MHA: Lust Quirk

The classroom door groaned when he opened it.

He'd been careful with the train. Careful with his bag strap. Careful turning his apartment's new doorknob, the replacement he'd bought at the hardware store on the corner yesterday afternoon and installed with a screwdriver and a video tutorial and fifteen minutes of swearing at the wrong-sized screws. But the classroom door was the first thing he touched without thinking and the handle made a sound like a complaint, metal flexing under his palm before the latch gave.

Nobody noticed. The hallway was loud with first-years and the morning rush and someone from Class 1-B was arguing with someone about a vending machine and the sound of a door handle protesting didn't carry.

Ryo let go of the handle. The metal had a dent. Shallow, barely visible, the kind of thing a maintenance worker would chalk up to wear. He pressed his thumb over it, trying to smooth it back. The metal bent further.

He stopped touching the handle and went inside.

PE was outside. Running, stretching, the standard pre-Festival fitness block that Aizawa supervised from his folding chair with both arms still in casts and the separate notebook balanced on his knee. The burn on Ryo's cheek from Bakugo's sparring had faded to a tan mark that Kaminari said made him look like "a guy in a cologne ad" and that Ryo had ignored because engaging with Kaminari's observations only produced more of them.

Ball drills. Pairs, overhand throws, catch and return. Ryo was paired with Kaminari, who threw hard because Kaminari did everything at one volume and the volume was maximum.

The ball hit Ryo's palm and his hand didn't move.

Zero give. The ball hit and stopped and Ryo was standing exactly where he'd been standing with his arm extended and the impact had registered as pressure. Like catching a pillow.

Kaminari stared. "Dude, I threw that hard."

"Did you?"

"I just- you didn't even- your hand didn't move."

"Maybe you need to eat more."

Kaminari said something about protein that Ryo stopped listening to because Aizawa's pen was moving. From across the field, from the folding chair, Aizawa had watched the catch. He couldn't have heard the exchange, but his eyes had been on Ryo's hand when the ball landed and his pen went to the separate notebook.

Two data points now. Recovery Girl's healing flag from USJ. And this.

Ryo threw the ball back. Easy. Kaminari caught it with both hands and a grunt and the drill continued and the morning was normal and nobody else had been watching.

A kid from General Studies was walking along the fence line outside the training field carrying a trombone case. He had headphones around his neck and he was humming and the trombone case was dented on one corner and Ryo watched him walk the entire length of the fence without knowing why. The kid turned the corner and was gone. Ryo went back to the drill.

Gym Gamma after lunch. Ochaco had asked him to train with her three days ago, before Thursday, before everything, and he'd said yes because she was developing a combat style around Zero Gravity and needed someone to hold pads.

The gym was massive and empty. Support pillars, padded floor, overhead lighting that buzzed at a frequency he could hear now when he couldn't before.

Ochaco came in wearing her gym clothes, hair pulled back with a headband, and she was already bouncing on her toes. She did that. Warmed up while talking, moved while thinking, burned energy even when the task hadn't started yet. Her whole body was always in motion and it was hard to watch her shift her weight, her thighs flexing in the gym shorts, and keep his focus on the equipment rack. He grabbed the pads.

"Okay so I've been thinking," she said, pulling the strike pads off the equipment rack. "My Quirk activates on contact with all five pads, right? All five fingertips."

"Yeah."

"So what if I don't use all five?" She tossed him a pad. "What if I hit with four fingers and hold the release on the fifth? Then I can make something weightless on impact and then immediately release it so it drops full weight again."

She demonstrated. Open palm strike against the pad, four fingertip pads landing flush while her thumb stayed lifted, and the pad went weightless in his hand. Then her thumb touched and she pressed her fingertips together and gravity came back and the pad was heavy again and the whole cycle took less than a second.

"So in a fight," she said, already talking faster, "I hit you and everything goes weightless for a beat and then it crashes back down. The toggle, right? Weighted, weightless, weighted. Your body gets yanked up and then slammed down and you can't adjust because the timing's too fast."

"Show me."

She hit the pad. His arm went light. Then heavy. The whiplash of it went through his shoulder and into his spine and he had to shift his stance to absorb it. She grinned.

"Again?"

"Again."

She hit him faster. The rhythm was rough and her fingerwork was clumsy but the concept was sound and every third or fourth strike she'd get the timing right and the zero-to-full-gravity transition would jerk his arm hard enough that his shoulder popped. Her face was concentrated and flushed and her eyes were tracking her own hands and she was getting it. Building it. Right here on the gym floor.

They trained for an hour. By the end she was hitting the pads with consistent four-finger contact and releasing inside half a second and the whiplash was enough that his arms were sore even with his new baseline. She was getting better at a speed that suggested she'd been thinking about this for longer than three days.

After. Against the gym wall. Water bottles. The overhead lights buzzing. Ochaco's headband was damp and her cheeks were flushed from the workout and she was sitting with her knees up and her arms around them and her fingertip pads were pressing together in the idle tic she did when she was processing.

"You seem different today," she said.

"Yeah?"

"Stronger. Faster. When I hit the pad it was like hitting a wall. Last week it wasn't." She looked at him. Her brown eyes were warm and direct and she didn't layer her observations with qualifiers. "Did you do extra training?"

"Yeah. Been working with Midnight on technique."

"That's not technique. That's raw strength. You're bigger." Flat. She stated it and moved on.

His shirt was tighter across the shoulders than it had been a week ago. He'd noticed that morning.

"I've been eating more," he said, and it was weak and he knew it was weak.

She reached over and touched his arm. Her fingertip pads on his bicep, pressing lightly, checking a bruise from the pad work that was already yellowing because his recovery rate had jumped with everything else. Her fingers were warm and the paw-like pads were soft and she squeezed once, gently, and the muscle underneath was denser than it should have been for a kid who'd been mid-pack two weeks ago.

She pulled her hand back. Looked at her own fingers. Looked at the wall in front of them.

"Whatever you're doing," she said, "keep doing it. The Sports Festival is in a week." She stood up and grabbed her water bottle and walked toward the locker room and her headband was crooked and she didn't fix it.

The cafeteria was loud. Ryo ate rice and curry and sat with Kirishima and Kaminari and Sero and the conversation was about the Sports Festival, which was the only conversation anyone in the school was having this week. Kirishima was going to go all out. Kaminari was going to go all out. Sero was going to go all out. Everyone was going to go all out. The specifics varied but the energy was the same.

Across the cafeteria, Bakugo was at a table alone. He wasn't eating. He was sitting with his arms crossed and his tray untouched and he was watching the room. His eyes moved from Todoroki to Midoriya to the rest of 1-A, ranking. When his gaze got to Ryo it held for a beat. A slow look that went from his face to his shoulders to his hands and back. Ryo held the look. Bakugo's jaw tightened. Then his eyes moved on.

Two tables over, Todoroki stood up. He walked to where Midoriya was sitting with Iida and Ochaco and the cafeteria noise dipped in the radius around him because people just stepped aside for Todoroki without thinking about it.

"Midoriya."

Midoriya looked up. Rice on his cheek. "T-Todoroki-kun?"

"I'm going to beat you."

Flat. Loud enough to carry. Half the cafeteria heard it. Midoriya's eyes went wide and his mouth opened and his hand clenched around his chopsticks and the muttering started, the low rapid-fire analysis that meant his brain was running faster than his mouth could manage.

Todoroki walked away. He didn't wait for a response.

Ryo watched him go. The two-tone hair, the scar, the straight back. In the anime this had been the start of the Sports Festival arc. Todoroki declaring war on the kid he thought was All Might's secret weapon. He was right, in a way he'd never know the full shape of. It would lead to the fight where Midoriya would tell Todoroki to use his fire and the ice would crack and the whole stadium would see the son of Endeavor burn for the first time.

His phone buzzed.

Mina. A fire emoji and a flexing arm and a winking face. From the girls' table across the cafeteria.

His pulse spiked. He could feel it in his throat, the uptick that happened every time her name showed up on his screen, and he was smiling before he could stop it and the smile was stupid and he knew it was stupid.

Three seats to his left, Jiro's earphone jack lifted off the table.

Small motion. The cable-like lobe raised itself an inch, orienting, the audio jack at the tip pointing toward him. He was well inside her detection range and his pulse had just jumped and her jack was pointed at him and her eyes were on her tray.

Then her gaze shifted. Quick. To the girls' table where Mina was sitting. Mina was looking at her phone. Looking at Ryo. Looking at her phone.

Jiro looked at Ryo. He was looking at his phone.

Jiro looked at Mina. Mina was grinning. The grin had too many teeth.

Jiro went back to her rice. Her earphone jack lowered. Her jaw was set and her eyes were focused on her food with the deliberate attention of someone who was not going to say what she'd just noticed.

Ryo put his phone in his pocket. His pulse was still elevated. He ate his curry. The cafeteria was loud and the Sports Festival was in a week and Todoroki's declaration was rippling through the tables in whispers and Bakugo was still sitting alone and Jiro was eating rice and she had heard everything and she'd said nothing and that was worse than if she'd asked.

Across the room, Mina caught his eye. She was wearing her school uniform and her collar was buttoned high and underneath it, he knew, was his black t-shirt, the one she'd stolen that morning when she'd stood in his kitchen with nothing else on and told him she was his girlfriend now.

He looked at her across the cafeteria full of people who didn't know and she looked back and the grin got wider and he went back to his curry because the alternative was staring at her for the rest of lunch and Jiro was three seats away and her earphone jack was very, very quiet.