MHA: Lust Quirk

The first week settled into a routine before Ryo noticed it happening. Wake up, train station, classes, lunch, train home. The days between the Battle Trial and whatever came next filled themselves with normal school things. Homework he didn't care about. Lectures he already knew the answers to. Hallway conversations that got easier each time because the class was learning who he was and what he did and didn't say, and he was learning where to stand and who to sit with and when to keep his mouth shut and how to be a person in a building full of future heroes.

Then one morning Aizawa started the day with an argument about leadership.

Aizawa told them to elect a class representative before homeroom, then crawled into his sleeping bag behind the lectern and stopped existing. The class erupted. Half the seats had a hand up. Bakugo was yelling about deserving it. Kirishima was yelling about how yelling wasn't leadership. Kaminari nominated himself and couldn't explain why when Jiro asked. Aoyama sparkled from his seat and said something in French that nobody understood. Hagakure's gloves waved in the air, which was the only reason anyone knew she was volunteering.

Iida stood up and chopped the air with his arm at a perfect ninety-degree angle. "I propose a formal written ballot! Democracy is the foundation of civilized governance. Each person casts one vote and abides by the result!"

The room went quiet for about three seconds. Then everyone started arguing about whether a written vote was a good idea, which was marginally better than arguing about who should be in charge.

Ryo didn't raise his hand. He didn't want the job. Being class rep meant visibility, and visibility was the last thing he needed. He wrote IIDA on his ballot in block letters and folded it twice.

The result: Midoriya got three votes. Momo got two. Iida got one, which was hard to watch because the guy had clearly wanted it more than anyone in the room and had still voted for someone else on principle.

Midoriya stood at the podium looking like he'd been sentenced to public speaking. He lasted about forty minutes before announcing, still slightly green, that he thought Iida was the better choice and was stepping down. Iida tried to refuse. Midoriya insisted. The class voted again, faster this time because the novelty had worn off.

Iida Tenya, Class Representative. Momo Yaoyorozu, Vice Representative.

Iida thanked the class with a bow so deep his glasses almost hit the lectern. Momo sat straighter in her chair, which Ryo hadn't thought was possible.

The cafeteria was on the first floor of the main building, a massive open space that served every department. Lunch Rush ran the kitchen, a hero whose Quirk apparently involved cooking really well, which was either the most useful or most depressing Quirk Ryo had ever heard of. The food was good, though. 300 yen for a full set.

Ryo grabbed a tray and sat down at a table near the windows. Kirishima dropped into the seat across from him before the tray was fully on the table.

"Bro."

"Bro."

"How's your side? From the fight. Jiro's sound thing."

"Bruised. It's fine."

"That's MANLY." Kirishima said this about everything. Stubbing your toe was manly if you didn't cry. "Did you hear Bakugo during the election? He said he should be class rep because he was the strongest. Iida said that's not how democracy works. Bakugo said democracy was weak."

"That sounds right."

"It was awesome."

Kaminari appeared with a tray piled high enough that it was structurally questionable. He sat down next to Kirishima and immediately started eating without greeting anyone, which was either rude or comfortable depending on how you read it. After about four bites he looked up.

"I still can't believe you tanked my discharge."

"We've been over this."

"I know but it's going to bother me forever. My whole thing is electricity. If electricity doesn't work on you, what am I supposed to do? Throw the battery at you?"

"Try punching."

"Have you SEEN my arms?"

The chair next to Ryo scraped back and Mina sat down. She just sat, like this was her table now, and reached across to steal one of Kaminari's gyoza.

"Hey!"

"Tax." She ate it in one bite.

Her knee was touching his under the table. Pink skin warm through the fabric of her tights.

"Mina, that was MY gyoza."

"And now it's my gyoza. Circle of life." She turned to Ryo. "You voted for Iida, didn't you?"

"How'd you know?"

"You're the only person in class who would've looked at that ballot and gone 'yeah, the rule guy' without overthinking it."

She wasn't wrong.

Three tables over, Ochaco was sitting with Midoriya and Iida. She was talking, rapid-fire, her hands moving, and Iida was doing the arm-chop thing while explaining something about cafeteria etiquette. Midoriya had his notebook out and was writing in it while eating, which was a skill. A second-year with what looked like mushroom caps growing out of her scalp dropped a tray behind them and nobody reacted because things falling was apparently normal here.

Across the cafeteria, Momo was walking back from the counter with a tray that had twice the food of anyone else's. She needed the calories for Creation. The ponytail moved when she turned her head to say something to Todoroki as she passed his table, and the motion pulled the collar of her uniform just enough that the line of her neck showed. He looked at his rice.

The alarm went off midway through lunch.

A siren, loud, industrial, the kind designed to make everyone stop what they were doing and move. Red lights flashed along the ceiling in rotating patterns. A voice on the PA said something about a Level Three security breach and for all students to evacuate in an orderly fashion.

Nobody evacuated in an orderly fashion. The cafeteria turned into a stampede. Students from every department were surging toward the exits, shoving, climbing over tables, someone's Quirk went off accidentally and a section of wall got frosted. Upper-classmen were pushing first-years aside. A girl with vine hair got tangled in a doorframe. The noise was enormous and layered and getting worse by the second.

Ryo stayed in his seat.

He picked up a piece of chicken with his chopsticks and ate it. It was good. Lunch Rush knew what he was doing.

Across the table, Kirishima and Kaminari had stood up, looking toward the exits with the same confused urgency as everyone else. Mina was half-standing, her hand on the table.

"Hayami, we should-"

"It's the press," he said.

"What?"

"The alarm. It's a media breach. Reporters got past the front gate. It's not an attack."

Kaminari squinted at him. "How do you know that?"

"Because if it were a real attack, the announcement would say 'villain incursion,' not 'security breach.' Security breach is a protocol-level alert. It means the perimeter was compromised, not that someone's inside trying to kill us."

That was half true. He knew because he'd seen this episode. But the logic held.

"That's... actually a good point," Kaminari said, and sat back down.

Mina sat back down too. Her gold-on-black eyes were narrowed. Her knee found his again under the table.

Across the room, Iida had reached the exit. He couldn't get through the crowd, so he did the Iida thing: he used his Engine Quirk to launch himself at the wall above the emergency door, braced against the frame with his legs, and shouted over the noise.

"EVERYONE! IT'S JUST THE MEDIA! LOOK OUTSIDE! THOSE ARE REPORTERS, NOT VILLAINS! ALL U.A. STUDENTS MUST CONDUCT THEMSELVES WITH PRIDE!"

The stampede slowed. Stopped. People looked out the windows. Cameras, microphones, reporters crowding the destroyed gate. Not villains.

The crowd calmed. Iida hung on the doorframe for another few seconds, then dropped down and straightened his glasses.

"See?" Ryo said.

"You could've yelled that," Mina said. "Saved Iida the gymnastics."

"He needed the moment more than I did."

The rest of the day went fast. Afternoon classes, Present Mic's English lecture that was more performance than instruction, Ectoplasm's math that was somehow the scariest class because the man could clone himself and grade your work in real time. Aizawa reappeared at the end of the day to announce tomorrow's schedule.

"Foundational Hero Studies. Off-site. Rescue training at the USJ. Be in costume and at the bus by eight."

Twenty chairs scraped back.

The next morning, the bus was the long kind with the open layout, seats facing inward along both sides. Ryo sat near the middle. Kirishima was across from him, already talking to Sero about something involving a skateboard and a dare. Kaminari was next to Kirishima, on his phone. Bakugo was at the back, alone, radiating the specific energy of someone who wanted everyone to know they didn't want to talk.

Mina dropped into the seat on Ryo's left. She didn't say anything. Just sat down with her thigh against his from hip to knee and started scrolling through her phone.

Then Tsuyu sat down on his right.

She folded her hands in her lap and looked straight ahead. Her enormous green eyes blinked once, slow, the whole eyelid coming down and up. Her hair was tied at the bottom in its usual bow. She smelled like pond water, which shouldn't have been interesting but was.

"Hayami-chan."

"Asui."

"Tsuyu. Call me Tsuyu." She said it the same way she said everything, flat and steady and non-negotiable. "I was thinking about you."

That wasn't a thing people usually said at eight in the morning on a school bus. Mina's phone-scrolling thumb stopped.

"Okay," Ryo said.

"You're a lot like All Might."

The bus was loud. Kaminari was arguing with Kirishima about whether the dare involved wheels or not. Sero was laughing. Bakugo was telling someone to shut up. But Tsuyu was right next to him and her voice carried without trying.

"How?"

She tilted her head. One finger tapped her chin.

"I don't know yet," she said.

That was the whole conversation. She turned forward and didn't say anything else. The bus moved. Mina looked at him sideways, one horn tilted in his direction, but didn't ask.

The bus turned a corner and the USJ dome appeared on the horizon, massive and round and white against the morning sky.

Ryo looked at it. The warp gate. Shigaraki. Seventy-plus villains. The Nomu. All of it was in there, and it was going to happen today, and he was sitting between Mina and Tsuyu and neither of them knew anything.

He didn't say a word.