MHA: Lust Quirk

The remaining matches took about two hours.

Todoroki froze an entire building from the outside in a single motion. Walked through the door, stepped over two frozen classmates, and touched the payload. The whole thing took under two minutes.

Mina's match went less well. She'd been on the villain side with Aoyama, who spent most of the fight hunched over from stomach cramps, and Sero's tape had caught her after she'd melted through half a floor. She walked out of the building with tape residue on her waistcoat and a grin that said losing hadn't even registered yet.

Tokoyami and Tsuyu won their match. Kirishima lost his and enjoyed it. All Might gave feedback to each team. Kaminari, who'd spent the entire duration of the other matches sitting cross-legged in the corner cycling between vacant stares and confused thumbs-up, finally regained cognitive function somewhere around the fourth match and immediately started complaining.

"Two million volts," he said, still sitting on the floor, pointing at Ryo across the room. "That should've dropped a horse. A BIG horse. Like, a Clydesdale."

"Do you know what a Clydesdale is?" Jiro said from her chair.

"It's a big horse, Jiro."

"Fair."

Kirishima leaned forward with both fists on his knees. "That was SO MANLY. You just stood there! The electricity was going everywhere and you were just-" He made a face that was supposed to represent stoic endurance but looked more like constipation. "Like a ROCK."

"Thanks," Ryo said. "I try."

"How, though? Like, your Quirk is Enhancement, right? Is part of it, like, durability? Because that's a LOT of voltage."

"I guess I'm hard to kill." He said it flat, like it wasn't a thing, because the alternative was explaining that his body was built from two middle school relationships and he'd rather eat one of Aoyama's stomach-cramp lasers than have that conversation.

All Might dismissed them after the last review. The class changed back into school uniforms in the locker rooms. Ryo's right side twinged when he raised his arm to pull the shirt over his head, the ribs still remembering Jiro's sound wave. Bruise, probably. He didn't check.

The U.A. hallways were wide and bright and full of students from other classes who hadn't spent their afternoon getting electrocuted. A third-year with antlers was carrying a stack of papers taller than his head. A support-course girl walked past with goggles pushed up into wild pink hair and grease on her chin, talking to herself about torque ratios. He'd remember that face later.

The school gate was at the bottom of a long tree-lined path. Students filtered out in groups, heading toward train stations and bus stops and whatever directions home meant for them. The sun was lower than it should've been for early afternoon, which meant the matches had run long.

"Hayami-kun!"

Ochaco fell into step beside him. She'd changed back into the school uniform and her bag was over one shoulder and she was already talking before she'd fully matched his pace.

"That was crazy, right? The whole day. All of it. Deku-kun's arm was- I mean, I know Recovery Girl healed it, but the SOUND it made when he used his Quirk, did you hear it? And Todoroki-kun, that ice thing, he froze the whole building, Iida said he could feel his engines almost seize up just from the ambient temperature, and then YOUR fight, you just-" She made a gesture with her hands that was supposed to represent tanking two million volts but looked more like jazz hands. "How are you not, I don't know, burned? Or twitchy?"

"I'm a little twitchy," he said. His right side was proving the point by aching every time he took a full breath.

"You don't LOOK twitchy."

"I internalize."

She laughed. Fast, almost startled, like she hadn't planned on it and the sound surprised her as much as him. Her cheeks were pink. They were always pink. But maybe slightly more than usual.

They walked. The path from U.A.'s gate to the main road was about ten minutes on foot. Ochaco talked with full commitment and occasional detours. She mentioned Tsuyu's stretching routine, which apparently involved crouching on a railing and extending her tongue to touch her toes. She mentioned that lunch tomorrow was curry day and that the cafeteria charged 300 yen, which was a lot when you were on a budget. She mentioned that her parents had called last night and asked if she'd made friends and she'd said yes and then felt weird about whether "friends" was accurate after one day.

"Is it?" she said. "Like, are we friends? We've known each other for two days. Is that enough?"

"Seems like it."

"Okay. Cool. Good." She pressed her fingertip pads together and bounced once on her heels. "Friends."

An arm landed across Ochaco's shoulders from behind.

"Who's friends with who?" Mina Ashido materialized between them like she'd been waiting in the bushes. She hadn't been. She'd just been walking faster than either of them and had the social radar to detect a conversation she wasn't in and correct that immediately. Her arm was around Ochaco's shoulders, casual, her body angled so she was walking between them and slightly closer to Ryo than she needed to be.

"Oh! Mina-chan. We were just-"

"Walking home together? Without me? Rude." She wasn't offended. Her voice was the same bright, bouncy register it always was, which was the register of someone who'd never once worried about whether she was invited and never planned to start. "What are we talking about?"

"The fights," Ochaco said. "Hayami-kun survived two million volts."

"I SAW. I was in the control room going like-" Mina did a face that was approximately surprise mixed with delight mixed with someone who'd just watched their favorite show have a plot twist. It involved her horns tilting forward and her gold-on-black eyes going perfectly round. "Kaminari was SO MAD when he woke up. He kept saying 'that's not fair, that's not how Enhancement works, I studied the Quirk register.'"

"Kaminari studies?" Ryo said.

"Right?! Also, Yaoyorozu getting MVP was perfect. Did you see her face when All Might said it? She was holding that book so tight I thought she was gonna crush it, and then she just kind of..." Mina mimed shoulders dropping, which on Mina involved her whole upper body loosening like a puppet whose strings had been cut. "Melted. In a good way."

"Hayami-kun nominated her," Ochaco said. "He said he was just the delivery system."

Mina looked at him. Her grin got wider, which shouldn't have been possible given that it was already taking up most of her face. "Smooth."

"It was true."

"It can be true AND smooth."

They walked three abreast. The sidewalk was barely wide enough. Mina's hip bumped Ryo's when the path narrowed around a light pole and she didn't adjust for it afterward. She smelled sweet under the standard-issue school soap, the same faint scent he'd noticed in the classroom on day one. Ochaco was on Mina's other side, tucked under her arm, walking in a comfortable lean that said this level of physical contact was normal for them after two days because Mina made everything feel like it had been happening for years.

Two girls flanking him on a sidewalk. Both talking to him and to each other. The whole thing felt ordinary in a way that nothing in this world had felt ordinary yet, which was the part that got him, because ordinary was exactly what he couldn't afford to let this become.

The train station appeared after another five minutes. Small, suburban, two platforms, a vending machine that someone had kicked hard enough to dent the front panel.

"This is me," Mina said. She unwound her arm from Ochaco's shoulders, turned, and pointed both index fingers at Ryo like a pair of guns. "Don't die from electricity poisoning or whatever."

She fired the finger-guns. Sound effects included.

Then she turned and headed for the platform. Pink hair bouncing, horns catching the late-afternoon sun, school bag swinging from one hand.

"She does that," Ochaco said. "The finger-gun thing."

"I noticed."

"She did it to Aizawa-sensei yesterday. He just stared at her."

"That tracks."

They kept walking. The sidewalk was wider now without Mina filling the center of it, and there was a gap between them that hadn't been there when Mina was acting as a bridge. Ochaco's bag strap crossed her chest and the fabric of her uniform pulled slightly at the shoulders when she adjusted it. Brawny build. Strong even in school clothes.

She was quiet for about a block. Ochaco being quiet was unusual enough that he almost said something, but then she did.

"You were really cool today."

She said it looking at the sidewalk, not at him. Her voice was lower than its usual register. Less bounce. More weight.

He didn't know what to say.

She was talking about the volts and the durability and the way he'd stood there while electricity ran through him. She thought he'd earned it through training. It wasn't. His strength came from Aoi and Hana and things the original had done in parks after dark, and the registered Quirk said "Enhancement," and that was the version everyone was going to get.

"Thanks," he said.

Ochaco looked up. Smiled. The pink on her cheeks deepened, and her brown eyes were warm and direct and she was looking at him like she'd decided he was worth paying attention to.

"See you tomorrow, Hayami-kun."

She turned left at the next intersection. He went straight.

The walk to his apartment was another twenty minutes. The sun was orange. A cat sat on a wall and watched him pass without moving. The dent in the train station vending machine was from someone with a strength Quirk who hadn't been thinking about it, and he wondered how many dents like that were scattered across this city from people who were strong and didn't question where the strength came from.

His right side ached. The rib would bruise by morning.

He got the apartment door open on the second try because his fingers were stiff. Kicked off his shoes. Made it to the bed. He was going to think about Ochaco's compliment and what it meant and what he couldn't say back, but his face hit the pillow and that was it.

He woke up in the middle of the night with his school uniform twisted around his torso and one sock on.