

“Ah, dinner is ready! We’ll go down, ok?” she gets up and beckons for you to follow. “Alright” you say, following her out into the hall and into the elevator.

-~-~-

“WELCOME TO OUR CLASS!”

1-A’s voices ring out as soon as the elevator doors open up to the common room. It’s not perfect, not by a long shot, but it lifts your spirits immensely because it shows just how much they tried. You love that they all did their best to say it, in english no less, just because you can’t speak Japanese. They’re catering to you in the middle of a sucky situation, not just because they’re heroes. Because they’re good people. Good kids.

Some of them say it a little better than the others, with Denki and Bakugou doing the best of the bunch. Their voices carry over the crowd a little better, or maybe you were just able to pick them out because you understood them the best. Others are quieter or unconfident like Koda and Momo, and Mina makes up for her awkward pronunciation with lots of enthusiasm behind it. You see everyone in 1-A, and even a few kids from 1-B. You also think you can see the big three, Hitoshi, and Mei Hatsume somewhere in the crowd. Off to the side, you find Izuku. His pronunciation was alright, but it felt just a bit different from when the quirk that hit you auto-translated his voice. He had tears in his eyes, and for a moment you’re confused why. That is, until he gives you a pointed look while wiping the tears off of his own face.

Bringing your hand up, you feel wetness on your own cheeks. You feel Momo’s arm wrap tentatively around your shoulders as you scrub at your eyes and try desperately to remember something. A word. Something in Japanese to show them how you felt right now.

When you finish wiping your eyes, you gently unwrap Momo’s arm from around yourself and step forward. You’re looking down at the ground, screwing up your face as you try to remember how to say it properly. Surely you’ve watched enough anime to at least get this right?

“Ari-” you begin, lips wobbling slightly. “Arigato -gozaimasu?” you look up at Izuku, asking as much as you can with your eyes ‘Was that right? Did I do it right?’

His eyes are watering again, and you know somehow that it’s not just because of your emotions this time. You’re about to ask him to translate something before you’re interrupted by a sudden screech.

Mina says something excitedly, and comes up right in front of you and says something else. Catching on to your confusion, Izuku translates. “She said that you’re, uh, really cute, and that she wants to hug you. She’s asking permission…” he trails off.

Looking back at the pink girl, you nod and say “yes” as clearly as you can. When you hold out your arms in a return gesture, you’re immediately tackled, and are forced to take a few steps back to stabilize. It’s a nice hug though, you think. The closeness it brings is welcome, something you haven’t had since the friends you left behind at your old school. Not since you moved.

After another moment, she carefully dislodged herself and smiles brightly. Waving Izuku over, she orders him to translate while she tours you around the festivities. (Why Izuku uses the word order to describe his task confuses you, but you’re distracted nearly immediately by the tour beginning)

With Izuku helping narrate, Mina shows you around the room. As the class moves around to converse, you can see the DJ and karaoke set up, smell the food from in the kitchen, and are amazed by the pillow fort. You hear a few people chuckle at your reaction to the fort but, c’mon. It’s probably the biggest and best-constructed pillow fort you’ve ever seen, with enough room to house at least 5 people, lights inside, and absolutely plastered with hero-themed blankets. You resist crawling inside immediately, because Bakugou’s gruff voice is calling something from inside the kitchen. Most of the people in the room perk up and begin to move towards the kitchen. After a moment, you hear the same voice speak a second time in clear English. “NEWBIE GETS FOOD FIRST, GET IN HERE DUMBASS.”

Your eyes widen as you look to Izuku. “Me?” you clarify.

Izuku chuckles. “Kacchan has always been pretty good with english, but yeah- it looks like you get the first bowl!”

He leads you to the kitchen, depositing you at the front of the food line with a smile, before going back to the end of the line. Bakugou watches him go with a glare before turning his attention to you.

Motioning to the pot in front of him with a ladle, he explains the meal. “I made fettuccine alfredo, with a chicken version and a seafood version. Didn’t know if any of these shitty extras are allergic to seafood or not, so grab a bowl and I’ll fuckin get you some.”

Raising your brows a bit at the curse, you choose the fettuccine you want.

“Haah?” he says as he plops the noodles into your bowl “what’s with the face, newbie? I know I said that shit right, so don’t try and say it was that.”

You chuckle as he adds in the sauce “You’re pretty good with English.” you begin to say. “And cursing. Did you learn English just so that you could curse in it?”

Katsuki levels a glare at you. “Wouldn’t you like to know, bitchass.” then he barks something in Japanese and Sero is being served. Taking the hint, you move over to one of the high-top kitchen tables and begin to eat.

-~-~-

After everyone has eaten dinner, the party really starts. Surprisingly though, it starts with Iida yelling instructions for a get-to-know-you game. According to Izuku, (who is kind enough to keep translating for you, the saint) everyone will be playing in English to improve their language skills. As Izuku relays the rules of the game to you, you feel your heart swell at the fact that they’re actively trying to improve their English.

“So, everyone goes around the circle and matches their name with a word in English- they have to start with the same letter, apparently,” Izuku says, speaking out of the corner of his mouth while he watches Iida speak. “Oh! He’s asking if you want to use everyone’s given names”

“Yes, please.” you say. ‘First’ names would be less formal, but they’d take a lot of the heat off of you if you mixed up someones given and familial names if you were expected to say their given names anyways.

“Ok, so everyone will use their given names. Oh, he’s adding a thing- he says that because it’s meant to help with memory, each person will say the name and word of every person that went before them! He wants you to go last so you can try and remember everyone’s names…” Izuku looks around the circle of students sitting on the floor.

“That’s a lot of people, (y/n). Are you sure you’re ok with doing it?” he looks into your eyes, and you catch the slight twinge in his forehead. Is Izuku really that worried about it?

Looking around the circle, you see people just like the characters that you know and love. You could probably name all of them without breaking a sweat, but they didn’t need to know that. Faking a waver in your voice, you respond slowly. “It’s a lot of people, but I want to learn their names. I’ll do it!”

Izuku beams brightly at you, before turning to Iida and confirming your position as last.

Iida takes a seat beside you, ready to go first. The order of students would start at your right side and swing around counterclockwise until it hit Izuku on your left side.

Iida takes a moment before starting off the game with “tenacious Tenya.”

And off the class goes! You pay attention to each introduction, if only so that you would remember their descriptive word. Just because you already knew their names didn’t mean you couldn’t or wouldn’t play along!

There are over 20 names to remember, with only Sato and Ojiro left out of the circle- they had gone into the kitchen to ice the last batch of cupcakes apparently. So that left the rest of 1-A, the big 3, Shinsou Hitoshi, and Mei Hatsume. A few 1-B people were there as well, but it was only Kendo Itsuka, TetsuTetsu TetsuTetsu, and Pony Tsuntonori. That made 25 people playing the game, 25 people to remember the names of. Smiling, you listened to the students make their selections. Some hesitated longer than others before coming up with a matching word, and others had obviously thought about it while waiting for their turn.

Before long, the circle had come back around to you, and you had to remember all of their names. And words.

“Alright, I am (adj) (y/n).” you began. Taking a deep breath, you looked around the circle, stopping at Tenya on your left.

“You’re all Tenacious Tenya, Kind Kyoka, Delightful Denki, Massive Mezo, Precious Pony, Interesting Itsuka, Talented Tetsutetsu, Fabled Fumikage, Eager Eijirou…” you stopped on Aoyama before saying his word, wanting to make sure you were correct. “Uh,” you say dumbly.

“was it ‘yummy’ yuga? Did I hear that right?” Beaming, Yuga nodded happily and motioned to his right for you to keep going. “Alright then,” you continue.

“Tactful Tsuyu, Maniac Mina, Magical Momo, Kooky Koji, Sleepy Shinsou, Needy Nejire….”

You continue until you finally hit “imaginative Izuku” and finally take a deep breath. You did it all as quickly as you could, as accurately as you could, and the rest of the students in the circle were gaping at you when you looked up.

“What the fuck?” Katsuki finally said. A few people laughed or clapped at how quickly you had gotten everyone's names, but seemed to chalk it up to you being really good at remembering names.

-~-~-

After the name game, Sato and Ojiro set out the sweets, ready for anyone who wanted to grab a cookie or a cupcake. Off to the side, someone had set up a drink station with water, punch, and lemonade.

Someone set up a movie in the background, and another had produced a few board games. Everyone split up to try out the games- many seemed to be ones that you knew? Most of them seemed to be in Japanese though... You saw mei and Tenya setting up a game of monopoly at the far corner, Kyoka and Momo blushing as they put together a Jenga tower, and Izuku gravitating towards the game of Catan that the big 3 had pulled out. He looked back at you, tentatively conveying that he wanted to play that. You waved him off with a smile. Catan was already a complicated game without it being in Japanese, and you felt like having fun, not getting frustrated.

Instead, you set your sights on Denki, who was gingerly holding a deck of Uno cards. Perfect! The cards still used Arabic numbers and normal colors, so it’s not like you’d need to talk very much if you didn’t want to.

You walk up to the blonde, meeting his eyes and smiling before motioning to the cards. “Can I play?” you ask.

Denki smiles “ok! Do you want to play in the, ehhh.” he waved towards the fort with his free hand. “The.” his face got redder the more he waved “the blanket thing?”

“Yeah, I’d love to play it in the blanket fort!” you say, taking it in stride. Walking towards the entrance of the fort, you keep talking, “Also, your English is pretty good, Denki!”

Denki’s face reddens a little bit more. “But I forgot that word!” he says. “That doesn’t matter, Denki. I can tell that you understand English grammar pretty well!”

He starts to follow you, but not before calling over a few more people to join in with Uno. you watched as Hanta finished grabbing a plate of cookies before heading over, and Katsuki sighed loudly and stomped after him. Looking back towards the fort, you’re surprised to see that Denki is holding the blanket flap for you.

“Thanks!” you say, sliding inside of the fort. Within the conglomeration of blankets, the floor is covered in pillows and the inside is lit up entirely with string lights. They’re thinner and more delicate than Christmas lights would be, but provide enough light for you to see the cards that Denki is holding pretty clearly. You pad over to the far corner of the fort, allowing room for the others to create a circle. Someone removes a pillow from the center of the floor to place down the deck.

Looking up, you find that Hitoshi has come into the fort as well. It’s a little cramped with 5 people, but not overly so. If anything, it’s cozy, Denki and Hanta’s shoulders brushing against yours as everyone gets comfortable in the fort.

Denki deals everyone their cards, explaining the rules in Japanese. Apparently he’s the only one that knows how to play it. When he turns and begins to try explaining it to you in English, you wave him off. “You already know how to play?” he asks, confused.

“Of course, I love playing Uno!” you explain, “I’m surprised that you know it too since it’s probably 200 something years old.”

Denki beams at you and starts off the game. The others seem a bit confused at first, but slowly get the hang of it. Towards the end of the first game, Katsuki has picked up a quarter of the deck, and is silently fuming at Denki, who had given it to him. When Hanta places down a reverse card, effectively skipping your turn and turning the order of play over to Hitoshi. When Hitoshi places down a harmless red 4, Katsuki’s face takes on a truly menacing quality.

Denki, who was previously down to 2 cards in his hand, pales as Katsuki places down 3 plus 2 cards on top of one another.

You and Hanta are laughing all over each other because oh-my-god-he-just-did that. Denki provoked the beast, and as soon as Katsuki understood the game enough to get back at him he *did*. As Denki slowly pulls his 6 cards, you place down a blue 6 on top of Katsuki’s blue +2, bringing your hand down to 2 cards remaining. You’re doing your best to not draw attention to your hand, but you can see Hitoshi eyeing your hand.

As the game goes around again, Denki pulls a fast one on you and reverses the turns again. Dammit, you guess he noticed the low card count too. Hanta hadn’t been paying as much attention though, holding a small conversation with Hitoshi. He puts down a yellow 2 without really looking at it, and you slap down your blue 2 with a yell. “UNO!” you exclaim, watching as Denki’s call dies on his lips.

Hanta whips his head back around to see you triumphantly holding your last card in the air, shielding the other side of the card with your hand. Katsuki and Denki were glaring his way, and Hitoshi looked like he was holding back a chuckle.

During the last round, the boys abandoned courtesy and went back in forth in Japanese, apparently trying to figure out what color your last car was. Eventually, they settled for keeping the color green and hoping for the best, because no one had any skip or reverse cards, and Hanta had no +2’s or +4’s. You smiled throughout the chaos. They thought they had you in a bind, and Katsuki sneered as he slapped down a green 6.

When Hanta carefully set down his green 1, everyone looked your way. You slowly moved your card face-down towards the deck, before flipping it and showing the boys what it was.

It was a “choose a color card.”

All of the boys groaned, before slowly picking up the cards to reshuffle and go for another round.

-~-~-

After a few rounds of Uno (and apparently not even half of a game of Catan) Mina stopped everyone's gameplay in favor of karaoke.

She challenged everyone to pick songs from around your era: 1980’s to 2020, and set the mood with a duet of “wannabe” by the spice girls with Hagakure. They picked the Japanese translation for ease of use, but you couldn’t help but follow along quietly in English. Izuku perked up a little by your side, where he sat, slightly squashed, in between you and Shouto. You don’t notice though, too caught up in watching and following along in your own head.

Hagakure and Mina sing along to the words on Kyoka’s computer screen. They end on a pose, and everyone sitting around applauds. Shouto gets invited to join a few people cuddling on the couch when mina sees him looking at them. After confirming with Izuku (who is just really happy that Todoroki is branching out more!) he moves to join them, and is coerced into big spooning Hanta with his head in Tsuyu’s lap.

You smile at the sight while Fumikage takes the stage to sing Mr. Brightside. Heh, you’re really tempted to get up there and sing along, but settle for singing it under your breath instead. After all, you have the perfect song to sing next in mind. He’s really good though, and for a moment you wonder if he listens to other bands from the era. If he doesn’t listen to them already, you’re sure he’d love some MCR or similar punk bands. It would fit his current aesthetic pretty well, after all!

You get up and sign your name and song into the list, but find that you’re already behind a few people. It’ll be ok though, and even though you can’t read the characters of the names in front of you, you’re excited to hear their choices.

Aoyama ends up being next and sings la vie en rose in its classic, french, form. He’s pretty good actually, even though the song itself is older than the timeframe mina challenged everyone to stick to. It’s a smooth change of pace from the other songs, and you find yourself humming along despite not knowing the words well. The song was in Wall E, if you’re remembering correctly, but that was the Louis Armstrong version in English. You wonder how many classic Disney movies these kids have watched, or even how you would find the movies in this timeline. Do they have streaming services still? Cable? Maybe for movies that old, you’d have to go to a library or something?

Before long, Ochako gets up to the mic and belts out “love song” by Sara Bareilles. She’s enthusiastic, dancing around with the mic in her hand, and floating up in the air for a moment at the peak of the song. It’s cute and perky for such an empowering song, and she makes it work really well.

Before you know it, you’re being handed the mic and shoved up to the front of the group. Of course, writing your name and song down in English on the list would mean everyone knew who to look for without much thought.

Jirou double-checks your choice when you come up to the stand. “Yep” you confirm, shaking out your arms and legs while you wait for the song to come on. Looking over the swath of students, it’s comforting to see that most people are just doing their own thing still, and not all of the attention is on you. Izuku, however, is sitting with rapt attention. Somewhere behind him, Shouto also looks mildly interested.

perfect.

After a moment, the poppy beat begins, and so do you.

“You change your mind
Like a girl changes clothes”

A few people look up in mild interest when they hear that you’re singing in English. You made sure to ask for the Japanese lyrics to be behind you so that they could understand what you were saying. Bakugou specifically looks up when he hears “like a bitch” come out of your mouth. Possibly seeing the opportunity to learn more cursing?

You keep an eye on Shouto though, waiting for the perfect moment to point him out of the crowd.

-~-~-

Shouto feels confused. The song is good, and he didn’t necessarily need the lyrics to know what (y/n) was saying. But “hot and cold”? It couldn’t just be a coincidence. How and why would some lady from 200+ years ago write a song about him? He ponders this ‘Katy Perry’ person and her time traveling powers from within his cuddle pile.

-~-~-

Izuku feels confused. He understands the song pretty well, via the bond that connects him to you, but he understands it almost too much to be confused with just understanding the lyrics. He can understand the original intent behind the song, a woman frustrated with an indecisive man. But he can also understand why (y/n) picked this song. It matches up perfectly with Todoroki-kun’s quirk!

Sure, the song itself doesn’t quite describe him, but the joke itself isn’t lost on Izuku, and many of the other kids in the room have caught on to the fact that she’s pointing right at him.

On top of understanding though, Izuku is seeing flashes of what seems to be some sort of music video. He’s vividly remembering things that he’s never seen before: like a lady in a wedding dress chasing… her groom? A pastor dancing sassily in the background and a man in a hot dog costume being shoved to the ground. A bunch of brides with baseball bats, stalking around the groom with looks that are strikingly similar to the one that mina gets when she wants information.

If anything, he feels like he knows the lyrics himself. He feels like he could go up there and sing it right along with you.