Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Morning, hellspawn."

The voice of their homeroom teacher ringing out as he slides open the door causes every member of 1-A to rush back to their assigned seats at an olympic pace from where they had been scattered around the classroom. By the time the dishevelled man trudges over to his desk, everyone was sat down quietly waiting for him to start the day.

"Hm. Good time. Well done." Aizawa praises dryly, before he launches into the morning announcements. "Today, we'll be focused on regular sparring. It's been a while since you've done any one-on-one fights, so we're making sure that you're not getting rusty."

Most of the class started murmuring amongst themselves at that, excited for the opportunity to go up against their friends, except for Mina who was sat uncharacteristically quiet at her desk in the second row, lazily resting her chin on her hand. Perhaps pulling an all-nighter to work on her essay due in at the end of the week wasn't the best idea in hindsight, she could feel her eyelids slipping shut and was too tired by this point to actively stop them. Maybe a quick nap in homeroom before heroics class would give her enough energy to push through the rest of the day..

"Sensei!"

Mina jolts awake from Iida's booming yell as the boy stands upright in his seat.

"We currently have an odd number of people! Would I be correct in assuming we will be joined by another hero student from a different class to round it out to an even twenty?!"

"Sit down, Iida." The tired man doesn't even attempt to look shocked by the interruption, and the tall boy dutifully returns to his chair, "You're only half-right. We will have a new face joining us in just a moment, but this addition's a bit more permanent, let's say."

That made Mina perk up instantly, her fatigue already waning. A brand new member of 1-A? She was wondering when they'd get around to filling the gap left by Mineta when he was expelled over two months ago, as the result of an incident she’d really.. rather not think about. The short boy’s expulsion wasn’t met with much resistance from the rest of the class, least of all Shinsou, who was finally free from the lecherous shrimp’s attempts to ‘recruit’ him, convinced that the hypnotist’s introverted demeanour meant that he was a closet pervert, despite his constant insistence on that not being the case.

Still, the hero students were curious as to who exactly would take Mineta’s place in their class, most of them assuming that some lucky person from Gen Ed would get the opportunity. The faculty must've really been searching for a suitable candidate if they took this long to find one. Mina tries her best to push her sleepiness back down, not wanting to miss this long due introduction.

Their teacher turns to the open doorway and calls out to the student presumably waiting outside the classroom.

"Come in, problem child.”

Because Mina's desk is positioned next to the wall, the only thing she sees at first are the tips of two bright red boots as they pause in the doorway. After a moment, the boots seemingly pluck up their courage and continue inside the classroom, revealing the owner. The shoes are donned by a short green-haired boy, wearing UA's school uniform to a strictly neat standard and walking stiffly with his fists balled at his sides, clearly nervous.

He glances towards the other people in the room, and Mina gets a good look at his facial features. His eyes are large and wide, taking up a good chunk of the space on his temples, and his emerald pupils are a similar shade to his fluffy hair. His nose is rather small, giving a button shape, and she has the passing thought that it makes him look kinda like a bunny rabbit. The nose is framed by a smattering of dark diamond freckles across his anxiety-ridden face, the decals sticking out like a sore thumb against his paler skintone. Before she can get a better read on his appearance, he swivels his head back to face where he was walking, apparently unable to hold eye-contact with the rest of the class.

The boy shuffles his way in front of the middle of the chalkboard and hesitates for just a second before turning to face them properly, still stood straight with his arms tightly at his sides as his eyes dart all around the room, refusing to settle on any one person.

Aizawa gestures a hand towards the new arrival. "Hellspawn, meet your new seat #19. This is-"

"DEKU?!"

Mina, along with everybody else, jumps at Bakugo's sudden shout, and the loathing behind it immediately concerns her. His temper was volatile even on a good day, but she doesn't think she's ever heard his voice coated in such vitriol. The new boy flinches hard at the loud noise, and the expression on his face shifts from nervousness into downright terror.

"What the hell are you doing-" Bakugo's anger is immediately cut off by Aizawa activating his quirk.

"Sit. down." Their teacher's harsh warning causes the blond to return to his seat, though his glare levelled at the green-haired boy doesn't let up.

"Like I was saying.." Aizawa returns his voice back to its usual bored tone, "This is Midoriya Izuku, but you all already know him as-"

"Uh, S-Sensei? Do w-we really have to d-do the full introduction?" The boy, named Midoriya apparently, pipes up for the first time since entering the room, and Mina is struck by just how meek he sounds. Sure, his physical demeanour up until that point didn't exactly scream confidence, but it was surprising to see that reflected even in his voice.

"Yes we do, problem child. It's illogical to leave critical information like that out, and it would only cause further problems down the line." Their teacher plainly responds, and Midoriya deflates at his answer.

"Right, o-okay.."

Aizawa turns his attention back to the class. "Any other interruptions?" He challenges, and most respond with a quick shake of their head. The man clears his throat and continues.

"This is your new classmate, Midoriya Izuku. Though you already know him better by his hero name, Brainstorm."

Mina feels like a ghost just punched the air out of her gut. Brainstorm? That bundle of nerves is Brainstorm? The Brainstorm? This is the guy who's been anonymously sending UA's hero course life-changing insight on their quirks these past few months?

Looking around, she can see that she's not the only one surprised by the revelation. Pretty much everyone else is sat in their seats with looks of shock on their faces, especially Tooru, who's gaping at the newcomer like she just met a celebrity. The heightened reaction from the light-bender was to be expected though, since the only reason Mina could even see the expression on her friend's face was thanks to Brainstorm's analysis giving her the key to manually control her invisibility.

Mina still remembers the level of detail in the first set of notes he sent her way, and finds it baffling that such a young mind could have that amount of knowledge on quirks. Whenever she imagined what the incognito vigilante would look like, she always pictured a kindly doctor type, like a more relaxed and much younger Recovery Girl that focused on quirks instead of medicine. It was a bit hard to connect that imaginary description with the very real, very anxious teenage boy currently standing in front of them.

Honestly, it almost felt as if this was another of Aizawa's logical ruses, like Midoriya was just a student from one of the other departments that their teacher had enlisted to lecture 1-A about the importance of not believing information at face value, or something. For a few moments they all waited patiently for any sign of a rug pull on their teacher's part, before Bakugo pipes up again.

"Bullshit!" The expletive was overly aggressive, but not completely inaccurate to how the rest of the class was feeling. Then, the angry blond continues his sentence.

"I refuse to believe I've been taking advice from that Quirkless little runt!"

The entire room goes dead silent. You could hear a pin drop, even without the enhanced audio that Kyouka's jacks provided.

Did.. did he say Quirkless? That couldn't be right, right? Though, Bakugo clearly knows Midoriya from somewhere, considering the fact he instantly recognised the new boy, and she'll admit that while he definitely has a few too many anger issues, he's not really much of a liar.

Still, the idea is a little far-fetched for her to fully believe right off the bat. During a few select bored evenings at the dorm, 1-A had started a discussion on what their mystery analyst's quirk could be, with most answers rounding out at 'intelligence enhancement' alongside a few extra outlandish options for fun, like transforming into a fly ("How else would they get the scoop on how our quirks work? Obviously they must be there in the room when we train." Denki had tried to justify).

The notion that the real answer to that debate is 'none at all' was almost unfathomable to Mina. She's never met a Quirkless person before, she didn't even know people without quirks were still being born. That Brainstorm of all people was one of those unlucky few should be considered a miracle of circumstance. How on earth did the guy know so much about quirks if he didn't have one himself? Or, was that the main difference? The fact that he doesn't have a quirk lets him think about others' on a deeper level? She'd have to ask him when she gets the chance.

Aizawa's voice cuts through her speculation as he responds to Bakugo's outburst.

"Whether you believe it or not, that's the truth." His tone is ice cold as he glares at the blond. "If I hear one more peep out of you this morning, it'll be detention for the next week." He threatens, and Bakugo slouches back in his seat, grumbling under his breath with his arms crossed.

Aizawa turns his attention back to everyone else in the room. "Might I take this opportunity to remind you all that UA has a zero-tolerance policy on any kind of discrimination, including quirk discrimination. If we catch you giving anyone a hard time because of their quirk, or lack of one, I promise that you will not like the consequences. Am I clear?" He questions lowly, and every student in the room, including Midoriya, nods their head firmly, with a few letting out a determined "Yes, Sensei!".

Their teacher's voice finally settles back into its usual disinterest. "Right, go get changed and meet me out in the PE Grounds. Twenty minutes maximum, anyone later than that will be running laps until lunch."

That gets everyone up and out of their seats immediately, knowing all too well that threat is far from empty. As the hero students travel down the halls towards the changing rooms with Midoriya following closely behind, Mina thinks back to the first time Brainstorm infiltrated their school in the dead of night just to leave them his notes on their quirks, and the ensuing chaos that stunt had caused. She huffs a small laugh at the fact that level of panic was incited by such a shy boy as the girls split off from the pack into their separate changing room.

Once inside, the six of them all get dressed in relative silence, though Tooru paces back and forth across the length of the shower hall as she shuffles on her pale-blue spandex, murmuring incoherently under her breath. After a minute, her volume raises slightly as she addresses the others in the room.

"What do you guys think? Chocolates definitely aren't enough, but I don't know what he even likes." She rambles with a worried tone.

"What's this about, kero?" Tsuyu asks with a raised eyebrow.

"My gift for Midoriya..?" The light-bender stops her pacing and answers incredulously, like it should've been obvious.

"What, already moving on from Koji?" Mina teases with a grin, "How fickle of you, Tooru."

Tooru snaps her fingers and levels a point in Mina's direction with a dangerous glint in her eyes. "Don't even joke, you know I don't play about that rock boy."

The pink girl laughs as she raises her hands in defence. "Chill, girl! I was just kidding!"

Momo tries to redirect the conversation back on track. "If not for romantic purposes, then why would you get Midoriya-kun a present, Tooru?"

"Uh, hello?" She gestures to herself, "This whole thing? The fact that I wouldn't be visible if it weren't for him?" And the three girls mouth an "ohhh" in understanding.

"Just give him a thank you." Kyouka chimes in while strapping her boots on, "We only met him like 15 minutes ago and I can already tell he's the type who would get the wrong idea about a girl giving him chocolates. Just play it safe, and say thank you."

"Yeah, you're right.." Tooru concedes with a sigh, "I'll make it a hearty show of gratitude, at the very least." She adds cheerfully as an afterthought.

Mina shifts her attention to the punk girl. "You really think Midoriya would assume Tooru likes him just from a present?"

Kyouka shrugs in response. "Visibly anxious? Likely a social outcast because he's Quirkless? Probably next to no experience with girls? I'd be more surprised if he saw that kinda gift as platonic."

"Huh.. I guess when you put it like that.." Mina remembers the many times over the years she's witnessed other people in her middle school (she refused to even consider them classmates if they were going to act like that) bullying their peers that had somewhat lesser quirks, ones that were almost completely imperceptable or only useful in specific circumstances. She tried to step in where possible, but there was only so much one girl could do against half the student body, especially when the teachers refused to interfere themselves.

She didn't know what the students in Midoriya's middle school were like, but if they were anything like the ones in hers then she honestly worried for his mental state. After all, if those kinds of people had acted so cruelly to kids with weaker quirks, what would they have done to a guy with no quirk at all?

The pink girl considers the anecdotal evidence and a frown forms from the picture it paints. She decides to distract herself before her mind can travel too far down that dreadful rabbithole.

"What about you, 'Chako? What's your read on him?" She questions while slotting her eyemask over her face.

A few seconds pass without a response from the gravity girl, and Mina turns to find her robotically putting on her costume with a furrowed brow, clearly lost in thought.

"Ochako?" She tries again, and the other girl jolts out of her ruminating.

"Eh? Sorry, what was the question?" She asks sheepishly.

"Brainstorm, what's your take on him?" Mina repeats, a little exasperated at Ochako's wandering attention.

"Midoriya-kun? I dunno, he seems kinda nervous, I guess?" She puts a thoughtful hand to her chin, "Just, there's something about him.. I feel like I've seen him before, but I can't remember-"

She gasps suddenly and bolts upright, garnering the attention of every girl in the room.

"The entrance exam! That's where I've seen him! He's the guy who saved me from the zero pointer!"

A memory flashes through Mina's head of their first week at UA, where Ochako was fervently searching the entire school for 'that green-haired boy', and she remembers the gravity girl's retelling of what went down during her entrance exam. How she got trapped under a piece of rubble with her calf completely broken and the hulking robot about to crush her, when at the very last minute a boy came to her rescue, lifting the debris off her leg and carrying her on his back to safety. Apparently she had blacked out from the pain before she could get his name, and by the time she woke up in the infirmary a couple hours later, the boy was gone.

Huh. So Ochako's mystery saviour and UA's mystery analyst were one and the same. Small world.

"Oh my god!" The brown-haired girl squeals gleefully, "I can't believe it! He finally got in!" Her countenance drops slightly as something else crosses her mind, "Weird that he didn't get a place the first time around. I woulda thought a save like that would score him some major rescue points."

"Maybe he didn't destroy enough of the other robots to pass?" Tooru proposes as an option.

"Whatever the case is, I'm not letting it be the reason I'm spending heroics running in circles, kero." Tsuyu pipes up, "We've got like 5 minutes, let's get a move on."

The others realise they've been dawdling and start hurredly fixing up the rest of their costumes before making their way towards the PE grounds.

As they trail out onto the field, Mina scans the crowd for Midoriya and finds him standing a little way away from the other boys, looking just as nervous as he did earlier. Before she can even think about taking a step towards him, Ochako barrels past and stops just in front of the green-haired boy, making him jump half a mile from the sudden invasion of gravity girl in his personal space.

The both of them are a little too far away for Mina to catch the exact words of their dialogue (or monologue rather, since Midoriya was too stunned to respond), but she can guess from the embarrassed blush on his face that Ochako is probably lavishing praise onto him about his rescue in the entrance exam. After a minute of one-sided conversation, the brown-haired girl gives him a cheerful wave goodbye as she walks back over to the others, and he returns it limply, looking like he isn't quite sure what just happened.

Mina's gaze shifts over to Tooru, who's also watching the interaction, and she raises an eyebrow at the contemplative look on the other girl’s face.

"You gonna go thank him for that analysis, or..?"

The light-bender turns to her friend with a hint of nervousness in her eyes, before she responds.

"Uh, maybe in a bit.. I still need to work out what I'm gonna say."

Mina nods in understanding. Tooru always had a little bit more trouble speaking candidly than other people, so it made sense that she would want to get all of her thoughts in order before attempting a show of gratitude, especially for something as big as what Midoriya had done for her.

Since the other girl was still formulating her speech to the Quirkless boy, Mina decides that now's a good time to make her own entrance, so she puts on her brightest smile and strides over to him.

"Yo! Midoriya, right? Welcome to Class 1-A! I'm.." She then remembers who exactly she's talking to and realises that introductions are a little unneccesary, "..Ashido Mina, but uh, you already knew that, huh?" She puts a hand to the back of her neck out of embarrassment.

Midoriya looks flummoxed at her enthusiasm for a moment, and then he greets her back in a stuttery voice. "A-Ah, yes! I'm M-Midoriya Izuku! It's nice to finally m-meet you properly, A-Ashido-san!"

Mina smiles at his response before her attention drifts to his odd getup, notably the fact that it's the standard issue UA blue gym shirt and pants combo rather than any hero outfit.

"So uh, why're you rocking the gym uniform? Your costume still in the wash or something?" She teases lightly.

He lifts a scarred hand to his neck to scratch at it whilst he answers with a faint blush on his face. "U-Uh, no, not exactly. I don't really h-have a costume y-yet, my enrolment w-was a bit.. sudden."

"Ah, gotcha." She winks at him, and his blush deepens. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices both Denki and Hanta looking at them and whispering to each other. When they see her returning their stare, they swivel in opposite directions, trying to act like nothing had happened.

A worrying suspicion roots itself in her mind, and she turns back to Midoriya.

"Hey.." She starts softly, "Nobody was giving you any grief in the changing rooms, right?"

He looks surprised at her concern for a moment, before he brings his hands up to reassure her. "O-oh, no! Everyone was r-really nice, actually! I-I mean, Iida-san was a bit wound up about the i-idea of UA enrolling a former v-vigilante, but I get the feeling he's like that a-about a lot of things?" He finishes off with a questioning lilt, and Mina breathes a sigh of relief that none of her classmates were secret bigots.

Except...

"..even Bakugo?" She asks cautiously, not really believing the blond would come around that quickly, especially considering the explosive reaction he had to Midoriya's mere presence in his classroom.

The green-haired boy stiffens for a moment before he answers her. "Uh, no.. B-but that's normal! Kacchan usually acts like that anyway."

Well, that had some alarming implications. Choosing to table those concerns until she could properly investigate them at a later time, she instead focuses on the more humorous part of that sentence.

"Pfft, 'Kacchan'?" She snorts, "That's great, I'm totally using that one myself."

"Please don't." Midoriya begs, looking genuinely scared for her, "He r-really doesn't like it."

"What, you think Sparky frightens me? I could take his ass in a fight any day." She boasts loudly.

"I heard that, Raccoon Eyes!" His voice rings out from across the field and she rolls her eyes as she twists her upper torso to face the angry pomenarian.

"Good!" She shouts back, before turning to Midoriya again and pausing at the expression on his face. He's looking at her in gobsmacked awe, eyes wide and pupils sized like pinpricks.

"How did you do that..?" He breathes out reverently.

"Do.. what?" She questions with a raised eyebrow.

"Uh, n-nothing.. just ignore me.." He tenses slightly, having realised he let something slip that he wasn't supposed to. Mina was really starting to dislike the connections she was forming in her head between Bakugo's antagonistic outburst and her new classmate's shaky demeanour, and she resolved to get to the bottom of it.

Eventually. They had heroics class to get through first.

Clapping her hands together, she takes the opportunity to catch the boy up on how things work at UA.

"Alright, the way this usually goes for sparring is we pair up for the session, and then just go to town on each other 'till we're bruised!" She notices the tension in his shoulders relax slightly when she doesn't bring up his verbal slip, and mentally pats herself on the back for navigating that landmine.

"So! Whaddya say? Wanna be my partner for the morning?" She offers with a bright grin, though it falters slightly when he looks at her with a trace of fear in his eyes.

"U-um, I-I don't.. I w-would really l-like to, d-don't get me w-wrong, but I k-kind of already p-promised to partner up with K-Kirishima-san.."

"Damn straight he did!" As if summoned by Midoriya's mention of his name, Eijirou startles the both of them with his proud declaration before slinging his arm around the green-haired boy's shoulder, not noticing the way he tensed once more at the physical contact. "Sorry, Mina. I already called dibs on the new guy. Gotta get in a manly initiation spar, you get it right?"

Midoriya shuffles out of Eijirou's hold and starts stammering an apology. "I'm r-really sorry, Ashido-san! I d-do want to spar with y-you, I promise! It's just, Kirishima-san asked me f-first and-" The guy looks almost petrified at the idea of upsetting her, and both she and Eijirou gaze at him in concern.

"Woah, hey! Midoriya, it's alright!" She tries to reassure him, "I can just pair up with someone else, no harm done." He seems to calm down a bit after that, and Aizawa's timely appearance on the field brings their conversation to a close.

"Right, you all know the drill. Group up and get to it." The man announces in a bored voice, having noticed that Midoriya already had a partner and likely wouldn't require an explanation. The other students spread out across the grounds in their groups, and Mina joins back up with Tooru for hers.

Nobody says anything, but she can see several pairs of eyes trailing after Midoriya and Eijirou as the red-haired boy rambles excitedly about their upcoming spar, likely worried about how the Quirkless student will hold up against his opponent. Eijirou was never one to restrain himself in a fight, and some members of 1-A were probably concerned that Midoriya wouldn't be able to handle it. Mina wasn't all that bothered though. Aizawa might be strict, but he was far from cruel. If he didn't say anything about those two pairing up, then he must have faith in Midoriya's capabilities. So, she would have faith too.

Eventually, everyone starts their exercises and their interest in the duo wanes considerably, bringing their focus back to their own sparring partners. Mina's eyes linger on the green-haired boy a little longer though. She does believe the guy can defend himself, she's just a bit curious as to how exactly he'd go about it. Fighting against Eijirou, with his rock-like hardening on his skin, was an annoying task at best and Sisyphean at worst.

A short whistle across from her makes her refocus her attention to the source of the noise, that being Tooru who was looking at her with a smirk on her face as she stretches her joints.

"As fun as it is to watch you ogle the new guy, I do actually want to get some sparring in, Mina." She teases, and the pink girl rolls her eyes with a faint blush on her face, shifting her stance into her regular fighting pose.

While she might have the matchup advantage in this situation, since Tooru doesn't have an offensive quirk, she knows that the light-bender is no slouch in a fight. And now that she's mastered her hologram technique utilising her light manipulation capabilities, Mina would have to watch out for dangers that weren't even there.

'Thanks, Brainstorm.' She thinks ruefully, readying her fists as Tooru rushes towards her.

---

As expected, the sparring was exhausting, yet fun all the same. It was nice to have a lower stakes battle every once in a while, one where she could shoot the shit with her best friend as they fought. Not to say that they weren't taking it seriously, Mina was using her all to push back against the onslaught of punches and kicks that Tooru was sending her way. After a few minutes of back-and-forth blows and banter, the light-bender had attempted to trick her out by turning completely invisible, costume and all, but Mina knows exactly how to detect her friend by this point, using the dust kicked up by Tooru's movements as a guideline for her general location.

Her friend had pivoted tactics after that, instead using her light bending to create the illusion of multiple Toorus coming at her from all directions. It was only thanks to some extremely quick thinking on Mina’s part that she caught out the trick, spinning in a circle and spraying her diluted acid every which way to see what Tooru caught the projectile, the substance flying straight through the fakes. Once she determines the real Tooru, she hastily parries the incoming blow and grabs her by the arm to flip her over her shoulder, pinning the invisible girl to the ground on her front until she eventually yields.

Once victory is assuredly hers, the acid user lends a helping hand for her friend to get back up on her feet, and they both decide to rest a little bit before going back to sparring. While the two are having their five-minute water break, Mina feels her gaze drift again towards Midoriya and Eijirou's current battle just a few spots away. The two boys are locked in an intense close-combat duel, with the Hardening user trying his best to hit his opponent whilst the other dodges each blow gracefully and attempts to wrestle the red-haired boy to the ground, knowing that his own fists would do no damage to the hardened skin. Despite the obvious strain the Quirkless boy is putting on himself, his face is spread out into a wide feral grin, and it’s paradoxically the most relaxed he’s looked all morning.

The shift between Midoriya's earlier anxious demeanour and the confident, quick-on-his-feet combatant she's currently watching entrances her, and it occurs to Mina that perhaps what she's instead seeing right now is Brainstorm, the fearless analyst who always has a plan to dismantle his opponents and the physical skills to execute them perfectly.

She's never witnessed the vigilante in a fight herself, only hearing about them second-hand from her classmates in the exceedingly rare times they encountered the analyst on patrols, but at every single one of those occasions the level of combat proficiency on display had apparently been breathtaking.

Of course, she and everyone else originally thought that proficiency was the result of several years of battle experience being utilised by a rather short adult, clad in an oversized hoodie and ski goggles to conceal their identity. She now suspects that it was moreso a necessity for a Quirkless teenager to stand his ground against the mass of superpowered criminals he was going out into the streets to face.

It made sense; without a quirk to fall back on, the guy would have to step up his game in all other aspects of quirked battling to match the output required of a combat-oriented hero. And clearly whatever training he'd gone through has paid off, as he finally brings Eijirou down to his knees with a winning manoeuvre, holding the red-haired boy's arms around his back in a tight hold. If the Hardening user was disappointed in his loss, he doesn't let it show as he laughs jovially when Midoriya relinquishes his grip and brings him back up to a standing position with a sharp yank. Mina knows her horn buddy well enough that she can tell precisely how he was reacting to that move, likely with some enthusiastic comments about how 'manly' it was.

A tap on her shoulder from Tooru brings her attention back to the present, and she spares a final extended glance towards the two boys as she returns to her sparring with the light-bender.

The rest of the morning goes by in a flash, and before she even realises it, their heroics class ends and it's time for lunch. The 1-A students start winding down for the break period whilst chatting with their classmates, and Mina notices Tooru psyching herself up to go and talk to Midoriya.

Deciding to give her friend a small source of backup, she joins her side in the stroll up to the Quirkless boy and his sparring partner, who are currently engaged in their own conversation about Eijirou's quirk. When they notice the girls heading their way, their dialogue fades to a lull, and Mina greets them with a languid wave of her arm.

"Hey, boys! Have a good spar?" She places her hands on her hips as she cocks them to one side, a wide grin present on her face.

Eijirou matches her grin as he answers her in his usual lively tone. "Yeah, we did! Whoo, you'd never think it just looking at him, but this guy can pack a punch!" He points a finger towards Midoriya, who stiffens at the sudden attention.

Her grin shifts to a smirk, and she leans forward while bringing a hand up to her chin, as if she were inspecting a piece of art. "He does, huh? Maybe I oughta give him a whirl next time." She teases, and the green-haired boy splutters wordlessly as his cheeks turn cherry-red. He brings both of his hands up to cover his blushing face, and Mina chuckles lightly at the reaction.

"Um, Midoriya?"

Tooru's quiet voice piping up from her side makes her immediately shut down her laughter, and she steps aside with an easy smile on her face to give her friend the floor, now that she's seemingly gained the courage to address the green-haired boy.

Said boy loosens the grip he had on his face as he gazes at the light-bender in intrigue, the red on his cheeks fading out to its regular shade when he replies to her.

"Y-Yes, Hagakure-san?"

Tooru takes a long breath and moves towards the boy, stopping just a few paces away from him, before she drops into a deep bow as she loudly states her gratitude with only a minor amount of trepidation.

"T-Thank you!"

After the phrase sounds out around the field, Mina can see the tension leave her friend's shoulders, relieved that she managed to get out her words properly.

Midoriya has a slightly different reaction. The Quirkless boy freezes in confusion, clearly bewildered by the sudden display of thanks. "H-Huh??" He responds simply, not understanding the reason behind the girl's gratitude, and he says as much, "W-What for?"

Tooru raises from her bow and moves the hair out of her eyes before elaborating. "Thank you, for that analysis. I just- Without it, I never would've figured out how to become visible. So, thank you." She gives him another small bow with a bright grin on her face, but Midoriya still looks confused.

"I.. I d-don't think.. That's- I m-mean, you would've f-figured it out yourself, I'm s-sure of it." He fumbles for a response while his fingers twitch by his sides.

"Maybe eventually, I guess.." Tooru concedes, "But I didn't. You did."

Midoriya looks like he's about to counter that statement too, but she continues before he can get a word out. "My dad's got a really similar quirk to mine, and thanks to your advice, me and mom were able to see him for the first time in our lives. I never thought I'd even get a glimpse of what he looks like, and now he can toggle it on a dime, just like that." Her smile turns wistful as she thinks about her parents, and Mina remembers back when the light-bender had discovered that the control her quirk allowed extended to her father too, proudly showing off the first Hagakure family photo with all members visible to anyone who would listen. "So, thank you." She repeats one last time.

The anecdote seems to get through to Midoriya, as he finally relents and accepts his deserved credit. "O-Oh.. Well, I'm g-glad I could help." His face spreads out into a soft smile, and Tooru returns it as the two stare at each other for a moment.

"Yo, you guys coming?!"

A new voice entering the conversation brings the attention of the four hero students towards its direction. Hanta was waving at them from across the field, beckoning them back to the building the other 1-A students were currently trudging their way towards for lunch.

Eijirou is the first to move, jumping into a quick jog before saying goodbye to the other three and catching up to Bakugo. Mina has to stifle a laugh at the Hardening user's eagerness to be near his 'best bro'. That boy was so whipped, and he didn't even know it.

She's just about to suggest to Tooru and Midoriya that they all get a move on too, before the latter is suddenly accosted by Ochako, who starts dragging him along with Iida in tow, discussing their lunch plans while the Quirkless boy desperately attempts to keep up with the conversation, throwing Mina an apologetic look over his shoulder.

The remaining two girls share a quick glance at each other, before chuckling in amusement and following after the pack.

"Just us again, huh?" Tooru jokes sarcastically, and Mina responds with just as much mirth in her tone.

"Seems so!"

The rest of the day after that is relatively uneventful, save for when Mina discovers in their chemistry period that Midoriya's intelligence extends to subjects outside of quirks, though the revelation honestly shouldn't have shocked her that much, considering that this is the same guy who once taught her the specific chemical compound needed to utilise her acid as an internal source of adrenaline. That was something she herself had to thank him for, now that she thought about it. Having access to a technique to temporarily boost her physical strength at a moment's notice was, unsurprisingly, very beneficial for hero work, and she'd gotten plenty of use out of it in a multitude of situations.

The sun is about 3/4 of the way around its arc in the sky by the time the final bell rings, leaving the UA students with a nice sunny afternoon for the walk back to their respective dorms.

It would’ve been nicer for Mina if she didn’t have to stay behind to ask for Midnight’s feedback on the current draft of her essay, but that’s high school. She ends up leaving her teacher’s office half an hour later than everybody else, with a marked draft and a head full of ideas.

When she reaches the front entrance of the school, ready to head back to the dorm, she notices that she’s not the only student left in the building, as Midoriya is standing near the open doors with his eyebrows furrowed as he stares down at the campus map held in both of his hands. It seems like he’s a little lost, so she walks over to him and tries to get his attention.

“Midoriya?”

The boy jolts at the sound of his name, nearly crumpling his map in the process, and he looks up at her in surprise.

“A-Ashido-san? Y-You’re still here?” He questions, caught off-guard by the appearance of his classmate.

“Yeah, had to go talk to Kayama-sensei about something.” She gestures vaguely behind her, “What about you?” She asks, reasoning that there’s no way he’s been trying to figure out the route to the dorms for 30 whole minutes.

He answers her in his usual skittish tone. “O-Oh, uh.. I had to go sort out my c-costume request form with Power Load- er, Majima-sensei.” Then, almost under his breath, “It feels really weird calling pro heroes by their real names..”

She huffs a laugh. “I know, right? I kept having to correct myself in our first week here.”

He tries to laugh along with her, but it seems that his nerves are still affecting him, because the sound catches in his throat, resulting in a hiccupy chuckle that comes out way too loud. The botched attempt at a reciprocated social interaction causes the boy’s ears to start burning, and she decides to give him an out to save him from any further embarrassment.

“You’re heading back to the dorms now, right? If you want, we could go together.”

He latches onto the offer like it’s a life preserver. “Y-Yes! I-If you don’t m-mind, that is.”

“Wouldn’t have offered if I did, man.” She shoots him an easy grin, and starts making her way out the front doors with the Quirkless student joining her as he quickly shoves the map back into his bag.

As they walk side-by-side down the path that leads towards the Heights Alliance buildings, Mina feels the urge to converse bubble up inside her. She would try to squash it back down for Midoriya’s sake, since he’s still visibly embarrassed from his fumble just a minute ago, but she’s a chatterbox even at the worst of times, and she’s got some burning questions to ask her new classmate now that they're alone.

She’s not completely socially inadequate though, so she leads in with an icebreaker first.

“How are you liking UA so far?”

Midoriya startles at the sudden question, presumably not having expected her to speak, before he responds in that stuttery voice she’s becoming quite familiar with by this point.

“Uh, i-it’s.. I can’t even d-describe it, it’s l-like everything I ever d-dreamed of.” His lips quirk up into a dorky smile by the end of that sentence, and she feels her own smile widen at the sight.

“I can imagine!” Her vocal chords release a cheerful laugh, “Honestly, you had a much easier first day than us.” She leans in conspiratorially, as if she was about to reveal a big secret, “Aizawa had us doing a quirk apprehension test like, the morning we got here. And he said the person who got last would be expelled! I mean to be fair, he was lying when he said that, but that’s not the kinda thing you wanna be hearing on your first day in the most prestigious hero school in the country.”

“O-Oh..” Midoriya looks a little perturbed by their teacher’s apparent strictness, “That was.. mean of him.”

Mina waves off his concern with a flick of her arm. “Nahhh, he’s a big ol’ softie really. He just likes to put on a front ‘cause we’ll perform better under pressure, or something.” She rolls her eyes as she remembers the many threats her homeroom teacher had slung their way over the half-year of school they’d known him for.

The green-haired boy brings a hand to his chin as he starts theorising on the effectiveness of such a teaching strategy, eyes drifting off into space as he unconsciously murmurs to himself. His voice is a little too low for her to understand most of it, but she manages to catch “..I guess sometimes I’m able to focus on patrol better if I’m on a time limit..” and decides to use that point to jump in.

“Y’know, I’ve been meaning to ask..” She begins, forcing him back to the present and his focus back on her, “How does a first year in high school end up as a vigilante?”

The Quirkless boy doesn't look very surprised by the line of questioning. He must've figured that someone would ask eventually, and now seemed to be contemplating whether he wanted to answer or just brush it off. Fair play to him, honestly. Depending on what the truth is, it might not exactly be 'first proper conversation' material.

When her new classmate still doesn't respond after a few seconds, she starts to worry that she might've just accidentally stumbled on a tragic backstory of some kind. She's typically rather good at talking to other people, but sometimes she gets a minor case of foot-in-mouth syndrome and ends up unintentionally upsetting them. She quietly hopes that's not the case in this scenario.

Mina gets a little lost wondering if she'd be willing to give a response to that kind of question if she were in his position that she almost misses when he turns to her and speaks up again.

“U-Um, I guess the v-vigilante stuff started after I.. I failed the entrance exam.”

The pink girl hisses in sympathy. “Oof. Sorry to hear that man, that must’ve been rough.”

Midoriya hunches over himself slightly as his gaze drifts towards the ground. “Yeah.. it- it was..” He says that weirdly nervously, more nervous than he’d been all day, and she furrows her brow in confusion.

But then the moment passes, and he straightens up just a bit before continuing like nothing happened.

“It wasn’t r-really a conscious decision at first. I was still t-trying to figure out what I wanted to do after failing to get into UA, and then one day I h-happened to stop a mugger from running off with s-some guy's bag."

She squints her eyes in a questioning manner. "One mugging was enough to make you go all caped crusader?"

He brings a hand up to his neck to scratch at it, still looking down at the path as he answers her. "It was l-less so the actual mugging, and m-more what the guy said to me after. I think he was in a b-bit of a rush, so he just thanked me before shouting 'You're a lifesaver, man!' and r-running off." His eyes shuffle to the left slightly before he continues, "I kept thinking over that s-sentence, and I realised that.. there's nothing really stopping me f-from just going out and helping, y'know? As long as nobody knew it was m-me." He shrugs weakly with his shoulders as he finishes his explanation, "So, that's what I d-did."

Mina just blinks a couple of times in response. That was.. rather mundane, in all actuality. Not that there was anything wrong with that, she's glad that he didn't go through some horrible tragedy to get where he is today. She'd just been expecting something a little more emotionally investing, is all. Still, it speaks to his drive that he got one taste of being a hero and immediately decided to break the law in the pursuit of justice.

"You really wanted to be a hero, huh?" The line was intended to be a tease, but Midoriya's back straightens fully and he looks dead ahead with a fiery glint in his eyes.

"It's all I've ever wanted." He states simply, and with the resolution in his tone it takes her a second to realise that it's the first thing he's said all day that didn't contain a single stutter.

"Well then.." She starts after a moment of just staring at him in slight awe, "It's a good thing you're here now, isn't it?" She posits rhetorically, jerking a thumb back to the school building behind them as they travel further away from it.

"Yeah, it is.." He breathes out with an amazed smile as he follows the direction of her thumb and gazes upon the dream institute he now calls his school. His eyes are shimmering with relief, likely at the fact that he was now attending a place he once only imagined he'd get to be a part of. However, there's also a trace of regret in those emerald pupils for some reason. She doesn't press for further details on that front though, feeling like she'd gotten a good enough idea of how Brainstorm came to be.

Now, it was time for the real juicy details.

"What's it like being a vigilante?" She asks, incapable of hiding the excitement in her tone.

Midoriya turns back to her with a surprised expression in his eyes for a moment, before they start sparkling and his face spreads into a wide grin.

He opens his mouth to answer her, and doesn't close it for another 15 minutes.

---

In response to her query, the Quirkless boy details some of his major escapades under his tenure as Brainstorm, and it becomes abundantly clear to Mina that the guy doesn’t have a single selfish bone in his body. It’s obvious in the way he talks about himself; the way he never gives himself full credit for any lives saved, the way he glosses over any injuries he sustained during a mission just because it means that someone else didn’t get hurt, the way his eyes shine with admiration whenever he mentions other heroes on the scene, even the ones that were actively trying to capture his vigilante persona.

He doesn’t want the glory of being a hero, or the self-satisfaction of being the only one people look up to. He doesn’t want his hero name up in lights, with masses of adoring fans screaming it from the rooftops, though Mina’s certain that is what he’d be getting if he went the limelight route. He doesn’t even want the rush of breaking the law to commit acts of heroism.

He just wants to help people, in any way possible. Looking at it from that angle, it’s no wonder that he’s completely awestruck at the idea of attending UA and learning how to become a better hero from some of the best in the country.

Midoriya has nothing but respect for the pro heroes that make up this world’s justice system, even if he sometimes goes on a brief tangent about how a hero he was assisting could have prevented X by doing Y, or how they could’ve gone about doing Z with more care. Any complaints he has are directed solely at the heroes’ actions, not the heroes themselves, and that’s only when he is actually complaining. Most of the time, he’s too busy gushing about how Nightlight can move completely undetected in the shadows, or about how Mr. Brave could take down a whole room of criminals without receiving a single scratch, or about how Eraserhead fights basically Quirkless due to the nature of his power (The boy was particularly fixated on this aspect of their teacher’s combat style, for obvious reasons).

And that’s nothing to say of the compliments he lobs towards 1-A’s own hero students, praising their ingenuity, their tenacity, their bravery. Mina doesn’t think she’s ever felt so worthy of her position in the hero course than she does when Midoriya insists it, and although it may not be the most heroic thing to do, she hoards the compliments for herself, like a private pep talk to recall whenever she needs to feel unstoppable. His words just had this, genuine weight to them that made it feel like he meant every single syllable, with 100% of his being.

As he continues talking, his stutter lessens, his back straightens up, and his hands start shaking less, like his confidence was building itself up in real time as he got more comfortable in her presence. She doesn’t point it out to him, for fear that becoming conscious of it would cause him to crumple back in on himself again, so she just observes quietly with a small smile as she listens to him tell his stories.

“Wow..” She breathes out after he finishes regaling the time he had involved himself in a Trigger ring bust alongside Kamui Woods, much to the wood hero’s displeasure at having to work with an unregulated ally.

His content smile flips on a dime as he suddenly becomes aware of how long he’s been chatting. “S-Sorry, I’ve been talking about myself too much, haven’t I?”

“No, no! By all means, keep going!” Mina gives him an encouraging smile in the hopes that his will turn back around to match it, “I mean, how often can one say they’re learning about the great and famous Brainstorm, right from the source?” She adds jokingly.

“F-F-Famous?” Midoriya balks at the idea, “I wouldn’t s-say that.”

She raises an incredulous eyebrow at him. He wasn’t serious, was he? “Dude, the entire UA student body knows your codename. I don’t think there’s a single person here who hasn’t heard of you, and there’s probably more, since I’m guessing you also sent quirk analysis to the other hero schools as well, right?” He doesn’t respond to that outside of a light pink dusting his cheeks, and she chuckles in satisfaction. “Knew it.”

The pink on his face darkens, and he coughs lightly while attempting to look away from her, though his pupils keep darting towards her direction. She tries to resist the frown that threatens to overtake her at his relapse back into awkwardness. Now that she’s had a taste of what he’s like without his mind internally filtering his every thought, she decides that she likes him much better that way, rambling about his interests like an excited kid instead of shutting them away out of fear. Luckily, he’s just unintentionally given her the perfect avenue to get that Midoriya back.

“That’s another thing I wanted to ask about, actually.” She starts again, and he glances over to her in intrigue, “The quirk analysis stuff. How in the hell did you get so good at that?! I mean, the professional analyst UA brought in at the start of the year wasn’t even as thorough as you were, and they only did the first year classes!” She praises, causing the pink still covering his face to tan down to a deep red.

“I- Uh- That’s- I’ve been d-doing analysis for as l-long as I can remember, s-so I guess just lots of p-practice?” He shrugs helplessly.

“Well, whatever it was, it’s definitely paid off!” She flashes him a blinding grin, which raises the temperature of his cheeks even further, “Y’know, when we got those folders, we straight up thought Aizawa wrote them at first.”

Midoriya doesn’t seem to share in her amusement at this news. "W-What? Surely they're n-not that impressive?"

The frown returns to her face once more at his self-deprecation. First with Tooru, and now this? Why was he so insistent on the idea that nothing he did was any good?

"I assure you sir, they are that impressive. Those notes had some of the most detailed breakdowns of quirks I've ever seen in my life! And you did it for every single hero student in the school, repeatedly! I mean, just phwoom- wow!" She charades her mind being blown with her hands and an accompanying sound effect, "You wouldn't know this, but Yaomomo told us that her parents got her an appointment with a personal analyst a couple years back; top of the line, 'best that money can buy' type of shit, and even they didn't come up with points as in-depth as yours!" She places a disbelieving hand to her forehead, "I mean, without your help we'd probably all still be at square one!"

"N-No!" Midoriya suddenly pipes up, cutting off her stream of praise, "That's- I- My analysis might have h-helped you with the foundations," She resists the urge to correct his use of 'might' to 'did', "b-but the things you all do; the techniques, the super moves, that's all you! I can ruminate all day on the theoretical applications of these quirks, but you guys are the ones putting it to practical use! L-Like your Acid Adrenaline technique!" He snaps his fingers in recognition.

"My Bio-Boost?" She asks with a raised brow.

"Yes, exactly! I told you that it was possible, but you're the one who figured out the fine balance needed so that you don't rupture your limbs whenever you use it! And you gave it a way cooler name than I did!" His face is spread out into a wide grin as he praises her back, and her own mouth matches it with fervour.

"Alright, alright.. I am pretty awesome, aren't I?" She jokes with a small laugh, one that Midoriya copies with a hand over his mouth. "Thanks for that info, by the way. You have no idea how useful that shit has been."

Midoriya's grin shifts to a smaller smile, but he still looks pretty pleased as he replies to her. "I have some idea, at least. I've been out on the frontlines enough to know that strength enhancement is almost always a net bonus when utilised properly."

Oh, yeah.. He has seen action, hasn't he? And quite a lot of it, too. She raises a finger as a thought crosses her mind.

"How did you have time for that? I mean, you had to write all that analysis, act as Brainstorm, and presumably still go to school?"

"O-Online school." He gently corrects, "It's a bit more lenient, timetable-wise."

"Right.. that's still a lotta shit to get done, though." Mina will be the first to admit she's not exactly the most proficient person in the world, but she still gets her assignments in on time, and she can't fathom having enough spare hours left to both fight crime and write quirk analysis for every hero student in the local area.

"I.. honestly couldn't tell you how. I just split off my day into chunks, and somehow it all got done." He shrugs,  "T-That was my basic routine for most of the year. Go to online school, write analysis, go out and patrol." He details while rolling a finger around in an 'on-and-on' motion. "Uh, except for when something m-major was happening. I had to make extra t-time for those." He rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. The mention of a schedule brings another thought to her mind, one that she's surprised didn't come up earlier.

“So how’d you end up enrolling at UA?” She asks, not really seeing how that timeline leads to where he is now.

“I got caught.” He admits plainly with his face tinted red, evidently embarrassed by this section of the story. “I got really i-injured on a rescue operation, p-passed out, and the next thing I knew I was w-waking up in the UA infirmary with a bunch of heroes a-around my bed.”

She can’t help the snort that escapes her at the image her mind provides of a bed-ridden Midoriya arising from his gentle slumber only to find a group of adult heroes surrounding him. “Pffft- Sorry, it’s just-“

“I think I almost screamed.” He adds, and that detail causes her to break, doubling over with laughter as she imagines the boy’s eyes popping out of his head like an old cartoon. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem offended by her amusement, even huffing a little laugh of his own with a shy smile on his face before he continues.

“I was in and out of c-consciousness for about a month while I healed, and when I finally got discharged, Nedzu gave me an ultimatum.”

Mina's laughter halts instantly at that. Their principal was by all accounts a proper hero, and a generally decent guy, but he could also be a sadistic little bastard when he wanted to, so any time his name and ‘ultimatum’ were present in the same sentence was usually cause for alarm.

“..that being..?” She asks hesitantly, almost dreading the answer.

“It was either I face a court of law and be t-tried for vigilantism, or I join UA as a hero student.”

Huh. “That, uh.. doesn’t really seem like a hard choice.” She states blankly after a couple seconds of silence.

“O-Oh, no, it really wasn’t. I decided on my answer b-before he was even done talking.” Midoriya replies with another small laugh, one that she mirrors with her own. He hasn’t seemed to catch on yet as to how the recon hero operates though, so she cuts her laugh short with a hand to her mouth to let him know how lucky he is.

“I think he was trying to scare you. He does that a lot with us.” She explains, and his eyes widen in shock.

“He w-w-was?! I thought he was just breaking the news to me gently! He was so nice about it though..” He trails off, looking perplexed at their principal’s odd personality.

“Yeah, that’s how he gets ya. Acts all chipper before tearing you to shreds.” She elaborates with a shrug, and Midoriya shivers at the thought.

“I’m kind of glad that I didn’t know that until now, honestly. It was bad enough just having to worry about how my m-mom would react.”

Her brow raises in interest. That sounded like trouble. “Is she one of those ultra-protective types?”

“N-No, not typically. But as you can imagine, it’s slightly different when she gets a call in the middle of the night informing her that her son’s in urgent care, and also that he’s been moonlighting as an illegal vigilante for months.”

Her face contorts into a grimace, and she tries to imagine how her own mother would react to getting a call like that. She would be lucky to get out of the ensuing conversation with her life, knowing Ashido Taiga.

“Yeah..” Midoriya continues limply, having noticed her pained expression, “She was, uh.. not pleased.”

"Yeesh.. You get punished for it?" She asks casually while placing her hands on her hips.

"She almost m-made me turn down the offer to join UA, she was that mad." The boy looks absolutely terrified at the possibility of that alternate outcome, "Luckily, Nedzu had a talk with her and I managed to get off pretty easy, all things considered."

"Hm?" She raises an eyebrow, "So what was your punishment?"

"I just have to go to my mom's apartment and do all the chores every Saturday until Christmas!" His gleeful expression juxtaposed with the completely menial subject of that sentence causes Mina to spit out a startled laugh.

"Pffft, ha! You did get off pretty easy, actually!" She replies through her laughter, and Midoriya looks at her in slight surprise for a moment before he joins her.

The two of them keep laughing as they walk down the path, though the boy's laughter is somewhat more reserved than hers, like he was actively holding himself back. She wishes he'd feel relaxed enough to really let loose with it, but she knows that sort of thing can't be rushed. If Midoriya was still acting nervous around her, then she could wait. And she would be waiting, patiently, because something in her gut tells her that a Midoriya completely unrestrained by his own insecurities would be something to behold. It didn't matter if it took a week, a month, even the rest of the year. She'd still wait for it.

Their laughter starts to fade out, and it’s only after a minute of comfortable silence as they continue walking that she remembers the other topic she wanted to discuss with him.

"Sooooo.." She starts with an extended vowel, "If you don't mind me asking, what's the deal with you and Bakugo? You guys met before?"

Midoriya looks a little confused at the change in subject, but after a moment he gathers his thoughts and responds to her query. “Uh.. s-sort of. Our moms are f-friends, so we used to play t-together when we were really young.. We s-stopped after a while, though.”

That piques her curiosity. “What changed?”

Midoriya swallows lightly before continuing. “He got his quirk, and I didn’t.”

So that’s what happened. A couple of childhood playmates falling out because one of them found the other ‘weird’, or whatever. Still, there were a few pieces of the puzzle missing in this story; Bakugo would have been only around 4 years old when this occurred, and children don’t typically come with biases and prejudices, they learn it from somewhere.

“Were his parents, like.. anti-quirkless or something?” She barely manages to stifle a wince at her clumsy wording, but Midoriya doesn’t notice it as he answers her.

“O-Oh, no! They’re both r-really nice people! Sometimes I see them out in public and h-have a good chat with them.” He slows his walking pace to a crawl before coming to a complete stop, looking down at the ground and continuing his thought, “It was everyone else that did it.”

She comes to a standstill just in front of him and tries to prompt an elaboration. “Everyone else?”

Midoriya nods sullenly. “Kacchan’s got a really powerful quirk. It was the most powerful in every one of our schools, all the way up to middle school. Everybody kept praising him for it.. and I-I think it got to his head. He wouldn’t accept being anything less than the best, and anyone who got in his way of being the best was just another stepping stone for him to crush.”

Mina’s breath catches in her chest as the implication washes over her.

The green-haired boy was getting really into it now, his words picking up steam. “It was innocent enough, at first. The other kids in school wanted to see him use his quirk on rocks and walls and stuff, just any old objects really. It was when they began pushing him to use it on other kids that the problem started.”

She swallows down the buildup in her throat as she gives him a small set of slow nods to show she’s still listening.

“They’d goad him into picking on kids with weaker quirks, until eventually Kacchan started seeking them out himself. The teachers didn’t want to punish him, because if he became a hero they’d be known as the ones who tried to ‘stifle’ him, so they just.. let it happen.” He reaches up to scratch his neck once more, and the sleeve of his blazer rolls down just far enough to reveal, amidst all the scarring, faded burns present on the underside of his arm. Very familiar burns.

Mina's eyes widen in horror as the pieces form together in her mind, joined by the eventual realisation of the other way the boy’s first name could be read, and its definition. She'd figured initially that whatever dynamic the two teens had was less than amicable in nature, but this.. this was deplorable. “Midoriya..” She breathes out while trying to keep her voice even, “That.. name, the one Bakugo called you this morning.. It doesn’t mean what I think it does, right?”

The boy clams up at that, refusing to answer or even look at her as he shuffles around in place, practically confirming her suspicion in the process.

After a few tense seconds of silence, her fists ball at her sides, and she starts marching past him and back towards the school, the only thought running through her head relaying the utter disbelief that she’d been classmates with such an abhorrent person these past few months.

“We need to tell Principal Nedzu. There’s no way that bully is fit to be a hero-“

Her sentence is cut off by a sharp tug on her wrist. She swivels around to find Midoriya grasping it with his own hand, his face panicked and his emerald eyes shrunken down to dots.

“Please don’t, Ashido-san! I know it seems like the right course of action, but it’ll only make things worse!” It’s then that he notices the hold he has on her wrist and drops it immediately, like it was burning him. “S-S-Sorry!”

She’s completely befuddled by the insistent defence of his tormentor. “Midoriya, if he’s hurting you, then he shouldn't be at this school! Or any hero school, for that matter!”

“Was!” He cries in response, “He was hurting me! In the past. He’s stopped now. It’s just, he- I-” The boy flounders on what to say for a moment before taking a deep sigh and continuing quietly, “..I realise that from your perspective, he looks like an irredeemable monster right now. I completely get that. But I know the real Kacchan, the one he was before people started filling his head with this ‘destined to be a hero’ bullshit. And I know that Kacchan is still in there somewhere, buried underneath all this grit. He just needs some help digging it back out.” He brings a contemplative finger up to his chin as something else occurs to him, “I think you guys have already been doing that, actually.”

“What do you mean?” She asks, stunned by the sudden determination in Midoriya’s voice.

“For the first time in his life, he’s not the biggest fish in a small pond.” He explains, a hopeful smile resting on his face, “All of you are able to at least match him in a fight, and now he’s forced to face the fact that he doesn’t get to be the best just because he’s Bakugo Katsuki. Now if he wants that title, he has to earn it.” The smile shifts into a wider grin, “I mean, it’s already done wonders for his personality. I was so surprised earlier in class when I saw how much better he’d gotten since starting at UA.”

Mina’s face scrunches slightly as she remembers the blond’s angry outburst from that morning. That was better?

“If he gets kicked out now, all of that progress will reset and he’ll go back to being a bully.”

As much as she doesn’t like it, Mina is forced to admit that what Midoriya’s saying does make some kind of sense, and looking back on the Explosion user’s interactions with their class since the start of the the school year.. While he was still loud and violent most of the time, he was only ever actively aggressive to them during the first week, after which he had mellowed out somewhat. Eijirou had even managed to get him to stop calling the more timid members of 1-A by the demeaning nicknames he'd coined for them, a feat that was much more impressive now that she knew the extent of just how rotten he'd been before attending UA.

“Alright..” She concedes with a sigh, “I won’t report him. But!” She quickly tacks on when she notices Midoriya’s face perk up, “If he starts bullying you again, then I’m going straight to the principal’s office. Is that clear?”

He nods with a satisfied smile. “That’s fine by me! Thank you, Ashido-san!”

After he says that, he stops for a moment and mutters a thought almost unconsciously under his breath. “Huh.. It’s nice, to have someone defend me for once..”

“Your friends didn’t stick up for you in school?” The question escapes her before she can think twice, and the way he stiffens in response makes her want to eat her own foot, mentally facepalming at her brief lapse in logic.

Because obviously, if everyone in their middle school was fawning over Bakugo, then by proxy Midoriya must’ve been pretty low on the social ladder. It wasn’t even out of the question that the guy would’ve only had like a couple of friends or so throughout his younger years. Still, she needs confirmation before she can move forward, so she relaxes her features and softens her voice before trying again.

"Sorry if I'm overstepping by saying this, but I'm guessing you've not really had many friends before?" She asks carefully, checking his face for any negative reaction.

He just stands there in silence for a moment, staring down at the gravel, before he answers her with a whisper.

"I don't think.. I've really had a friend before.."

The quiet admission breaks her heart, and strengthens her resolve all the same. That's it, she's gonna friend this boy so hard he won't even know what hit him!

"Well, you can count me as one!" She jerks a thumb towards herself with a wink, and Midoriya whips his head up at her in astonishment.

"You.. You really want to be my f-friend?" He asks with no small amount of trepidation in his voice, as if she was about to take everything she said back, laugh in his face and shove him to the dirt. She can tell that the hesitancy is a learned reaction from his middle school days, so she brightens her grin and tries to show him that things will be different, better, at UA.

“Of course, dude! I love meeting new friends, and you seem like a cool guy to hang out with.”

He still looks a bit reluctant even after her reassurance. “You’re not just d-doing this because you feel s-sorry for me, right?”

Mina feels her heart crack a little more at the fact that he doesn’t seem to believe anyone would genuinely want to be around him, but she stands her ground and reiterates her point.

“Midoriya, I promise you that I’m not doing this out of pity. I just, like making friends, and I think you’d make for a pretty good one.” She shrugs with a sheepish grin, not entirely sure how to get her feelings across to him.

He blinks a couple of times in surprise before his face spreads into a cute little lopsided smile.

“O-okay.. I-if you’ll have m-me, then I’d l-like to be your friend as well, A-Ashido-san.”

Her own smile widens at his formal reply, and she pumps both fists in the air as a victory pose while cheering loudly.

“Wooooooooo! Alright! New hero buddy! Oh man, I can’t wait till we get another chance to spar, Midori! It’s gonna be awesome!”

He’s clearly amused by her enthusiasm, letting loose a small adorable laugh into his hand, before what she called him registers in his mind.

“Midori?” He questions, while tilting his head in confusion.

She pauses her cheer to answer him. “Yeah! I give nicknames to like, all my friends. And ‘Midori’ fits you pretty well, I think.” Then she notices his shocked expression and belatedly realises that just because she’s made the mental jump into nickname territory, that doesn’t mean that he’s followed her, “Unless that’s too much?” She hastily adds, “I can go back to just ‘Midoriya’ if you want, I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable..”

“N-No!” He brings up his splayed palms in a panicked manoeuvre. “I d-don’t mind! I was just a little surprised!” He calms down a bit and starts wringing his hands together in front of him as he hunches over slightly. “I.. I actually r-really like that nickname..” He admits softly, with his face stained firetruck red.

“Oh, good!” She replies, relieved that she hadn’t pushed her new friend too far right out the gate, before an idea crosses her mind. "Hey.. If you'd like, I could try and help you with making more friends." She places a self-righteous hand on her chest, "Not to brag or anything, but I've got a lot of experience in bringing people together." Granted, that experience was mostly relating to romantic couples, but he didn't need to know that.

"Really..?" He's looking at her in reverent awe, and she feels some of the cracks in her heart fix themselves at the expression.

"Yeah man, totally! Back in middle school, I was basically my classes' own platonic Cupid! You'll see, after I work my magic."

"Er, no.." He amends gently, "I-I meant, you'd really help me with making friends?"

"Oh, for sure! Don't you worry 'bout a thing Midori, 'cause Ashido Mina's got your back!" She strikes a confident pose with both thumbs pointed towards her head before continuing, "Just don't forget me when you're sailing in the top 50 once you're out in the field, you'll be rolling in sidekicks in no time." The praise might be a little exaggerated, but if there's anyone who deserves extra compliments after going basically his entire life without, then it's the green-haired boy standing across from her.

Midoriya chuckles nervously. "You say that, b-but I don't think many people would exactly be p-pleased to work alongside a Quirkless hero."

"Ah buh-buh!" She tuts aggressively whilst wagging a finger in his face, "Never say never, Midori! Sure, there's probably a lot of asshats in the hero business who would scoff at the idea, but there's a lot more decent people than you're probably thinking. And it's not like you gotta be part of an agency, anyway. In fact, if we're in the extremely unlikely timeline where you don't get snatched up by a place the moment we leave school, we could form one of those hero duos! I think we’d work well together. I mean, you’ve got the smarts and I’ve got the guns!” She rolls her shirt sleeve up her arm while flexing a bicep as she says that, showing off her impressively built muscles, and holds the pose for Midoriya to get a good look at the results of her strength training.

And get a good look he does. The display seems to stun him for a moment, his mouth dropping open slightly in awe as a tint of red makes itself at home on his face, all whilst his eyes stay fixated on her arm, refusing to budge from her bicep. He stands there gaping just long enough for a teasing remark to form in her head, but before she can let it loose he jolts out of his frozen state and responds to her original proposal.

"I d-don't know about that.. I mean, I wouldn't exactly c-call myself smart."

She relents and shuffles the sleeve back down her forearm while raising an eyebrow at him. "Says the guy who goes by 'Brainstorm'."

His eyes widen and his hands start flailing about as he tries to defend himself. "N-now hold on! I didn't choose that name! People just started c-calling me that one day and it kinda stuck."

"You're a fully-fledged hero student now, you know that right? You can probably get it changed pretty easy." She reminds him with a smirk on her face.

"Y-yeah, I suppose.." He concedes before readying his argument, "But! The first rule of m-marketing is to have consistent branding! If I s-suddenly change my codename, then other heroes won't recognise my analysis anymore! That's why it's important that I stay as Brainstorm!" He folds his arms in satisfaction of his rebuttal.

"Sure, sure.. I'm certain that it has nothing to do with the fact that it makes you sound intelligent." She responds wryly, and laughs when he continues to list excuses as to why he can't change his hero name.

It’s only when she recovers from her laughter that Mina notices the setting sun and becomes conscious of the amount of time they’ve spent out here talking, before gently interrupting Midoriya’s rambling so that they don’t miss curfew.

“Alright, we really should be getting back now.” She gestures to the orange sky, to which Midoriya responds with a quiet “Ah, right..” before nodding. She’s just about to start walking again alongside him when she remembers who’s on dinner duty that evening.

“Oh! We should hurry actually! It’s Tokoyami and Dark Shadow’s turn to cook dinner tonight, and it’s an absolute riot watching him try to stop her from messing around in the kitchen.” She starts jogging in place for a moment before dashing off at full speed, checking behind her to see Midoriya completely frozen in his tracks, surprised at her sudden departure.

“C’mon, man! You don’t wanna miss it, trust me!” She calls out to him, not slowing her pace, and the shout brings him out of his stunned state.

“A-Ah! Okay! I’ll be right there, Ashido-san!” He repositions his bag comfortably over his shoulder and joins Mina in the race back to the 1-A Heights Alliance, eventually catching up to the pink girl despite her generous head start.

As the two of them sprint towards the dorms, Mina glances over to the side at her new Quirkless friend and grins wildly.

She could tell that things were gonna be fun with him in their class.

Chapter Text

Midoriya had integrated into his place at UA way quicker than Mina expected, if she was being honest. It hadn't even been a week since he first started at the school, and already he'd gained a reputation within their class, in no small part due to her efforts.

On their second day, she'd invited the boy to walk back to the dorms with her once again, and he accepted in a heartbeat. The only difference this time around was the presence of her other friends as well. Mina had been a little concerned she was effectively throwing him in at the deep end by surrounding him with so many people, most of which she'd readily admit were more hyperactive than the average teenager, but the green-haired boy had taken it in stride, with only a small amount of visible nervousness on his part.

Of course, the other hero students were all as curious about the illusive vigilante as her, so they'd lobbed their own series of queries in his direction. Thankfully, none of the conversation topics had gotten as emotionally vulnerable as the stuff she discussed with him alone, even if some of them were really weird.

Denki had somehow gotten the idea that Quirkless people.. pooped differently? She didn't even wanna know what passive game of Telephone had led to that awkward misunderstanding, but she did have to admit the way Midoriya's face scrunched up when the electric boy asked him about it was comedy gold.

Hanta was fortunately more normal about his questions, asking much of the same general stuff she did the day prior. The most outlandish of his requests was when he posed a hypothetical to the green-haired boy. 'If you could have any quirk in the world, which would you choose?' It was an odd concept, theorising on what superpower you would have instead of talking about the one you did, but Midoriya took the question deadly seriously and had a proper think about it, eventually settling on super-speed after much deliberation.

Tooru was happy to talk with him on matters outside of his quirk status and previous occupation, asking about his hobbies (Analysis, no big surprise) and likes (Quirks, even less shocking). At one point the light-bender had been discussing her parents, when Mina interjected with a similar story about her own family. For some reason, Midoriya had gotten really fixated on learning more about the other Ashidos, and although the sudden interest confused her, she still answered all of his questions dutifully, with him hanging onto her every word.

All in all, her plan to get Midoriya talking with his peers was a major success. It's not like those after-school walks were the only times he'd interact with other people, too. She'd spotted on multiple occasions other members of their class approaching the green-haired boy independently to chat with him, and it only took about half a week before basically everyone had at least some idea of what his deal was.

And with that, the honeymoon period ended.

Once everybody in 1-A had gotten over the novelty of seeing someone without a quirk go toe-to-toe with the powerhouses in the hero course, Midoriya became just another hero student like the rest of them, and Mina could tell that the green-haired boy preferred it that way. It was obvious in the way he stopped tensing up slightly during battles once the others quit watching him like he was an exhibit at the zoo.

After that, it was like the Quirkless student was barely even a newcomer, like he'd been there the whole time. She supposed that he had been there all along, in a way. Helping them out with his analysis, letting them reach new heights, even stepping in on certain occasions to assist on the frontline in his baggy hoodie and goggles, though that outfit had been retired by this point.

His new forest-green jumpsuit fit him much better, in more ways than one. The costume was outfitted with a number of utility items for the boy to use at a moment's notice, alongside a long two-handed metal staff slotted against his back. While he was clearly competent in barefisted combat, his handling of the staff was where he truly shined, spinning the metal pole every which way with masterful dexterity and slamming it into his opponents with pinpoint accuracy.

Mina wondered beforehand how exactly Midoriya had gotten out of some of the sticky situations he detailed from his time as a vigilante, but after getting a glimpse of him fighting with that staff in his hands? It was clear that his physical capabilities were almost as sharp as his mental ones.

And that's nothing to say of what he could get done with the right people at his side. His encyclopedic knowledge of 1-A's quirks and fighting styles let him adapt to assisting any of them with an unparalleled level of synergy, save for the obvious exception of Bakugo.

The hero students all individually realised that whenever they had Midoriya on their team, it was probably best to follow his lead. Though, the green-haired boy never showed any sign of abusing this trust, making sure to gather opinions and suggestions from everybody before moving forward, like a textbook embodiment of the phrase 'No I in Team'.

She was still ruminating on the boy's heroic nature even as she strolled down the dorm hallways back to her room that Friday evening, fresh in her jammies and ready for a relaxing session of Me Time™.

"Ashido."

She's jolted out of her wandering thoughts by a voice calling her name. She turns around to face the source of the noise and finds Todoroki looking at her with his usual blank expression, save for the slight inquisitive upturn of his brow.

"Oh, hey Todo. What's up?" She greets him back with a smile.

The boy's expression doesn't shift as he responds to her, blunt as ever. "I need your help with something."

Immediately, she locks in and prepares to listen to his request. The elemental boy was still getting used to social interaction and relying on others, so 1-A had taken an unspoken vow to hear him out properly whenever he asked something of them, as a passive form of encouragement.

"Sure thing! What is it?" She asks while brightening her smile.

"I want to thank Midoriya for something." Todoroki cuts right to the chase, not wasting time with preambles. "I know what I would like to tell him, but I'm a bit worried that I might end up saying something to upset him in the process." His brow pinches slightly at the thought, "Since you're the one closest to him out of all of us, I wanted to ask if you would be there as well, to let me know if I'm being.." He mentally searches for a moment to find the right word, "..inconsiderate."

Her own brow raises in intrigue at the request, but she quickly shifts her face back into a reassuring one as she answers him cheerfully. "Can do! Just uh, lemme know when and I'll be there."

"Would right now be okay? Midoriya's currently in the common room by himself, so I thought I'd ask you to do this now since you're both available at the moment." The boy explains, keeping his tone perfectly even.

She chuckles at his pragmatism, and gestures an open hand towards the direction of the lounge. "Sure, that works. Lead the way, Freezeflame."

He nods, and turns around to make his way to the green-haired boy's location, with her following closely behind. Once they reach the common room, Mina sees that it's devoid of any human life besides their target, who's currently sitting in one of the lounge's armchairs with a light novel held in both hands, perusing the contents with fervent interest.

As they approach him, he notices their sudden presence and shifts his attention from the book to greet them both. "Oh, hi Ashido-san! Hi, Todoroki-san!"

"Hey, dude." She gives him a lazy wave with her arm before jerking a thumb over to Todoroki at her side, "This guy's got somethin' he wants to say to you, so I'm here as moral support." She explains with an easy grin.

Midoriya looks a little surprised at first, before he carefully places a bookmark in his current page and jumps up from his seat to face them properly. "O-Oh, really? W-What is it, Todoroki-san?"

Mina shuffles her way over to Midoriya's side instead, and gives the elemental boy an encouraging nod. He takes in a small breath before looking the Quirkless boy dead in the eyes with a determined glint in his own.

"I wanted to talk about what you said during our fight with Stain."

The pink girl practically bluescreens at the statement, convinced that her ears were playing up on her. Because there's no way what he just said made any sense. There's only one incident he could be referring to, that being the week of internships where Hosu had gotten attacked by those Nomus, and the Hero Killer had made an appearance in the city.

Somewhere along the line, both Todoroki and Iida had gotten involved with Stain. The boys claimed that Endeavour had been the one to take on and take down the villain, while they only witnessed the events, but the absolute reluctance from either of them to give any proper details made it abundantly clear that they were much more than just spectators to that fight.

What hadn't been clear, up until right this second, was that Brainstorm had also made an appearance on the scene, and Mina was all of a sudden extremely glad that she had taken Todoroki up on his offer, because she was now deadly curious to learn what went down that day.

The Quirkless boy's voice piping up from beside her derails her train of thought. "The fight with the H-Hero Killer? What about it?"

Todoroki takes a small pause to gather his words, before he continues in his usual even tone. "You might remember, I used to have a vow that I would not use the left side of my quirk, as an act of defiance against my father."

Right, right. That was a whole thing, wasn't it? Mina had almost forgotten about it entirely with how crazy their year had been, but she does now remember him having some hangups over using his fire.

"During the fight, I was only using my ice, and getting practically nowhere. Until you showed up and joined me in defending Iida." He takes another breath, "You suggested I start using my fire to make him back away and give us some space to form a retaliation. I refused, citing my vow, and you got rather frustrated with me."

Midoriya's shoulders sink a bit as he replies to the other boy. "I-I'm really s-sorry about that, Todoroki-san. I just-"

The elemental boy juts in mid-apology. "But then, you said something to me that changed my whole perspective on my quirk. You said, 'It's not his power, it's yours!'." His brow furrows slightly in thought, "That was the first time anyone had ever said something like that to me, and it changed everything. It is.. my power. My quirk. No-one else's. And what I choose to do with it is up to me. So.." He drops into a deep 90 degree bow towards the Quirkless boy, "Thank you." He finishes firmly, completing what he set out to do.

Midoriya looks flummoxed at the gratitude, and it takes him a second to respond. "W-Wow.. That uh.. I wasn't r-really intending to be inspirational, I-I was just.. well, like you s-said, frustrated." He rubs the back of his neck with his hand.

Todoroki was not to be deterred, however. "Whatever your intentions were, it was a tremendous help, and I shudder to think where I may have ended up had I kept restraining myself to that degree."

"Um, no p-problem, I guess?" The green-haired boy still looks confused as he continues, "I just, I didn't r-realise that line was what got through to you. I kinda thought it was when I yelled 'Iida's gonna fucking die if you don't do something!'."

Mina had been quietly listening to their exchange up until that point, but hearing a full-on swear come from the Quirkless boy's usually squeaky-clean mouth makes her release a snort. Midoriya spares her a sheepish glance, before Todoroki's voice brings his attention back to the elemental boy.

"That helped too." He admits bluntly, and Mina lets out a proper laugh at the deadpan expression on his face as he said it. Once she recovers, the boy continues his speech.

"Midoriya. I'm glad you're in this class now, and I look forward to working with you." He gives the both of them a small wave before turning around and making his way out of the common room.

The pair just watch in confusion as he leaves them alone, and Mina huffs an exasperated sigh before bringing a palm up to her face. It seems that Todoroki still needed to learn how to leave a conversation naturally, though admittedly it was much better than he used to be, walking off without even saying a word. So, baby steps.

Turning back to the remaining boy in the room, she fixes him with a wry look as she places her hands on her hips. "Fighting the Hero Killer, huh? Is there anything you haven't done?" She questions rhetorically, and the boy just gives a nervous chuckle as he senses the impending interrogation headed his way.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The regular ticking of the clock in the dorm lounge sounds out clearly amidst the complete and utter silence permeating the room, despite the abundance of people currently taking residence on the furniture.

The majority of 1-A wait with bated breath for their prophesised event to come to fruition, sitting quietly on the couch and chairs, and if it wasn't for the fact that everyone was relaxed in their seats, it'd probably make for the oddest western standoff Mina's ever seen.

Not everybody has a free schedule on Sundays, but those that do always make sure to stick around the common room, for one reason and one reason only.

Ding dong!

Iida jumps up from his seat and starts making his way to the front door. "That must be them!" The tall boy announces with a pep in his step as he disappears down the hallway. A moment later, the sound of a door opening and a young chipper voice ringing out confirms his assumption. "Hi, Mr. Tenya!"

The other 1-A students share a grin between each other and shuffle around to sit up properly and be ready for their guest's grand arrival, heralded by an approaching set of soft footsteps. Soon after, the footsteps' owner is revealed to be third-year hero student and notable member of UA's Big Three, Toogata Mirio.

As the older boy steps into the common room with a blinding smile on his face, the students catch sight of the primary reason for their current gathering. Hanging onto his shoulder, with her arms wrapped around his neck, is none other than Eri, the girl sporting a grin so reminiscent of her surrogate guardian's that they could be confused for blood siblings placed side-by-side like that.

These weekly Sunday meetings had been a suggestion from Hound Dog as an effort to get Eri used to being around other people in a controlled environment. 1-A was selected for the task because, in the guidance counsellor's own words, they were the 'calmest' of the available classes, and if that was true, then Mina didn't even wanna think about how chaotic things must be over in the 1-B dorms for that descriptor to be applied to theirs.

Before the first meeting with Eri, the hero students had been briefed on her situation and warned harshly that if anyone acted out of line in her presence, then expulsion would likely be the least of their worries. Not that anyone had been planning on doing that anyway, they all understood the state she'd been left in because of those villains.

With what the Rewind user had gone through, it was no surprise that in the beginning the hero students' gentle introductions were met with frightened mumbling as she clung to Toogata out of fear. However, slowly but surely over the weeks, they had gained a spot firmly lodged in the young girl's heart, to the point that she started tearing up on one occasion when their time was over and she and the older boy had to leave.

It's just a shame that Midoriya wouldn't be here for this. The green-haired hero student told Mina earlier in the week that he would be busy Sunday afternoon, as he had an 'important event' to attend, or something along those lines. She didn't want to disappoint him by mentioning that he'd be missing out on meeting the young girl, so she kept it quietly to herself. Oh well, there was always next week.

"Hey, all!" Toogata greets the room with his broad smile still spread from ear-to-ear, using one hand to wave at them and the other to support the horned girl as she grips onto his shoulder. The present members of 1-A return his greeting, with Mina and Tooru walking up to the pair as they did so.

"And hello to you too, Eri-chan!" The pink girl coos, and the Rewind user giggles adorably at the attention. After the Culture Festival a couple of weeks ago, she had really come out of her shell, and now felt free enough to be an absolute little bundle of joy around the teen heroes. That being said, the young girl was looking extra cheerful today, practically bouncing up and down in her carrier's hold excitedly.

"Hi, Miss Mina! Hi, Miss Tooru!" Eri waves at them as she says hello, before looking back up at Toogata with a pout on her face.

"Can we see him now, Mr. Million? Pretty pleaaaaaaaasssse?" She demands impatiently, and the third-year laughs jovially at her whining.

"Soon, Eri-chan! I'm not sure he's even here yet!" He gets out between guffaws, before his attention shifts back to the two first-years in front of him. "Sorry about that, ladies. She's just really excited to meet her hero~!" He finishes with a teasing lilt, and Eri blushes in embarrassment.

The older girls feel their hearts clench at the sight, too overwhelmed by cuteness, before Toogata's sentence properly registers in their head and they share a confused side-glance. Her hero? Who was he talking about..?

At that moment, Midoriya rounds the corner into the dorm lounge, head firmly planted in one of his notebooks as his pen glides across the pages. He's so engrossed in what he's writing that he doesn't notice the new arrivals until a loud gasp from Eri pulls his attention.

"MR. GREEN!" The young girl shouts with glee, and she starts wriggling around in Toogata's hold. The older boy takes the hint, and carefully sets her down on the ground. As soon as her feet touch the carpet, she rushes towards Midoriya, barreling directly into his torso and knocking him flat on his back as she hugs him tightly. The boy lets out a startled squawk as he tumbles down and his notebook goes flying elsewhere, before he lifts his head back up to see what hit him.

As soon he recognises the projectile as Eri, his face spreads out into a wide smile and he shuffles up to bring the girl into his lap and return the embrace.

"Eri-chan! What are you doing here? I thought I was meeting you at the other dorm- never mind." He shakes his head slightly to stop his wandering thoughts, "It's so nice to see you! How have you been?" He asks as his arms tighten around her. The girl laughs joyfully before breaking away from the hug to start excitedly rambling about living in the dorms with Toogata and the other third years, all whilst the green-haired boy listens with rapt attention.

The other 1-A students have gathered around Mina and Tooru by this point, and all of them are now gazing at the two on the floor with a mixture of amusement and bewilderment, with the pink girl feeling an extra edge of relief that Bakugo was one of the busy few who couldn't make it today. Even though the blond was usually well-behaved and actually fairly calm around Eri, she had a feeling he wouldn't exactly be pleased seeing Midoriya so jovial.

Toogata must have noticed the confusion on their faces, because he leans down slightly next to them to stage whisper an explanation. "Brainstorm helped out during the fight with Overhaul. He was carrying Eri on his back while we both fought the guy, so I think she got a little attached."

Mina's eyebrows raised in surprise. First the Hero Killer, now this? She'd only known Midoriya for like a few days, and already his list of feats was rivaling even the most prolific hero students in their class. At this rate she'd have to start writing them down if she wanted to keep track.

Going up against Overhaul couldn't have been easy. She recalls Tsuyu's account of the first half of the battle, how grueling it had been to push back through so many high-ranking villains and yakuza, and that the enlisted teams had needed all the help they could reasonably get. Come to think of it, she now remembers Ochako mentioning way before the raid that Brainstorm had been officially brought on board by the late Sir Nighteye to act as analysis support for the heroes on the frontline. Apparently that background role had shifted to the foreground pretty quickly when shit hit the fan, if Toogata was to be believed.

The older boy elaborates further. "He got pretty banged up from the raid, had to be kept in the UA infirmary while he healed. The teachers let Eri visit him a few times after he properly woke up, but getting a vigilante enrolled in hero school was a major legal hassle that required him to be present, so this is her first time seeing Midoriya out of the hospital."

Mina hears the reaction of her friends around her, realising they were witnessing the heartfelt reunion of a little girl and her rescuer, including a quiet "Awww.." from Ochako and an even quieter "Manly as hell.." from Eijirou.

The pink girl stands there stunlocked however, as the anecdote Midoriya regaled to her on his first day flashes through her mind, and she realises that the raid must’ve been the incident that led to the Quirkless boy being hospitalised and subsequently offered his place at UA.

She huffs a small laugh as she shakes her head in disbelief. A ‘rescue operation’, he’d called it. No mention of the fact that he’d gone up against the frickin’ yakuza and lived to tell the tale. No, the only thing on his mind about that raid was Eri, and that she made it out of there safely. How modest could one guy be?

She zones back in when she notices that the pair across the room have stopped their chatter, and she turns to face them again. Eri stands back up and steps away slightly from her humble hero, who repositions himself on his knees to be a little more comfortable.

"Are you all better now?" The young girl asks with a trace of worry in her voice, and he quickly reassures her.

"Yep! Fit as a fiddle!" He raises his fists above his head and poses just like All-Might with his upper half, deepening his voice to mimic the No. 1 hero, "I feel like I could take on anything!"

Eri giggles at his overblown display, and the green-haired boy continues in his regular tone.

"Now you, on the other hand.. Something seems different about you, Eri-chan. I just can't quite put my finger on it.." He brings a hand to his chin and pinches his features, as if he was thinking really hard about it. After a moment, he snaps his fingers and points at the girl. "I got it! It's that award-winning smile of yours!"

Eri giggles once again, showing off said smile, and Midoriya doesn't let up.

"Seriously, where were you hiding those pearly whites all this time? I can almost see my face reflected in them!" He gestures a camera with his hands and makes the effort to charade taking several pictures of her from different angles, like he was an unrelenting fan of a movie star.

Eri is visibly shaking by this point, desperately trying to contain her laughter and barely holding on. She moves her hands up to cover her grinning mouth, and Midoriya takes the opportunity to move in for the knockout blow.

"Awwww, c'mon!" He feigns disappointment, "You're not gonna deprive me of your smiles, are you Miss Eri? I need them to live!" He brings the back of his hand up to his forehead as if he were feeling faint, swaying on his knees. Eri relents, lowering her hands to reveal her smile once more, and Midoriya recoils like he'd just been shot.

"So bright!" He gets out in a strained voice, "It's too much!" And then he fake swoons, falling on his back cartoonishly with his legs splayed out like a starfish.

That motion is the last straw for Eri and she starts full-on laughing, doubling over as she holds her arms to her stomach.

"Mih-Mister Green, wha-hahaaa! W-What are you do-ih-hing!?" She tries to ask, but her intense cackling causes her to stutter through the question.

The young girl's laughter is infectious, and Mina hears some of her friends chuckling under their breath at Midoriya's routine, but she can only watch with amused astonishment at the complete 180° turn his personality had taken in front of Eri.

"Wow.." Tooru's quiet voice piping up from her side nearly makes her jump half a mile, "He's.. weirdly good with kids, isn't he?" Mina can only nod in response, that exact thought having just ran through her own head. The green-haired jester she was currently looking at was a far cry from the shy boy she'd been getting to know over the past week, but she couldn't say it was an unwelcome change. Confidence.. looked really good on him.

It was like when he got into his rambling mode and ended up forgetting that he had inhibitions, only now it was dialled up to 11, with a dash of dramatic flair sprinkled in for good measure. And she loved it.

Off to the side, Toogata chuckles dryly, and the two first years turn their attention to look at him. "You'd think he knew Eri her whole life the way he can get her to laugh just like that." He muses fondly with his arms folded over each other.

It's then he notices the younger students staring up at him, and shifts his gaze to address them directly. "Y'know, I was there in the infirmary when he woke up. First thing he asked, no questions about where he was or anything.. 'Is Eri okay?'. I was flabbergasted. Guy gets almost obliterated by a villain, and his first instinct is to check up on the kid who didn't even get a scratch on her thanks to his efforts." He chuckles again whilst shaking his head, "He's got the markings of a great hero."

Mina feels her mouth spread out into a wide smile, pleased that someone else had noticed what exactly made Midoriya so special.

"Truth be told, I actually owe a lot to Brainstorm." The older boy continues, "When my quirk mutated, I was at a complete loss on what to do, 'till I got a little folder on my desk telling me exactly what to do." Toogata coughs into his hand, "That.. was a surprise and a half."

Mina nods her head in understanding, remembering a few months back when Permeation had suddenly mutated, giving Toogata an additional power of super-strength, and also black tendrils later in the year, for some reason? She tried not to think about it too much, quirks were weird sometimes.

Across the room, Eri suddenly straightens up like she just remembered something important and bounds over to her guardian, leaving Midoriya in the dust.

"Mr. Million, could I have my drawing please?" She asks sweetly, and the older boy complies.

"Sure thing, Eri-chan!" He pulls out a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket and leans down to give it to her. She takes it with both hands and darts back over to Midoriya, taking care not to rumple the page as she did so.

As she approaches the green-haired boy, her countenance turns shy and her face reddens slightly. She holds out the folded paper expectantly, and after a moment Midoriya takes it into his own hands.

"This is for me?" He asks softly, and the girl just nods, too embarrassed to speak.

The Quirkless student carefully unfolds the paper and splays it out to see what it contains, letting out a small gasp as he processes whatever's on there.

Curiosity gets the better of Mina, and she discreetly shuffles to a spot a small distance away from Midoriya's side to get a closer look at it.

On the page is a crude drawing made with crayon of three stick figures; a yellow tall one with straight, gelled up hair, a shorter green one with scribbles detailing fluffy hair and a tiny one in the middle of the other two, drawn with a light grey crayon and showing long white strands that reach down to the two lines representing its feet.

All three of the figures have a wide smile on their face, stood on a grassy field with the sun shining in the background over a blue sky, with the little grey one having the widest smile of the bunch.

It's obvious who the stick people are meant to be, yet Eri finds her voice again and explains anyway.

"This one is Mr. Million.." She says quietly, pointing to the yellow figure, "..that one is me.." Her finger drifts to the small one in the centre, "..and that one is you, Mr. Green." She finishes off by gently tapping the verdant figure at the end.

She then starts shuffling around nervously with her hands clasped behind her back. "Um, I made this.. because I wanted to say thank you, for rescuing me.." She mumbles out, face turning red again.

"Eri.." Midoriya is staring down at the paper with an astonished expression, jaw dropped open slightly, before he looks back up at her with shimmering eyes and a grateful smile on his face. "I love it, thank you."

Eri's own face spreads into a smile at his acceptance, and he continues. "If it's alright with you, could I keep a copy of this? I mean, a piece of art this magnificent belongs in the Louvre!" He exclaims with a flourish of the paper.

"You.. you can keep that one, if you want.." She answers quietly, surprising everyone in the room. For as long as 1-A had known the girl, she was always fiercely clingy with anything she created, likely as a fear response from her time in the yakuza's clutches where she didn't even have the freedom to own anything for herself. The idea of the Rewind user willingly giving up the only copy of one of her drawings was practically unheard of.

"..Are you sure?" Midoriya double checks.

"Mmhmm." She nods a couple of times, determination clear on her face, before stepping up closer to the green-haired boy and attempting to whisper in his ear. However, she hasn't really learned proper volume control yet, so the hushed sentence is still audible to Mina.

"Sometimes.. I have bad dreams, and I can't sleep.. So I look at my drawing, because it makes me feel safe.. because I know you will rescue me if anything bad happens. But I don't need it anymore.. because now I have the real Mr. Million and Mr. Green.. so, you can keep it."

Midoriya's face scrunches up like he just ate something sour, and Mina completely understands his reaction. What the young girl just admitted was unfairly cute, and she knows that if she were on the receiving end of that praise, she might just keel over then and there.

Choosing that point to make her presence known, she sidles up to the pair and joins their dialogue. "Wow, Eri-chan! That looks really good!"

The horned girl's demeanour switches almost immediately, her eyes sparkling at the compliment. "You really think so?" She asks hopefully.

"I know so!" Mina responds with just as much enthusiasm, and Eri's smile widens even further.

"Yay!" She raises both of her hands in celebration for a moment before she finishes her statement, "I did this one allllllll by myself!" Her hands drop down to her hips as she gives the hero students a bright grin, looking extremely proud of herself. Out of the corner of her eye, Mina notices Midoriya giving her a look, one that clearly reads as 'this is the most adorable thing i've ever seen in my life', and she finds herself agreeing wholeheartedly.

"That's incredible, Eri-chan! No wonder it looks so amazing!" She replies, more than happy to continue praising the girl, who nods rapidly before continuing her excited rambling.

"Yuh-huh! The hardest part was drawing Mr. Green's hair, 'cause his is fluffy." She pouts slightly, evidently a little peeved at the fact that she couldn't perfectly recreate Midoriya's strands in drawing form, "Why is your hair so weird?" She questions the boy in an almost accusatory tone, and he chokes on air trying not to laugh at her annoyed expression.

"S-Sorry, Eri-chan." He apologises as candidly as he could through the coughs racking his lungs.

That seems to mollify the girl's irritation, and she settles back as she relaxes her features. Then, she leans in towards the pink girl conspiratorially as she asks the other hero student a different question. "Miss Mina, do you know why I didn't say that I knew Mr. Green before?" Her voice is low, yet still not quiet enough to classify as a whisper.

Mina, of course, didn't know why Midoriya's existence had been kept hush hush, and she plays up her reaction as she replies to the young girl, scratching the side of her face with her index finger. "Now that you mention it.. I don't, Eri-chan. Why is that?" She asks with an exaggerated tilt of her head.

Eri's face grows even more secretive as she answers her. “Welllll.. Mr. Million said I wasn’t supposed to talk about Mr. Green yet because there were..” The young girl pauses for a moment, “com-pli-cay-shuns.” She continues, sounding out the longer word syllabically. “He said that Mr. Green would get in trouble if anyone found out he was here, so I had to shhhhhh..” She puts a finger to her lips as she shushes, and Mina chuckles in response.

“Well, you did a very good job, Eri-chan! I had absolutely no clue!” She ruffles the girl’s hair approvingly, and the Rewind user lets out a joyful laugh, right before making her next move. She suddenly darts towards Midoriya and gives him another tight hug around his torso, nearly making him topple over backwards from the unexpected force. He returns the hug just as tightly for a few seconds before Eri breaks away and looks back up at him.

“I need to go say hi to everyone else now, but I’ll be back quickly!” She declares, and the green-haired boy laughs softly at her blunt delivery.

“Sure thing, Eri-chan. I’ll be right here when you’re done.”

The young girl gives him a nod before dashing off to the other side of the room where the rest of 1-A was located, making a beeline towards Tsuyu first, which was hardly a surprise to Mina considering the amphibious girl was her favourite in the class. It was never confirmed aloud, but anyone with half a brain could tell just by looking at the way they interacted. Though, her froggy friend might have some competition for that title, now that Midoriya’s here.

Mina turns her attention back to the Quirkless boy, who’s gotten up from his knees by now and has started dusting his pants off.

“So..” He pauses his ministrations as she strolls up to him with her arms crossed and a smug grin on her face, “When were you gonna tell me about this little facet of your backstory, ‘Mr. Green’?” She finishes in a teasing voice.

"Uh, s-sorry.." He looks genuinely apologetic as he replies to her, "I just.. I didn't want to look like I was b-bragging or anything."

Yep, that's just about what she expected from him by this point. She laughs mirthfully and shakes her head at the boy's boundless modesty. "No need to apologise, dude. I get it. Though personally, if I took down a big-time yakuza, you'd never hear me shut up about it." That line causes Midoriya to let out a little laugh of his own, covering it up with his hand.

She watches his display with a soft smile for a moment before her attention shifts towards Eri at the other end of the room, who's currently in the process of giving Shoji a big hug, and a thought crosses her mind.

"By the way, what 'complication' was she talking about?" She asks, gesturing her head towards the girl to indicate her meaning.

Midoriya looks confused for a second before he remembers Eri's words and his brow shoots up in realisation. "Oh, right! They uh, the school wanted to keep my presence under wraps while they got my enrolment sorted out, since 'providing hospice to a vigilante' could easily be twisted into 'harbouring a fugitive' if someone wanted to, which would've been a whole can of worms for everybody involved."

She mouths an 'ah' in understanding. "Fair play, probably a good call." They both watch in silence for a few moments as Eri excitedly discusses her week with the Dupli-Arm user, before Mina pipes up again. "She really did do a good job, y'know? None of us knew you were even at UA until you joined our class."

"That's a relief." Midoriya exhales whilst his body sags slightly, "Whenever she came to see me in the infirmary, she'd always talk about your visits, so I was a little worried that the inverse was true as well." He huffs a small laugh at the thought, and she mirrors it after a second's delay.

Then he continues, voice softened as he turns his head to face hers. "She really loves you guys, more than anything in the world. She always talks about you with the biggest grin on her face, and I don't think I've ever seen a child as happy as she was when she told me about that drawing competition you put on for her." He pauses for just a second before finishing his speech, "You guys are all real heroes for that. You saved her."

"Hey, we saved her." She counters semi-firmly, having noticed the self-deprecation in his words, "Don't go thinking you've not helped her as well. Have you seen the way she acts around you? She absolutely loves you just as much."

The boy looks a little surprised at her insistence, before his face shifts into a quietly happy expression. "Thank you, Ashido-san.."

"Don't gotta thank me for telling the truth, dude. But, sure." She responds with a lopsided smirk, and they both continue watching the girl across the room.

"Y'know.." Another thought crosses her mind, and she turns her attention fully back to the Quirkless boy next to her, "It's probably good for her now that you're in 1-A. Now she can just see you along with everyone else on Sundays. Makes it a bit more convenient." She explains, and Midoriya nods a couple of times in agreement.

"That's true.."

"I mean, even besides that.." She continues, "It's just nice to have you here, dude. Feels like.. a gap's been sealed, or something." She shrugs at her clumsy analogy, but he doesn't seem to mind as he gives her a full smile.

“It’s.. nice to finally be here. Now I can train alongside you all, and actually become a hero!” He beams a blinding grin in her direction, and she feels the corners of her own mouth rise to match it.

“But you already are a hero.”

A third voice joining their conversation forces them out of the little bubble of privacy that’s formed around them, and they look over to find Eri gazing up at Midoriya with a tilted expression of befuddlement, evidently having completed her round of greetings to the others.

The green-haired boy pauses for a moment at the unexpected interjection, but he realises immediately after where the young girl might have gotten the wrong idea.

“Oh, no, Eri-chan.. I was a vigilante before, remember? It’s a bit different from being a hero.” He tries to explain, but it doesn’t seem to clear the cloud of confusion on her face.

“Heroes save people..” She starts slowly while raising a hand to her chin in imitation of Midoriya's usual pondering pose, and Mina has to actively clamp her mouth down to stop herself from squealing at how cute the gesture looks. “..and you saved me. So, you’re a hero!” She concludes triumphantly while raising both of her hands in victory.

“I.. suppose that makes sense.” The boy concedes with a heavy blush, not really having a proper counter to Eri’s statement. Mina locks on to the reaction like a bloodhound, and it takes her all of two seconds to figure out a way to increase the intensity.

"Ooooo, someone's blushingggg~" She teases him even further, making the entirety of his face flush a volcanic shade of crimson, "You're looking more like 'Mr. Red' right now, Midori!" He splutters wordlessly at her prodding, and Eri starts giggling at his humourous reaction before calming herself slightly and walking up closer to Mina.

"Miss Mina? I have something I need to tell you." She's clearly trying not to laugh as she addresses the rosette, which raises her suspicions immediately, but she's a weak woman when it comes to Eri, even at the best of times.

Deciding to honour the girl's request, and give Midoriya a small reprieve from the teasing, she bends her knees and brings herself down to the Rewind user's level.

"What is it, Unicorn?" She questions with a grin, using her favourite nickname for the girl.

Eri gets a little closer whilst lowering her voice to an ineffective whisper. "I just thought you might want to know that.." She suddenly slaps a tiny hand into Mina's shoulder and starts running away frantically, "TAG! You're it!" She shouts as she darts around the corner and out of sight.

The two teens are left in silence for a moment while they process her words, before Mina realises that they're the only ones still in the room, the other students evidently having gone to hide as part of the game.

She feels a devilish smirk spread across her face. Well, if they were going to be playing tag, then she only had one target available to her at the moment..

She turns to look back up at Midoriya, who notices the mischief pouring out of her expression and starts backing away nervously while raising his hands in defence. "Now, Ashido-san.. let's not do something we might regret.."

She slowly raises back up to a standing position and begins stalking towards the green-haired boy as her grin turns evil. "Well, well.. Looks like it's just you and me here, Midori.. Why don't you make this easy for me, and hold STILL!" She suddenly lunges for the boy, who instinctively dodges out of the way and starts gunning it at full speed out of the common room.

"YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!" Despite the fear in his voice, his face displays a wild grin as he turns his head back to yell at her.

"GET BACK HERE, GREENIE!" She shouts just as loudly before giving chase, laughing all the way.

As she closes the distance, she can hear Eri's laughter further ahead and redoubles her efforts. Mina knows that the girl would appreciate a bit of a show, and she can tell Midoriya 'Green Jester' Izuku realises that as well, so the two of them ramp up the intensity together, letting loose a comical array of sounds into the halls of the dorm as they continue their cat-and-mouse routine, with gleeful grins on both of their faces.

Their one-on-one chase only comes to an end once Mina stumbles upon Todoroki hiding in a closet, and switches targets almost immediately. The game evolves from there, the 'It' mantle passing every which way up until visiting time is over, and everyone is left spent in the common room, trying to get their breaths back as they wave goodbye to Eri and Toogata.

When the door closes behind them and Mina flops over onto the couch, she muses that might've been the most fun she's ever had in this building, and she secretly hopes that Midoriya will be available next Sunday for a repeat performance, since now she's got a score to settle.

As the students of 1-A chattered between each other around the classroom, Mina was sat at her desk near the front, leaning over the counter as she rested her elbow atop it and using the hand to cover her gleeful grin.

Usually being in class wouldn't be cause for such an expression on her face, especially not first thing on a Thursday morning. But today, things are different.

Because today, All-Might is teaching their heroics class.

Not exactly an uncommon event by this point. In fact, most of the hero students would probably describe it as mundanely as the weather, a simple fact of life. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and the Number 1 hero sometimes teaches them.

No, the reason Mina's so happy about this little fact specifically today is due to a certain greenbean-sized classmate.

This heroics class will be Midoriya's first time having the Symbol of Peace as an instructor, and she's absolutely jonesing to see his reaction when he realises that for himself. Given that he's a proud hero fanboy, possibly the biggest in the world if she had to guess, there's no way he would be anything less than dumbstruck at seeing All-Might in the flesh.

A quiet snicker escapes her mouth as she imagines the boy's jaw dropping as far as it could go, along with his eyes practically bulging out of his head in shock, and she brings her hand closer to muffle the sound when Denki pauses his conversation the next desk over to give her a weird look. Once her mini bout of laughter ends, she schools her expression and tries not to crack up, though a hint of a smile keeps involuntarily pulling at her lips.

"Goooooooooood morning, students!"

Right as the clock strikes 9:00am, the chatter is interrupted by their teacher's extravagant entrance as he slides through the door and lands in a heroic pose just in front of the chalkboard.

Normally, Mina would respond to the display with a mirthful eyeroll, having seen it hundreds of times by now, but on this occasion the grin takes over her face once again, and she immediately swivels around to gauge Midoriya's reaction, only to find the boy's figure blocked off by the other students in between them.

She has to actively stop herself from toppling over in her chair as she leans it back on its hind legs to get a better view of her target. After spending just a nanosecond locating him again from the new angle, her eyes land directly on the green-haired boy, who was absolutely..

..neutral.

That's really the only word that could be used to describe his expression. Neutral. The boy's mouth is set in a straight line, neither a frown nor a smile, as he regards the Symbol of Peace with about as much excitement as he would an empty drinking glass.

Mina's own mouth falls into a slight frown as she brings her chair back down to ground level and turns to face forward.

Okay, admittedly not the reaction she was hoping for. The look on the Quirkless boy's face bugged her for some reason, and it takes her a second to figure out exactly why.

If Brainstorm were anyone else, she'd have brushed off the blasé expression without a second thought. Maybe they would've seen All-Might so many times over the course of their vigilante career that even having him as their instructor would be boring. But Brainstorm is Midoriya. And she knows Midoriya should be going crazy over this news.

She recalls when they had English class with Present Mic, and the boy had practically bolted up to the voice hero as soon as he stepped in the room to ask for an autograph, before remembering himself and sheepishly apologising to their teacher.

The guy absolutely loved heroes, which made his apparent disinterest towards the man ranked at number one all the more baffling. Hell, he'd had a more favourable look talking about heroes who'd tried to capture him than he did gazing at the Symbol of Peace in that moment.

Which begged the question: What had All-Might done to garner that kind of reaction from him?

---

The familiar alarm blaring over the comm signals the end of the exercise, and All-Might leans in towards the microphone on the console.

"Team D is victorious! Excellent work, students!" He booms directly into the device, and Mina notices on the spectator cams above all ten of the hero students out in the field wincing at the volume. "Please head back to the command centre post-haste to receive your feedback!"

Despite their teacher's words, the two teams take their sweet time returning to the others, chatting jovially between themselves about the match. It was a simple 5v5 area control exercise; both teams competing to see who could hold the most ground the longest, with the end goal being controlling every single one of the marked points placed around the mapped area. Due to the nature of the exercise, not having a set time limit or anything, the matches could last quite a while, leaving all of the participants completely spent afterwards. Or, at least most of them.

Midoriya looked pretty good all things considered, breathing slightly harder than usual to regain some lost oxygen, but otherwise completely unimpaired by the long-term physical activity. The camera system didn't provide sound, but the picture quality was good enough for Mina to tell that he had a wide grin on his face as he exchanged words with his opponents, Tooru and Satou. She could practically hear him anyway, reading his lips while her mind filled in the blanks ('Your form was incredible, Hagakure-san!' He'd praise, or even fix the other student with an excited 'That grapple hold was really something, Satou-san!', just to name a couple of examples).

When the two teams finally get back to base, the spectating half of the class give them a polite round of applause, and when Midoriya happens to catch her gaze, she adds an extra thumbs up in his direction along with a wink, which causes the boy to rub his neck sheepishly as a faint blush blooms on his cheeks.

After the clapping fades out, their teacher clears his throat and addresses the ten. "Well done, heroes! Although there was a definitive winner, you all gave it your best and showed some real grit out there!" Their faces lift at the compliment, with most of them looking extremely proud of themselves for their performance, "That being said!" The Symbol of Peace continues, "There's always room for improvement! So, let's take a look at the areas that could use some work, shall we?" He moves back over to the console and leans over the controls, with the students following suit to get a better look at the footage, lining up in a horizontal formation a few steps behind the hero.

Their teacher rewinds the cameras back to a certain point near the start of the match, freezing on a frame showing Team C preparing traps for their defence strategy.

"Young Todoroki!" All-Might starts, and the elemental boy straightens up at the direct address, "Your posture here is extremely open! Confidence is a good trait for a hero, but you mustn't leave yourself unguarded when in potentially hostile territory!"

Todoroki nods firmly. "I understand, Sensei. I apologise for my lack of self-preservation." He finishes off with a half-bow.

Their teacher nods back before fast-forwarding slightly further into the exercise, this time showing a still of Momo getting ready to enter an area with two of her opponents inside, holding a set of utillity items in both of her hands.

"Young Yaoyorozu!" The No. 1 continues, "I understand you were intending to not give away your position, but entering a disadvantageous situation without informing your allies of your whereabouts was extremely risky! Even a quick check-in could mean the difference between life or death, so always make sure to keep your fellow heroes updated."

The heiress brings a contemplative hand up to her chin, "I see.. Thank you for the feedback, Sensei." She clasps her hands back together as she gives him a bow as well.

All-Might acknowledges her thanks with another quick nod before turning back to the screens and bringing the footage along even further into the match. This time, Mina instantly recognises the point he stops on.

It was when Satou and Midoriya were clashing in a one-on-one duel, and the sugar rusher landed a lucky blow to the green-haired boy's abdomen. Midoriya had stumbled backwards a bit, slightly winded from the force, but was basically unaffected as he struck back with his staff almost immediately.

"Young Satou!" Her thoughts are interrupted by their teacher calling out the boy's name as he turns around, "We may be training for real villain encounters here at UA, but the use of such excessive force during an exercise is completely unwarranted!"

..What?

Mina feels her brain physically pause at the feedback. Excessive force? What excessive force? Midoriya had barely even fallen from that hit, surely that wasn't 'excessive force'?

Her confusion is mirrored by the two boys in question, who share a quick glance at each other before Midoriya pipes up.

"Um, S-Sensei? Sorry, but could you elaborate? I think we're b-both just a bit confused at what you m-mean?" He asks politely, and Satou nods in agreement.

All-Might pauses at the request for a moment before turning back around to face the console. "Alright.." He brings the footage forward ever so slightly to showcase Midoriya's reaction to the hit and his subsequent quick recovery, "Although Young Midoriya was able to bounce back safely from that strike this time around, the fact of the matter is that he could have been harmed badly from the force of such a hit. So, make sure to temper your output next time, Young Satou."

The entire room stays silent for a few long seconds, with figurative crickets chirping in the background, before Midoriya speaks again.

"You can't be serious, right?" He questions blankly with a furrowed brow.

"I didn't think I hit him that hard.." Satou muses to himself with a pinched expression while scratching the side of his head absent-mindedly.

Midoriya shifts his gaze to the other boy. "That's because you didn't. Wh-" He turns back to All-Might, "Sensei, what are you talking about?" He asks incredulously, his bewilderment apparently overriding all of his usual manners in that moment.

Their teacher looks just as confused as them now. "I.. I'm not quite sure what you're not understanding."

Momo chooses that point to join the conversation, with a finger raised to signal attention towards her. "If I may jump in, I believe what Midoriya-kun is trying to say is that we're all a bit curious as to why you pointed out such an.. for lack of a better term, inconsequential blow, Sensei." She explains.

Their teacher folds his arms as he responds to her. "Safety is not an inconsequential matter, Young Yaoyorozu. That attack could have potentially damaged Young Midoriya beyond repair."

Midoriya recoils as he processes the reply. "Damaged beyond- Sero got flung into a wall!" He suddenly shouts in disbelief whilst gesturing aggressively towards the tape wielder with his arms, "You're not gonna bring that up?!"

All-Might straightens his back with a huff as he places his hands on his hips. "As an instructor, it's important to gauge what your students are capable of on an individual basis. Young Sero was completely fine after that impact, so I see no reason to correct the force applied."

"Midoriya's more built than me, though." Hanta chimes in, adding to the total tally of confused people in the room, "Like, if I got hit with that punch from Satou, I'd probably be worse off than he was."

"Physical resistance is not the only factor to take into account." Their teacher explains, "Having a proper means of defence is equally, if not more important than how well your body is built to take hits."

Midoriya looks like his confusion has hit its peak by this point. "A proper means of defen- Oh." His face all of a sudden drops into an unimpressed look, "You mean a quirk."

All-Might's own face shifts around slightly at the boy's accusatory tone. "Well, yes." He admits, "Since you lack the fundamental means to protect yourself properly, Young Midoriya, it's important that we make adjustments to prevent any serious injuri- young man, where are you going?"

Mina was listening to their teacher's justification with disturbed befuddlement before she realises at his self-interruption that Midoriya had started marching across the room towards the exit door, a thoroughly annoyed expression fixed on his face.

"Unbelievable!" The boy scoffs angrily, and as he passes Mina on his set path, she hears him grumble at the hero under his breath, "..guess it's still not realistic enough for you.."

He finally reaches the door and slams it shut on his way out, leaving the room in an uncomfortable silence as they all stare at the closed exit.

The quiet lasts for just a few moments before All-Might clears his throat and speaks up again, his voice now lacking the distinctive boom. "Was.. Was it something I said?"

Mina snaps her attention back to the hero with an incredulous stare. There's no way he was that dense, right?

Before she can point out the obvious, Denki beats her to the punch. "Well.. yeah, man. You basically called him weak. To his face." He spells it out clearly to the No. 1, who takes in the explanation with a contemplative look, evidently mulling it over.

"Hmmph." Bakugo pipes up from his leaning position against the far wall, scoffing at the green-haired boy's exit, "At least someone in this shithole has some fuckin' sense. Was about time Deku got a reality check."

"Awww, c'mon Bakubro! You don't really mean that!" Eijirou slings an arm around the blond's shoulder with a cheeky grin on his face.

Mina feels the instinctive urge to correct her friend and tell him that Actually Yes, He Really Does Mean It, but then she remembers her promise to Midoriya and halts in her tracks, choosing to leave the words unsaid and give Bakugo another unearned second chance, in spite of how queasy it made her feel.

Squashing that feeling back down, she turns to their teacher with a determined look and states her business. "I'm gonna go make sure Midoriya's doing alright." She jerks a thumb over to the door, and All-Might responds with a distant nod, wordlessly giving her his permission to seek the green-haired boy out.

Locating him was easier than expected, as he apparently only ended up about a couple of corridors away before stopping. Mina turns the corner to find him standing slumped against the concrete wall, barely moving in the slightest. His hero costume is still on, but he's removed his gloves and dropped them haphazardly by his feet to press his face into his bare hands. After her brief moment of observation, his arms flop back down to his sides as he lets out a deep exhale, somehow still not noticing her looking at him from across the hall.

"Midoriya?"

He stiffens at the sound of his name, and immediately swivels his head over in Mina's direction before relaxing when he realises it's just her.

"O-Oh, Ashido-san.. Are you here for m-me?" His face turns crestfallen, "S-Sorry to worry you, b-but I'm alright. You can go back to class n-now."

Her own face scrunches a bit as she tries to decipher his intentions. "Is that a 'I don't want you around' go back to class, or a 'I don't think I deserve your concern' go back to class?" She asks while slowly walking over to him, "Because my experience with you is telling me that it's more likely to be the second option."

Midoriya goes quiet for a moment, before mumbling out an answer under his breath. "..second one."

She nods slightly before sidling up next to him against the wall and slumping down so that they're at equal height. They both stand there in comfortable silence for a moment, just staring at the opposite wall, before Mina tries to gently coax him into conversation.

"Do you wanna talk about it..?" She asks softly, and Midoriya shuffles up just a touch as he answers her.

"N-Normally, I'd say no.. But p-part of me just wants to let it out at this point." He takes in a small breath before continuing, "I think it's because you're r-really easy to talk to, Ashido-san."

She feels her heart swell at the praise, but keeps an even expression on her face as she prompts him. "So.. how are you feeling?" She questions while shuffling up the wall as well, since she might as well be comfy if she's going to be playing hallway therapist.

"I guess just.. disappointed." He sighs, tilting his head back until it bumps against the concrete with a light thud.

"Right.. I get that. Never thought All-Might of all people would be quirkest." Though it made an unfortunate amount of sense, the more she thought about it. People with powerful emitter quirks tended to be a bit ignorant towards the struggles of those with weaker ones, or people with blatant mutant features, and All-Might certainly fit into the category of 'powerful emitter-type'.

To her surprise, Midoriya shakes his head slightly against the wall as he responds to her statement. "It's not that. Well I guess it is that, but it's not just that." He brings his head back down to face the opposite wall as he speaks again, "I met him one time, at the end of middle school. Saved me from a villain, gave me an autograph and everything."

She gives a small nod to show that she's listening, before he continues. "I knew it'd be the only chance I'd get, so I asked him 'Can someone without a quirk become a hero?'. Everyone else I'd asked didn't think so, but I knew if I could just get All-Might's encouragement, it'd be all I needed.." His gaze drops down to the floor, and Mina waits with bated breath in the few seconds of silence before he regales the No. 1's response, "He said no. Said that.. it wasn't realistic."

Even though she expected that answer, she still lets out a quiet gasp at the cold indifference on display, silently fuming at the man's attitude. Who the hell did All-Might think he was, telling teenagers to give up on their dreams just because of a little disadvantage? And clearly he wasn't a very good arbiter of such a matter, considering that Midoriya had the heroism of ten whole men in just his index finger.

The boy's voice piping up again cuts through her train of thought. "It's not like I'm mad at him for it anymore, though. I mean, anyone would've said the same thing."

Her mouth opens reflexively to argue the truth of that statement, with herself as an example, before she thinks about it for a second and realises that she probably would've said something similar, had she been in All-Might's position. Loathe as she is to admit it, but the idea of a Quirkless pro hero wasn't something that even crossed her mind in the realm of possibilites until she met Midoriya.

The green-haired boy, having watched her pause in real time, is able to parse her thought process from her expressions and responds with a strained smile. "Yeah, I don't blame you.. It is a bit of a far-out concept, isn't it?" He huffs a small hollow laugh, "That's why I'm not mad at him for saying that. Because, who would believe in a Quirkless hero?" He posits rhetorically (and she hates that it's rhetorical, that people not believing in him is such a given he can't even ask that question in earnesty).

He tries to inject a side of levity to his next words, but it rings wholly artificial. "I mean, if there is one good thing about that day, I got the encouragement I was looking for.. Even if it was in spite of his answer, rather than because of it." The boy chuckles humourlessly as he turns back to face the wall, and after a moment his mouth drops into a discontent frown, "I just hoped that maybe.. I dunno, he would've changed his mind by now? That seeing all the stuff Brainstorm did would be enough for him to reconsider, at least?" He lets out a deep sigh, "Guess not.."

Her annoyance with the Number 1 hero gains a second wind at Midoriya's quiet resignation. Yeah, maybe All-Might wasn't exactly incorrect to assume a boy without a quirk might not get far in the hero industry, but he didn't have to be so callous about it. A gentle discouragement and suggestions for other career paths would've at least been better than a blunt 'no' to what sounded like a desperate plea for approval. And there was no excuse to still be this adamant on Midoriya's fragility when the boy had proved time and time again that he could more than hold his own in a fight.

After ruminating on it for a moment, she jumps up from the wall to face him properly. "You know what? Screw that old fart! What does he know, anyway? You're like the most heroic guy I've ever met!" She states with enough confidence that some of it seeps into the green-haired boy.

"Y-Yeah?" He still responds with a lick of hesitation, so she cranks it up a notch.

"I mean, you got into UA despite the fact you had criminal charges and no quirk! You've saved so many people!"

"..Yeah!" He repeats as he stands up straight too, head held high as he keeps his hands down by his sides.

She's getting really into it by this point, leaning towards the boy with a triumphant fist raised. "And if All-Might can't see how heroic you are, then he can shove it!"

Midoriya mirrors her motion with his own fist. "Yeah!!" He booms loudly, almost matching the Symbol of Peace in volume.

She grins at his growing enthusiasm. "You're not just some fragile piece of porcelain, you are a fighter! And we'll walk out of as many classes as it takes for him to realise that!"

"YEA-" Midoriya suddenly stops cold, fist still poised in the air, as his face shifts into one of horror. The built-up confidence immediately leaves every single one of his joints as he stumbles back against the wall with a haunted look in his eyes. The change is so jarring that it makes her blood freeze on instinct, and she's just about to ask him what's wrong before he preemptively answers her.

“Ohhhhhhh shit, nononono.." He breathes out, "I just walked out on All-Might.." His words turn squeaky as he continues, "He's gonna get me expelled and then I'm gonna have to go back to being a vigilante except I can't becauseeveryonealreadyknowsmyidentityandi'llgetarrestedand-“ His voice lowers to an imperceptible volume as his words ramp up in speed, and it becomes impossible to understand him after that. He brings his hands up to his head as his panicked muttering reaches terminal velocity, and it seems like his jaw might actually fall off from how fast it’s moving now. Mina watches with an increasingly worried expression as he descends further into his mutter storm, before realising she should probably snap him out of it in case he injures himself in the process.

“Midori?” Her first attempt is met with no reaction. She huffs slightly and tries again, louder this time.

“Midoriya!” The second doesn’t do anything either, his mutters tapering off into little unintelligible soundbites by this point.

An idea to comes to mind and she puts it to action immediately, cupping her hands to her cheeks and closing the distance between them while mentally apologising to him in advance for what she was about to do.

“Brainstorm!” She vocalises his hero name directly into his ear canal while making sure to dampen her volume somewhat so she doesn’t damage the drums inside, reasoning that there’s no way he could tune that one out.

She’s proven right almost instantly as the boy jolts out of his spiralling, releasing a startled scream while bouncing a few steps away from her in surprise, as if embodying the bunny rabbit she’d initially compared him to when she first laid eyes on him.

“Sorry, sorry! I thought you needed a little jump to help you out of it!” She holds up both hands as she apologises profusely, praying that she hadn’t just messed up beyond repair.

The boy is breathing heavily as he clutches his chest with one hand, staring wide-eyed back at her, before he registers what just happened and calms down a little, still keeping a firm hold on his clothes.

“O-Oh, that’s.. I-I did need t-that, thank y-you.” He responds with a wobbly smile, clearly a bit shaken from the forceful jumpstart.

A long moment of silence, except for Midoriya’s laboured panting, passes before Mina finds the courage to prod him for an explanation.

“What.. what was that?” His breath hitches while his entire body tenses up and she quickly amends her query, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to!” She raises her hands again in a placating manner, not wanting to cause him any further distress.

Another moment of silence comes and goes before his breathing evens out and he can properly reply to her.

“No.. it’s f-fine, Ashido-san. It’s j-just me being dumb.” He sighs despondently.

“No no, hey. None of that, okay?” She rebukes firmly with a furrowed brow, “If it’s causing you harm, then it’s not dumb.”

Midoriya looks a little surprised at the decisive tone her voice adopted, and he elaborates. “I-I just.. I have t-trouble keeping my thoughts to myself, and s-sometimes the thoughts build up and it becomes t-too much for me to handle, which leads to.. that.” He finishes lamely, gesturing to the spot between them where his little episode occurred while avoiding direct eye contact with her out of embarrassment.

“Oh..” She responds simply, taking in the reasoning with a muted frown, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Huh..? Wha-? Y-You don’t have to do anything, Ashido-san. It’s my p-problem to solve.” He claims, though the warble in his voice indicates his lack of confidence in performing such a task. The audible tremor lights a fire inside her, and feels herself switch into hero mode almost instinctively.

“Well sure, it might be your problem.. but that doesn’t mean it’s your sole responsibility, Midoriya.” She starts slowly ambling towards him at a snail’s pace as she continues, “..One of the things they teach us at UA is that it’s alright to ask for help. That you don’t have to do everything by yourself. You probably shouldn’t try to handle everything by yourself, as a matter of fact.”

Midoriya gulps quietly as she stops just in front of him, her face displaying a reassuring smile to try and ease his nerves.

“We’re all in this together.. So, don’t think that you’ve gotta go it alone, alright?” She finishes softly, before lifting her upturned palm towards the boy, as a silent suggestion. His eyes dart between it and her face repeatedly for a moment, before he tentatively raises his own hand and places it in hers, all while his cheeks begin reaching nuclear levels of red.

Once their palms make contact, her fingers gradually close around his scarred flesh, making sure to take her time and keep a close eye on his reaction in case he decides he doesn’t want this after all. His embarrassment visibly skyrockets at the gesture, but the tension in his shoulders unwinds from the spring it’s coiled around, and his whole body relaxes with an exhale as he gives her a smile in response. Shaky, unsure, absolutely awkward, but a smile nonetheless.

Her own smile widens at his acceptance, before she calmly asks him again, “What can I do to help?”

His mouth opens to answer her, but the material built up inside turns it into a raspy cough released into his other hand. After he recovers from the involuntary convulsion, he clears his throat to remove the blockage and tries again.

“U-Uh, um.. T-This is helping a lot, actually.” He hesitantly raises their entwined hands, and her face lifts in understanding as she releases a soft sound of recognition. Physical contact.. Alright. She can work with that.

“Okay.. how’s about, whenever you get into one of those mutter cycles, and I’m around.. I do this?” She carefully contracts her tendons to give his hand a gentle squeeze, taking meticulous note of the light gasp that escapes him in response. It doesn't sound like a negative one, but she needs to be absolutely certain if she wants to get this right.

"Is this okay?" She double checks.

He doesn't reply for a short while after that. The silence stretches on long enough that she prepares to remove her hand from his, now sure that this was a step in the wrong direction that needed to be remedied. Just as she's about to relax her grip however, she hears a quiet sniffle from the boy in front of her, his nose creasing ever so slightly as it releases the sound. He repeats the motion a couple extra times, with more of his face creasing alongside his nose, and then she notices the beginnings of tears start to well up at the corner of his ducts.

Before any can escape his sockets to stream down his cheeks, he brings his free arm up to wipe it across his face and finally speaks again, the quietest that she'd ever heard him.

"S-Sorry.. I just.. N-Nobody's ever been t-this n-nice to me b-before.." He softly cries, his words interrupted by an irregular pattern of sniffles.

Her heart practically shatters at how broken he looked from a single act of kindness, but she holds strong and doesn't let it show on her face. This poor boy.. he deserved so much better than what he had been dealt. It fills her with grief that no-one, not a single person outside of his own mother, had given him the chance be anything but a fractured husk, or believed in him when he said he wanted to be a hero, or even just let him be a normal kid. A normal kid who just so happened to be Quirkless.

That hypothetical person might not have existed back then, but Mina's here now. And she's gonna do her damndest to give back what was taken from him by a simple dash in the 'Quirk' section on his ID, no matter what.

She lightly rubs her thumb over his hand as she soothes him. "It's gonna be okay, Midori. You're not getting expelled."

"B-But what if-" She brings a finger up to his lips to stop his worried rambling.

"If the faculty brings it up, we'll tell them what happened. You're not gonna get in trouble, Midori. I promise."

The boy continues his light sniffling as he weakly asks her a question. "We..?"

"Yes, we." She confirms with a reassuring nod, "I'll be right there alongside you, the whole time. You have my word."

He just looks at her in awe, like she gifted him the entire universe, before his mouth sets in a determined line, and he grasps her hand firmly.

"Then.. the same goes for you, alright? If there's anything you need me for, I promise I'll be there too, Ashido-san."

Her own face stays stunlocked for just a moment, before it spreads into a small smile as she responds to him, shifting their handhold to a handshake. "Deal." She says with a nod of finality, and they both shake on it in sync, sealing their newly upgraded friendship with an extra unspoken vow.

After their handshake ends, Midoriya's gaze drifts down to their joined limbs before his irises shrink in their sockets, and he practically rips his hand away from hers to bring it up to his neck in embarrassment.

She just watches the motion with an amused upturn of her lips. Apparently, holding hands without the veil of emotional support to shroud his awkwardness was still a bit too much for him to handle. That's alright, they could work on that later.

"Right, shall we head back now?" She jerks a thumb over her shoulder back towards the direction she arrived from, and he agrees with a nod, before turning around to pick up his gloves from the floor and shuffle them back onto his hands.

As he does that, they start walking down the corridor towards the command centre, falling in step next to each other almost instinctively. When they're close to approaching the hallway containing the door they both exited, Mina speaks up one last time to give him a final boost of confidence.

"I wouldn't worry too much about All-Might, by the way. He's kind of a pushover when it comes to teaching, I doubt he'll be actually mad at you for leaving."

The green-haired boy sucks in a breath through his gut. "Yeah, I suppose it could be worse.." He concedes, "It's not like he's being malicious about the whole Quirkless thing. He's just.. old-fashioned."

"Right." She nods with a determined grin, "So, all we gotta do is force him to update his beliefs a little. Mainly through kicking ass in heroics." She finishes, punctuating her statement with a fist to her open palm.

He lets out a small laugh at her antics, and she gives him a warm smile as she continues. "We should also probably tell Aizawa about what happened, he's really on top of this sort of thing."

Midoriya stops his laughter as he processes her words. "Huh. I.. I kinda forgot they actually take Quirkless discrimination seriously at UA." His face quirks up into a little lopsided smile, as if people actually listening to his troubles was a quaint idea to him, "Neat."

That last word makes her let out a laugh of her own. "Ha! 'Neat'? You sound like an old man, dude!"

The boy gasps in mock outrage, and folds his arms with a scornful 'harumph'. "Well, I never! Is that any way to speak to your elders, young lady?!"

Her heart lifts in her chest, and her mouth spreads out into an astonished open grin. He.. He was playing along with her jokes now? Hell, YES! This is what she's been waiting for!

"Oh, I'm so terribly sorry, Mr. Geriatric!" She responds sarcastically while bringing her hands up to her cheeks.

An idea springs to Midoriya's head, and he grabs his staff from over his shoulder to plant it on the ground as if it was a walking cane, making sure to hobble his knees and lean forward to really sell the act. "Now you listen here, whippersnapper! Back in my day, we didn't have these fancy schmancy hero costumes! No, back then we wore spandex, and we liked it!" His voice takes on the persona of an older man, squawking endlessly about the good old days.

She starts laughing again at the imitation and he joins her after a second, except his own laughter is still dampened down to a politely restrained level, much to her disappointment.

As they come up on the door to the command centre, they attempt to school themselves back down into neutral, though a few giggles end up slipping out here and there.

There was still a long way to go before things for Midoriya would even come close to being better, but this? Them side-by-side as they boldly march towards their shared adversary, joking together all the while?

It feels like a good first step.

Chapter Text

Midoriya wasn't exactly the most socially experienced guy around.

That was an established fact by this point, one that Mina knew extremely well. A life full of ostracization had left the boy broken, wary and scared of interacting with other people he wasn't familiar with. He'd even admitted directly that the only reason he believed her when she said she wanted to be his friend was that he knew she had a heroic spirit from his time analysing her, and wouldn't lie to him about something like that.

So, yeah. Midoriya and social isolation were not two unconnected topics in her mind. It still didn't stop Mina from being floored whenever she discovers something she'd accepted as a staple of life was barely even a concept for him.

"Whaaaaaaaat do you mean you've never been to the arcade?!"

The exclamation startles Midoriya so much that he almost loses his grip on his bag from where he'd been placing his belongings inside it. The two of them were just conversing whilst preparing for their after-school walk back to the dorms when the green-haired boy offhandedly dropped that bombshell on her.

Mina keeps staring at him in dumbstruck shock, convinced she must've heard wrong, before the boy clears his throat and explains himself.

"I m-mean, I never really had anyone to g-go with, so there wasn't much of a p-point."

Ah. Right. Why don't you stick that foot a little further into your mouth, Mina? You're only one slip away from calling him a straight-up loser by mistake.

Shaking her head to dispel those self-deprecating thoughts, she picks up on his wording and realises that the way he said it implied he wasn't against the idea.

"Well.. you've got people to go with now.. wanna give it a shot?" She offers with a slight smile.

"W-With the others??" Midoriya doesn't look as excited by the prospect of their classmates joining them, "U-Uh, I dunno. Won't they find it weird that I've never b-been before?"

Her smile falters only a little as she responds to him. "Midori, c'mon.. They're our friends. Your friends. They're not gonna make fun of you for something like that." Then she remembers two specific 1-A members and amends her statement, "Well, maybe the Chuckle Brothers would have something to say, but it's not like they'd be mean about it." She finishes, remembering the amount of prodding Todoroki had received from Hanta and Denki when the elemental boy once revealed he'd never had an ice cream before.

Midoriya still looks a bit cautious about the idea, so she softens her voice and strikes up a deal that'll be a little more enticing. "If it makes you feel better, we can just not tell them? Just say that we're going to the arcade, nobody has to know that it's your first time."

The green-haired boy mulls it over for a moment, before responding with an agreeing nod. Her smile brightens again, and she whips out her phone. "Great! Alright, I'll just see who's available.." She swipes to the class group chat and starts typing a message, murmuring the words out loud as she did so, "Me and Midori.. going to the arcade.. anyone wanna come. There! How's that?" She holds her phone out for him to check the message, and after he gives her his confirmation, she hits send.

The two of them then continue quietly packing away their stuff, and it's only when they start heading back to the dorms to get ready for their outing that Mina feels her phone buzz from the first response.

Predictably, Tooru was onboard from the get-go; that girl loved her arcades. To Mina's pleasant surprise however, a lot of the others were also accepting the invitiation, and it's not long before most of the class are planning to join. Even the more introverted members of 1-A like Tokoyami were getting involved, though she's pretty sure that a certain sentient quirk had something to do with that case in particular.

She scrolls down the group chat, taking a mental note of all the attendees, before she halts her thumb as she stumbles across a short back-and-forth between Eijirou and Bakugo in the midst of all the responses.

'Rock 'N Stone: @Blasty u coming too bro?'

'Blasty: hell no. if dekus going, then i aint'

Mina scoffs indignantly at the message. It's about what she expected from the blond anyway, but did he really have to be so rude about it? Especially in the class group chat where Midoriya could see it?

The green-haired boy notices her little sound of annoyance, and shifts his attention to look at her. "A-Ashido-san? Are you alright?" He asks with a trace of worry in his voice.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Just Bakugo being Bakugo." She answers with a roll of her eyes, and Midoriya shuffles nervously from where he was walking.

"R-Right.. He would t-turn down the offer if he knew I was going.."

Had she not known Midoriya as well as she did by this point, she would've missed the self-admonishing undertone to those words. Thankfully, she does catch it, and responds accordingly to try and lift his spirits.

"Mehhhh, let him." She waves a dismissive flick of her hand, "If he wants to miss out on a fun trip because he can't stop being a grouchy little Grinch for five minutes, then that's his problem."

It seems to work, because Midoriya accepts her statement with a small shrug of his shoulders. "That's true, I suppose.." He then glances down to her phone with a look of curiosity, "Um, who else is coming?"

"Uhhhhhhh.." She stalls for time as she scrolls up to the start of the messages, and then quickly makes her way back down, listing all of the affirmative responses. "Tooru, Ochako, Eijirou, Tsuyu, Hanta, Denki, Satou, Tokoyami.. whole buncha people, really." She then looks over to him with her brow raised in slight concern, "You gonna be alright with that?"

To her surprise, Midoriya nods firmly with a small smile on his face. "Yeah! I mean, it's like you said, they're our friends, right?"

Mina feels her own smile widen at his burst of confidence, but before she can reply to his rhetorical question, she tunes back in to the conversation on her phone screen and realises that some of their friends are already waiting in the common room for the others to get ready.

Not wanting to waste precious daylight, she quickly shows the new messages to Midoriya as an explanation before speaking up again.

"Right, no time to lose. We gotta go get changed as well. Race you to the dorms!" She starts sprinting off ahead, sparing a glance behind her just in time to witness him follow suit.

"A-Ah, wait up, Ashido-san!"

---

"And then, he starts blushing like crazy! I don't think I've ever seen his feathers so red!"

"Dark Shadow, cease this at once!" Tokoyami shouts in desperation, his feathering mimicking the colour his quirk had just described.

"Geez, fine. You're no fun, Fumi." Dark Shadow replies in her crackly voice, pouting as much as being a bird-like mass of darkness would allow.

Mina brings her hand up to her mouth to stifle her laughter from her place next to the two. No matter how many times she saw it, it was always hilarious witnessing the normally eloquent bird boy stumble over himself trying to control his quirk.

The hero students and shadow were walking side-by-side down the street in one of the many mini-groups that had formed from their band of arcade goers as they head towards said building, all changed into winter casual clothing and ready for a fun evening out.

As the two avians continue squabbling with each other, Mina feels her focus drift to the group just in front of her, consisting of Midoriya, Ochako and Iida. Ever since the gravity girl dragged their Quirkless friend off after heroics class on his first day, the trio had made it somewhat of a routine to spend their lunch breaks together, a routine that Mina wholeheartedly endorsed.

Don't get her wrong, she likes hanging out with Midoriya, and would be more than happy to spend her own lunch breaks with him as well, but she recognises that it probably would be best if he formed some additional social circles, ones that didn't directly involve her. A one-person support system is usually a quick road to disaster, after all.

At that moment, Ochako finishes telling a joke of some kind, and it must've been a pretty funny one considering that even Iida was guffawing at the punchline. Midoriya's laughing too, obviously, and Mina smiles softly at the fact that he's getting progressively more and more comfortable around other people, though there are still some roadblocks to overcome.

Unfortunately, it seems like him playing along with the pink girl's jokes was a one-time thing, as on all occasions after he simply responded to them with that disappointingly tempered laughter, or blushing if they were of a more teasing nature.

No matter. She's more than willing to gradually work up to that point again, and now that she's had a glimpse of the end results, her efforts to reinstate the boy's lost confidence have only doubled.

"Mina!" Dark Shadow's giddy voice cuts through her train of thought, and she shifts her attention to the sentient quirk. "You wanna hear about what happened with Fumi and Hitoshi the other day?"

Tokoyami's feathers rouse at the offer, and he straightens his back as his eyes widen with fury. "Oh, don't you dare-!" The boy attempts to wrestle his companion back down to prevent his secrets being spilled, but to no avail as the shadow keeps evading his hands whilst taunting him in a playful tone.

Mina just laughs once again at the display, before shaking her head mirthfully and continuing her stride, the two bird beings gradually falling behind due to their fighting. Midoriya notices the noise, and turns his head around to see her now walking by her lonesome. She gives him a small wave, and he returns it with a shy smile on his face.

After glancing back at his two conversing companions, the green-haired boy discreetly slows his pace until he's right next to Mina instead, and she leans over to whisper a question to him. "You excited?" She asks quietly, her smile spreading out into a grin.

"Y-Yeah!" He replies enthusiastically, making sure to dampen his own volume as well, before asking a question himself, "It's just.. I realised back at the dorms that I only really know what arcades look like because of TV shows and stuff. Are they actually like that in real life?"

One half of her face scrunches up as she gestures a 'so-so' motion with her hand. "Sorta. They tend to make them way less varied in fiction, though. Don't worry, I'll show you around once we get there." She reassures with a wink, and a blush blooms on his cheeks as he replies to her softly.

"Thanks, Ashido-san.."

She just gives him a smile in response, and the two of them turn back to face ahead, content to leave the rest of the walk in a comfortable silence.

"Woah.."

Mina tries to hold back a laugh at the absolutely stupefied look on Midoriya's face as he takes in the arcade interior. Almost as soon as they walked through the door, the boy was completely stunned by the mass of colours swirling around him and the cacophony of noises ringing out from the speakers of the different machines.

Clearing her throat and stepping just in front of him to get his attention, she presents the establishment with a wide flourish of her arms and an animated spring to her voice.

"Welcome.. to the Hi-Score Arcade!" She exclaims before placing a hand on her chest, "My name is Mina, and I'll be your tour guide for this evening. We'll experience crazy machines, cooling refreshments, and video games of which the likes you've never seen!" She then clasps her hands in front of her and shifts her tone to be more polite, like a flight attendant performing a safety briefing, "Please make sure to stick with the guide at all times, wouldn't want ya to get lost." She finishes with a cheeky grin, and Midoriya chuckles in response to her display.

"S-Sounds good. I'm, uh.. in your hands." He says with a nervous smile, clearly still a bit anxious about this new environment.

The other students had gone on ahead, already knowing what activities they wanted to partake in, but Denki notices that the fluffy-haired duo have stopped in their tracks and turns to address them. "Yo, you guys good?"

"Yep!" She calls out to him before jerking a thumb towards Midoriya, "Just gonna show Midori around. It's his first time coming to this arcade, so he wanted to check how different it was from the other ones he's seen."

She'd spent the remaining time during the walk towards the arcade perfecting her explanation for why she was giving the green-haired boy a tour, which wasn't even technically a lie if you looked at it a certain way.

"Ahhh, right." The electric boy nods in understanding, "Well, I'll catch you guys later, then." He gives them a lazy wave as he turns back around, and they both mirror it before Mina shifts her attention to Midoriya again.

"Okay, first thing; the diner. Gotta show you where the pit-stop is in case you need a quick refresh." She explains, already setting off in the direction of their target with him following closely behind. It being a weekday evening, the arcade is nowhere near as packed as it usually is on the weekend, which makes traversing through the corridors a pleasantly uncumbersome task, and they reach their destination in no time.

'Diner' is a pretty apt description of the building's food area, plastered with a multitude of tables atop a black and white checkered floor, complete with plastic chairs spanning a variety of different colours. Not exactly the highest of culinary experiences out there, but it works for what the arcade is going for, with a bright neon menu shining overhead and plenty of advertisements for the various products on sale.

The extremely bored employee behind the counter gives the two hero students a glance as they survey the area, but otherwise keeps to himself as he continues stacking cups, or whatever it is concession stand workers do besides serving customers.

"Here we are!" Mina announces jovially, "The diner, food court, bar, whatever you wanna call it. Need a little pick-me-up? This is the place."

Midoriya was busy perusing the menu, but still gives a nod to show he's listening. "There's a lot to choose from here.. I didn't expect them to have so much.."

She follows his gaze and folds her arms over each other. "Yeah.. pretty good selection, all things considered." Then she leans towards him inconspicuously, "Though, word of advice; do not get the takoyaki. That shit is rancid." She spits the word out like it's dirt, and her body involuntarily shivers as she remembers the first and only time she had made the mistake of eating the arcade's sorry excuse for a snack.

The green-haired boy looks suitably warned as he responds in a slightly disturbed voice. "N-Noted.."

Mina straightens up and places her hands on her hips. "Right! First stop completed! Now, it's time for the real show." She turns around and beckons the boy to follow her with a sweeping motion of her arm, "C'mon, I got just the thing to get us started!"

She was quite proud of herself for thinking up this idea, as it was pretty much the simplest concept to grasp in the world. After approaching one of the many claw machines strewn about the arcade floor, they both stand there gazing at it, with Midoriya eyeing the game with a particular interest.

"I see what you mean now.. Yeah, I've heard of these before." He says with a hand to his chin.

"Ah, good! I don't gotta explain it then." She reaches into her pocket and pulls out her wallet, rummaging around for some loose change. After grabbing six 100 yen coins, she presents them to the green-haired boy. "Here! Have a few games, on me."

Midoriya's eyes widen at the offer, and he brings his hands up to flail them around in front of him. "U-Uh, no! That's- I c-couldn't-"

"You could." She insists, jutting her coin-filled hand a little closer to him.

The Quirkless boy was holding stronger than expected, however. "S-Seriously, Ashido-san. You've already d-done so much for me.."

"Well, consider this a down payment then." She practically shoves the money into his own hands before continuing, "Just put it on my tab."

Midoriya glances down in surprise at the coins gathered in his palms for a moment, before he looks back up at her with an unimpressed raise of his brow. "You're never gonna ask me to pay this back, are you?"

She just gives him a smug grin. "Now you're getting it."

"Ashido-san! That's playing dirty!" He whines with a pout.

Her mind instantly concocts a response to turn this back around on the green-haired boy and fluster him to the point where he couldn't refute her even if he wanted to. "Oh, it is? Good thing I like being dirty sometimes, then." She caps it off with a wink in his direction.

His face instantly turns beet-red at the light innuendo, and he stiffly swivels towards the machine just so that he wouldn't have to look directly at her anymore. She just chuckles at his reaction and the sound causes his cheeks to colour an impossible shade of crimson as he inserts a coin into the slot.

Midoriya doesn't win anything at the claw machine. He gets close a couple of times, but the various prizes he aims for slip out of the hand's grasp on each try. Once his six coins are all used up, they both stroll away to look for something else to do, the green-haired boy looking somewhat disappointed at his lack of earnings.

"Aw, don't feel too bad about it, man." Mina tries to cheer him up, "These things are rigged to high hell anyway, the chance of winning is practically zero."

The boy's face scrunches up at that, his disappointment shifting to confusion. "Then, why do people play them?"

"For fun!" She explains with a grin on her face, "Like sure, you know you're getting scammed. But it's the thrill, the anticipation, the 'maybe this time..' that keeps you coming back!" She spreads her arms out wide to emphasise her point, "I mean, basically all of those prize type machines are like that."

Midoriya still looks a little perplexed by the concept. "That.. seems like a very predatory business tactic."

"Yep, that's arcades for ya." Mina comments dryly, "Here, how 'bout we go find some less 'predatory' stuff to play?" She offers, and the green-haired boy perks up before nodding along enthusiastically, excited to see what else the place had in store for them.

After that, they took a long walk around the arcade, stopping at any machines that catch Midoriya's fancy, and they end up getting a good variety of games in. Mina's more than happy to let him take the wheel, and she's absolutely loving his reactions to the machines he'd never seen before, including when he inspected the complex controls of the sim racer cabinet like it was a supercomputer. Of course, she insists on paying each and every time despite his objections, and waves away any counterarguments he might have with a multitude of excuses.

When they get to the section containing the purikura booths, they stumble across Momo and Kyouka already inside one of them and getting the most out of their time together. It's almost comedically obvious which of the two had the idea to enter the picture booth, as the heiress is sporting a wide grin on her face as she greets the fluffy-haired pair. Kyouka looks a little less jazzed to be involved in the process, but still content to follow her girlfriend's lead.

That's not the only duo they meet, either. After Mina and Midoriya leave the couple to their devices, they come across Denki and Hanta engaged in an intense two-player match of 'Beat the Beat!', both of the boys' eyes locked onto the game to make sure they don't miss any of the titular beats as they fly across the screen. It's a close game, but Hanta evidently has slightly better rhythm than his friend, as he reigns victorious over the electric boy.

After thoroughly celebrating his win, he then notices the two other hero students spectating and greets them casually whilst leaning against the machine. "What's up, guys?"

"The sky." Mina replies, quick as a whip, and Hanta rolls his eyes to the back of his head at the joke, having heard it thousands of times by this point.

Denki chooses that point to turn around and say hello as well. "Yo!" He cheers jovially with a wave of his arm before addressing Midoriya specifically, "You having a good tour, dude? How you liking the place so far?"

The green-haired boy straightens up at the question, and he answers it dutifully. "U-Uh, yeah! It's great! Um, A-Ashido-san's been showing me around.. it's kinda crazy the amount of stuff they have in here.."

"Oh, yeah." The electric boy responds with an easy smile, "I remember I got pretty overwhelmed my first time here too."

"I'll say." Hanta chimes in whilst slapping the other boy's forearm with the back of his hand, "You almost passed out doing DDR, dude."

Denki groans at the reminder. "That's only 'cause Mina's too good at it! I couldn't keep up!"

The rosette folds her arms over each other in triumph. "Damn straight I am!" She boasts with a smug grin on her face before continuing, "You guys got anything else lined up?"

The blond shrugs as an answer. "Eh, prolly just this again." He jerks a thumb back towards the rhythm game they'd been playing, and Hanta nods in confirmation.

"Speaking of which, let's get down and dirty with it." He pulls out another 500 yen coin from his pocket and slots it into the machine.

Mina feels a smirk spread across her face as the perfect tease comes to mind. "Oh, I'm sure you'd love to get 'down and dirty' with each other, wouldn't you?"

Both of their faces flush bright red at the insinuation, and Denki splutters wordlessly whilst Hanta just swivels back to her with a look of annoyance. "S-Shut up!"

She cracks up at their reactions, letting loose a loud laugh, and begins to turn away from the duo in search of her and Midoriya's next venture. "Alright well, you two lovebirds have fun!"

Hanta manages to find his voice properly again and he calls out one final jeer towards her. "Make sure you go easy on Midoriya! We don't need our night out cut short by a trip to the ER!"

"Yeah, yeah! Whatever you say, Morales!" She responds sarcastically with an eyeroll, and the tape wielder bites back by sticking out his tongue as they walk away from the two boys.

"Morales?" Midoriya had been pretty quiet during the tail end of that exchange, but his voice piping up brings her attention back to him.

"Yeah, it's one of my nicknames for him. Pretty sure you know where it's from, don't you?" She asks with a grin, as there's no way Mr. Hero Fanboy wouldn't have heard of one the most famous fictional heroes from the pre-quirk era.

The green-haired boy nods slightly. "Like Miles Morales, The Spider-Man. Right?"

"Bingo." She snaps her fingers in his direction, "Spider-Man and Hanta have got kinda similar powers, so I thought 'Eh, why not?'." She shrugs whilst keeping the grin on her face, before an idea crosses her mind. With the right prompt, it would be extremely easy to just..

"What do you think about him? Miles Morales, I mean." She asks Midoriya, who lights up at the chance to talk about his interests.

His eyes start sparkling and he practically vibrates like he can't contain himself. "He's like my favourite comic book hero!" All of his mannerisms point towards an impending Midori infodump, and she feels her grin widen in anticipation of it.

"The public reception to his introduction is such a fascinating peek into the general consensus of western audiences at the time. Did you know that after he debuted in the Ultimate Spider-Man line, a lot of people straight up hated his existence?"

"Really?" She asks with genuine interest.

Midoriya nods rapidly in response, his hands gesticulating wildly as he elaborates. "Yeah! It was only when he got an animated film adaptation a few years later that popular opinion on his character shifted to a more positive light, and then.." As he continues, his voice gradually shifts to a pleasant source of white noise, and Mina watches with a fond expression as he regales the history of the arachnid hero, making sure to keep at least part of her brain tuned in to his words since it is actually pretty interesting stuff.

He looks so at home discussing heroes that it's a wonder he isn't doing it 24/7, though he'd run out of air pretty quickly with how fast he shuffles through the sentences. Mina never thought she'd ever find someone who can be as chatty as her, even if it was under extremely specific circumstances.

The talking is primarily done by him, but she doesn't really mind. It's nice to take the passive side in a casual conversation for once, and the way he words his thoughts still makes it clear that he's talking to her, not at her. It's not like he's completely dominating the conversation, either. At certain points, she'd interject with a question or comment about his current stream of words, and he'd respond to it with the swiftness of a scholar, even going as far as to ask her opinion on specific topics as he flies through them.

That self-consciousness of his was sure to catch up with him eventually, though. Partway through his expositing, he suddenly stops in his tracks and her smile falters as a result, already able to predict what had caused it. Midoriya starts shuffling around nervously in place, hands wringing together in front of him, and after a moment he speaks quietly.

"S-Sorry, I'm t-talking too much again, aren't I?"

Her mouth begins to dip into a frown, before she catches it and shifts it to a stern line.

"Midori.." She warns in a semi-serious tone with her arms crossed, "What have I told you about your rambling?"

The boy at least has the decency to look sheepish as he answers her with a mumble. "..that it's not annoying.."

She turns her head and cups a hand to her ear expectantly. "Aaaaaand..?"

He huffs a small sigh before continuing, "..and that you like listening to it."

"Exactly!" She nods with a satisfied smile, "So don't feel like you gotta put a lid on it, alright bud?"

He still takes a moment to give her a return nod of confirmation, but it's less reluctant than it would have been a couple of weeks ago, so she takes it as a sign of progress.

Then something catches his gaze, and he turns to his left while squinting his eyes. "Is that..?"

His shift to confusion gives her pause, and she follows the direction he's facing to see what prompted it. Nothing sticks out to her except for the row of machines dedicated to Hero Fighter III: Tertiary Tackle. The beloved fighting game series was apparently based on a different set of games from the pre-quirk era, only the newer ones had rosters full of actual real-life heroes instead of the fictional characters that populated the legacy titles. It was a series that she dabbled in occasionally, though she wasn't nearly as much of a fan as some of her other friends.

Mina racked her brain for any reason Midoriya would take note of those specific machines, but was coming up empty. Unless..

Turning back to him, she questions the first logical conclusion her mind came to. "You play Hero Fighter?"

He jolts out of his trance, and brings a hand up to the back of his neck as he answers her. "Uh, s-sorta. My d-dad had the c-console version, so I played it a l-lot as a kid." His attention drifts back to the machines as he continues absent-mindedly, "It's been years since I last picked it up, though. I'm probably not that good at it anymore."

Her face lifts at the new information, and she jerks a thumb over to the area. "You wanna go run a couple sets? I'm always down for a HF session."

Midoriya's face also perks up at the offer, and he nods a few times in excitement. "U-Uh, yeah! That'd be fun!" Then a thought crosses his mind, and he tries to school his expression back to a serious one, "B-But I'm paying though! You've already spent too much money on me today!"

The statement has about as much bite as a golden retriever, but she still gives him kudos for the effort, and starts making her way over to the machines with an easy grin. "Alright, dude. Just don't think I'll be going easy on you for it." She turns around to face him as she continues walking backwards, "When I play, I play to win!" She finishes, giving him a cocky double point with her arms.

He stands there for a moment staring at her as she gets further away from him, before chuckling lightly and following. "I wouldn't expect anything less, Ashido-san."

---

As it turns out, she and Midoriya have very different definitions of 'not that good', because he absolutely stomps her in every single round with his All-Might against her Present Mic, all whilst having the gall to look just as shocked as her at his exceptional performance.

"I-I swear, I don't remember being this good at HF." He tries to pacify as the second K.O. graphic of the match flashes across the screen, bringing their first set to a humiliating 3-0 close. If it were anyone else, she'd think they were trying to rile her up with that line, but she knows Midoriya better than that.

Doesn't stop it from being annoying though. Unfortunately, as much as she wants to blame the matchup, she knows all too well from Tooru's passionate ranting that All-Might was firmly in the lower end of the tier list with last year's revision, so this loss was her own fault.

As if on cue with her thoughts, the light-bender happens to pass by the area at that moment and notices her two friends sat up at one of the machines, before changing course and heading straight towards the pair while greeting them. "Hey, guys!"

They both snap their attention over to the semi-transparent student, and Mina gives her a wave in response. "Hey, Tooru! Guess what? Midori here is a HF buff too!"

The other girl's eyes start practically sparkling at the prospect of another potential opponent in their class. "No way, really!? Oooooo, I'm calling next once you guys are done, I gotta see how he shapes up!"

"Eh, you can have this one. I'm all fightered out for the minute." Mina disembarks from the seat and lets Tooru take her place, "I'm gonna go get something to drink, you guys want anything?"

Tooru spares a glance to answer her, already selecting her character on the screen. "Diet soda, pretty please!"

The pink girl nods in confirmation before turning to the other player. "Midori?"

He starts a little at being addressed directly, and his brow furrows in confusion. "Uh, that's o-okay, Ashido-san. Like I s-said, you've spent t-too much on me already."

She resists the urge to roll her eyes at Midoriya's unbounding sense of selflessness, even for something as innocuous as a drink. He might be more stubborn on those matters than the average teenager, but he'll learn soon enough that there's nothing on Planet Earth that can stop Ashido Mina from spoiling her friends. In the meantime though, she'll have to use less conventional methods to get her desired answer.

"Hm? What was that?" She looks around in exaggerated puzzlement, "Tooru, did you hear a voice of some kind?"

The other girl snickers as she plays along with Mina's taunt. "Nope, not at all."

"Yeah?" She shrugs with a look of resignation, "Must've been the wind."

Midoriya just flicks his gaze between them for a moment before letting out a defeated sigh, shoulders sagging with the motion, and he finally answers her as a tiny smile creeps onto his face. "Um, c-could I j-just have a water, please?"

Switching her demeanour instantly, she clicks a finger gun in his direction whilst beginning to make her way towards the diner area. "Gotcha, two drinks comin' right up! Be back in a minute, besties!" She announces cheerfully before turning around fully and heading towards the counter, huffing a small laugh at the belated 'thank you!' that Midoriya called out after her.

She only makes it a third of the way towards her destination before her trip is derailed by another one of her friends.

"Heyyy, Mina. Could I talk with you for a sec?" Eijirou asks casually as he joins her side, "It's about Midoriya." He elaborates while his eyes dart towards the green-haired boy, who's now completely focused on playing his rounds against Tooru.

Though confused about the clearly premeditated ambush, she complies with his request. "Uh, sure." After looking around briefly to find a more secluded area near the diner, they both stroll over to it and stand face-to-face, the quieter ambiance allowing them to lower their voices a little.

Eijirou brings both hands together in front of his face as he details his query. "Okay, I know I said it's about Midoriya, but it's actually more about Kats."

Mina's even more perplexed by the shift in topic towards the Explosion user, and she says as much. "What about him?"

The red-haired boy shuffles around for a moment, trying to figure out how best to word his thoughts. "Okay, well it's like.. ever since Midoriya joined our class, he's been more.. difficult?" He winces slightly at the descriptor, "And I was wondering, since you're practically joined at Midoriya's hip, you might know why?"

Mina tenses at the question, mentally mapping out every possible response she could give to it. On one hand, Midoriya had specifically requested that she keep the details of his shared history with Bakugo on the down-low. But on the other, Eijirou was basically the only one in their class that the blond would be certain to listen to. If the Hardening user could manage to get through to him, then he might be able to make the other boy see the error of his ways and bring him back to the less aggressive version of Bakugo that Midoriya had described.

She thinks about it for a good half-minute, and after making up her mind, she sucks a breath through her teeth and clears her throat before answering her horn buddy. "Alright look, I can't give you the full details because Midori asked me not to say anything. The most I can say is that they didn't really get along in middle school." Technically an answer, but vague enough that it didn't break her promise to the green-haired boy.

Eijirou looks a little put-out at the lack of information, but he still nods in understanding. "Alright.. it's just, I'm a little worried about Kats. The last time he made such a stink over something was when he failed his first term practical, but that only lasted a couple days. And.." He leans in closer and lowers his voice a bit, "..I think he's got a problem with Midoriya being Quirkless."

Mina hisses a little in worry. Eijirou was a good hero, and an even better friend, but he did somewhat lack an awareness when it came to other people's inner thoughts. If even he's noticed Bakugo's animosity towards their other classmate's quirk status, then the blond must really not be keeping it subtle. Deciding to prod a bit and see what exactly was being said, she asks him to elaborate. "What do you mean?"

"Uh, well.." He rubs the back of his neck with his hand, "For starters, he gets in a huff if you talk about Midoriya around him. Doesn't even have to be a compliment or anything, just mentioning the guy gets him all riled up. Second, he's always calling Midoriya by that nickname.. I'm not going crazy, 'Deku' does mean useless, right?" He asks with a raised brow, and Mina just nods in confirmation.

The red-haired boy winces as he continues. "Right. Thought so. I know he's not exactly the nicest guy around, but that one just seems.. way too mean. Uh, third thing, and this is the one I'm most worried about.. Kats keeps talking about 'putting that shitty Deku in his place'." He frames that statement around air quotes, "I usually just kinda laugh it off 'cause I don't know what to say, but he keeps bringing it up enough that I'm starting to get a bit scared for him."

Yikes. From that angle, it sounds like the only thing stopping Bakugo from going full scorched earth on her Quirkless friend was Aizawa's threat of 'consequences' on his first day. Otherwise, the blond probably would've tried something already.

Eijirou's voice cuts through her thoughts. "Should I.. talk to him about it?" He asks, evidently having mulled over the idea before.

Mina hesitates. Midoriya seemed certain that the blond would eventually right himself around to become a more tolerable person, but honestly, she thinks the green-haired boy is giving his ex-friend a little too much credit. While Bakugo had technically tempered himself to a degree over the months she'd known him, in no small part thanks to Eijirou's influence, he was still loud and abrasive, and that was just towards people who annoyed him somewhat. Meanwhile, he pretty much hated Midoriya, to the point that he was still grumbling about the Quirkless boy's presence even weeks after he'd settled into their class.

Would it really be such a bad thing to give him a little push in the right direction through Eijirou?

"Yeah.." She starts slowly, "I think that might be a good idea. Just, make sure to keep it casual. He probably won't respond well if you start an intervention or something."

Eijirou coughs lightly into his fist before he replies to her. "No, yeah. Good call. I'll see what I can do." He places his hands on his hips, "Alright, that's all I really needed. I'm gonna go join Shoji back at the strength test machines. Later." He gives her a lazy salute while starting on his path back towards the Dupli-Arms user, and Mina replies in kind before returning to her journey for those drinks, all whilst hoping that she and her horn buddy weren't making a huge mistake with this move.

It's really hard not to feel vindicated watching Midoriya actually struggle in Hero Fighter after he wiped the floor with her earlier, but Mina still pumps her fist a bit in victory as Tooru finally brings the boy's health bar down to zero.

"Wooooo!" The light-bender cheers at her win before taking a long swig of her soda and turning towards her opponent. "Hoo, boy.. You really put up a fight there, man! Nice job!" She holds out a clenched hand for a fistbump, and Midoriya stares at it for a moment before returning the gesture awkwardly with his own.

"Uh, yeah! T-Thank you for playing with me, Hagakure-san!" He retreats his hand back to his side as he gives a little bow in his seat. Thankfully, Tooru seems to find the display as endearing as Mina does, since she just gives a light laugh in response.

"No problem, dude! We should have a rematch sometime, I have a feeling you've got potential.." She leans in slightly and squints her eyes, like she was examining him, and the green-haired boy shies away at the attention.

"Easy, girl. You're gonna make him freeze up if you keep pestering him like that." Mina admonishes lightheartedly with a roll of her eyes, and Tooru finally leans back in her seat.

"Ah, right.. Sorry, dude." She apologises sheepishly to the boy with a lopsided grin, and he's quick to reassure her that he doesn't mind with a customary flailing of his arms.

After finishing and subsequently binning their drinks, the trio start making their way elsewhere whilst discussing the outcome of their matches together. Midoriya's halfway through praising Tooru for her ingenious use of Ryukyu's Upperclaw to catch him off-guard after a quick cross-up when he's cut-off by another voice.

"Mina!" Dark Shadow pops up in front of the three, startling them to hell and back, before she continues as if her entrance was at all normal. "We've been looking all over for you! Come on, it's Revolution Time!" She doesn't even wait for a response as she heads back towards where Tokoyami and the others were presumably waiting for the rosette.

"Already??" She questions out loud before a wide grin spreads across her face and she turns to her two companions, one looking just as excited as her and the other seeming confused at the sentient quirk's demand. "No time to waste, let's go!" She continues before breaking out into a brisk walk, conscious of the fact they were very much indoors and that sprinting would likely only lead to injury.

She can hear the other hero students following her, before Midoriya appears by her side and asks what must've been on his mind. "A-Ashido-san? What's Revolution Time?"

Mina slows her pace a little to answer him properly, letting Tooru go on ahead in the process. "Okay, so we've got this little tradition in our class. Every time we come to the arcade, we have a competition in this one game. Don't really remember how it started, but knowing us it was probably some dumb bullshit."

A little white lie. She knew exactly how that classwide custom had started, but that story was rather embarrassing in hindsight, and what Midoriya didn't know wouldn't hurt him. She couldn't have him thinking she wasn't cool, after all.

"O-Okay.." The green-haired boy still looks perplexed, "And it's called 'Revolution Time' because..?"

"Because.." They both happen to turn the corner at that moment and find the rest of their classmates gathered around the machine of the hour, already getting into the swing of things with a duel between Kyouka and Denki, "It's short for Dance Dance Revolution!" She announces with a beaming smile, gesturing towards the large cabinet with both hands.

"Ohhhhh.." Midoriya lets out a little sound of understanding, and Mina continues with her hands placed on her hips.

"Pretty cool, huh?" She surveys the present crowd, her grin only widening at the turnout, "Y'know, this is the first time we've had such a large group, I might actually have to put some effort in this time." She cracks her fingers between each other before noticing the green-haired boy's questioning glance in her direction and elaborating, "Feast your eyes Midori, because you're looking at 1-A's reigning DDR champion!" She finishes with a proud grin and a thumb to her chest.

"DDR.." The boy muses to himself for a moment with a hand on his chin, before he straightens up and looks back over at her with a worried expression, "Wait, the game Kaminari-san almost p-passed out playing??"

She quickly assuages his fears before he gets too concerned. "Yeah, but don't worry about it. That was only one time, and he's learned how to pace himself since then. See?" She gestures towards the currently-dancing electric boy, who's very much enjoying himself with the game, and she notices Midoriya's shoulders relax slightly at the sight.

"C'mon, let's see if we can get a good angle." She motions with her head, and the two stroll up to the group of hero students, greeting their classmates as they approach. Once they get situated in a nice viewing spot between Ochako and Hanta, they stand there in relative silence watching the two on the platform desperately attempt to keep up with the notes scrolling up the screen.

Mina notices her green-haired friend glancing between the pads on the floor and the overhead display in slight confusion, clearly trying to figure out exactly how the game works, so she lends an explanation to save him the trouble.

"You see those arrows on the floor?" She starts, pointing to the pairing set of four directional arrows beneath their classmates' feet. Midoriya nods, and she continues. "You gotta try and time your feet hitting them with the arrows on the screen. The more arrows you get in a row, the higher your combo meter rises and you get a better score."

The Quirkless boy opens his mouth in realisation. "Ohhhh, I see! And the arrows are set up in such a way that it makes you dance if you want to get them all, right?" He questions with a raised brow.

"Yeah, you get it!" She confirms, "It gets real crazy at higher difficulties though. Those two are playing on Expert right now, I can tell." She jerks a thumb towards Kyouka and Denki to get her point across, "Meanwhile I play on Challenge only and lemme tell ya, that level does not let you rest."

His eyes widen at the explanation. "It gets harder..? It already looks pretty intense just from this." His face scrunches up into a wince as he resumes watching the two dance it out.

Before Mina can say anything else, Ochako chimes into the conversation from Midoriya's left. "Is this your first time seeing DDR, Midoriya-kun?" She asks with a tilted expression of confusion.

The boy flounders slightly before he remembers the excuse they came up with and replies to the brunette. "A-Ah, yes! The.. other arcades didn't have it." He gives her a sheepish smile.

It's at that point that Kyouka and Denki finish their song, and the punk girl groans loudly at the fact she lost by a not-insignificant margin to the blond. It made sense though, the girl was much more of a musician than a dancer, so after giving Denki a reluctant high-five, she disembarks from the platform and rejoins Momo in the crowd, sagging from exhaustion into her girlfriend's side as the taller girl starts petting her hair. The other students give the dancing pair a boisterous round of applause, before Ochako turns to Midoriya again and finishes their conversation.

"It's a lot of fun! You're gonna have a great time with it!" She gives him a bright grin before swiveling to her other side to begin conversing with Tsuyu. That sentence causes the boy's shoulders to tense up slightly, as though he just realised something gravely important.

Mina's brow furrows at the motion, and she prepares to ask him if something's up before she's interrupted yet again.

Shortly after Kyouka exited stage right, Denki had begun to seek out a new opponent for the next battle. The electric boy's gaze roams across the crowd of spectators, before stopping directly on Midoriya. "Oh dude, that's right! You've not done this with us before, have you? C'mon Midoriya, let's see what you got!" He beckons the Quirkless boy with a wave of his arm, but Midoriya stays bolted to the ground, seemingly unable to move.

The pink girl senses that something is off, and a closer inspection of her friend's body language reveals that he's shaking. Not just the light shaking that sometimes occurs when he's a bit nervous. No, these are practically full-on tremors, and she thanks the heavens that the rest of the crowd was too busy chatting amongst themselves to notice it. His eyes are wide in their sockets, and he's breathing heavily with his arms glued tightly to his sides, stood ramrod straight with his back at a 90° angle.

It's abundantly clear that whatever it is Midoriya wants to do in this situation, getting on that platform in front of everyone is definitely not it, but for some reason wasn't allowing himself to refuse Denki's offer.

She joins his side and decides to provide some space for him to breathe, responding to the electric boy on his behalf. "Uh, I think Midori's a bit tired at the moment. Maybe later?"

Denki just shrugs in response, looking nonplussed at the rejection. "Suit yourself." He turns to another person in the crowd, "Yo, Riki! Get up here, I still need to get you back for last time!"

Mina just sighs in relief and turns her attention back to Midoriya, who's still staring up at the stage and shaking dreadfully. She frowns slightly before pressing a hand gingerly against his back and carefully leading him away from the group of students, letting Satou and Denki have their long-awaited rematch as the crowd watches.

Once they reach the corner a good distance away from the others, Mina finally releases the light force on his back, and turns to face him properly before stopping in her tracks. She hadn't realised above all the noise of the arcade machines, but now standing directly parallel with him she can see that his lips are moving at a million words per minute, and his eyes are darting all over the floor, head tilted down towards it. His hands are still at his sides, fingers twitching erratically as he mutters under his breath.

She racks her brain for a solution to his predicament, and the arrangement they decided on after All-Might's heroics class flashes through her mind. She casts one final look towards his face, him not even registering her presence right in front of him, before sliding her left hand into his right one. Despite the slightly awkward angle, his grip is loose enough that she can slot her palm over his with no issue, and after cautiously coiling her fingers around the back of his hand, she gives it a gentle squeeze, just like she did back then.

Like a switch was flipped, Midoriya's mumbling stops in an instant, and she can see his eyes begin to refocus on his surroundings as he notices the change in environment. His breathing starts to even out, and after a moment his gaze darts down to their interlocked hands, before gradually climbing its way back up to meet her own.

"You okay?" She asks softly with a neutral expression, trying to gauge his current status.

For a moment the green-haired boy grasps for words before finally finding his voice again and answering her. "Y-Yes, I'm o-okay. T-Thank you, A-Ashido-san."

She gives a subtle nod in response whilst her expression stays somewhat impartial, only just dipping into concern as her mind races trying to figure out what could have possibly caused such a reaction in her friend.

The root problem was fairly obvious; Midoriya doesn't want to dance. Whether that was out of a dislike for the activity or if he just thought he wasn't good enough at it, Mina didn't know. What she did know was that even the idea of getting up on that stage in front of everyone terrified him just as much as the prospect of being expelled from UA. The reason for that level of fear was beyond her at this point, though.

Seeing as running her thoughts around her head was getting her nowhere, she just decides to outright ask the boy himself what the issue was.

"Midori.." She takes his other hand into her second one and starts rubbing light circles on both of them with her thumbs. "Talk to me, okay? What's up?"

"U-Uh, well.. I g-guess I'm j-just worried about m-making a fool of myself in front of everyone." He answers quietly, only just making eye-contact with her. "I d-don't really like d-dancing, anyway." He adds, looking almost embarrassed at the admission.

"Okay.." She starts, not really understanding the problem still, "That's alright, you don't have to. We'll just tell them that you're not up for dancing, problem solved." She tries to comfort him, but his eyes drift even further away from hers instead.

"B-But.." He says something else after that singular word, but it's too quiet for Mina to hear.

"Hmm?" She gently prompts him to repeat himself, straining her ears so that she'd catch it this time.

"Y-You.. you said it was a class tradition, though.." His answer is still only barely audible, but it's enough for Mina to piece together the route his mind had gone down. Suddenly, his conflicted response to Denki's offer made a whole lot more sense.

Midoriya was a pathological people pleaser. If he thought something would inconvenience someone else, he'd go out of his way to make sure that thing didn't happen. While not a negative trait by itself, the green-haired boy often took it to a point where he'd actively trouble himself for other people, which wasn't very healthy to be doing repeatedly.

Mina was still in the process of trying to make him un-learn that behaviour and act more in his own interest for once, but it was a bit of an uphill battle. She certainly wasn't helping either of them by saying stupid shit like referring to a dance tournament as a 'class tradition'. Midoriya was desperate to fit in with his peers, despite the fact that everyone already liked him anyway, so even implying that there was the slightest chance he'd be left to the wayside was a surefire method to get his worry synapses charged.

"Oh.. and you thought- I'm sorry, Midori. I didn't mean to make it sound like it was a.. rite of passage, or something." She apologises softly before continuing, "I just meant that it's a fun thing we do sometimes. That doesn't mean you have to take part if you don't want to. We'll still be your friends, either way." She gives both of his hands a reassuring squeeze.

However, Midoriya's expression stays in that worried formation as he shakes his head vigorously. "N-No! I-If I don't do this, then e-everyone will know I'm lame and don't know how to have fun and they'll stop wanting to be around me and-"

"Midori!" She cuts him off with another squeeze of his hands, "I promise that no-one here is going to think less of you for not getting up on that platform. I mean, Momo never participates in these. She only watches. And I highly doubt Tokoyami is the dancing type, so he'll probably sit out too. Everyone still likes them, so I can tell you for certain that it's not gonna make the whole class turn their backs on you, alright?"

The green-haired boy just stares at her in shock for a moment before he finally relaxes, airing out a breathless chuckle as he gives her a wobbly smile. "Thanks, Ashido-san.. I needed to hear that." Then a thought occurs to him, and his eyes harden as he continues with a furrowed brow. "But, don't apologise for what you said before. It's my fault, I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions-"

"And I should have considered how you might take that statement." She counters firmly with a resolute edge to her words. She's just about to get into a heated debate on how she's in the wrong here before she remembers there's a dance competition currently going on across the room, one that won't last forever. If they started arguing on this, they'd likely be here all night and Midoriya would completely miss the experience, so she offers a compromise instead. "How's about, we're both at fault and we'll both try to do better?"

The boy's eyes soften again as he huffs a laugh in response, suddenly looking way healthier than he did five minutes ago. "Alright.. that sounds fair enough."

"Cool." Giving him a return smile as she slowly releases her grip on his hands, she motions her head back towards the crowd of hero students. "Now, wanna watch me kick these guys' asses?"

He lets out a heartier laugh at that before replying with a nod, and they both head back to where the boys were just finishing up their dance battle. It was apparently a close one, as the two are sweating profusely and panting as they double over, and the screen shifts to the results menu to reveal that Denki just barely beat Satou with a minimal lead. The sugar rusher huffs a laboured sigh at his loss, but doesn't take it too badly as he ambles off the platform towards his little cheerleader squad of Tooru and Eijirou, both of which are already complimenting the boy on his performance.

Meanwhile, Denki looks about ready to tap out, before he notices Mina in the audience and the fire in his eyes reignites. "There she ish! Right, Pinky! Get up here, I gotta score to shettle!" His words are slurring from how tired he is, and his body is swaying on the spot trying to stay upright.

Everyone in the crowd just watches his speech with incredulous looks, and the rosette folds her arms over each other as she raises an eyebrow. "I think you've had enough, dude. You should probably call it quits before you actually pass out this time."

Denki mulls over her words for a moment before giving a resigned shrug and making his way off the platform. "Yeh, you're prolly right. Ahm gonna get a wahter." He starts trudging towards the diner area, and Hanta joins him a second later to support him by the shoulder and make sure he doesn't topple over, all whilst giving his bromantic praises to the blond. Mina watches the display with a smirk on her face, knowing that this would be gold material to bring up to the boys at a later date and embarrass them.

She hears a snicker from her side and shifts her gaze to find Midoriya covering his mouth as he tries not to laugh at Denki's currently inebriated demeanour. The green-haired boy notices her watching him, and turns to face her properly whilst folding his arms in a similar manner to hers.

"'He's learned how to pace himself', huh?" He throws her previous words back in her face, and she rolls her eyes mirthfully as she responds to him.

"Okay, smartie pants. He is usually better than this, but I guess the adrenaline got to him."

"No kidding." The boy chuckles once again, shaking his head in disbelief.

She feels a grin spread across her face, pleased that he was feeling better now, before she rolls her shoulders in a circular motion to stretch the muscles. "Alright, lemme show you how a real Dance Dance champ gets it done." She finishes her stretches and jogs her way onto the Player 1 spot on the platform, calling out to the crowd as she did so, "Right, who wants a go with the Alien Queen? I'm down for any challenger, as long as you don't mind your ass being taken six ways to Sunday!"

Unsurprisingly, one of the first voices to call a response is Tooru's, as the light-bender jumps up onto the spot next to hers. "I'll take that bait! But I ain't gonna make it easy for you, Pinky." She challenges with a smirk, putting clear emphasis on her hero name.

The other hero students start chanting some made-up cheer as they set up the game, with Midoriya joining the ensemble of voices after a minute's hesitation. Mina feels the grin on her face widen at his encouragement, the mildly shaky 'You can do it, Ashido-san!' pumping through her veins like a shot of caffeine. The noise only gets more rambunctious once the song begins its opening crawl, and the rosette feels her limbs instinctively loosen as the dancing part of her brain takes over.

The first notes fly up the screen and Mina loses herself to the music, body running on autopilot as she stomps against the arrowed pads on the floor in time with the beat. Her arms are moving every which way, jutting out into confident poses with each completed motion, and while the extra flourishes aren't technically necessary for the game, it wouldn't be a proper round of DDR if she didn't give it her all. Luckily, she's become so proficient at the dancing game that she only requires a quick glance every couple of seconds to track the upcoming beats, and then her body does the rest.

Most of the spectating students are singing along to the song blasting through the cabinet speakers, and Mina can't help but strain her ears a little to check if one of those voices belongs to a certain greenbean. When she can't pick out the timbre of his vocal chords, she relaxes her drums and focuses fully on the game once again, a little disappointed but not surprised that Midoriya wouldn't join in the singalong.

She just hopes he's enjoying himself, at least.

Her whole face is covered with sweat by the time her foot lands on the pad to complete the final note and finish the track, and the crowd erupts into cheers as the screen flips to the results section to reveal the astronomical gap in points between the two dancing hero students. Tooru didn't do badly by any stretch of the imagination, but Mina's not the 1-A DDR champ for nothing, and that's clear to see looking at the large difference in size between the two bars displaying each player's score.

"Aw, damn." Tooru manages to get out between desperate gasps for air, before holding out a closed hand towards her friend for a fistbump, one that Mina accepts with a tired push from her own fist, only slightly less winded than the light-bender was after their dance duel.

Once she regains a bit of lost oxygen, she turns to face the roaring group of students, though she's only focused on one particular person's reaction.

Oddly enough, Midoriya is the only one not cheering, his eyes wide and his jaw hung open slightly as if he were in a trance. His cheeks are blotted in a full brick-red shade, and he's staring at her like there was nothing and nobody else in the room at that moment.

Hopping down from the platform, she makes her way towards him and feels a small smirk raise the corners of her mouth as she addresses the boy head-on. "So, how'd I do?"

Midoriya doesn't respond to that, still staring at her in that hypnotic state. His gaze stays locked onto her even as she moves a bit closer, but his irises are unfocused and hazy.

After a couple seconds of awkward silence, she clears her throat and tries again. "Yo, Earth to Brainstorm. You in there, dude?" She waves a hand in front of his face, and he finally joins the room again with a startled yelp.

"A-Ah! W-What? Oh, s-sorry! I.. I must've s-spaced out." He brings a hand to the back of his neck while his cheeks somehow get even redder, making his diamond freckles stick out and gleam against the overhead lighting.

"I'll say! You didn't even notice me walking up to you!" She places her hands on her hips before continuing, "What's on your mind, huh? Must've been pretty interesting if it distracted you from all this noise." She gestures to their other classmates, who've started chatting amongst themselves again by this point.

For some reason, Midoriya's face goes nuclear red at her question, and he squeaks out a non-commital answer. "N-N-Nothing! It's n-not important!"

Her brow raises at his panicked response. "You sure? Seems like it's eating you up a bit."

The boy, in his embarrassed state, just points both of his thumbs up as he darts his gaze away from her, his face reaching levels of crimson she didn't even know were possible. "Y-Yep! A-All good here!" He brings his thumbs back down as he moves on to a different topic, still refusing to look directly at her, "U-Um, your dancing was a-amazing, Ashido-san! I didn't know y-you could move like that!"

Mina's face blooms into a full smile at the compliment. It was no small feat that had lead to her prowess in the dancing arts, it being the result of several years spent practising with many injuries in the process. "Why, thank you!" She responds genuinely before beginning to dust her forearm off, "I did a lot of practice when I was younger, so now I've got it down to a science!" She boasts lightheartedly with a joyful laugh.

"Yeah, you do.." The breathy tone he replies with gives her pause, and she shuffles her attention back to the green-haired boy to find him looking at her with a dopey grin on his flushed face. Before she can begin to think about asking what the expression was for, he snaps out of it and starts flailing his arms around as the blush on his cheeks darkens again. "I-I mean- You're v-very good at dancing, it's no w-wonder you had a lot of practice!"

Though confused at why he'd suddenly dipped back into his trance for a moment, she ultimately decides to shrug it off and chalk it up as another Midori-ism, and then her thoughts are interrupted by another person calling out to her.

"Mina! You good for another round, kero?" Tsuyu's already taken her place on the platform, and Mina gives the amphibian a thumbs up in response.

"Sure thing!" She calls back, before turning to Midoriya and addressing him more casually, "Looks like you're gonna get to see some more practice, Midori! Make sure to savour it!" She leaves him with that final statement before joining her friend back on the podium, completely missing the way his gaze followed her retreating figure.

After everyone had their fill of dancing and the sun was well past setting, the 1-A students decided to call it a day and head back to the dorms, this time with the cool nighttime breeze blowing in the wind.

As they all walk down the street, in a similar mini-group formation to which they'd arrived (with enough space between the groups to have at least some semblance of privacy), Mina finds herself instinctively falling in line with Midoriya once again, and was now rambling about the differences between the many versions of DDR that she's played over the years. It should've been a nice relaxing wind down after their fun trip out, but something about the green-haired boy had been bugging her for a little while now.

Ever since she got up on that stage with Tooru, he'd been suspiciously muted with his words, only responding to her stream of sentences with the bare-minimum requirements. It was starting to reach the point that she was getting legitimately worried about him, and admittedly a little frustrated at his apparent lack of interest in their conversation. However, she's pretty sure he's not trying to be rude, because while he may be treating their dialogue with indifference, the same can not be said for how he's regarding Mina herself.

During their walk back to the Heights Alliance dorms, the boy had not taken his eyes off of her a single time, not even once. His face is flushed bright red from the cold air as he stares at her directly from the side, just barely staying above that trance-like state he was in at the arcade.

She's had to pull him out of the way from directly walking into a lamp post three separate times now, and during each of those moments she'd noticed something peculiar.

Midoriya is not a person who was used to sudden physical contact. He startled when people surprised him with casual bumps on the arm, or when Eijirou performed one of his friendly arm-around-the-shoulder manoeuvres, something the boy had thankfully stopped once he realised that Midoriya wasn't exactly a fan of it. The only person he seemed to accept those sorts of offhand touches from was her, which is why this new development confused her so much.

When she grasped his arm to gently lead him away from smashing headfirst into those lamp posts, the limb had locked in place, and he let out a quiet noise as the red on his face turned even darker, reaching all the way up to his ears. The first time it happened, she'd brushed it off as just a reaction to an unexpected yank. However, once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern. And boy, was she starting to sense a pattern here.

By the fourth time she pulls him away from yet another crash-course collision, and he responds in the same exact manner, she decides to cut off her rambling and see if there's an actual reason at play for the sudden aversion to her touch.

"Are you okay, dude? You've been spacing out for like, the whole evening."

Her finally addressing it directly seems to knock him out of the spell, and his eyes widen as he brings his arms to flail around in that classic Midoriya fashion.

"Y-Yes! I'm a-alright! Alllll good here!" He spouts desperately, mirroring his earlier reaction inside the arcade.

She just raises an unimpressed brow in his direction as she responds to him dryly. "You've almost gotten a concussion like four times over, man." She then shifts her expression to be more open as she gives him a small smile, "C'mon, it's just me. Tell Mina how you're feelin', bud."

The boy looks sheepishly down at the ground as he starts wringing his hands together. "Right, s-sorry. I-I've been ignoring you this whole time, haven't I? That wasn't very nice of me, I'm sorry." He apologises again, and she feels any lingering irritation at his earlier behaviour dissipate from the genuine remorse in his voice.

"Apology accepted." She notices the tension in his shoulders loosen at her words, and she continues, "Now.. what's on your mind?"

The red on his face darkens to an impossible shade, and he very purposefully tries to look at anything except her. "U-Uh.. I just- In the arcade.. I had a revelation, a-and I'm still kinda freaking out about it."

Her brow raises in concern. "That bad?" She asks, mind racing about what kind of discovery could've possibly led to such an absent-minded daze.

However, he shakes his head fervently as he finally meets her eyes again. "No, not bad! Anything but bad! I'm, uh.. just not sure how to feel about it yet. But.. I know it's not bad." His explanation is about as clear as a room of mist, so she asks him to elaborate.

"Care to share?" She tilts her head slightly in a questioning manner.

His mouth flaps wordlessly for a moment, eyes widening again, before they dart away from hers as his blush flares up once more. "I'd.. rather keep it to myself for now, if that's alright with you."

"Yeah, of course man." She's quick to reassure him, "I'm right here whenever you're ready to tell."

He lets out an short exhale, the cold temperature giving it shape through a small puff of frigid air leaving his mouth. "Thanks, Ashido-san.."

"No problem, dude." She follows those words with a light yawn, bringing her hand up to her mouth to muffle it slightly, "Man, I'm totally spent after all that. I can't wait to get back and get some shut-eye." She stretches her arms in front of her with an audible groan.

Midoriya lets out a light laugh as he responds to her. "Me too. That trip really took a lot out of me."

"You had fun though, right?" She asks with a hint of trepidation, suddenly conscious of the fact that she'd kinda commandeered his whole evening from the moment they left school.

To her relief, he nods a couple of times with a little smile on his face. "Yeah, I did. I'm really happy we went, it was a lot of fun."

She just returns his smile, glad that his time out hadn't been ruined by his earlier anxiety attack combined with whatever revelation he'd come to in the meantime, and the two of them continue walking in comfortable silence for a moment before Midoriya pipes up again with a cough into his fist.

"So, um.. I was a little distracted earlier.. W-Would you mind telling me about those different DDR machines again? It sounded pretty interesting."

It takes her a second to process his request, but after she does, her face spreads out into a wide grin, and she prepares to launch into her re-explanation on Dance Dance history, all whilst the green-haired boy listens closely with a soft smile pulling at his lips and a cherry-red colouring splashed across his face.

Chapter Text

Exams sucked. That's what Ashido Mina had decided long ago, eons before her time at UA.

The idea of having to sit down and only revise boring topics for two long hours each and every day just to prepare for an equally dull two hour exam was revolting to her hyperactive mind. It was an affront to everything she considered holy in this world, that being free time and hanging out with her friends.

But, she understood they had an important part to play in the school ecosystem, so she begrudgingly put her head down and got to work whenever one came around. She did have to admit, she felt better about their upcoming quirk history test after cramming her mind full of those junk factoids, though that was mostly thanks to Midoriya.

When they were told about their imminent exam just a week ago, the green-haired boy had noticed her less than thrilled reception to the news, so he offered to help her revise the material that would be covered in the test. Mina would have taken pretty much any assistance when it came to history of all things, but eagerly accepted his offer knowing that he likely had a backlog of expertise on the subject that would make professional historians jealous.

She wasn't surprised when she turned up to their first session together, hosted in his room, and he had a mountain of books at his disposal piled up and ready to use. She was surprised, however, when going over the text in said books was actually less of a slog than she anticipated. Whether it was due to his extensive knowledge, or the fact that he was a natural-born teacher, studying with Midoriya made memorizing the necessary details actually kinda interesting. It was almost fun, as blasphemous as that sounded. He just had this way of explaining things that really spoke to her, and for once the learning was going in one ear and sticking, rather than immediately exiting out the other side.

Despite that, the constant studying over the past week had worn down her ability to take in information, so tonight she was having a rest day and resuming progress on one of her personal projects to recuperate.

"..um, okay.. w-what was the first r-recorded mutant type quirk..?"

The question is spoken no louder than a whisper to a presumed audience of one, as the dorm common room was populated only by Tooru and Koji at that moment, the two hosting a study session of their own to get ready for the class's upcoming test. Unbeknownst to either of them however, was that their little revision session had an uninvited spectator in the form of Mina, who was watching the pair on the couch swap practice questions from her hiding spot around the corner that led out to the hallway.

Tooru takes in the question with a contemplative hum and a scrunched facial expression as she tries to remember the answer. "Uhhhhh, it's.. No, not webbed feet.. It's- Damn, I can't remember! Hang on.." She places both hands on her head and closes her eyes to try and think harder.

The room goes quiet for a moment whilst she scours her brain to find the proper response, before a light series of chirps interrupts her concentration. Both of the students turn their attention to the source of the noise, that being Koji's little brown jay bird that follows him around pretty much everywhere. The small avian repeats her cheeps in Tooru's direction from her place on the coffee table, clearly trying to communicate something to the pondering hero student.

Months ago, Koji would've only been able to glean a general idea of what his little companion was trying to say. But now, thanks to Midoriya's analysis, he could have full-on conversations with the creatures he commanded, which in turn had done wonders for his progress in speaking more often.

The animal-whisperer frowns at his feathered friend before softly reprimanding her in his hushed voice. "T-Tori..! You're not s-supposed to give her the answer..!"

Tooru just chuckles airily in response. "It's okay, Koji. It's not like I can really hear it, anyway."

The boy's face reddens at his small lapse in logic. "..ah, that's r-right.."

The light-bender's own face shifts into a soft smile as her cheeks darken to a pretty shade of pink, and she turns back to face the tiny cheater. "Thank you for trying at least, Tori-chan." She holds out her index finger horizontally towards the bird, who chirrups lively before shoving her head underneath it and giving herself a thorough petting whilst Tooru holds the appendage steady.

The semi-transparent student giggles at the sensation, her focus on Tori making her completely miss the absolutely lovestruck expression on Koji's face as he watches her.

Mina, however, doesn't miss it from her spot behind the corner, and if the current display wasn't so tranquil (and frankly, adorable) then she'd have half a mind to march up to Tooru and manually swivel her head so that she's forced to see how blatantly in-love this boy is with her, just like she is with him.

Instead, the rosette stays put, watching and waiting for her bestie to finally make a move and bring an end to this torturously long road to romance.

Throughout her time in middle school, and a bit of her first year at UA too, Mina had made somewhat of a name for herself as a bonafide matchmaker. Need a couple linking up? Ashido Mina's your gal, or so she'd advertise to her classmates.

She liked to brag about the fact her success rate at making matches had been a near 100%, with only a few blunders when she was still starting out. It was a talent she was vocally very proud of herself for, and vowed to use her knowledge in the romantic world to help any struggling couples make the final jump. And the two hero students in front of her were definitely struggling, she can tell you that much.

Hagakure Tooru and Koda Koji had been playing this soft fluffy love game for almost as long as they'd known each other, and the pink girl was starting to become desperate in her tactics after many failed attempts to get a confession out of either of them.

Mina's not a savage, though. She has hard-and-fast laws that she follows to the letter whenever performing one of these operations. There are many different rules she's stuck upon herself, mainly as contingencies from specific mishaps over the years, but the one rule she's always had since the beginning and that she's never faltered on, is that she cannot be the one to confess on their behalf. She can guide them with an abundance of advice, help with their nerves and set up scenarios for them to act on it, but the confession has to come from the couple themselves, not her. It'd seem way too insincere otherwise.

Besides, half the fun of playing Cupid was seeing the confession play out after all your meticulous planning, so she'd only really be ruining the experience for herself if she was the one confessing second-hand.

However, Tooru and Koji must be gunning for a prize or something, because for the first time in her matchmaking career, Mina's actually considering breaking that sacred rule. Those two have had so many near-successes and moments together choked with romantic tension that it's becoming almost impossible to stop herself from tearing the bandaid off. It's times like these that she curses the fact she has a strong moral compass, otherwise she'd probably end up just physically mashing them together like a pair of dolls until they sort it out.

Alas, she's forced to watch from the sidelines as Tooru eventually stops petting the small bird, and Koji immediately swivels his head away to hide the crimson painted on his face.

"Right, okay.. First mutant type quirk.." The light-bender props an elbow on her knee and rests her chin atop her hand, face scrunching up once more as she has another think. "Was it.. Claws?" She answers in an unsure voice, turning her attention back to her study partner.

Koji takes a moment to respond, and when he does the sentence is littered with more stutters than usual, his face still shining a bright red. "..u-uh, y-yes..! that's r-right, T-Tooru-san..!"

Tooru does notice the cherry shade of his cheeks, but doesn't seem to realise that she was the cause, and if Mina didn't know her friend well enough to understand how she processed things when it came to her crush, then she'd likely accuse the other girl of doing it specifically to frustrate her.

"Gosh, Koji! Are you okay?! You're burning up!" In a manoeuvre that was almost certainly instinctual, Tooru presses the back of her hand against Koji's forehead to gauge his temperature, which of course flusters the boy even further and raises said temperature higher. They hold the position for only a moment before the light-bender realises what she just did and yanks her hand away from him, as though the rising heat of his face had somehow left burns on her flesh.

"S-Sorry!" Tooru apologises hurredly, her own face turning red now, before she stands up from the couch and starts stiffly walking over to the kitchen, "I-It is kinda h-hot in here, isn't it? I-I'll get us s-something to drink!"

Koji just gives a soft whine and a nod in response, too embarrassed to reply verbally.

After witnessing that fumble of epic proportions, Mina sighs under her breath. Compared to this textbook slow burn, it had been wayyy easier to get Ochako and Tsuyu together, though that was mostly thanks to the amphibian's blunt nature. It was after just one session of teasing about her attraction to the gravity girl that she had plainly said "Okay." and immediately went to go ask out her crush in front of everyone. Mina still remembers how long it took to coax Ochako down from the ceiling and make her give a proper response instead of just blushing uncontrollably and activating her quirk on herself.

And that somehow wasn't even the fastest coupling of 1-A! Kyouka had managed to ask out Momo before Mina could even get around to giving them any assistance, the slippery bitches. She had tried to make up for the lack of teasing the two should have gone through after they were already together, but Kyouka was a frustratingly effective brick wall when it came to jokes like that. Momo, on the other hand, was much more susceptible to such teases, and Mina got a major kick out of seeing the heiress blush madly at even the most innocuous of suggestions that were flung her way.

Disappointingly, that was all there was in the way of confirmed couples. The other prospective pairs of 1-A were still in various stages of what Mina liked to call 'The Pining Zone'.

Denki and Hanta had their annoying ass will-they-won't-they dynamic going on, and the lack of progress on that front was almost enough to make her rip out her hair. Both of the boys were stagnant in their belief that the other only liked them in a platonic sense, and no amount of arguing on Mina's part could convince them otherwise.

Shinsou and Tokoyami were a pretty obvious pairing, their shared secluded nature making them 'birds of a feather', as it were. Those two were much happier chugging along at their own pace after her interfering left them in a comfortable spot between 'really close friends' and 'actually dating'. Mina's not entirely sure how Dark Shadow fits into all that, but she figures it's probably best not to ask.

On the opposite end of the spectrum was Eijirou and Bakugo, and she was staying firmly away from that mess for her own safety. Not that what they had was toxic or anything, she actually thought Eijirou was quite the adept relaxant for Bakugo's temper. It's just that the blond had the tendency to blow up if anyone so much as suggested that he had romantic inklings towards the red-haired boy, and Mina valued her limbs a bit too much to make poking that bear worth it. Even besides that, she wasn't exactly feeling charitable towards the Explosion user given his recent behaviour, so she was more than content to let him stew in The Pining Zone if that's what he so desired.

Not to say that zone is restricted to just their class. He's extremely secretive about it, but Mina knows that Ojirou is nursing a broken heart for Kendou in 1-B, with the boy still trying to recover from when he finally figured out that the redhead is dating Setsuna. A shame, but an unfortunate fact of feelings is that you sometimes catch them for people not on the market. The tailed boy will find his match eventually, even if it takes him a couple of tries.

In other cross-class romance news, Iida had his little crush on Hatsume from the support course, though Mina wasn't exactly certain how much help she could be in that situation. From what she could tell, the other rosette didn't have much interest in the opposite sex.. or anyone really, for that matter. If something came up, then she'd maybe try getting those two together, but as it stands there's just not enough to go off at the moment.

Mentally shaking her head to reset her train of thought and bring it back to the couple at hand, Mina watches with a look of disappointment as Tooru and Koji stumble through their practice questions.

She heaves another sigh. At least the two hero students had no idea she was there at the moment, they'd probably refuse to get even a single word out if they knew Mina was spying on them.

..not spying. That makes it sound bad. No, this was something else, something.. that wasn't spying, at least. She'd workshop the fine print later.

Besides, she did have a proper reason to be doing this. As of late, Mina had been trying a different tactic when it came to finally making those two official, a tactic directly involving Tooru. The rosette had come to the realisation recently that there was only so much she could do by herself to help these two along, they were that oblivious.

Maybe 'oblivious' was a bit harsh, but the both of them were definitely too shy to make a move, alongside the regular jitters from a pair in love but not knowing for certain whether that love was reciprocated, so Mina was trying to build up Tooru's confidence a bit and convince her to just go in and tell her crush how she feels. The progress had been.. moderate, to put it kindly, but she was pretty sure that the light-bender was now at the stage where she could handle it, and had the perfect location to get it done.

A quiet lounge with only the two of them present (and Tori, she supposed), a nice casual study session where they can really get to talking with one another, and most importantly, a low lighting setup because of the late hour. Makes it a little more intimate.

It was for all of these reasons that Mina had decided to take today off from her own studying to watch the pair go through their revision notes. She just knows that the two of them are on the cusp of something beautiful, and she will be there firsthand to witness it unfold.

"Uh, A-Ashido-san?"

Even despite her partner-in-crime's worried concerns.

Over the past two months from when he started at UA, Midoriya had been slowly integrated into the A.A.A.A. (Ashido Amorous Assistance Alliance) as a Co-Cupid, aiding in bringing the couples together. Normally she'd enlist Tooru's help, but considering the light-bender was one of the two individuals currently on her radar, that wasn't really feasible in this situation.

"Should we really b-be doing this?" Midoriya continues, gesturing to their current position behind the corner, "I mean, it just seems a bit l-like an invasion of privacy."

Ah.. the naivety of newer matchmakers..

"I get where you're coming from, Midori. But trust me on this, if we don't supervise and make sure everything goes according to plan, then nothing will go to plan. Understand?" She raises an eyebrow in his direction.

"R-Right." The green-haired boy nods, though he still looks a little uncertain at the prospect of spyi- supervising their classmates.

Speaking of which, in that moment Tooru returns to her seat with two full glasses of water, still possessing a faint tone of red across her face. Koji accepts his drink with a quiet thanks, and after a few awkward seconds of silence, the light-bender clears her throat and asks the next practice question on their papers in an attempt to dispel the tension in the room.

Realising that they were back in business, Mina hunches over just a bit before planting herself up against the wall to minimize her visibility and make sure the two hero students don't catch her, barely peeking her head around the corner to keep an eye on them. Midoriya follows suit, his slightly taller height allowing him to lean in a similar pose right above her. It'd probably make for a pretty humourous sight from inside the lounge, seeing their heads stacked on top of one another like a cartoon.

By now, Tooru and Koji have mostly moved past their previous embarrassing exchange, though the lingering dusting of blushes indicate that they're still affected by the tense atmosphere it left them in.

Mina just hopes that little stumble hadn't caused Tooru's confidence to crack. This new plan they were trying out had only been put in effect very recently, so they were still ironing out all the kinks in her armor, so to speak.

She doesn't get to elaborate on that internal thought, as Midoriya huddles closer to remain unseen and ends up inadvertently making direct contact with her. She feels her heartrate pick up slightly, and her face tints with warmth from the faint blush now spread across it.

Right, that's another recent development in the romance department. Her own relationship with the green-haired boy had been suddenly upgraded from 'fledgling friend' to 'full-blown crush', and she knew exactly what had caused the shift.

It was that damned laugh.

About two weeks back, she and her freckled friend had been sat on one of the common room couches, chatting about their classes earlier in the day whilst Denki washed his used dishes over by the kitchen.

When the electric boy had finally finished up with his cleaning, he started making his way out of the kitchen and through the dorm lounge back to the stairs. About halfway towards his destination, he suddenly tripped on his own feet, stumbling over and landing on the carpet face down with a squawk. Mina and Midoriya's conversation paused mid-sentence as they processed what just happened in front of them, before the pink girl cracked and started letting loose peals of laughter, doubling over as she clutched her arms to her stomach.

A couple of seconds later, another voice joined hers and almost immediately her cackling was cut short as she looked back up to find Midoriya laughing just as unabashedly at their classmate's fall, leaning backwards as he clasped a hand to his forehead to try and steady himself. She just stared at him in awe as she absorbed the laugh that was escaping his vocal chords. Unlike all the other bouts of laughter she'd heard from him prior, this one was completely unrestrained and free, and Mina found herself absolutely enraptured by it.

As the boy continued his howling, her heart started pounding in her chest at a rapidly increasing pace. The edges of her vision blurred with a rose vignette, and her face burned with the brightest blush she'd ever experienced. All thoughts inside her head ceased to exist, save for one unrelenting desire; she wanted to hear that laugh again and again and again. She wanted to personally engrave the soundwaves of that laugh onto the grooves of a vinyl and then play that record on repeat until the needle eroded the markings back down to a flat plane.

She would claim she wanted to hear that laugh until she was tired of the sound, but she doesn't think she'd ever get sick of listening to such a melodic treasure.

Once her shellshocked symptoms had dampened a little, her mouth unconsciously spread out into a goofy grin, and her own laughter picked up again, spurred on by her friend's joyful cackles.

While this was happening, Denki had propped himself back upright with both hands and was now glaring at the two of them in annoyance as he dusted off his legs. "Oh yeah, real funny, guys."

For once, Midoriya's stutters weren't due to anxiety as he tried to apologise to the electric boy through his continued hysterics. "S-Sorr-ee-hee, K-Kaminari-san! It's j-just, I- AHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!" The dam burst and his laughter reached its peak, forcing him to lean on the arm of the couch whilst his whole body convulsed. There were genuine tears in his eyes from how hard he was laughing now, and Mina wasn't far behind him.

Denki just looked between the cackling pair in exasperated confusion before shrugging to himself and continuing out of the lounge, leaving the fluffy-haired duo to their own devices. After a good few minutes, their laughter finally died down and they were left panting heavily, trying to recuperate their lost oxygen.

Once they had both calmed somewhat, they happened to turn to the other at the exact same moment, and the coincidental timing caused them to burst out into more uncontrollable giggles on the couch.

Since that day, things had changed. Whereas before, Midoriya's analytical mutter storms had been endearing, now they were captivating.  She'd always paid special attention to them, but now it was like the sound of his murmuring voice commanded every nerve ending in her body to give her full unflinching focus to him, watching the boy unconsciously exposit with an easy smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.

He didn't even have to be saying anything consistently. He could just be writing quietly in one of his notebooks, but the moment he'd utter a soft word or two under his breath as he jotted them down, her eyes would dart in his direction, dropping whatever task she had at hand to instead rest her pupils on his enchanting figure.. which had led to her accidentally stopping a conversation with someone else early on multiple occasions, even sometimes when she was mid-sentence. They'd ask if Mina was alright, and she'd swivel back to face them with a half-baked excuse, not entirely understanding her new compulsion to catch every syllable that came out of Midoriya's mouth.

One other odd symptom from these new feelings was that she now had a deep-seated psychological want- no, need, to hear him laugh. Those polite chuckles he usually responded with were all fine and dandy in their own right, but what she was really after was that unshackled cackling he'd displayed at Denki's fall.

Something about the way his face scrunched up when he was lost in the sensation of laughter was really enticing to Mina, but she couldn't for the life of her explain why. Maybe it was because his cheeks flushed a particularly fascinating shade of red, or maybe because of how his eyes crinkled as he shut them instinctively to stop the joyful tears from escaping. Maybe it was just as simple as the fact that he was happy, and seeing it so plainly displayed on his face made her happy too? She couldn't say for sure, but what she did know was that she really liked the way he looked when he was laughing.

And that's nothing to say of how she saw his other physical features now. His forest-green hair looked so much more ruffable, and she found herself having to resist the urge to run her fingers through those fern-like strands an embarrassing amount of times. It was a particularly invasive urge, considering that after every intensive training session he'd end up wiping his brow free of sweat, catching the front of his hair in the process, and it would take everything within her to keep her hands to herself instead of sticking them directly into his bird's nest of a haircut, like it was a trial of willpower specifically designed to test her restraint. She was also getting lost in his eyes way more, those shimmering irises reeling her in like a siren's call. And the way they sparkled whenever he got all excited about something.. it never failed to set her cheeks ablaze and her heart thumping in her chest.

There was a disconcerting few days in the beginning where she thought something might be seriously wrong with her, compounded by plenty of worried internal rambling to herself, and it was only thanks to Tooru that she actually figured out what was going on.

The light-bender just so happened to be going on one of her lovestruck rants about Koji when a certain sentence jumped out at the rosette.

"-and then he said goodbye to me at the end of class, it was the cutest thing ever! Gah, I swear my stomach was fluttering the entire way back to my room!"

Mina had only been half-listening to her friend, still concerned about her weird new reactions to Midoriya, but that last part made her thoughts pause in their tracks. A fluttering stomach? She'd.. felt a funny buzzing in her own stomach around the green-haired boy, at times. Mainly when he did one of his charming little ticks, or when he geeked out about his interests. And once that comparison entered her mind, she couldn't help but draw other similarities between her and Tooru.

The semi-transparent girl was known to break out into a furious blush around Koji whenever he did something she found particularly enthralling, and Mina had definitely felt her own face see a rise in temperature around Midoriya when he was infodumping about whatever topic was whirring through his mind in that moment. Tooru was also known to start staring at her crush with her mouth curled up in a soft enamoured smile, and Mina at certain points had needed to manually snap back to reality to stop herself drifting off in a similar manner, and- oh god, she was crushing on Midoriya.

In the face of that shocking revelation, Mina was now left with a problem. She'd never had a crush on anyone before, something that would likely come as a surprise to anybody who knew her. Despite her obsession with linking couples up, she had never once in her life felt a pull towards a potential partner herself.

Sure, there were those singers and celebrities she'd pined over as a pre-teen, but that didn't really count. They were far-flung infatuations, barely even a pipe dream for most people, let alone a little girl.

This? This was real. And it was simulataneously the most heart-warming and anxiety-inducing thing she'd ever experienced. Hell, she’d been in multiple life-threatening situations that didn’t make her heart race as fast as the green-haired boy now did by simply flashing a smile in her direction. She suddenly gained a newfound sense of sympathy for everyone she'd teased about their crushes before. If this was how they felt, then it was no wonder they tended to be so nervous about the whole thing.

But, if there was one saving grace, then it was that she at least knew exactly when she'd bring it up in conversation to Midoriya himself.

Never. She was taking this secret to the grave if she had to. These feelings, these wonderful, beautiful feelings, were dying alongside her, and she'd been damned if the apple of her eye ever found out she held this flame for him.

Alongside the airy, almost dreamlike sensation of liking someone romantically was a deep feeling of shame for who she was directing it towards. Midoriya was her friend, for god's sake. She didn't need to complicate things by adding infatuations into the mix, and honestly she was extremely worried about what might happen if she let these feelings loose.

As it stands, he has a lot more to lose if things went wrong than her. If it turned out he didn't feel the same way, then worst case scenario is that she'd lose a close friend. Heartbreaking, but not world-ending. However, she was Midoriya's first friend. If they ended up drifting apart due to awkwardness about her obvious attraction towards him, then he'd lose a connection with the first ever person his age who took the time to actually befriend him, and who knows what kind of domino effect that could have on his ability to make other friends in the future.

It was easier and safer to just let it be. There was no need to risk a perfectly good friendship with her delusions of romance, so she ignored the small scolding voice at the back of her head telling her that she was just scared of rejection. True as that may be, she did have an actual reason to keep her feelings hidden, thank you very much.

She'd initially hoped that her previous fleeting attractions towards those celebrities would at least help her with mitigating these bubbly emotions welling up inside her, but the thing about crushes filtered through a movie screen was that it didn't prepare you for how it felt to have the target of your affection sing his praises of you in his sweet, skittish voice, or how it felt to see him literally light up at your mere presence.

And it definitely didn't help you deal with how it felt to have him press up against your back as you both spied- supervised another budding couple. Like right now.

Mina can practically feel the gentle breeze of his exhales as they cause the ends of her pink locks to sway lightly from the force. The way he's positioned behind her, with his figure looming just above hers, his line of sight is completely out of range from the bold purple spread across her cheeks, thankfully. She takes a few silent, calming breaths to try and stop her racketing heart from jumping out of her throat, but she'd probably have an easier time keeping her composure if it wasn't for the weight of his torso reminding her of a less wholesome detail about her verdant crush.

Midoriya is actually pretty jacked.

It's something she's noticed about him before, his hero costume not leaving much to the imagination, but at the time she'd regarded it the same way she had for the rest of their classmates; with a platonic admiration on how far they'd come in their physical training to achieve that sort of build. However, her newfound feelings towards the green-haired boy had shifted that platonic admiration to a decidely un-platonic appreciation for his fitness regime.

Her mind starts to drift off as thoughts about her crush's physique fill the unoccupied gaps in her head, despite her valiant attempts to stop them. Just, something about how he fit into his outfits, the fact that he was still very lean in his silhouette whilst being built like a steel wall, the way his impressive muscles juxtaposed with his shy demeanour and cute, boyish face, the idea that he'd gathered such brawn from his many illegal escapades over the year, escapades that had helped countless lives and were acted in the name of doing good, for good's sake.

Mina had honestly learned more about what she found attractive in a partner through this one infatuation than she had her entire life, and was now being forced to re-evaluate a lot of the unfounded assumptions she'd made about her tastes in the past. Though to be fair, Midoriya was sort of a one-in-a-million kinda guy; it wasn't a surprise that she'd never encountered anyone like him before. She wouldn't be shocked if the green-haired boy was the only boy out there who embodied all those aspects that made her heart race. Maybe that was her type; her dream partner was simply Midoriya Izuku.

She's aware that's a bit of an extreme way to refer to a high-school crush, especially one that had only popped up recently, but she can't help it. Ashido Mina's a sappy romantic at heart, and apparently that still applies even when it's her own love life she's gushing over.

Her conciousness slips further into dreamland as she thinks about all the other little things about Midoriya that make her ticker go off-beat. Oh, what she wouldn't give to drown in his soothing voice for the rest of time, just basking in the way his enticing lips formed her name. She wishes she knew how her given name sounded in his distinct timbre, but sadly she only had that frustratingly formal title to go off of.

'Ashido-san..'

Her heart does a funny little jump as the sound pops into her head. God, she's really got it bad, doesn't she?

'Ashido-san..?'

Those four syllables play once again, this time with a questioning lilt, and her brain conjours an image of him tilting his head like a confused puppy to go alongside it.

"Ashido-san?"

That.. That one wasn't in her head.

She jolts back to the physical space instantly and twists her neck up to find Midoriya gazing down at her in slight concern.

"Are you alright?" He asks with a worried brow raised, and it takes her a moment to respond, still recovering from her sudden return to reality.

"Uh, y-yeah.. Yeah, I'm alright. Just got a little lost in my thoughts.. sorry. What were you saying?" She tries to redirect the conversation back to him because of the unlikely, but very embarrassing chance that he was able to figure out what she was imagining just a second ago.

Midoriya visibly relaxes, now knowing that she's all okay, before bringing a hand up to his neck as he answers her. "I realise it's a bit l-late to be asking this, but are you sure that Hagakure-san and Koda-san both like each other? They s-seem like polar opposites most of the time." He points out.

The familiar topic allows her to settle back to her usual self immediately, shoulders loosening as she feels a grin spread across her face. "You have much to learn, apprentice." She tuts while shaking her head, "It's well known by any matchmaker worth their salt that extrovert x introvert is one of the best classic ship dynamics. I'd even go as far to say that it's a hall of famer."

"O-Oh?" Midoriya's face perks up slightly, before a faint blush spreads across it for some reason, "I-Is it a ship dynamic you.. p-personally subscribe t-to?" He asks timidly as the blush darkens, all whilst he refuses to look directly at her.

Her own cheeks flare up in a brilliant violet as she belatedly realises the many mortifying roads this conversation could lead down if she wasn't careful.

"Uh, well.." She coughs lightly into her fist, "I wouldn't say I'm looking for anything specific at the moment, but I.. I-I wouldn't be opposed to the idea." She looks back up at him as her heart pounds in her chest, a fleeting sense of foolish hope that he might actually reciprocate coursing through her veins.

"Oh, good." The boy breathes an exhale of relief, before he realises what that sounds like and quickly corrects himself, "G-Good for you, I mean! It's good that you know what you want! Obviously." He chuckles nervously with a hand to the back of his neck.

"..Right! Yeah, 'course." She replies after a moment, trying not to feel too dejected at his dismissal whilst reprimanding herself internally for the less than platonic thoughts now running through her head. She needs to stop, because it's really not fair on him. Midoriya's just trying to converse with a friend, and all she can do is fantasise about how soft his lips must be.

..to be fair, they do look really soft- No, stop! Bad Mina!

She's fortunately given a distraction from her wandering imagination as Tooru's voice reaches her eardrums.

"Koji?" The light-bender pipes up whilst wringing her hands together in her lap shyly, "I-I have something I n-need to tell you." Her stuttering grabs Mina's full attention, as it dawns on the rosette what her friend was trying to force out of her throat. She presses up against the wall again, and Midoriya follows suit after a second.

This is it. The moment of truth. All those pep talks and confidence-boosting speeches have led towards this exact statement. Now, it was up to Tooru to get the words out and seal the deal.

"..what is it, Tooru-san..?" Koji questions in a quiet voice, and the light-bender takes a deep calming breath before trying to answer him.

"I.." She starts, but then trails off. Mina leans in closer from her spot around the corner, her anticipation building at a rapid pace.

Come on, Tooru.. You're right there..

"I-I.." She falters at the starting line once again.

Come onnnnnn..

"I.."

Mina really hopes that the rule of threes would come into play here, because she can't take another second of this.

"I.. am going to go get a refill!" Tooru gives her study partner an extremely strained grin as she grabs her now-empty drinking glass from the table, "Do you w-want one too?"

"..oh! um, yes please.." Koji responds with a grateful smile, clearly having noticed his study partner's odd behaviour but choosing to move past it for the sake of her comfort.

Tooru juts out a stilted thumbs up before picking up his glass too and powerwalking back to the kitchen, lest the embarrassing colour on her cheeks become too prevalent to hide.

Over by the corner, Mina watches the interaction with a flabbergasted expression, astounded at how close her friend had gotten to finally spilling the beans, and yet dispirited at the fact that effort had yielded no results.

She slumps her shoulders as her lungs expel the air from her body, causing it to sag against the wall like a depressed tube man, and she feels her mind start to fester with thoughts about her own miscalculations. She was sure that Tooru could handle it, they'd been practicing the confession in the other girl's room for days now. But, maybe she was wrong? Maybe her friend needed more time to think it through?

She wasn't mad at Tooru, she knew now thanks to her own crush on Midoriya that these feelings can and would overwhelm any sense of preparation on a dime. She was mostly annoyed with herself, and her seemingly inaccurate predictions. Was she losing her edge? She really hopes not. Her romantic expertise was something she very much prided herself on; if that knowledge failed her now, then it was like a part of herself was.. well, missing.

Missing.. There had to be something she was missing here. Some extra component in Tooru and Koji's situation that just wasn't clicking for her, some important detail that was slipping her by. Maybe, if she could just figure it out..

"Ashido-san?" The sound of Midoriya's voice brings her attention back to him.

"Hm? Yeah, what's up?" She shifts her head to look up at his face.

"Could I.. try talking to Hagakure-san about this? I-I think I might have something that would help her."

The rosette just blinks for a moment before she huffs a defeated sigh. "Sure, knock yourself out." Her gaze drifts down to the floor, "..not like anything I've been doing has worked."

Midoriya frowns slightly and places his hand on her shoulder in a comforting motion, one that she's not too stubborn to admit makes her heart skip a beat.

"Maybe it didn't work out.. But you still tried, and that's what matters." He gives her an encouraging smile before standing back up properly and fixing his clothes. His uplifting words raise the corners of her mouth slightly, and she watches as the green-haired boy casually strolls into the common room and towards the kitchen, where Tooru was still filling up the glasses at the tap.

The kitchen area is much further away from their hiding spot than the couch is, so Mina's unable to hear what Midoriya is saying to their friend, but she can tell from the expressions on their faces and their body language that he's just engaging in small talk at the moment. After a minute of lighthearted conversation, his eyes dart towards Koji to check if the animal-whisperer was paying attention. Once he sees that the other boy is none the wiser to their discussion, murmuring quietly to Tori as he flips through his revision notes, the ex-vigilante turns back to Tooru and leans closer to whisper something in a hushed voice.

The light-bender freezes in place, almost dropping the glass in the sink, and her face turns a bold red as she swivels towards Midoriya in shock. The boy raises his hands in a placating manner before speaking calmly to the semi-transparent student, likely explaining something if his gesturing was any indication. Tooru just stands there stunned, taking in his words with rapt attention.

Meanwhile, Mina was once again planted against the wall in her hunched posture, watching Midoriya monologue to her bestie. Now that her little moment of self-deprecation had passed, she was wondering with no small amount of confusion what exactly the boy had to say that he thought would help. In post-depressive hindsight, she probably should've asked him before he walked off.

Eventually, Midoriya finishes his speech to Tooru, and the girl straightens up with her mouth set in a determined line. She gives him a firm nod and Mina can see her lips form a quick thanks, before she grabs the two drinks and strides back over to the couch, positively beaming confidence onto her face.

Midoriya watches her retreat for a second, and then starts making his own way back to Mina's location, looking more anxious than he should considering he wasn't the one shaping up to confess to his crush right now.

When he reaches their spot, he falls back into formation behind her and breathes a nervous exhale. "Okay.. Done all I can do, I really hope this works.."

She's just about to ask him what he was saying to Tooru, but the words catch in her throat as she notices what the light-bender was up to.

After leaving the kitchen and approaching Koji once again, the girl places both drink glasses on the coffee table gingerly, still wearing that look of confidence. The animal-whisperer raises his head at the sound, and his face shifts to an expression of gratitude with a soft smile plastered across it. "..thank you, Tooru-san."

Tooru visibly reddens at the sound of his voice, but doesn't falter as she takes one final deep breath and speaks to the boy in an unwavering tone. "Koji.. I have something else I need to tell you."

That catches his attention, and he places his notes on the coffee table to give her his full focus. Only for his previous expression to shift into one of shock as Tooru extends an upturned palm towards him.

"Come with me?" She asks faintly, a quiet plea to trust her, and his cheeks turn red at her breathy tone.

"u-uh, sure..?" He replies with a soft edge of confusion, before placing his palm in hers and letting himself be brought up to his feet by a moderately sharp tug. She shifts her hold to grasp his hand properly, and then starts gently leading him over to the large window at the far side of the room, way outside the listening range of the two spectating hero students. Once they reach their chosen spot, the pale-blue moonlight shines through the glass to illuminate the scarlet shade on each of their faces, Koji's in awe and Tooru's filled with put-on courage.

The semi-transparent girl takes a deep breath, stiffens her hands into fists by her sides, and opens her mouth to let her feelings free. Mina strains her ears to try and catch the words being exchanged between the two, but because of the distance she can only hear incomplete syllables from Tooru. The light-bender is clearly still nervous speaking to her crush, with shaking hands and her face coloured firetruck red, but the glint in her eyes is now full of resolve. As she carries on, Koji's face gradually reddens more and more until it matches hers, and eventually Tooru finishes her speech, leaving the both of them staring at each other with equally crimson tones all over.

Over by the corner, Mina waits with bated breath for the boy to respond, her mind racing with possibilities about what just happened. Did Tooru confess, for real this time? Or had she chickened out at the last moment? She didn't think the second option was as likely considering the determination that was seeping out of her friend just a minute ago, but she doesn't want to get her hopes up too much.

After a tense few seconds, Koji finally finds his voice again and forms his reply to Tooru's declaration. He's even more obviously nervous with his sweaty wringing hands, and his address doesn't last nearly as long since he's not exactly a master of speeches even at his best, but it goes on long enough for Mina to witness the light-bender's face shift from tentative hope to relieved elation, and she's now 99% sure that it is happening.

The animal-whisperer caps off his speech with a question towards his crush, and Tooru's entire being lights up as she starts shaking excitedly, practically bouncing up and down with her balled fists jittering at her sides. Mina doesn't have to wonder for long what the question was, since Tooru answers almostly immediately with an exhilarated shout.

"YES! I'd love to be your girlfriend!" She darts towards Koji and wraps her arms around him in a binding hug. The boy's eyes nearly pop out of his head in shock, not having expected the sudden contact, but then after a moment he relaxes with an enamoured smile pulling at his lips, and he slowly brings his arms up to return the hug before resting his chin on top of her chartreuse locks. The duo's eyes slowly slip shut, wanting to savour that feeling of closeness they were experiencing by blocking out any possible distractions.

Their lack of spatial awareness allows Mina to finally stand up straight and come out from her and Midoriya's hiding spot, with the green-haired boy following soon after.

"Holy shit, Midori.. What the hell did you say to her?" She asks in astonishment, refusing to take her eyes off of the new couple across the room.

"Nothing much.. I just had the thought that m-me and Koda-san are kinda similar in some ways, so maybe if I told Hagakure-san how I'd l-like to be confessed to, it might work for him too?" His attention darts back towards the lovestruck hero students, "It seems like it went well."

Mina was still completely stunlocked by the efficiency at which her Quirkless friend had paired up her favourite problem couple, but eventually she breathes out a response. "It did.. Well, I'll be damned! Way to go, Co-Cupid!" She holds a hand up in offer of a high-five, which he accepts after a moment's hesitation with a light slap of his palm against hers.

Then, a thought crosses her mind, and her brow raises as she pivots it as a question towards the boy. "How do you wanna be confessed to, actually?"

Midoriya, of course, flares up in a bright red at the query, but to his credit does answer her after a small pause. "U-Um, well.. I g-guess I'd like them to be really c-clear about it. You how I get in my own head a bit too much sometimes?" She gives a quick nod, and he returns it before continuing, "Right. So, uh.. It'd really help if they were direct and just t-told me they liked me." He shrugs as a sheepish grin makes its way onto his face.

"Huh." Mina takes in his answer with a simple smile, "Noted."

"H-Huh??" Midoriya echoes her with a more worried tone, "N-Noted for w-what?"

It's her turn to blush now, as she flounders for a response whilst her cheeks flush a faint lilac, mentally cursing herself for her slipup. "Oh, uh- For.. if I gotta get you linked up with somebody, obviously!" She gives a fake laugh before grimacing at how obvious she was being.

Somehow, by a complete miracle, Midoriya doesn't catch on to her, and he deflates slightly as he replies. "Oh.. right. Yeah, that's uh- that's good planning, actually."

His despondent response confuses her, but before she can ask him about it, they're both startled by a loud sequence of chirps just beside them.

The pair swivel round to find Tori tweeting at them angrily, the brown jay bird flapping her wings to stay eye-level with them. The hero students share a quick look, before Mina realises what the rude awakening was all about.

She turns back to the avian and brings her hands together in apology. "Sorry, Tori! You're, uh.. mad at us for eavesdropping, aren't you?"

The bird huffs at them both and chirrups in a manner that was clearly meant to be disapproval. Mina just shies back slightly, and glances over to check if the new couple had noticed the commotion. Thankfully, they're still tightly wound in their embrace, oblivious to the world around them, and the content smile on Tooru's face widens as she snuggles deeper into her now-boyfriend's chest.

The rosette feels her own smile soften at the sight, happy that her friend had finally made her match, before her thoughts get churning in her brain and her attention inevitably drifts towards her matchmaker crush. Midoriya's busy receiving his own bit of grief from Tori, though it seems that the jay had relaxed her tirade of cheeps for him specifically, seeing as he was the one to get her favourite humans together at last. The green-haired boy still apologises profusely to the avian with a flailing of his arms, and Mina breathes a small laugh at the display.

Then, her traitorous imagination kicks in, and her cheeks heat up as she pictures her and Midoriya in a similar situation to their two friends, having a lovely little embrace after confessing their romantic feelings for each other.

The rosette gets a little lost in her thoughts envisioning that hug. They were both basically the same height, unlike Tooru and Koji's gap of a whole foot, so they'd more than likely end up slotting their heads next to each other instead of burying hers into his torso. Part of her bemoans the lost of opportunity at getting to feel those muscles against her cheekbone, but then she realises that their actual position would let his warm breaths travel down her neck, and they'd be able to feel the heat of the other's blushing face as they squish cheeks from their close proximity.

His mouth might even land right next to her ear, letting him whisper out a soft, reverent 'I love you..' directly into the canal.

Mina shivers at the thought, and banishes those dangerous ideas to the recesses of her subconscious as a brilliant violet forces its way onto her face. She focuses back to the present, where the green-haired boy was still being scolded by the small bird, and has to remind herself that this Midoriya, the actual real life one, was not going to just drop to his knees and profess his undying love for her.

The idea of her Quirkless friend doing something that bold was, quite frankly, ridiculous. Especially towards someone like her. She probably wasn't anything like what he wanted in a romantic partner.. she was loud, and social, and very hyperactive. Midoriya, by comparison, was very much not.

Sure, there was that old adage of opposites attract. Hell, they'd just seen a prime example of it play out in the form of their two friends across the room. But Tooru and Koji had months of time together, bonding as friends, seeing their relationship sprout from a small seed into a beautiful flora. Meanwhile, her and Midoriya's own bond was basically in its infancy stage, comparatively speaking.

Maybe further down the line, when their friendship had been properly cemented and she could be confident that a one-sided attraction wouldn't bring an end to it, she'd tell him her feelings. But not now. Not when things were too volatile to predict. And that means she needs to crack down on these romantic daydreams, or at least convince whatever part of her brain was writing them to get his personality right.

Shy and reserved Midoriya Izuku, proclaiming a direct declaration of love? She scoffs internally at the fantastical expectations her mind had concocted.

Like that'd ever happen.

Exams sucked, but the only thing that sucked more was the agonising wait for your results after you'd completed it.

Mina was by no means a patient person even at the best of times, but watching the clock slowly tick by as the class waited after last period for Aizawa to return with their marked tests was proving to be actual torture. Thank god for the fact that they had afternoon English with Present Mic to occupy them after they finished the test that morning, if she'd been left with only her thoughts all day she might've actually gone insane.

She'd tried to distract herself after the final bell rang by engaging in conversation with her desk neighbour, but Denki was just as anxious about what score he'd get, so the two keep glancing back at the ever rotating second hand as the measly increments of time build up their shared nervousness with each quiet tick.

Eventually, their patience is rewarded, and the sliding door creaks open as their dishevelled teacher enters the room again, a large stack of clipped test papers held in one hand.

"Exams are marked." He calls out in his tired voice, the continuous grading evidentally having taken a toll on his cognizance. "Come get them." He dumps the stack on his desk and slumps back in his seat behind it.

Everyone shuffles out of their seats to converge at the front of the class, forming a neat single-file line as they each grab the pages branded with their own name. Thankfully, it's not too long before Mina gets her hands on her own, and she ducks out of the queue to lean up against the far wall with it clutched close to her chest.

She'd waited all afternoon to finally have her answer, but now that it was in her grasp, she found herself hesitating to take the plunge, scared of what number would await her on the first page. But, she knew from experience that putting it off would only make it hurt more, so she scrunched up her face and pinched her eyes shut as she turned over the cover. After taking a quick second to brace herself for disappointment, she glances towards the marked score at the top and pauses at the number.

67%. That.. That wasn't too bad, actually. In fact, that was pretty good.

Mina blinks a couple of times at the result blotted in red ink, before hastily double-checking the cover to make sure she'd picked up the right test.

No, yeah. Clear as day, right on the front, 'Ashido Mina'. That was actually her score.

She stays staring at the number for a long moment, jaw dropped open slightly in shock, before she huffs a small disbelieving chuckle as it finally sets in that she'd gotten a decent grade. In a history test!

"Ashido-san?"

Her amazed trance is broken by the voice of her study partner as he sidles up next to her. Midoriya's holding his own paper in both hands and looking at her with an inquisitive smile on his face. "U-Uh.. how did you do?" He asks sheepishly.

"Really good!" She answers him with a bright grin, "I got a 67!" She giggles gleefully to herself, bouncing up and down slightly with her test held up in front of her.

The boy's smile widens to match hers, and he responds with just as much enthusiasm. "T-That's amazing, Ashido-san! I knew you could do it!" He praises fervently as his cheeks gain a light dusting of red.

Her face colours its own flushed shade of lilac at his compliment, and she laughs once again to hide the glowing heat on her skin. "Only 'cause of you, dude!" She bumps a fist casually against his forearm in lighthearted admonishment, "I'd still be down the in the 30s if we didn't have those study seshes!"

Midoriya rubs the spot where she made contact as he lets out a little chuckle. "Yeah.. the revision sessions really helped me too, so thank you." He gives her a sunny smile alongside his claim of gratitude.

Having the green-haired boy's smiling visage pointed directly at her only causes the lilac on her cheeks to darken. "No problem, man." Then her attention drifts down to the test paper held in his hands, "What did you get, by the way?"

Midoriya's smile strains slightly as he answers her. "Uh.. 96%?" He darts his gaze away from Mina, clearly a little embarrassed at their gap in scores.

Meanwhile, she's completely awestruck by the stark difference, her mouth gaping open in response. "Ninety si- Holy shit, dude! That's so good!"

His cheeks go cherry red at her praise, and he shyly mumbles out a thanks as his eyes shift back, still not making direct contact with hers. "T-Thank you.. L-Like I said, it's all thanks to your help."

Mina's face spreads out into a grin. "Yeah, looks like we make a pretty good study team, huh? Let's do a repeat next time we've got exams, how's that sound?" She proposes, and he accepts with an enthusiastic set of nods and an equally bright smile.

Then, something catches his eye, and he turns to look at somebody else in the room. "Ah.. I think Kaminari-san is having a bit of trouble with his paper."

The rosette's gaze follows his to find Denki standing by himself and looking down at his test paper in confusion, reading over their teacher's markings like they were written in hieroglyphics.

Midoriya gestures a gentle finger towards the other boy. "Maybe I should.. see if I can help."

"Yeah, might be a good idea." She nods with her hands on her hips, "He does tend to get a bit lost when it comes to history."

"Right, yes. I'll do that then." He straightens up and prepares to make his way across the room towards their mutual friend, but not before giving her a final statement. "U-Um, good job on your exam. I'm really proud of you!" He calls out as he starts walking away.

Her heart stutters at the words, and her face reaches a dangerous temperature as she stares after him. Okay, someone seriously needs to rein that boy in, because it is not fair that he can stun her like that with a sentence as simple as 'I'm proud of you'.

The pounding in her chest only increases in intensity as the soundbite replays in her mind, and she feels her active consciousness slipping away she continues gawking idly at her crush, who's now helping Denki sort through his exam and figure out where exactly he went wrong.

She'd have probably spent all day just staring at his adorable freckled face if she could, but eventually she's broken out of her spell by a palm poking into her field of vision at point-blank range.

Mina startles slightly, returning to the present, before her eyes trail down the arm attached to the hand and realises that Tooru had snuck up beside her during her reverie.

"There you are!" The light-bender puts her hands on her hips with a slightly annoyed huff, "Did you have fun staring into space, star-wanderer?" She questions sarcastically, and Mina straightens up as she fully comes back to the room.

"Sorry, I got distracted." She gives a vague reply as to not arouse her friend's suspicions.

The other girl laughs dryly. "I'll say. Took you like a whole ass minute to respond."

Mina feels a bit of heat creep up her neck again. Had she really been staring at Midoriya that long?

Tooru raises an eyebrow as the million dollar question must've finally entered her mind. "What were you looking at, anyway?"

The rosette squeaks out a deflective answer as her face bleeds radiant magenta. "Nobody- I mean, n-nothing!" She winces hard at her lack of composure, as there's no way Tooru wouldn't catch it and start digging with the dedication of an ace detective. There's a reason they made such good friends, after all.

The light-bender freezes for a second, before her eyes start twinkling with mischief. "Ohhh, ho-ho! I know that response! I've been saying it about Koji all year, there's only one thing it can be!" She levels a point at Mina with a smug grin on her face. "You've caught the love-bug, haven't you?!"

The pink girl's skin turns almost fully violet at the loud accusation, and she starts waving her hands around frantically. "Shhhhhhh, shut up! You wanna let the whole world know!?" She rebukes with an annoyed edge to her voice.

Tooru looks way too pleased with herself, still wearing that infuriatingly smug smile on her lips. "Oh, Mina.. You don't know how long I've been waiting for this. All that teasing over the past few months? Well, now the shoe's on the other foot, ain't it?" She folds her arms over each other. "Now, you can make this easy, or I'll find another way to get what I want.. who is it?"

Mina turns away before crossing her own arms with a 'harumph' and a childish pout, trying desperately to keep her eyes on anything except her crush, not wanting to give the game away. Despite her best efforts however, eventually she slips up and her pupils dart towards the green-haired boy for less than a second.

That near second is more than enough for Tooru though, as she immediately snaps her head in the direction Mina's eyes had led to with a scrutinising squint, before her eyelids open up wide again at the realisation of who her pink-haired bestie was pining after.

"No. way." She starts slowly, and then she swivels back to the rosette as her voice turns extremely giddy, "You like Midor-!" Her exclamation is cut-off just in time by Mina slapping a hand against her mouth.

The pink girl spares a worried glance towards the Quirkless boy, and sighs in relief when it looks like he didn't even realise anything had been said. After a quick glare back towards Tooru, she finally releases the grip on her mouth.

"You like Midoriya!" The light-bender repeats, thankfully keeping her voice hushed this time around, "Mina, this is amazing! Oh, he's such a sweetheart! You really picked a good one!"

That, she could definitely agree on. Which is why this next part was so hard to say.

"Yeah.. but look, Tooru. I can't tell him." Her friend gives her an incredulous look in response, and she elaborates, "If I told him, and he didn't feel the same, it'd be too awkward to keep being friends." She explains, and Tooru's eyes light up in understanding.

"I see.. and, if he does feel the same?" The light-bender posits with a raised brow.

"If he does feel the same, then woop de doo. We can ride off into the sunset with a loving kiss, or whatever." Her cheeks heat up at the vivid imagery her mind provides of that scenario, "But, it's just too risky."

Tooru's inquisitive raise of her brow shifts to an unimpressed one, and she folds her arms again. "You're making excuses."

The rosette splutters at the accusation. "Wh- I am not!" She refutes firmly, the lilac on her face darkening to a vibrant purple.

"You are." Tooru reiterates, "And I know this because I used to do the same thing, remember?"

Mina just groans in response. "Yeah, but that was different."

"Was it? Seems like a pretty similar situation to me." The light-bender's face shifts into another small smile.

The rosette looks at her friend like she just grew another head. "Yeah, it was. Koji actually likes you back."

"And Midoriya doesn't?" The other girl challenges.

"I don't know if he does, Tooru. That's the problem!" She clenches her hands in front of her, frustrated at the fact that her friend wasn't getting it, for some reason.

The girl looks nonplussed at Mina's intense reaction, shrugging her shoulders as she unfolds her arms. "I guess you're right. We don't know." She settles with a determined grin on her face, "That's why I'm gonna find out."

Mina blanches at the statement. "What? Tooru, what are you-"

"Relax, Mina." Her friend starts backing away casually with both her hands raised in front of her, "I'm a Co-Cupid, remember? You did everything you could think of to help me and Koji, now it's my time to return the favour. Plus, I can pay Midoriya back for actually sealing the deal." She swivels her torso around and calls the rest over her shoulder, "I'll have you two together faster than you can say 'greenbean'!" She laughs at her joke before turning around fully and facing her boyfriend as she returns to his spot at the far end of the room.

Mina just watches the light-bender retreat to her corner with a frozen expression of shock, before she slumps her head back against the wall as she lets out a long defeated sigh.

What kinda mess has she gotten herself into..?

Chapter Text

Silence permeates the corridors of the designated cement building in Ground Beta, leaving the whole area in a static state of pure quiet.

Fumikage likes the quiet. It's his natural state, slinking into the shadows instead of out in the light. By all measures, this quiet should have been calming to him.

But, this quiet is not natural. It's an artificial calm, designed to deceive their senses, disarm them, lull them into a false sense of security, to strike them at their most unguarded.

Fumikage would be reluctant to say he hates the constant noise that comes with 1-A's unique mixture of boisterous personalities, but it's not his favourite. At this moment, however, any sort of ambience besides the faint whistling of the wind outside these concrete walls would have been appreciated.

The only sounds inside the walls come from a pairing set of footsteps, purposefully softened so as to not alert the other two occupants in the building of their presence.

Beside Fumikage, moving with a caution unlike her usual bubbly personality would denote, is Uraraka Ochako. While not his first choice for a teammate, mainly because of her aforementioned cheerfulness, she is a powerful and capable ally, a fact he's very thankful for considering the upcoming trial that awaited them both.

Behind him is his ever-bound companion Dark Shadow, who's keeping tightly to Fumikage's back and shifting her eyes around to locate any possible sources of danger. His sister was a nuisance most of the time, but to her credit, she did know when it was time to shut her beak.

A soft click freezes all three of them to a sudden stop, and their eyes snap towards the adjacent room further down the corridor where the sound originated from. There. That must be where their objective lies. After a quick glance to each other, the two hero students and sentient quirk hastily head towards the doorway leading into the room, making sure to hunch lower in an effort to conceal their quickening pace on the concrete floor.

Uraraka crouches down beside the left of the wide, open doorway, and Fumikage darts over to the right, hoping that no-one was keeping watch of the hallway from inside.

After waiting a few seconds for any sort of response, to which there is none, he assumes that he safely made it across the passage without detection, and breathes a sigh of relief under his breath.

He and Uraraka take a tentative peek around the corner to get a visual survey of the objective room, making sure to keep the majority of their figures hidden out of sight, and the state of the area inside gives both of them pause.

Right in the centre of the spacious cement cuboid is Midoriya, who's crouching down on one knee with his back turned against the doorway, fixing something near the floor with both of his hands. His signature metal staff is beside him on the concrete, likely laid there for easy reach in the case of a sudden ambush, and in front of him is their target, just out in the open and ripe for the taking.

This exercise was an almost 1:1 repeat of the Battle Trial from the start of the year, only now the difficulty had been ramped up for both teams to coincide with their increasing repertoire of skills. Now, the hero team had to either subdue their opponents or bring the fake bomb all the way back to the entrance of the building, unlike previously where they simply had to grab it to win. To compensate for this, the comedically large nuclear warhead in the first exercise had been instead replaced with the much more portable and realistic depiction of a small briefcase. In addition, the villain team also had an extremely reduced amount of prep time, and similarly had to capture both of their opponents to win.

In regards to that, where was the other opponent? Midoriya's right here in front of them, but Hagakure was nowhere to be found inside the room. There would be no need for her to stay cloaked if it was just the two of them in there, and she clearly wasn't on lookout duty in the hallway considering the fact that she hadn't reported their presence to her battle partner yet.

Therefore, the most obvious explanation was that the illusionist had left the area to go and scout for the hero team, and by some miraculous intervention hadn't found them during her search, leaving Midoriya all alone and unaware of his current spectators.

This could be big. Before they entered the building, Fumikage and Uraraka had unanimously decided that trying to go for the bomb was a death sentence, as there was no way they'd make it out of there with it in their grasp. Midoriya outclassed both of them in speed and stamina, and Hagakure could easily blindside them on the way out with her invisibility, so the only option was to tackle them in head-to-head combat. Not exactly an easy feat in itself, as both of their opponents were rather skilled in battle.

Still, this lucky draw gave them an opportunity. If they could manage to capture Midoriya before Hagakure stumbled across them, it'd effectively be a 3-on-1 fight against the light-bender, which were much better odds than the previously assumed even matchup.

Then, a glint of the light catches Fumikage's eye, and he has to stifle a chuckle as he finally realises what Midoriya's doing over there. The green-haired boy is currently pronging at a lengthy piece of tripwire, testing it to make sure it's tensed and ready to go. It's a rather rudimentary, almost quaint booby trap compared to his usual arsenal of snares, but he supposes that the Quirkless boy did only have a couple minutes of preparation this time around.

Out of the corner of his vision, Fumikage spots Uraraka waving at him, and he turns to give her his full attention. The gravity girl, upon noticing his eyes watching her, mimes out her plan of attack, first pointing to herself, then the ceiling above where Midoriya's crouched, before finishing it off by placing all of her fingers together, like she does when she deactivates her quirk.

The meaning is clear. He gives her a firm nod of approval, and she responds with a quick thumbs up before putting her plan to action.

She takes one final look towards Midoriya to check if his back is still turned, before quietly shuffling inside the room and placing a splayed hand on her stomach to activate her quirk. Uraraka's control over Zero Gravity had expanded exponentially after Brainstorm's analysis, allowing her to change the gravitational force on objects she touched to any direction, alongside completely controlling the strength at which that force pulled, a fact she was putting to very good use at the moment. The brunette carefully floats upwards, twisting her body to be upside-down, and slows her ascent to gingerly place her boots on the ceiling.

Uraraka chances another quick glance at Midoriya, who's none the wiser to the intrusion, before she creeps along the concrete like that spider-themed hero Dark Shadow refuses to stop raving about. When she reaches the spot directly above Midoriya, Fumikage tenses against the corner, ready to assist in-case things go south.

The gravity girl raises up into a crouch on the ceiling, before reaching into her bodysuit's pocket and gradually taking out her roll of capture tape. All they had to do was bind Midoriya's hands together, and they'd be in the clear.

Unfortunately, fabric is a rather noisy material, and the faint shuffling of the tape is enough to catch the boy's attention. He stills suddenly, shoulders tensed, and Uraraka strikes.

Releasing the hold of her quirk, she begins falling down towards him right as he swivels his head to look up at his ambusher. Shocked by the sudden appearance of his opponent, the green-haired boy accidentally removes his hands from the tripwire, causing it to drop limply onto the floor. Instead, he quickly grabs both his staff and the bomb, and with a panicked "Oh, shit!", jumps out of Uraraka's trajectory just before the girl can grab him. She recovers from the fall, performing a safety roll to reduce the impact, and immediately gives chase with a battle cry as Midoriya backs away from her.

She lunges for him once again, using her quirk to give herself an extra push, but he manages to escape her grasp once more. Thinking fast, Midoriya flings the bomb along the floor, the smooth sides of the briefcase allowing it to slide all the way to the other side of the room and far out of reach for either of the hero team.

Now with a hand free, he hastily brings it up to his ear and activates his comm link. "Miss Appear! They're in the bomb room, you gotta get back here now!" He yells into the microphone as he dodges a hook from Uraraka.

The mention of Hagakure's hero name confirms Fumikage's earlier suspicion that she was currently nowhere near their location, and the panic in Midoriya's voice seemed to indicate that wherever she was, it was far away enough to be a problem for him.

Deciding that now's their only opportunity to capitalise off their opponents' blunder, he quickly enters the fray with Dark Shadow poised to attack, and makes himself known with a commanding shout. "Dark Shadow, restrain him!"

"Aye aye, Cap'n!" His sister squawks back before darting out of his body and beelining towards Midoriya. The green-haired boy had dropped his staff on the floor and was now locked in a push-battle with Uraraka, both of them growling with exertion whilst giving their all into their hands and trying to make the other yield, before the Quirkless boy notices Dark Shadow about to make contact and disengages to avoid the incoming projectile.

The sentient quirk just barely misses her target, and doubles back around to take another shot. Fumikage rushes from the other side, intending to attack Midoriya from behind, but the boy surprises him by swiveling in place and roundhousing the avian in the abdomen with his foot. The force is enough to send Fumikage flying and Dark Shadow, being attached to him and not expecting the sudden yank, gets pulled off-course to join him in crashing against the concrete wall.

As they both slump to the ground groaning, with his head lolling back against the wall, he looks back up to find Midoriya fighting Uraraka once again, the two exchanging blows repeatedly. Fumikage's still winded from the previous kick, but he knows that it's only a matter of time until Hagakure gets here, and then there's no hope for either of them. Forcing himself to stand back up, the cloud fogging his brain dissipates just in time to witness Midoriya land a disarming hit to the gravity girl, and he forces Uraraka to the ground on her front as he scrambles to get his capture tape from wherever he's got it stored on his costume.

Fumikage's eyes widen, and he tries to reach the struggling pair on the floor, but his body reacts too slow, and he only breaks into a sprint right as Midoriya finally binds Uraraka's hands to each other.

Shit. The only way to get that tape off is to manually untie it, and neither he nor Uraraka are in any shape to do that right now. The only option is to have Dark Shadow do it, which means he'll have to stall Midoriya himself. An extremely risky manoeuvre, especially without his sister to help him fight, but they've likely got precious little minutes before Hagakure arrives, so they need to even the odds now.

"Dark Shadow! Help Uravity back up!" He orders, and the dark avian zooms past without so much as a quip, probably because she realises the gravity of the situation. Midoriya completely ignores Dark Shadow, instead running straight towards her brother. On his path, he picks up his staff from the ground and hurls it like a javelin directly at Fumikage's face, who just barely dodges in the nick of time and leaves it flying past his head.

He waits a beat to hear the clattering of the metal as it collides with the wall, but.. it never comes.

And then Fumikage is airborne. An unknown leg sweeps his own and renders them a couple of feet in the air. He has barely enough time to register what happened before he's pushed back down to the ground on his torso, the impact forcing the air out of his lungs. The way his head's turned, he can see that Midoriya's still standing a good distance away, so if it wasn't him, then.. Hagakure. She must've finally showed up.

Releasing a defeated sigh as he feels his hands being tied together, he shifts his head to look up at his invisible assailant, only to find.. Midoriya?

The sight is so confusing that it brings him back mentally in an instant, and he blinks up at the green-haired boy a couple times before darting his gaze back to the other Midoriya, the one they were actually fighting.

At that moment, the tape tightens around his wrists, and a klaxon alarm signals both the end of the exercise, and their loss. Not a second later, their comms crackle to life and a booming voice blasts into their ear canals.

"Villain team wins! Excellent work, all of you! Make sure to untie everyone and then head to the command centre for your feedback!"

They all wince at the volume before the comm dies down again, taking All-Might's voice with it.

A couple more seconds of silence, and then Dark Shadows breaks it with an annoyed shout. "Aw, damn it! I almost had it, too!" She huffs out loud before untying Uraraka fully, the gravity girl letting out a quiet thanks as she stands back up and starts dusting her costume off.

Meanwhile, the other Midoriya is gazing at Fumikage with an unbridled grin, one that doesn't seem natural on his face, before he raises his fists above his head and cheers loudly in a voice that was most definitely not his. "Wooooooo! We did it!"

Then the other shoe drops. This was a reverse ambush.. they'd been duped. Fumikage huffs a laugh with what little oxygen he has left, and he watches as the other Midoriya's figure warps and shifts with the light until it eventually resembles Hagakure Tooru, still with that grin on her face.

The actual Midoriya just above him unties the capture tape and gently brings him to an upright sitting position with a steadying hand against his back. "Are you alright, Tokoyami-san? I didn't push you down too hard, did I?"

Fumikage shakes his head. "No worse than I've endured before. I appreciate your concern, though."

By now, Hagakure's finishing her cheering, and they're rejoined by Uraraka and Dark Shadow, the latter returning to Fumikage's side where she likes to rest.

"Wait, so.." Uraraka seems a little slower on the draw, "You were Midoriya-kun the whole time?" She asks whilst pointing at the light-bender, who responds with a gleeful set of nods.

"Yup! We knew we had to lure Dark Shadow away from Tokoyami, so we pretended that I was somewhere else in the building to force your hand."

"I was hiding in the next room over and waiting for the signal." Midoriya adds as he finally slots his staff onto his back again.

"Mmhmm! Though, is 'get here now' really much of a signal? It's too direct to be sneaky or anything." Hagakure muses with a hand to her chin, whilst Uraraka's jaw drops slightly.

"That was planned too?" At the illusionist's confirming nod, she hangs her head in disappointment, "Awww, man. So we didn't get the drop on you at all?" The gravity girl looks disheartened by how much they'd been played, though she lightens up a bit when Hagakure bounds over and gives her a tight side-hug, the corners of her mouth involuntarily pulling upwards.

Her brow furrows as another question comes to mind. "Then, why did you switch? Surely it would've been easier to just have Tooru hide somewhere close, right?"

The light-bender's smile widens as she answers her. "Failsafe! I worked a little bit of my light magic to create a replica bomb, just in case you tried to sneak it past us. The real one's another two floors up." The hero team glance towards the area that Hagakure had flung the briefcase and sure enough, it's nowhere to be found, likely having disappeared alongside her disguise, "Since Midoriya can't exactly bend light, I guess I just had to be the bait.." She lets out a faux sigh of despair, and grins when the green-haired boy flails his free hand around as he tries to reassure her.

Meanwhile, Fumikage groans as he makes an attempt to stand, and Midoriya quickly readjusts to help him up. "A truly masterful gambit. You have my unbound awe at your conniving minds."

Hagakure breaks away from the hug to bring her hands up in front of her with an easy grin. "Woah hey, I can't take the credit for that. It was all Midoriya's idea. I just put on a good show!" She finishes with a light giggle as she takes a curtain call esque bow.

Midoriya steps away from Fumikage after he confirms that the avian can keep himself upright, before he speaks again. "Um, right.. I meant to ask earlier, but.. I don't actually sound like that, do I?" He asks cautiously, his face cringing at the thought.

"Couldn't tell the difference." Uraraka shoots back immediately.

"She sounded exactly like you." Dark Shadow seconds.

"It was a remarkably accurate impression." Fumikage concludes with a smirk on his beak, and they all burst into laughter as the green-haired boy slumps over with a groan.

---

"-Make sure to untie everyone and then head to the command centre for your feedback!"

All-Might releases the talk button on the console, and leans away from the microphone again. Their teacher then swivels around in place and addresses the spectating students with his fists on his hips.

"Right then! While we wait for those five to return, does anyone have any thoughts about the battle you just witnessed?"

Several hands shoot up, eager to give their outlook, though none of them belong to Mina. There wasn't really much to share from her end other than rampant gushing about how her two best friends kicked major ass out there, so she elects to keep quiet for once in her life and stare off into space to pass the time. It wasn't like she was missing out on much, the students' feedback would be repeated to the group when they returned anyway.

She can faintly hear the other participants teasing Midoriya about his voice through the comms, as they had an actual audio output this time around to catch the students' callouts to one another during the exercise, and she smiles at the light ribbing.

He's really come into his own since he started at UA, and in such a short time too! It only seemed like yesterday that he was still bumbling around his words, stuttering on every other syllable.. now he's bantering with his classmates like it's completely natural to him.

As All-Might quickly turns back around with a quiet "Oops." to shut off the comm monitoring and give the participants some semblance of privacy, Mina thinks about the way others around the school have changed as a result of the green-haired boy joining their ranks, with a prime example right in front of her.

Aizawa must've unleashed some special type of wrath on All-Might after his incident with Midoriya, as the No. 1 had been scared stiff into being more conscious about his biases in the following exercises, and was making a concerted effort to avoid treating the Quirkless boy like he was made of glass.

He wasn't perfect. There were a few times where he'd massively overcompensated and ended up giving Midoriya praise where perhaps constructive criticism would've been more appropriate, as much as the idea of the green-haired boy not deserving praise seemed like an absurd notion to Mina. Midoriya never abused these missteps however, making sure to gently correct All-Might and tell their teacher that he didn't want to be treated differently, even if it was in his favour, displaying the same earnest integrity that was one of the many reasons Mina became infatuated with him in the first place.

She's broken out of her thoughts by a polite array of clapping sounding out around the room, and she turns to see the five participants of the exercise gathered at the entrance to the command centre. Tooru and Dark Shadow are eating up the applause with blinding smiles on their faces, whilst the other three take it in with a more rigid posture, feeling that teenage awkwardness that came with unexpected attention.

After the crowd dissipates and they all return back to their individual conversations, the other five do the same, with Midoriya talking to Tokoyami and Dark Shadow about battle tactics from what she can hear, whilst Ochako gives Tooru a wave goodbye as she cheerfully trots over to her girlfriend.

Midoriya was still busy discussing the strategies of the match with Tokoyami, but Tooru now had no such conversational restrictions, and the light-bender takes a small pit-stop to greet her boyfriend and give him a quick kiss on the cheek before practically rushing over to Mina with a bright grin on her face and her hand raised for a customary high-five. The rosette lifts her own hand to match her friend's, and their palms collide with a moderately loud slap punctuating the action.

"Nice one! You and Midori killed out there!" Mina feels a grin spread across her face as she praises the other girl, who responds to her compliment with a manic laugh before leaning in and lowering her voice to a conspiratorial tone.

"Girl, you are not gonna believe this- thanks, by the way -you're not gonna believe this, but I heard from a little gravity manipulating birdie on the way back here that apparently our resident greenbean is fixing for a taste of cotton candy!" She squeals gleefully and she grabs Mina's hands as she starts bouncing in place, "He likes you back! Oh, I'm so happy for you!"

Mina's smile freezes on her face, and despite the cheer her semi-transparent friend was displaying at the moment, she couldn't find it in herself to match it.

"You're sure?" She questions, her tone indicating that she wasn't messing around.

Tooru finally stops her giddy hopping as she answers the rosette. "Yuh-huh! 100% sure! Ochako said they were talking about romance at lunch one time, and when she asked Midoriya if he had a crush on anyone, he started blushing and said that they're 'someone very special to him'." The girl beams after she finishes regaling the story, but Mina just looks at her with a mixture of confusion and disappointment.

"So.. not 100% then? Don't you think you're jumping the gun a bit, Tooru? I mean, that could be anyone, he didn't even say a name." She squints her eyelids in a questioning manner.

The light-bender releases her grip on Mina's hands as her smile turns sheepish. "Well I mean, maybe a little? But c'mon, Mina. Who else could it be? You're like the guy's best friend, it has to be you." She insists, but Mina's got far too much riding on this to base her confession on a simple hunch.

"I appreciate the intel, Tooru. But I'm gonna need to see some definitive proof before I-"

"Excuses!" Tooru interrupts her with a poke to the forehead before withdrawing her finger and sagging her shoulders with an annoyed groan, "Come on, Mina! It's so obvious that he likes you!"

"Sure.." The pink girl drawls sarcastically with a roll of her eyes, "In fact, it's so obvious that I've completely missed it, apparently! Do I need to remind you that I have 4 whole years of Cupid experience under my belt? I think I'd recognise if a guy had a crush on me, thank you very much." She places her hands on her hips as she turns her head with a small huff.

Meanwhile, Tooru finds a second wind and tries again. "4 years of experience, and yet can't confess on her own. I see how it is." She folds her arms over each other and smirks at the offended expression that crosses Mina's face at that.

"Wh- hey! That's not fair! It's hard, okay? And there's so much that could go wrong! What if he rejects me? What if we have to stop being friends and it screws up the whole class dynamic? What if we- okay, I'm hearing myself, shutting up now." She cuts herself off at Tooru's unimpressed look as she realises she's just recycling the same reasons that the light-bender used to spout before she got together with Koji. After a short pause, she sighs despondently and speaks once again in a small voice. "I do wanna tell him, y'know. I don't know how, but I do wanna tell Midoriya soon."

"Tell me what?"

The subject of their conversation joining it from behind Mina was the last thing she expected in that moment, and she immediately swivels round to face him as her mouth lets out an unflattering squawk. Midoriya startles at the sudden noise, eyelids flying wide open as he takes a step backwards in shock.

The two end up standing there staring for a long moment, with both of them looking just as surprised as the other. From Mina's new position, she can hear Tooru quietly snickering behind her, and her face burns bright purple at her.. admittedly overblown reaction to what shouldn't have been that big a scare.

She then belatedly realises that he asked her a question she really didn't want to answer truthfully right now, so she desperately cobbles together an appropriate replacement.

"Uhhhh.. I was just.. trying to figure out how to tell you about how.. well you did in the exercise! It's just, there are so many adjectives, it's hard to only choose a few, y'know?" She chuckles awkwardly, and internally cringes at how fake it sounds.

Either Midoriya was willing to let her have her escape, or he was a lot denser than she thought, because he accepts her explanation without a single hint of visible suspicion.

"Oh! T-Thank you!" He rubs the back of his neck bashfully as an embarrassed smile crosses his face, "You did really good in your exercise too, Ashido-san."

She breathes a relieved sigh, before following it with a smirk as the moment of panic passing allows her to slip into their regular dynamic, and she folds her arms as she gives the boy a teasing look, "Yes, I'm well aware. You made your thoughts on that very clear earlier." Her cheeks gain a faint tint of lilac as she recalls the fervent praise that he lobbed her way after she returned to the command centre.

As soon as she had walked in the room, he'd bounded up to her and started spilling his compliments like he was going to explode if they remained in his head any longer. A little embarrassing, but any awkwardness she was feeling from the barrage of admiration was sorely outmatched by the sheer happiness at hearing Midoriya's voice direct accolades towards her, of all people.

The green-haired boy's face coats with its own sheen of red at her light jest. "Well, I uh.. I meant it. You're amazing, Ashido-san." He finishes as he looks directly into her eyes with a shy smile spread across his reddening face.

Ba-dum!

Oh, that is not fair! A couple of genuine compliments paired with that soft look on his face works like a charm against the self-employed defenses meant to stop her from swooning like a lovesick maiden. All it takes is for him to sneak a few laudatory adjectives past those blockades and her heart starts racing in her chest, a response almost identical in nature to when she uses her quirk and a particularly potent acid courses through her bloodstream. She isn't sure whether to be more annoyed with him and his infuriatingly cute features, or herself for getting swept off her feet from such a simple display of appreciation.

She's amazing? He's the amazing one out of the two of them.

"Okayyyyy.." Mina flinches hard at the additional voice, she had completely forgotten that Tooru was currently watching all this go down and getting a good eyeful of the rosette embarrassing herself in front of her crush, "If you two are done flirting-" Both pairs of cheeks flare brighter at the implication, "-then we should go get our feedback, Midoriya. While the next guys are getting set up."

Midoriya jolts out of his stupor from the direct address, and replies to the light-bender with an apologetic bow. "A-Ah, yes! S-Sorry, Hagakure-san! You're right, w-we should go d-do that." He turns back to Mina, "I'll s-see you later, Ashido-san."

She's more than happy to put this awkward exchange behind them and out of her mind, so she responds with as casual of a thumbs up as she can manage at the moment. "Right-O, Midori! You go get that feedback, I'll see you later!"

...

'Right-O'??? What is her brain cooking up there??

Midoriya gives her a small wave goodbye, and is just about to turn around to meet All-Might over by the console with Tooru when a louder, much angrier voice sounds out as the owner stomps past their group.

"Oh fuck off, Shitty Hair!"

Bakugo continues his march towards the corridor that leads to the Ground Beta area, ranting even as he disappears around the corner, leaving everyone else in the room silenced as their attention is pulled towards the shouting.

The trio stay quiet for a moment as they process what they just saw, before Tooru breaks it with a slight huff as she frowns at the blond's last known position. "Geez, grouchy much? Wonder what's got his panties in a twist."

Mina swivels back to face the direction he had come from, only to find Eijirou watching the same corner with his breath sucked in through his teeth, an immensely guilty look plastered all over his face. When he notices her staring, his eyes shift to lock with hers, and the glint present in his irises wordlessly conveys the situation in an instant.

He had just tried to put the plan they decided on back at the arcade into effect, and evidently it backfired in a most spectacular fashion. If Bakugo was no longer even listening to what Eijirou had to say about his behaviour towards Midoriya, then they had lost the one surefire method at their disposal to get past his emotional blast shields.

Mina sucks in a breath through her own teeth at the realisation that they may have just accidentally lit a fuse that could no longer be extinguished, and now it was only a matter of time before the explosion went off.

Oops.

Sure enough, Bakugo's temper only worsened as the days went by, though not exactly in the way either of them had expected.

Unlike the explosive burst that usually followed one of his emotional funks, the rage was instead making itself known in a steadily raising heat bubbling just under the surface.

It started out with only small things at first, stuff that previously slightly annoyed him now caused him to lash out. It became a common sight to see the blond angrily spouting swears at inconsequential incidents like a minor liquid spill, or an out-of-place piece of furniture.

Of course, that sort of incend wouldn't go unnoticed for long, and the other members of the class began to pick up on the fact that Bakugo was not feeling his best, as a kinder person would probably put it.

Some of the more adventurous hero students had tried to casually bring it up to the blond and maybe understand the source of his contempt, but he wasn't in the mood to talk about feelings even at the best of times, leaving Mina and Eijirou as the only ones privy to the fact that he was getting in a huff over Midoriya.

Her horn buddy revealed to her after the exercise that the blond had gotten pissy hearing the people on the comms praising their Quirkless friend, which led to Eijirou building up the courage to talk to him about his treatment of the green-haired boy. Obviously, Bakugo didn't like that, causing him to storm off without heeding a single word out of the red-haired boy's mouth.

The two searched their brains for any solution to his temper, though both of them came up blank. They just didn't have enough context to form a proper speech to the blond, and if they tried without careful consideration, then this wildfire might reach an uncontrollable state.

Even the small measures they could take weren't yielding much results, as the rosette heard through the grapevine that Momo had alerted Aizawa to Bakugo's change in mood (as if it wasn't blatantly obvious). Their homeroom teacher agreed to keep a closer eye on the Explosion user, but since he hadn't technically done anything yet, the older hero couldn't exactly force a conversation between him and the school counsellor without proper reason.

So, until an actual incident occurred, they just had to deal with a grouchier Bakugo trudging around the place. Like Mina, nobody wanted to be the one to finally poke the bear and cause the ever inflating balloon of anger to pop, so they all steered clear of him whenever they could. However, it was obvious that they were getting pretty sick of his aggressive attitude, and well.. when you add more fire to an already blazing inferno, it doesn't exactly douse the flames.

Eventually, it all comes to a head during one of 1-A's weekly movie nights.

The whole class was lounging around the various available seats in the common room, with everyone clad in their sleepwear for maximum comfort and the house lights sufficiently dimmed, leaving the flashing TV as the main source of illumination.

Tonight's movie was Denki's decision, and the electric boy had chosen one of the many action flicks he had stored away in his bedroom. It wasn't the most boring thing ever put to film, but Mina would be hard pressed to say that she was actively engaging with the action on-screen.

Next to her on the couch was Midoriya, who was sat up straight with a way less damaging posture as he rested his back against the cushiony sofa. The Quirkless boy was taking slightly more interest in the movie than her, though she's certain it was only because he was obsessively theorising to himself on the different ways that the fictional protagonists could utilise their quirks. The almost silent muttering was a pretty clear indicator, at least.

Everyone else was bundled up in their chosen groups, with the romantic couples instinctively gelling together in the many spaces around the common room. Over in the one of the few oversized armchairs strewn around the area was Tooru and Koji, the two newly-coupled lovebirds casually snuggling up next to each other under a cozy blanket as they quietly took in the barrage of colours on the display.

The room's atmosphere stays in a soothing state of relaxation for most of the runtime, until eventually a gruff voice lets out an annoyed grunt about 30 minutes into the movie.

"Do you have to do that?"

Everyone's attention is pulled from the screen and towards Bakugo, who had been sat in a padded spot on the carpet and was now fixing a glare in Tooru and Koji's direction. The light-bender takes a quick visual survey of the others to check that they're all as confused as she is, before she responds to the blond's question. "..do what?"

Bakugo scoffs as he rolls his eyes. "Don't play dumb. The lovey-dovey shit. Cut it out."

Tooru's confusion turns to bewilderment. "..we're literally just sitting here, dude."

Denki cautiously pauses the movie with the remote and turns to face Bakugo properly. "You okay, man? Something up?"

The blond growls at the question before standing up and directing his body towards the electric boy. "You know what? Yeah, something is up! These two-" He points to the couple in the armchair, "-won't stop shoving their stupid ass relationship down our throats, and I'm sick of it!"

Koji winces at the increase in volume, and Tooru frowns as she shuffles around to shield her boyfriend from view. "The hell do you mean, 'shoving it down your throat'? We've not been doing that. Have we?" She asks the rest of the lounge's occupants, who quickly shake their heads along with a few verbal disagreements.

The blond is less convinced. "Oh, please! You two fuckheads can't go five minutes without seeing each other before you start whimpering around like sad dogs! It's pathetic!"

Mina distantly wonders if Bakugo had unknowingly dropped in from an alternate universe or something, because she's witnessed absolutely none of the 'pathetic whimpering' he was claiming to be rampant between the fresh couple.

Tooru's frown turns incredulous at his statement, clearly tired of whatever fictional problem he had with her relationship. "What are you on about? Look bro, if you're jealous that I got a boyfriend and you don't, then just say that. You don't gotta dream up reasons to have the moral high ground about it."

Bakugo's teeth gnash together in anger as he loudly rebukes Tooru's accusation. "I am not jealous! You think I'd be jealous that you have to deal with that?" He juts a finger towards Koji, who cowers at the unwanted attention, "I'd rather date a wild animal than that jagged ass-"

What happened next would change the course of 1-A's history forever.

Midoriya suddenly inserts himself into the steaming argument, to everyone's surprise. He leaps up from the couch and barricades the lengthy gap between the couple and Bakugo, staring the other boy down even as he shook with fear.

"N-Now that is enough, Kacchan!" The green-haired hero gives his classmate a stern look as he reprimands him, "Hagakure-san and Koda-san have done nothing to you, and you're getting mad at them for no reason! The way you're acting right now is not very heroic!"

That last word causes Bakugo's eyes to harden, and he stomps towards Midoriya with a fiery glare, making the Quirkless boy stumble back slightly in alarm. Mina tenses in her seat across the room, having recovered from her shock at his moment of unexpected courage, and she quickly prepares to intervene in case things get ugly.

"Oh, you think you know more about being a hero than me, Deku? Is that it? You think you're better than me?" His hands start twitching, with bright orange sparks crackling from his palms that emblaze the dark lounge.

Okay, things are getting ugly. Time to intervene.

Mina immediately shoots up from the couch and rushes over to the two boys, placing herself between them as she fixes the blond with a glare of her own.

"Back off, Sparky." She growls, and Bakugo just leers at her with an unimpressed look in his eyes.

He opens his mouth, presumably to let loose some variation of 'fuck off', before a thought crosses his mind and his disinterest shifts back into anger.

"I just realised. It's you!" He jabs a finger in her direction, and she refuses to give him the satisfaction of a flinch as she stares him down coldly. "You're the reason Deku thinks he's all important now! You've been telling him that he's special and shit, and now it's infected every single one of you!" He gestures an arm towards Eijirou, "I thought he was the only one who understood, but even Shitty Hair's betrayed me!"

Mina squints her eyes in befuddlement. "Betrayed you? Is that how you see it?"

The blond's volume somehow raises even higher. "How else am I supposed to see it?! You're all treating him like the second fuckin' coming of All-Might, and it's fuckin' weird! Why aren't you putting him in his place?! I don't get it!" He spouts random points with a manic tone, and Mina feels her irritation surge as she replies curtly to him.

"If by 'treating him like the second coming of All-Might' you mean giving him a basic level of respect and decency, then yes, we have been doing that. The bigger question is why aren't you doing that?"

"Yeah!" Another voice finally joins the argument, belonging to Eijirou. The red-haired boy is frowning at his crush from where he was sat on on the carpet, "Kats, listen! This is crazy! You've been acting like a dick towards Midoriya ever since he got here! I don't know what happened between you two in middle school, but surely it doesn't justify this kinda treatment??" He practically begs for the blond to settle down, but it falls on deaf ears as Bakugo tightens his jaw harder in response.

"It's impossible to reason with any of you! That's it!" He pokes a harsh finger towards Midoriya, who jolts at the address, "Deku! You, me, outside, now! We're settling this fist-to-fist!"

"Dude!" Kyouka pipes up from her place on the other couch, "Knock it off! Let's just finish this movie already!"

"Quiet down, Ears! I ain't watching no damn movie until I pummel the shit out of this useless ass nerd!" He levels a second hateful point at the target of his ire, who was quaking in terror from his place behind Mina. She discreetly offers an open hand around her back, and he takes it, squeezing onto it like it was a lifeline.

Iida apparently decides that direct threats are a step too far, and he straightens up in his seat to scold the blond. "Bakugo! That is no way to speak to a fellow classmate!"

The other boy only seems to get even angrier at the repeated interruptions. "He.." The word drips from his mouth like acid, "is not a classmate. He is an intruder! He doesn't belong here!"

That final jab seems to be the line in the sand for everyone else, as they all start lobbing their own cries of outrage towards the blond, aghast at the blatant disrespect occurring right in front of their eyes. Mina can only look at Bakugo in appalled disgust, before it gives way to anger once again.

Oh, that is it! She's done with tiptoeing around the issue of his behaviour; if Bakugo wasn't gonna have the courtesy to be civil about this, then neither was she! She grits her teeth and readies the words in her throat before silencing the room's cacophony of voices with her own.

"What is your problem, man?!" She carefully lets go of Midoriya's hand and storms up to the other boy whilst shouting at him, "All Midoriya wants to do is become a hero, and you're out here threatening him like he personally insulted you!"

"Oh shaddup, you stupid bitch!" The Explosion user gets up in her face, "You think you know Deku better than me? I've known that shithead my entire life, and the only thing he's ever been is a whiny little runt! You wanna know what my 'problem' is? It's him! Ever since we found out he was Quirkless, it was always me, me, me! 'Kacchan, why can't we play heroes anymore?' 'Kacchan, the teachers are picking on me!' 'Kacchan, I don't think you should use your quirk like that!'. Why should I listen to some weak little nobody who's first instinct is to just cry about everything?!"

He takes a very brief pause to get some air before concluding his rant, "The only reason he's even here is because that principal went soft and felt sorry for him! Meanwhile, I passed the entrance exam fair and square!"

Mina feels her blood start to boil, and she's just about to rebuke that assessment of her friend's character when all of a sudden the atmosphere shifts almost imperceptibly, the intangible tension in the air rising.

"Fair and square..?" Midoriya utters lowly with a dangerous tone. She swivels around immediately to face the green-haired boy and stops cold when she sees his current state, his face scrunched into a scowl and hands balled into fists at his sides. He marches forward a couple of paces past Mina and juts his body towards Bakugo, making the other boy take a cautious step back in shock.

"Fair and square?" His volume raises as he repeats himself, "You wanna talk about fair!?" He practically screams in Bakugo's face, and the entire room goes silent at his anger. Mina in particular is completely shellshocked by the absolute vitriol present in her normally quiet friend's tone. The boy rarely raised his voice to that degree outside of training and even then, those times were usually just the result of him getting really excited in the heat of battle. This was unbridled rage, and she didn't really know how to deal with it coming from Midoriya. It seemed like Bakugo didn't really know how to deal with it either, considering the startled expression on the blond's face.

After a moment, he recovers from his perturbed state and opens his mouth to shout at the green-haired boy some more, only to find himself preemptively silenced by the next line.

"77 points." Midoriya states simply.

"..Huh?" Bakugo responds, just as simply.

"77. points." He repeats slowly, "That was your score, right? 77 points, all of them villain ones?"

"Yeah?" The other boy scoffs, "What of it?"

The Quirkless student finally leans back, relaxing his fists slightly. "Nothing wrong with it in particular, it's a good score.." He trails off for a second before continuing, "Only 17 points more than mine."

Mina's eyes widen at the claim, along with the 1-A students freezing in their seats, unsure if they heard him right. However, Bakugo heard him loud and clear, and his fury comes back with a vengeance.

"You fuckin' liar! We all saw that scoreboard when they gave us our acceptance letters, you were nowhere near that shit!"

"60 points." Midoriya interrupts his tirade with a glare, "28 villain, and 32 rescue. I know what I got. Believe me, I checked." He practically spits the last word out. "The only reason I didn't show up on that leaderboard is because they didn't want me there."

Bakugo, now more confused than angry, asks the question on the minds of everyone currently present. "Who?"

"The school board!" Midoriya answers with a rageful shout as he starts pacing back and forth in front of the TV, the sudden increase in volume making everybody jump in their places, "Nedzu wanted to let me in the hero course, but they vetoed my enrolment because I don't have a quirk. Cited reasons such as 'he'll be a liability on the field' and 'he's a fragile boy, he'll fall to pieces at the first sign of conflict'." He frames those statements with air quotes and a mocking voice, "That's just code for 'I don't want this fucking pest in my school'!" The whole class flinches at the harsh tone he coats the insult in.

Midoriya was getting really riled up now, angrily marching around the room at an increasing speed as he ranted to the hero students. "They knew that I could handle myself out there, they had video. proof. But nooooo, we can't just let the Quirkless kid in even though he got more than enough points to pass, that wouldn't be fair to the other applicants!" He suddenly stops and takes a deep breath, realising he was getting out of control. After a tense moment of quiet, he speaks again.

"So that's that." He spreads his arms out in defeat, "My application got trashed, and I was kicked to the curb. That's.. whatever. I've made my peace with it, it happened, the fact I'm here now is what matters." He strides up to Bakugo and jabs a finger into the other boy's chest, "But don't you ever fucking complain to me about fairness, understand?"

The blond looks thoroughly shocked by his childhood friend's rant, having dropped any sense of anger from his being as he stares at the Quirkless boy with wide, almost vulnerable eyes. He tries to find a response, but can barely manage to get past a single word. "I.. uh.."

Midoriya just scoffs at the display, and bites back with a question smothered in sarcasm as he begins walking away from Bakugo and towards the staircase. "Oh, now you've got nothing to say? Typical!" He stomps over to the stairs, the harsh footfalls booming throughout the quiet lounge as the rest of 1-A watch him from their seats.

Just as he reaches the first step, he stops with a hand placed on the railing and calls out one last jab towards the Explosion user. "Did you ever consider the idea that I was whining for a reason, Katsuki?"

And with that, he continues up the stairs and out of sight, presumably heading to his bedroom a couple floors above.

Once the heaving footsteps seem far enough away that Midoriya would reasonably be out of earshot, the other students start murmuring amongst themselves at what they just witnessed, the general consensus being worry for the green-haired boy. Only two members of the class stay silent during this exchange, coincidentally the only pair still standing up.

Mina gazes at the top of the stairwell with a troubled expression, her mind racing about what occurred in front of her. This sort of outburst was completely unprecedented from Midoriya, she'd never seen anything like it. Despite that, she could tell by the way his teeth practically grinded against each other as he spoke that this broadside had been a long time coming, likely too long if she had to guess.

For a few moments, she stands there wondering whether if she should chase him down and try to comfort him, but part of her subconscious was making her hesitate, and she's a little ashamed to admit that seeing him that mad kinda scared her.

She's broken out of her internal debate by a nearby voice grabbing her attention, one that's usually not as soft and unsure as it is right now.

"He's never yelled at me like that before.." Bakugo murmurs the words unconsciously as he stares vacantly at the same spot near the top of the stairs, and the blond looks so lost in that moment that she almost feels bad for him.

Almost. She huffs an annoyed exhale at the Explosion user, forcing his focus back on her, and she rolls her eyes as she adds a complaint of her own. "Yeah, well maybe he wouldn't have had to if you just stopped harassing him."

She fully expects for Bakugo to shift back into his usual rage at that snide comment, but instead he stays unnervingly passive in his demeanour as he continues. "I.. I thought he was making it up."

Mina raises an eyebrow in confusion. "Making what up?" Then it hits her, "The discrimination?? You thought he was just, what, lying about people being shitty because of his Quirklessness?"

Bakugo just shrugs helplessly, his eyes now shamefully pointed towards the floor like a scolded child. Mina's bewilderment only grows at his pitiful display, and she racks her brain to find any reasonable connection between it and Midoriya's rage-induced outburst.

Nothing comes to her, but the one clear point from all this was that for some godforsaken reason, only now was Bakugo actually registering the consequences of his long-term bullying, and it took the victim straight up yelling it in his face for him to come to that realisation. Seeing the blond's aggressively self-centered worldview crumble around him should have been satisfying for Mina, but she could only bemoan the fact that this could've all been avoided if someone just gave the boy a harsh lecture at some point.

Though.. would it have hit as hard if it didn't come from Midoriya himself? Perhaps that was the missing link here. She didn't know exactly what the green-haired boy was like before his time at UA, but she can guess that he wasn't really the assertive type. Maybe seeing the boy finally stand up for himself was enough of a shock for Bakugo to rethink the way he'd been treating him?

Whatever the reason, there was no use dwelling on it now while her friend was currently upstairs and likely in desperate need of comforting. This introspection could wait until later, she'd be doing him a disservice if she didn't at least check up on him.

She gives Bakugo one final huff and a disappointed shake of her head before jogging over to the stairs and quickly making her way up to the corridor containing Midoriya's room.

Once she reaches his door, she raises her fist to knock on the green metal in a melodic pattern before stepping back and calling out to the boy inside.

"Midori..? It's Mina. I know you're a bit stressed at the moment, and you probably don't wanna talk to anyone right now, but if you do.. I'm always free. So, uh.. yeah." She slumps her hands down by her torso, feeling a little awkward just standing there in the hallway, and waits for him to respond.

One tick. Two ticks. And so on.

After a good ten seconds of lingering at his door without so much as a single peep from inside, she breathes a disheartened sigh and prepares to start on her way back downstairs. Before she's even pivoted halfway towards the direction of the staircase, the lock on the door clicks and it slowly creaks open, revealing Midoriya just behind it.

All the fire he possessed just a few minutes ago had apparently fizzled out, as he hangs his head despondently while his body hunches over. His gaze stays locked down towards the carpet for a few moments of mutual silence between them, before he takes a breath and lifts it up to meet hers.

"Um.. I'd like to talk.. if that's okay.." His voice is barely audible as he mumbles out his answer, and Mina's heart twists a little at the defeated expression on his face.

After recovering from her stunned state, she trudges up to the doorway whilst giving him a look of sympathy, and her chest wrings itself even more when his features wash over with a tinge of relief at her acceptance. He backs away from the door to allow her space to enter, and she follows after him, making sure to shut it carefully behind her.

Inside, the room looks identical to how it is normally. Steady lighting from the overhead lamp, the walls and desk covered in merchandise from a variety of pro heroes, joined by a large bulletin board on the main wall plastered with notes and in-progress quirk analysis about several different people, some of them from their own class. The familiar decor should have been comforting, but the loaded quiet that permeates the room at that moment prevents her from relaxing the tension in her shoulders.

Midoriya shuffles over to his bed on the far side of the room, and plops down onto the edge, his hands resting either side of him on the dark-green cover. He's very purposefully trying not to look at her, instead directing his gaze down towards his lap, and after giving the door a second glance to make sure it's fully shut, she walks over to the bed as well and takes a seat right beside him, taking care to maintain an appropriate amount of distance between them.

For what feels like an extremely long minute, the both of them just sit there in silence, neither sure on where to start. Mina thought she'd figured out what to say on her way up to his room, but now that she's actually here, it's like every idea that came to mind seemed too much, or not enough.

Eventually, the quiet becomes too much to bear, and she shuffles around slightly on the edge of the bed as she turns to look at her friend.

"So, um.. how.. are you feeling?" As soon as the words leave her mouth, she cringes at how stupid they sound. How is he feeling? He's obviously feeling bad, for god's sake!

Midoriya understandably breathes an annoyed sigh in response, though it didn't seem to be directed at her if his next words were any indication. "I dunno. Angry, I guess? It's just- he's so frustrating!" He splays his hands in front of him with an irritated gesture, "I thought that being around you guys would help him be better. It has, actually!" His volume suddenly spikes louder, "He's got real friends now! Not just.. cronies who hang around him! He's even got a love interest! Surrounded by people who actually care, and- and want to see him thrive and be happy! And he doesn't even realise how damn lucky he is!"

His hands are balled into tight fists, and he takes a couple of deep breaths to calm himself whilst Mina watches with a worried expression, though she keeps quiet to let Midoriya rant about his feelings. He clearly needed this.

After a few more pacifying inhales, he speaks again. "..I just don't get why he's still so hung up on me trying to be a hero. I'm not like, trying to compete with him or anything. He's just decided that I'm somehow insulting him by attending UA."

She thinks back to the blond's rageful.. temper tantrum was really the only word for it, and asks a hesitant question for Midoriya, being mindful of how she phrased it. "Was he.. always like this? After you guys fell out, I mean."

The boy shakes his head. "No, that's the first time he's ever gotten that.. loud. If I had to guess, he was probably feeling a bit trapped since he's not used to people disagreeing with his opinion of me."

Mina frowns. "That's no excuse for what he did."

"It's not." He affirms with another small shake of his head, still keeping his gaze down at his lap, "It's just an explanation."

The rosette purses her lips as she carefully chooses her next words. "You.. You never told me he was that bad. I knew he was hurting you physically, but I didn't realise it went that deep." A foolish assumption on her part, because when did Bakugo ever half-ass anything?

Midoriya winces slightly at her soft reproach. "I didn't mean to keep it from you.. I just didn't want you to think I was fishing for sympathy, or something." He says with a muted voice, shoulders slumping in self-deprecating shame.

The admission confuses Mina, mainly because as far as she's aware, Midoriya had gotten over his inferiority complex for the most part, at least when it came to her. It was one of her many points of pride in their friendship, that he felt safe enough around her to share his emotions without worry of retribution.

She wonders for a moment if this specific situation was just too big for him to talk about and he was too scared to bring it up to her, before she remembers the grievances his childhood 'friend' had aired out earlier that evening, that Bakugo was under the assumption Midoriya was being an attention whore about the quirk discrimination he went through, and she decides that perhaps this fear of his wasn't exactly unfounded.

"Midori.. you know you can talk to me about this stuff, right? You don't have to, I'm not gonna force you.. But I promise I'll always listen." She reminds him with a casual bump of her shoulder against his slumped one, and his lips twitch at the corners into a small involuntary smile.

"I know, Ashido-san. Thank you. It's just.. hard sometimes, y'know? Still getting used to having people who actually care and all that." The smile softens as he finishes his thought, "I realise it's not exactly been simple, having to deal with me, and that I usually need a little push.. but I don't wanna hide this kinda stuff about myself anymore. Especially from you. And.. somehow it doesn't feel as scary, if it is with you."

Mina feels her face brighten at his resolve, but it's not long before it dampens back down as she realises she needs to address the other elephant in the room. "In that case.. I think there's something else we should discuss, Midori."

He just blinks a couple of times before recognition displays itself on his features, and he responds to her prompt. "Right.. the entrance exam."

The green-haired boy shuffles around on the bed and bunches his hands together in his lap as he continues. "Though.. there's not really much to say, is there? I feel like I said most of the details back downstairs, you already know what happened."

Her eyes soften in sympathy as she gently shakes her head. "No, not what happened, Midoriya. I'm asking how you feel about it."

He looks a little shocked by the firm edge her voice took at the end of that rebuttal. "How I feel..? I.. I told you that as well. It's in the past, I've made peace with it." His eyes droop towards the cover, looking like even he didn't believe his excuse.

Mina just raises an eyebrow as she replies to him. "I hate to break it to you dude, but usually people who've 'made peace' with something don't have emotional outbursts about it."

The room goes quiet, and his body sags a little at her light accusation. She has a faint worry that despite his request for her to push and make him open up a bit more just a minute ago, she might've taken it a step too far with her interrogation, but then Midoriya huffs a small laugh in response. "You've got a point there, I suppose."

A pregnant pause, and then he resumes talking. "I, uh.. I guess if I had to name it, I'd be feeling.. mad, and upset, and uh.. outraged?" He glances over to her hesitantly, like he was searching for approval.

She's not having any of that. Shaking her head again with more force than before, she furrows her brow as she responds to him. "This isn't a quiz, Midori. I want you to tell me how you're feeling, not how you think you should be feeling." He'd never been this unsure about his emotions before now, but after a moment of stunned silence as he gapes at her, he straightens up and tries again.

"Right. Okay, I'm feeling.. confused, and.. disheartened, and.." He tightens his hands into fists as he concludes in a low tone, "..definitely outraged." The fire returns to his voice, though unlike the raging inferno it had manifested as downstairs, this was more of a simmering heat. By now, it was clear to Mina that this boy had some emotional baggage that he desperately needed to unload, and she doubles her resolve to help by prodding him in the right direction.

"Why are you outraged?" She asks with the casualness of inquiring about the weather, and Midoriya's back straightens out fully as his volume raises once again.

"Because they cheated me! They took my placement and stomped it into the ground like it meant nothing!" His clenched fists crease the fabric of his pants as he drags the limbs down his thighs, "I played by all their stupid rules, beat all their stupid trials, and they still screwed me!"

She nods and queries further. "Who's 'they'? Who are you outraged at?" She obviously knew the answer to this already, she was just trying to direct his anger down a more constructive path.

"The school board! And the HPSC! And Nedzu!" He halts his rant after that last one and backtracks, his voice calming down to a neutral tone again, "No no, wait. That's not fair. Nedzu.. Nedzu tried to help."

That detail catches her attention, and she asks a different line of questioning, now genuinely curious. "Nedzu tried to help? What do you mean?"

He finally relaxes his hands and places them back in his lap as he answers her. "Um, when the school board banned my enrolment.. Nedzu tried to argue my case in the meeting. It didn't work, obviously, and I only found out he did it when I discovered the transcripts to that meeting like two months later." He pauses when he notices the confused look on her face and then quickly elaborates, "It was because of my Brainstorm activities, I was gathering evidence for something else and happened to stumble across them."

She lets out a quiet noise of understanding, and he continues. "When I woke up in the infirmary after the whole Overhaul thing, Nedzu told me that he had originally planned to give me one-on-one lessons, as a way to get around the ban. But then the USJ incident happened, and you guys started getting attacked by villains semi-regularly.. He got too busy trying to manage all the PR scandals and the school's security, and I just kinda.. fell to the wayside, I guess." Midoriya tries to pass it off as if being forgotten like that doesn't bother him, but even someone who didn't know him like Mina did would've seen through it immediately.

"Oh." Not really much else she can say to that, it was quite a heavy bombshell to just drop without warning, and a more pessimistic part of her broods a not-so-flattering explanation for their principal's behaviour. She couldn't put it past the mammal however, he'd done much sneakier things in the past. "Not to be a cynic or anything, but.. do you think maybe he was lying about that, to convince you to join UA? I mean, he could've-"

Midoriya's hand flies up to stop her train of thought in its tracks. "Ashido-san. I know you're trying to help, but please let me believe this. I need to believe it." The desperation present in his voice leaves her silent for a moment, but then she realises what the sentiment must have meant to him.

That knowledge was likely the only thing keeping him going in the beginning. A singular lighthouse of hope amidst a sea of self-doubt, because to his mind if Nedzu tried to keep him in UA, then surely he was worth something, right? But, if their principal didn't try, didn't care.. then maybe he was better off just giving up.

Mina knows that's obviously a load of bullshit. Midoriya was a true hero, with or without UA training, but she can see how he might've felt that was his only glimpse of reassurance, at least before he got settled into his place at school. Still, she didn't wanna take that reassurance away from him, especially if he was this desperate to believe it to be true.

"Right. Sorry." She apologises whilst rubbing the back of her neck with her hand. She's even picked up his nervous ticks too, it seems.

The audible remorse must've knocked the green-haired boy out of his funk, because he's quick to turn and assure her that she hadn't made a transgression.

"Y-You don't have to be sorry, Ashido-san. I.. I really am grateful you're talking to me about this, it's helping a lot. In fact.. I'm sorry for dumping all this on you."

Despite herself, she feels the corners of her mouth lift to a smile. "You don't have to be sorry about that, Midori. Friends help each other with their problems all the time, you're not committing some grave sin by talking about your feelings."

He doesn't look very convinced. "Still.. it's p-probably not what you expected to be doing tonight, so I'm sorry."

She rolls her eyes mirthfully at his insistent apology.

"And.. I'm s-sorry for shouting earlier, too." He adds sheepishly, and she looks at him like he just sprouted an extra head.

"Midori. You got discriminated against. Unfairly, for something you have no control over. Most people would be upset about that, you don't have to apologise for it." She places a comforting hand on his shoulder, and he leans into the contact slightly after a moment of hesitation. She feels her heart skip a beat at how relaxed he looked in her presence, and the two sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes, though Mina's mind is buzzing with thoughts about the situation at hand.

The excitement of the evening had postponed her introspection a bit, but now that she's had a chance to consider it, she should've realised it was a little fishy that Midoriya didn't pass the entrance exam despite his clear physical prowess. She just didn't think that sort of thing would happen at UA. The school quite heavily promoted their inclusion policies and positioned themselves as an institution that wouldn't treat people differently because of their.. well, differences.

Clearly, that wasn't true. Even if Nedzu had been more than happy to let the green-haired boy into the hero course, the fact of the matter was that didn't end up happening, and poor Midori had been left in the dust with a shattered dream.

She feels a righteous fury well up inside her. He should've been with them from the start, but was denied his earned spot just because a few middle-aged dickheads were salty that a boy without a quirk was more competent than them. Her irritation with the school board only doubles when she realises that their prejudice had allowed Mineta to worm his way into the hero course in Midoriya's place, and that little turd was about as heroic as last week's leftovers.

If the Quirkless boy hadn't taken things into his own hands and started his vigilante career, who knows where he'd be? Furthermore, what would've become of 1-A? Brainstorm's quirk analysis had laid the foundations for dozens of techniques that ended up becoming critical to their survival on multiple occasions. If they didn't have that analysis, then..

Mina shuddered at the thought, and forcefully redirected her mind back a stage to stop herself from wandering down that rabbithole.

Quirk discrimination was never fun. Although she'd never been denied enrolment because of the way she looks, she has received grief from many people over the years due to her mutant features. A few specific instances jump to her mind, and she mentally debates sharing them with Midoriya as a show of camaraderie, the only thing stopping her being the thought that he might not appreciate hearing about more bigotry at the moment.

After eventually deciding that it's at least a better idea than the two of them just wallowing in silence all evening, she speaks up again with a sigh. "This shit sucks. Believe me, I know the feeling."

Midoriya looks at her in confusion for a moment before his expression shifts to realisation. "Oh, right.. You probably had trouble because of your quirk, didn't you?"

Her face creases slightly in response as she gives a rueful smile, and she takes her hand off his shoulder to bunch it with the other one in her lap. "Yeah.. I've had people straight up refuse me service before, call me names, just because I got this pink skin.." Her voice trails off for a moment,  "..one time when I was 12, one of those anti-mutant protestor guys threatened to kill me as I was walking home from school."

Midoriya had been quietly listening up until that point, but that admission causes him to let out a small gasp. "That's horrible! I'm so sorry that happened to you, Ashido-san."

She doesn't respond verbally, only giving a muted nod of agreement. She didn't like to think about it much, but that guy had left an emotional mark on her, one that required an extreme amount of effort to wash off. It took a long time to scrub his horrid visage from her nightmares after that incident occurred, to cleanse her memories of the genuine hatred etched onto his features as he screamed murderous threats in her face.

Her smile becomes even more strained as she resumes talking. "There was one thing that always stuck out in my mind. It's not like it was even that bad compared to all the other times, but I can't shake the way it made me feel."

Out the corner of her eye, she spots Midoriya edging a hand into her space, tentatively offering his quiet support, and she feels some of the tension in her shoulders loosen as she takes the hand into her own. A thought passes through her, and she can’t help but act a bit greedy, locking her fingers in between his to experience the lovely warmth it provides.

Is it perhaps a little wrong to derive enjoyment from the way his fingers curl protectively around her knuckles in response, when all he’s trying to do is help? Maybe, but she knows this is basically the only time Midoriya would offer his hand like this, instead of the other way round, so she allows herself a guilty pleasure and logs the feel of his scarred digits into her memory banks to revisit at a later date before regaling her story.

"It was all the way back in elementary. I was like, 7 at the time, I think?" She shakes her head slightly to refocus, "Whatever, doesn't matter. Our class was putting on a school play, just some generic 'knight saves the princess from a dragon' schlock, that kinda thing. Obviously I wanted to be the princess, but.."

She shuffles slightly in her seat, and her grip on Midoriya's hand tightens.

"..the other kids made fun of me for it, said I wasn't pretty enough to be a princess, one boy even said I ought to be the dragon because I looked more like one."

Midoriya frowns at that, clearly displeased with the way she'd been treated, and he says as much with a look of sympathy in his eyes. “That sounds like it was really upsetting.. I’m sorry that happened to you.”

"S'okay dude, I'm over it by now.." She replies weakly.

The green-haired boy darts his gaze away for a moment, contemplating whether to say whatever was on his mind, before he comes to a decision and turns back to her.

"U-Usually people who are 'over it' don't tense up that hard when t-talking about it." He rebuts, throwing her earlier words back in her face, though the effect is dulled somewhat by the lack of confidence in his tone.

Mina huffs a small laugh at his attempt at a comeback, and throws him a bone for his effort. "Touché, Midori."

He's not done yet however, and continues his train of thought. "I mean, if that memory stuck with you all these years, it must've really affected you.." He muses, and she can sense the hidden question in that statement.

She decides to answer it. "I think it was the first time I properly realised 'Oh, some people just hate me, for no good reason'." She distinctly remembers it was only after that incident that she started noticing the dirty looks people gave her as she walked down the street with her family. Part of her wonders whether Midoriya had a moment like that too, where it just clicked and the world got a little bit darker all of a sudden.

Then, clarity hits her like a freight train, and she puts her head in her hands with a self-admonishing groan. "What am I doing..? You were denied access to your dream school, and here I am whining about how I didn't get a part in a stupid play!"

Honestly, how insensitive could she be? She raises her head again to apologise to the green-haired boy, but he beats her to the punch with his response.

"So?" He asks simply, with a slight raise of his brow. The question stuns her for a moment, her mind trying to compute what he meant.

After that brief pause, she heaves a long sigh before replying, feeling too much shame to entertain his.. whatever he was doing. "You don't have to sugarcoat it, man. I know I'm being a dick right now."

Her statement only seems to confuse him more, and his face crinkles a bit in bewilderment. "I don't think you're being a.. jerk."

Despite herself, she huffs a small laugh at his self-censorship. "What, you can cuss out your bully in front of everyone, but you can't handle the word 'dick'?"

Midoriya reddens slightly as he rubs the back of his neck out of embarrassment. "T-That was.. I was running high on emotions, alright? I never liked swearing much, and my m-mom always used to say that a dirty mouth led to a dirty conscience. Just got in the habit of catching myself, I guess." He shrugs casually before redirecting the conversation back on track, "Why do you think you're being a jerk?"

"Uh, because I'm acting like our stories are at all comparable? It's basically like telling you that your problems don't matter." She explains.

The green-haired boy shakes his head vehemently, looking almost affronted by the thought. "What?? No it isn't!"

The firm denial surprises her, and her brow furrows as she tries to reiterate her point. "Dude, you got singled out for being Quirkless and lost an enrolment that you rightfully earned. I didn't get to be a pretend princess when I was 7. You can't tell me you don't see the difference between those two things?"

Midoriya takes in her rhetorical question with a contemplative look, and just when she thinks that he finally sees her argument, he hits her with another curveball.

"But, it made you sad, didn't it?"

Her face pinches in confusion as she tries to understand what angle he's taking here. "Well, yeah.. but-"

"Getting my application for UA shot down made me sad, too." He finishes, looking at her with a muted smile.

The befuddled expression on her face sticks, and Midoriya clears his throat before elaborating on his stance. "I just.. don't see much point in getting caught up in the semantics of who's got it 'worse'. We can argue about the severity of the symptoms for hours, but at the end of the day, they've all got the same root cause."

Mina supposes that.. kinda makes sense, from a certain point of view.

"I get that it feels like you don't have the right to complain sometimes, because it seems like such an insignificant thing, right? I've had moments like that too, but I realised a while ago that even the small stuff can be just as damaging if it starts piling up. That whole play incident is just a microcosm of the issues that mutants tend to go through."

He then darts his hand up to the back of his neck timidly as his eyes drifts down to his lap out of nervousness, "I-I mean, I realise I'm presuming quite a bit here. Maybe you went through a lot of that kinda stuff? I don't know. But if you ask me, there's no reason to beat yourself up for finding it upsetting."

His irises glance back towards her figure. "Besides, it's not like you don't have more.. extreme examples to pull from." He raises his brow meaningfully, clearly alluding to her earlier anecdote with the anti-mutant protestor, and she vacantly nods in acknowledgement. Before she can slip too far into her thoughts on that encounter again, the green-haired boy's voice pulls her back to the surface like a safety rope.

"Now, I'm not saying that it isn't a good idea to compare experiences. Anecdotal evidence can be an extremely useful resource to finding out which marginalised groups are hit the hardest because of bigotry." He states matter-of-factly with a finger raised, sounding like even more of a nerd than usual, "It's just that when it comes to discrimination as a concept, whether it's from intolerant adults, or kids who just don't know any better, it sucks for everyone." He finishes with an awkward smile and a shrug, and she feels the corners of her mouth lift higher to match it.

"Yeah.. I see what you're saying. And you're right, it does suck." She and her crush share a short laugh at that, before slowly turning to face the wall, her eyes trailing over the notes plastered on the bulletin board, and her smile gains a companion blush as she starts daydreaming about the boy right next to her.

It was inspiring, the amount of social progress he'd made since he came to this school. She thinks back to the bundle of nerves she'd been presented with on his first day, and decides that the Quirkless boy in that state would never have been able to give an impassioned speech like that without stuttering up a storm.

Now though? His confidence had skyrocketed over the relatively short period of time she'd known him, and she laughs again under her breath at the irony that she'd come up here to comfort him, only to have the tables turned without her even noticing.

Then, in her peripheral vision, Midoriya's gaze shifts down towards his legs again, and he puts a hand to his chin with a thoughtful look.

"Actually, now that I think about it.. why did those kids make fun of you for that? 'Not pretty enough'..? I don't see it. I mean, not that it would've been acceptable either way, but I don't get how that reasoning holds up even with child logic. Like, you're really pretty now, I can't imagine that you weren't cute back then as well."

Her mind instantly grinds to a halt, and Mina swivels her head round to face him in shock, heart pounding in her chest. He was still looking down at his lap with that contemplative expression, not even registering what he just let slip. She was barely processing it herself, to be fair. Swallowing the buildup in her throat, she tries to confirm what he said in a quiet voice.

"You.. You think I'm pretty..?"

He freezes at the question, and quickly snaps his head in her direction looking equally as shocked. They stare at each other for an extremely long moment, before Midoriya's face goes nuclear red and he stammers up a storm, waving his hands around frantically.

"N-No! I m-mean- Yes! No, w-wait! I mean-" He squints his eyes shut and takes a deep breath to regain some oxygen before explaining himself, taking manual pauses between certain words to make sure he doesn't stumble over them, "I mean. You are very pretty. But I shouldn't have said that, and made you uncomfortable. I'm s-sorry!" His stutter breaks through at the end, and he bows in his seat as he apologises, face still a bright crimson.

Mina's so high up on Cloud 9 that it takes her a second to realise why he was even apologising, and softens her voice as she replies to him with her face exhibiting a burning violet. "Woah, hey! Don't be sorry, Midori. I'm not mad, I promise." He lifts his head back up as he practically trembles from anxiety in his seat, "I mean, w-what girl wouldn't wanna hear that she's pretty?" She tries to play it off, but the lingering colour on her cheeks betrays her embarrassment.

Then, a previously passive idea suddenly activates in her cerebral cortex, an extremely risky idea if she was being honest with herself, and she wars with her subconscious on whether to vocalise it out loud.

'I mean.. he said it first, didn't he? That makes it okay, right?'

She notices Midoriya start to open his mouth, and her brain makes the decision for her.

"Ithinkyou'reprettytoo!" The words come out so fast that it sounds like just one with way too many syllables, cutting Midoriya off preemptively and leaving him stunned on the edge of the bed. She ducks her gaze away from him as her face shifts to a deep indigo, and she only knows that he's processed what she said when he eventually lets out an involuntary whine followed by a very voluntary exclamation.

"W-W-What???" His voice cracks through the stutters, and Mina feels the temperature of her cheeks rise even further.

"Y-Yeah, you heard me. I think you're p-pretty as well." She finds the courage to look back up at him, and sees that his own cheeks are blotted in a bright scarlet as he squeaks out a response.

"O-Oh! Um.. t-t-thank you.." He brings his hand to up to rub the back of his neck bashfully, and his lips shift at the corners to form a tiny smile. The sight is nearly enough for Mina to drop any pretense of keeping her crush a secret and to relay her feelings immediately, just so that captivating shade of red stays on his face.

She's already embarrassed enough from just complimenting his appearance, surely it can't be that much worse to dump the whole thing on him, right?

Her brain takes a couple of internal reps to psyche herself up. She can do this. She's Ashido Mina, for god's sake! A hero-in-training at the best school in the country. Something like this is a cakewalk for her. She can do this. She's-

"No need to thank me, man. I mean, it's normal to call your friends pretty, isn't it?"

..a goddamn coward. And a hypocrite.

A distant memory, long before Midoriya started at UA, flashes through her mind of her and Tooru discussing the then-latest plan to set her up with her now-boyfriend. As fun as matchmaking was most of the time, Mina felt that the lengthy period being spent on getting just one couple together was becoming a little ridiculous.

She hadn't said anything out loud to the light-bender, but internally she was getting just a bit irritated that they were having to devise hair-brained schemes to couple her up with Koji when, in her retroactively naive and narrow-minded point of view, it seemed so much simpler to just go up to him and say "I like you".

The irony is very much not lost on her now.

She could practically hear her past self's inner voice cackling at her predicament. 'Just get it over with, you big wuss! What's the hold up? It's only three simple words!'

Yeah, three simple words that would almost certainly set her and Midoriya off on a catastrophic path of estrangement! She'd be lucky if they even end up exchanging Christmas cards by the time her rampant emotions destroyed their friendship.

Mina vacantly wonders how she ever thought confessing would be easy, but she supposes that was the bliss of ignorance clouding her judgement.

She definitely understands Tooru way more now; this shit was hard.

Back in the real world, Midoriya brings a hand up to rub his neck at her rhetorical question, looking a little lost, confused, and.. disappointed?

"Oh.. it is?" A beat of silence passes, "..yeah, you're right, it is! I mean, I'm just stating a fact, basically. You are pretty!" He reaffirms with a wide grin, his dimples flushing a lovely shade of red all the while.

"Right you are, mister!" She shoots back, all too eager to take the convenient out he had presented her with. In her defense, it wasn't like he was incorrect; it is normal to compliment your friends on their appearance.

'Little bit less normal to wanna yank them by the collar and kiss 'em silly though~' The treacherous voice in her head (which is starting to sound more and more like Tooru by the minute) pipes up with an audible smirk, and her own face flushes with heat as she stomps it back down where it belonged.

Once the manifestation of dangerous thoughts is securely banished to her subconscious, and the temperature of her face simmers to the point that her skin regains its usual pink, she clears her throat and addresses the green-haired boy once again.

"So, how you feelin' now?" She asks, now that they've cleared the air regarding his bigotry-riddled treatment from the school board.

"Much better." He confirms as his grin widens further, "Feels like a weight's been taken off my chest now. Thank you for talking with me, Ashido-san."

Those last two words niggle at the back of her mind where her inner romantic voice lay dormant. Ashido-san.. That formal title was grating on her eardrums the more she heard it, because frankly it's a little ridiculous that they've pushed this far into their relationship without an update on the Midori-Mina registry.

Another idea passes through her head, and this time she blurts it out before she can even second guess herself.

"Mina."

He stops in his tracks and turns to her with wide eyes. "Huh?"

"Call me Mina." She elaborates with a small smile, her cheeks tinting a faint lilac at the prospect, "I mean, we just shared tragic backstories. I think that calls for an upgrade to first names, don't you?" She posits as her smile widens out to a grin.

If she couldn't find the courage to spill her romantic feelings to her crush, then surely going up to first name status would be enough to mollify her inner voice for now.

In contrast with his earlier confidence, Midoriya's face goes completely red at her request, and his eye sockets reach their apex radius as he stutters out a response. "I-I.. t-that's- I mean-"

His crimson complexion and staggered speech forces Mina to remember herself, and she quickly course corrects. "Only if you want to, though! We can just stay as is if that's more comfortable for you." She had forgotten in her excitement that Midoriya was way more timid than her, and would probably be a bit apprehensive about making that jump up the friendship ladder.

To her surprise however, Midoriya shakes his head frantically as his eyes widen even more and the rosy red on his cheeks remains. "No! I.. I-I wouldn't mind d-doing that.." He fidgets with his hands as his gaze darts away from her, and the tone of his face darkens to a deep maroon, "..you can call me I-Izuku, if you want.."

Mina feels her heart palpitate at the offer, and her own face dusts a bold violet as her breath catches in her chest. Good lord, what was wrong with her? She was giving him the same proposal less than a minute ago, and now she's blushing like a preteen as soon as he does it in return?

Despite her racketing heart, she feels her lips pull up into a soft smile, and she finally answers him after a lengthy pause. "Alright.. Izuku." The three syllables taste absolutely delicious on her tongue, and any thought she might've had is instead replaced by a continuous internal squealing at the fact that she could use that title anytime she wanted now.

Meanwhile, Izuku's shoulders tense up at the sound of his name, and the vermillion on his cheeks goes nuclear. By this point, the colour is so deeply red that it's not out of the question he's somehow formed a brand-new, never-before-seen shade. Maybe he'd get to name it. 'Midori Red' might be a bit of an oxymoron, but it'd catch on eventually.

He takes a deep breath for air, and after expelling it from his lungs, he replies with no small amount of stammering present in his voice. "T-Then.. I'll c-call you M-Mina-san, okay?"

Her heart stutters, and it takes everything she has to stop herself from swooning at how rich her name sounds when formed from his vocal chords. She doesn't have a mirror to check for sure, but if the burning heat on her face was any clue, then it was now likely covered by its own impossible shade of purple.

"S-Sounds good." She responds meekly, as she darts her gaze away from him and towards the wall they're facing.

Izuku follows suit as he gives an equally shy answer. "C-Cool."

The room enters a quiet period after that exchange, the both of them keeping their bodies pointed directly at the wall whilst taking hesitant glances at each other in their peripheral vision.

However, Mina was never really a fan of unnecessary quiet, so after a minute of awkward silence, she clears her throat and makes an attempt to kickstart the conversation again.

"So, uh.. what do you wanna talk about now?"

Hey, she never said it was a good attempt.

The green-haired boy jumps a bit at the question, evidently more used to the quiet than she was, but then he brings a hand up to his chin as he lets out a little contemplative noise.

"Hm."

---

"And then he said 'Ashido-kun, just because you have Acid does not mean you can make a mockery of this experiment!'" Mina puts on an exaggerated rendition of her middle-school chemistry teacher's voice as she places her hands on her hips.

"No way!" Izuku exclaims with a disbelieving grin.

"Yes way!" She replies with an equally wide smile.

Both of the hero students were currently sat cross-legged in the middle of Izuku's bed, exchanging stories from each of their childhoods. To be more specific, stories pertaining to discrimination.

The topic had stemmed from Izuku floundering for a talking point, before he eventually offered to share some tales from his time growing up, an offer that Mina took immediately. She wasn't gonna say no to learning more about her crush, after all.

At first, the tone of the conversation had been dreadfully morbid, as Izuku told her about being outcast from the rest of his peers due to his Quirklessness, being targeted by authority figures for his perceived lower social status, even when he was beat up by the people around him for simply existing. She listened with a gradually breaking heart as he gave example after example of the horrible torture he went through at school, and her sympathy flared as she regaled her own experiences in response, since being a very blatant mutant with extremely visible features came with its own share of bigots and assholes that wanted to make you feel small just for being different.

It initially seemed that the atmosphere in the room would stay melancholic for the rest of the evening, but then, like a script was flipped, Izuku happened to try and imitate one of his tormentors as he was telling a specific story. Only, the impression was absolutely awful, and he almost immediately started laughing at the croaky voice he had adopted, with her following not long after. The laughing fit that ensued lasted at least a full minute, and by the time they had calmed down, they were both too giggly to feel all that sad.

So they said 'screw it', and kept the stories coming. Only now, they were telling them like stand up routines, adding in sarcastic comments on the bully's behaviour and laughing at the absurd voices they gave to the characters.

"Geez. Teachers were the worst, in my experience." The green-haired boy huffs even as he keeps that smile on his face, "I almost got sent to remedial classes like 4 different times because they were convinced I was cheating whenever I got anything close to a good grade. It's a miracle I'm not still in middle school right now."

"Amen to that, brother. I ever tell you about this old bitch Shimizu?" At his shake of the head, she takes a small breath and continues, "Okay, well, everyone hated her. She was a mean old hag who always yelled at us for the slightest screw up, but ah, that's besides the point. For some.. fuckin' reason, she thought that all this? The skin, the horns, the eyes?" She gestures around her body as she lists the features off, and Izuku nods, "All cosmetics." She finishes with a horizonal flick of her flattened palm, and the green-haired boy slumps his neck forward as his eyebrows raise in disbelief, "I know, right?? Like, firstly lady, I don't know why you think I'd do all that for middle school. Secondly, I was 13 goddamn years old, I was still learning how to apply concealer at that point. My parents had to personally come in and show her pictures of younger me to prove that I just look like that."

"Oo, oo! I had something like that as well!" Izuku raises his hand to ask permission to tell his story, which she grants with a nod, "Okay, so! First week of middle school. My mom gets a call from my English teacher to let her know that her son was 'faking being Quirkless for attention'." He puts the phrase around air quotes to highlight the absurdity of such an assumption, and Mina's face shifts to shock at the audacity of someone to call his mother over an unfounded claim like that.

Izuku chuckles at her expression before he continues. "She tore him to shreds on the phone. I don't think I've ever seen her that mad since.. well, I guess the whole 'vigilante' thing, maybe. Anyway, while that's happening I'm sitting on the couch listening to her yell at him and thinking like 'Why the hell would anyone choose to be Quirkless??'."

"It's insane, right??" She questions rhetorically as she slaps an exasperated hand to her forehead, "I dunno what goes through their minds to make them think we'd wanna bring this kinda stuff on ourselves."

"Right??" Izuku echoes her sentiment as he straightens his back and splays his palms out in front of him, "Like, I'm sorry to break it to you, Rokuden-sensei, but I actually don't like being physically assaulted for my quirk status! Crazy, I know!" He holds his open hands up in a surrender position before relaxing them as a short laugh escapes his vocal chords.

He continues his thought after a momentary pause to catch his breath. "Sometimes it wasn't even because I was Quirkless. I was just Aldera's designated punching bag because everybody knew that the teachers wouldn't do shit if I got hurt. So I'd have people I'd never even seen before coming up and sucker punching me because they'd had a bad day, or whatever." He scoffs mirthfully with a hand to his chin, "And I'd always wonder what train of thought led them to that decision. Like-" Mina watches with a barely suppressed smile as he shifts the hand to poke a finger into his chin while he purses his lips and squints his eyes in an exaggerated display of thinking, "Huh, I'm feeling pissed off right now. Whatever should I do to alleviate this rage?"

Izuku brings both of his hands up to his temples, pressing his index and middle fingers into the flesh as he scrunches up his face in concentration, like he was trying to activate some sort of latent psychic powers. The green-haired boy then speaks in imitation of the unnamed bully, putting on a stereotypical nerd accent. "Hmmmm.. by utilising my engorged cerebral cortex and massive IQ.." She giggles at his impression, "I can determine that the best course of action in this situation is- yes! Beating up this random kid for no reason, of course!" The giggles turn to full-on laughter, and it takes her a moment to calm down and continue the back-and-forth.

"Yeah, it's best not to question what goes through those morons' skulls. Kinda hard to see them as anything but dumbasses after you've been accused of spreading 'space cooties', as I learned from my elementary experience." She chuckles at the memory.

"Space cooties?" Izuku spits out a laugh, "What even are space cooties?"

"The funniest thing in the world, according to 8 year-old boys." She rolls her eyes snarkily.

"I had a couple of nutjob teachers who thought my Quirklessness was contagious." Izuku adds while resting his chin on a propped hand, "They made me sit at the back of the classroom so that I didn't transmit my 'disease' to them."

"Ugh, don't even get me started. My biology teacher in second year thought that her skin would turn pink if she stood too close to me. A biology teacher, thought that quirk mutations were contagious. It was always a coinflip on whether you'd get a cool teacher who didn't care about that kinda shit, or the most quirkist person alive, with no in-between."

She lets out a groan as another thought comes to mind. "And the other students, oh my god! They could never make up their minds on how they feel about mutants! When you're little, you're 'cool' and 'unique' which like, okay, not that bad. But then you all get a little bit older and everyone stops thinking it's cool, and then you become 'weird'. And then if you're a girl, when you get even older you become 'exotic' all of a sudden." She gags at the word, and laughs when Izuku's face scrunches up in disgust.

"Ewwwww! People really called you that?" He asks incredulously, clearly alarmed that mindset was common enough to be a standard issue for mutant girls.

"To my face." She confirms as her grin widens, "And they always think it's a compliment. Every time! It gets to a point where you have to wonder if they're even hearing themselves as they say it."

"Jesus! I think I'd go insane if I had to deal with kids doing that kinda thing to me." He muses to himself.

"Not just kids." She comments wryly.

Izuku's jaw drops in shock. "Adults were calling you 'exotic'??" She nods, and he balks further, "What the fuck!?"

She barks out a proper belly laugh at his loud expletive, clutching her hands to her stomach as tears begin to form in her ducts and she sways on the bed, nearly falling backwards from how lightheaded she was getting. Izuku just stays there stupefied for a moment, before his surprise gives way to laughter as well, and they both sit on the bed, cackling their asses off without a care in the world.

It's weird. What happened to them- what had been done to them- was disgusting, despicable, inhumane. It shouldn't be funny. And yet, it is.

Because while those asswipes were probably stuck in some no-name highschool, or a draining dead-end job, where was she and Izuku? At the best goddamn hero school in the country, learning how to become the greatest versions of themselves with their heads held high and showing all the naysayers that they could go eat shit for all they care.

Oh, part of her wishes she could see the looks of all the people that told her it was useless trying to become a hero 'with a face like that' now, but honestly? They don't matter. They never did.

All that matters is that she's having the time of her life with one of her best friends in the whole wide world. And she wouldn't have it any other way.