MHA: Lust Quirk

The media vans were still outside.

Ryo counted six on the walk from the train station to the U.A. gates. White vans with satellite dishes, reporters in pressed suits holding microphones at their sides like weapons they hadn't drawn yet. A camera crew was set up on the sidewalk across from the main entrance, filming the students as they walked in. One of the reporters, a woman with sharp bangs and a microphone that had a station logo on it he didn't recognize, stepped toward him.

"Excuse me, are you a student at-"

"Late for class," he said, and kept walking.

The gates were heavier than usual. New security protocols, probably. The guard at the front desk checked his student ID twice, which had never happened before. The hallways were tense. Everyone still deciding how to talk about it.

The vending machine on the second floor was sold out of everything except melon soda and water. Someone had taped a handwritten sign to it that said "broken" in Kaminari's handwriting, which was recognizable because every letter leaned in a different direction. The machine wasn't broken. It was just out of the things people wanted.

Classroom 1-A.

He opened the door and the room was loud and alive in a way that told him everyone had been home for two days processing USJ alone and was now overcorrecting for the silence. Kirishima was standing on his desk. Kaminari was sitting backwards in his chair talking to Sero. Tokoyami was in his seat reading a book with Dark Shadow hovering above his shoulder, also apparently reading the book. Iida was at the front telling Kirishima to get off his desk with arm-chop gestures that could have been coded as semaphore.

Mina was in Seat 2.

She was leaning back in her chair with her legs crossed at the ankle under the desk and her phone in one hand and she was talking to Ochaco about something he couldn't hear from the door. Her hair was the same fluffy pink. Her horns were the same small yellow. The U.A. uniform was the same gray blazer and green skirt that everyone wore and somehow on her the skirt sat different.

She saw him.

The grin was instant. Wide, fast, full of teeth, and then she caught it and pulled it back to normal and the normal version was still too big. Her eyes stayed on him a beat longer than anyone else's would and in that beat there was the wall and the hoodie and his hands on her lower back and the sound she'd made when his thumbs found the spot and all of it was visible only to him because the grin was just slightly too wide and that margin contained everything.

He walked to Seat 19. Dropped his bag. Sat down.

His heartbeat was doing something it shouldn't have been doing in a classroom full of people.

Three seats over, Jiro's earphone jack twitched.

He didn't see it. He was looking at his desk, at the scratch on the surface that had been there since the first day, a thin line through the lacquer that he'd traced with his fingertip during Aizawa's first lecture. He was not looking at Mina. He was specifically, deliberately, with conscious effort, not looking at Mina.

Mina was looking at her phone. He knew this because he was not looking at her and therefore was aware of exactly where she was and what she was doing at all times.

The door opened.

Aizawa walked in.

The room went quiet. All at once. Kirishima got off his desk. Kaminari turned around in his chair. Even Tokoyami closed his book.

Aizawa looked worse than the gurney. Bandages covered everything from the bridge of his nose up, wrapping around his skull, leaving only his eyes and mouth visible. Both arms were in rigid casts, held in front of him by slings. His torso was bulky under the black shirt, more bandages underneath. He walked like every step was a negotiation with his skeleton.

Iida stood. "Everyone. Please-"

The class was already standing. They bowed. All of them. No one told them to. Iida had started to say it and they were already doing it.

Aizawa looked at the bowing class with the two eyes visible through the gap in the bandages. His mouth was flat. It stayed flat.

"Don't make those faces. I'm not dead." He walked to the podium. Set down a folder he'd been carrying clamped under one cast. "More importantly, the fight is not over for you."

He opened the folder with the tips of his fingers, which were the only parts of his hands not wrapped. The class was still standing. Nobody had sat down yet.

"The U.A. Sports Festival is in two weeks."

The silence lasted one more second.

Then Kirishima sat down so hard his chair scraped and said "YES" and the room detonated.

Everyone talked at once. Kaminari was asking Sero if he'd been training. Sero was asking Kaminari if tape was a combat Quirk. Iida's arms were going, either excitement or a traffic control exercise. Momo's posture had straightened. Todoroki was in his seat by the window and hadn't moved and hadn't spoken and was looking at the courtyard with the same expression he'd had before Aizawa entered, which was no expression at all. His heterochromatic eyes caught the window light and one of them was gray and one was turquoise and neither of them was invested in the conversation.

Bakugo.

He was in Seat 16, arms crossed, leaning back, and his grin was the grin of a person who had been waiting for this specific announcement his entire life. He didn't say anything yet. He was building to it. Everyone in the room could feel the declaration loading.

"I'm going to win." Flat. Loud. The room heard it. "I don't care about the rest of you. I'm winning."

Kaminari said "Dude, same," and Bakugo looked at him and Kaminari stopped talking.

Midoriya was in his seat. His right hand was clenched on his desk and his left hand, the one with the healed finger, was twitching. His eyes were down. His mouth was moving. The muttering. Ryo could hear individual words from three seats away: "obstacle course... cavalry battle... one-on-one... Quirk... control... percentage..."

The kid was already game-planning.

Ryo sat in his seat and looked at the scratch on his desk and thought about what the Sports Festival meant. In canon: the obstacle course, the cavalry battle, the tournament bracket. Todoroki's fire awakens during his fight. Ochaco pushes Bakugo to his limit and loses. Midoriya breaks his fingers. After the festival, during internships, Iida's brother gets attacked by Stain and Iida almost dies trying to avenge him.

In this version: Ryo was going to be in that bracket. He was going to fight people whose Quirks he'd watched on a screen and whose limits he'd memorized during a life that didn't exist anymore. The bracket was a showcase. Every pro hero in Japan watched. Every agency scouted. Midnight would be the referee.

Midnight would be watching him fight.

Aizawa was still talking. Security measures. Training schedule. The festival was proceeding despite the USJ attack because "U.A. does not cower." He said this in the same monotone he used for everything, including presumably his grocery lists.

The bell rang. Aizawa left. The room became loud again.

Mina caught his eye across the room and her mouth made the shape of "Thursday" without sound. He watched her lips move. Pink lips forming a word that was a plan that was a date and nobody else in the room could read it.

She turned back to Ochaco. Normal. Talking. Laughing. Gone.

Jiro was three seats to his left. She was writing in a notebook. Small handwriting, precise, filling a page that already had writing on it. Her earphone jack was draped over the desk, oriented loosely in his direction. The jack's tip pointed at him.

She didn't look up.

He didn't know exactly what she could hear. He knew the Quirk worked on heartbeats. He knew the range was about twelve meters. He knew that his pulse had jumped when Mina mouthed "Thursday" at him because his pulse was a traitor that had never once in its life maintained operational security.

If Jiro had been listening, she'd heard it. She'd heard his, and she'd probably heard Mina's, and if she'd heard them both spike at the same moment-

She turned a page in her notebook. Wrote something else. The earphone jack shifted off the desk and curled back against her neck.

She still didn't look up.

The cafeteria was loud and Ryo ate rice and fish at a table with Kirishima and Kaminari and Sero. Kirishima was talking about his training plan. It involved punching rocks. Kaminari's plan involved "figuring out how to not go stupid when I use my Quirk" which was a reasonable goal given that his Quirk's main drawback was making him too dumb to function for an hour. Sero's plan was tape.

"Just tape?" Ryo asked.

"Tape is versatile."

"That's what he says about everything," Kaminari said. "His answer to every problem is tape."

"Tape IS versatile."

Ryo ate his fish. Lunch Rush, the cooking hero, was behind the counter in his chef's whites and his cartoon-chef hat. The food was good. Better than the rice and expired milk he'd been living on. Across the cafeteria, Mina was sitting with Ochaco and Tsuyu and Momo and she was telling a story that involved hand gestures and at one point she stood up from the table to demonstrate something and the whole group laughed and Mina's laugh carried across the room because her laugh always carried across the room.

He looked at his fish.

After classes, in the corridor outside 1-A. Students streaming toward the exits. Ryo was packing his bag when Ochaco Uraraka appeared next to Seat 19 with her school bag held in front of her with both hands. Her cheeks were their standard pink and her brown eyes were wider than normal.

"Hayami-kun."

"Yeah."

"The Sports Festival." She adjusted her grip on her bag. "I want to do well. I mean, I need to do well. My parents- I need agencies to notice me." She said this like she'd rehearsed it and was now delivering it in a different order than she'd planned. "I was wondering. If you'd train with me? Before the festival. You're strong and I want to work on my combat but I need someone to actually- like, I need someone to spar against who won't hold back."

"You want me to hit you?"

"I want to practice not getting hit. By someone who hits hard."

He looked at her. Bag like a shield. Jaw set. She needed agencies to notice her because her parents needed the money and that was the whole reason she was here.

"Yeah," he said. "I'll train with you."

"Really?"

"After school works. Training Ground Gamma, usually empty around five."

Her mouth pulled into a smile that was too fast to be calculated and too wide to be polite. "Thank you. Seriously. Thank you, Hayami-kun."

"Don't thank me yet. I hit hard."

"That's the point." She was already turning, already planning, her bag swinging at her side. She got three steps away before she turned back. "Oh. Um. Is Tuesday okay? And Thursday?"

Thursday was Mina.

"Tuesday works. Thursday I've got something."

"Tuesday then!" She waved and walked and her step had the bounce that had been missing since USJ.

His phone buzzed.

One text. The emoji-string contact.

Mina: 🔥

He looked at it. One emoji. No context. He pocketed his phone and walked toward the train station and the six media vans were still outside and the woman with the sharp bangs was still holding her microphone and he walked past her without making eye contact and the afternoon sun was warm on his face and somewhere in the classroom behind him Jiro was probably still writing in her notebook.

Thursday was a date. Tuesday was training with Ochaco. The Sports Festival was in two weeks.

He needed to hit something.