Chapter Text
Momo was startled out of her daze when she slammed into a reporter.
The brown-haired, aggressively focused woman stuck a microphone in her face. "Now that we know All Might is teaching at UA, have you had any classes with him? How does he compare with other teachers? Is it true he had a student expelled his first day of teaching?!"
Momo shook herself awake enough to look around, belatedly realizing the front gate was teeming with more media figures than she'd ever seen in one place - and that she was late. After a moment of gaping, she let out the "no comment" every authority figure in her life had drilled into her and tried to slip by, only for the crowd to surge and knock the two into each other. Momo stumbled through the gate, the reporter almost following her before the campus defenses kicked in and nearly took the woman's nose off. Now awake, she hurried into the building.
THE PREVIOUS EVENING
Momo lay curled up in bed, staring at her phone.
IZUKUN: We're still friends
IZUKUN: But I don't want to look at you right now
IZUKUN: Call me after school tomorrow
IZUKUN: We'll work this out.
She thought about sending a response, but, after hesitating for what felt like forever, she turned it off.
PRESENT
As she walked into the classroom (making sure she visibly noticed Aizawa's sleeping bag behind the teacher's desk), she realized she was the last one there - except Bakugo, but she wasn't inclined to think about him if she didn't have to. Izuku saw her and gave her a wan smile, but he wouldn't meet her eyes and turned away rather quickly.
That... was a better reaction than she'd been afraid of.
The moment she sat down, Aizawa popped up, a sheaf of papers mysteriously appearing in his arms. He knocked it on the desk a couple of times before speaking.
"Good morning. I watched the tapes of your trials yesterday, and I'll admit, a better performance overall than I expected. Not perfect, or really anything better than "good", but still, everyone passed."
He then began working his way down the classroom, front to back, left to right, giving each student extensive feedback. She noticed he moved past Bakugo's seat without skipping a beat.
"Midoriya."
The boy looked up.
"Learn a martial art."
As Momo thought he would, Izuku stiffened and went to talk back.
"I don't care why you don't want to. This is the real world, and you can't rely on your Grimm to do all the fighting for you. You cannot afford to be that vulnerable up close, that'show villains take you out and keep after civilians. I'd strongly recommend starting - not stopping, starting - with aikido; any villain with combat training will tear you apart, but most villains you'll face early in your career don't have any and I suspect the way it emphasizes ending fights without injuring the other party will appeal to you. It'll also help you control your anger."
Izuku slumped over.
"You'll run into villains in the future who push your buttons even more than Bakugo, so you can't afford to lose your cool. Ever. You regenerate from injuries so fast the pain doesn't always have time to sink in, you should have been able to close with your opponent instantly, absorb his first attacks, and slap capture tape on him before he could wrestle you off. Instead you hung back, afraid of going berserk, and let Bakugo goad you into going berserk anyway."
Aizawa looked up from his papers.
"Your performance was lackluster, but you wouldn't be the first student who couldn't use their quirk to the fullest when they walked in the door. We'll work with your quirk in class, but visit the guidance counselor or the principal's office after class, both can direct you to aikido trainers approved by the school. I will be checking on this."
Aizawa flipped the page.
"Hori."
"Hmm?" Momo could hear just a trace of the false cheer she suspected was how Himiko showed malice.
"One of the best performances in the class overall. Good job."
The girl cocked her head.
"You're very aggressive on the attack, which can be used against you but usually works in your favor. Good quirk use using it to change lines of attack, just make sure you can roll with it if someone reads you well enough to predict it. However, you need to work on muscle tone. No matter how good you are with your weapon, there will always be someone who's fast enough to get in your guard or tough enough to ignore it, and you just aren't tough enough yourself to survive if that happens. I recommend learning a martial art as well, one with an emphasis on physical fitness; muay thai, maybe, or jeet kune do. You'd probably also do well with krav maga or escrima."
He narrowed his eyes.
"Also, don't play with your food. Anyone who knows how to read a fight could tell you won in the first fifteen seconds and everything else was you having fun. I don't know why or how Yaoyorozu distracted you when you had her dead to rights, but it doesn't matter. If you'd gone for the capture, you would have had the best grade in the class, not one of."
After a moment, he threw in, "oh, and putting yourself in harm's way to protect others is laudable. The way you do it suggests it's compulsive, and that is not. This time you didn't openly defy a teacher and undermine an important exercise," Himiko twitched, "so it won't affect your grade. But since this is becoming a pattern, I'm going to send you to Hound Dog for an evaluation." Himiko twitched again. "You will have that evaluation scheduled by the end of the week."
Himiko said nothing as he moved on.
"Yaoyorozu."
Momo straightened up.
"You had one of the worst performances in the class. You passed, but only barely."
She sank in her seat.
"Good work on that barrier and how you placed it, but everything else about your quirk use needs work. Your quirk rewards creativity that you aren't showing. For instance, you made the right call not shooting your classmate with the gun you created, but you could have loaded it with netting, bolas, or any number of nonlethal deterrents. I understand you're strictly limited by laws on drug and chemical manufacture, but have you ever actually sat down and compiled a list of relevant laws and how they limit you?"
She shook her head.
"You will spend this semester building that document so you can figure out what the boundaries are and how to safely and ethically push them. Like Midoriya and Kaminari and really half the class, you need to learn how to use your quirk, but that's a common issue."
He started gathering the papers on his desk with a sense of finality.
"What isn't is losing your first fight in seconds. If this was later in the semester, you'd have failed the exercise. As it is, you were surprised and defeated by a much more experienced opponent. It happens. It can't happen again.
"Going by the tapes, I assume you have a lot of theoretical knowledge but little practical experience, especially against people?"
Momo thought of once-a-month (if that) training with Miss Kaina and studying combat manuals when her parents weren't looking, then nodded.
"Fix that. UA has an entire buffet of aspiring heroes you can build combat experience with. I expect twice-weekly minimum visits to the on-site training facilities starting next week. If you haven't improved by the next time we hold a battle trial, you will do significantly worse in your assessment."
... That was more fair than she expected? Especially given what he did two days ago. Momo figured she'd have to start looking on the bright side eventually.
Aizawa paused and cocked his head, like he was going to add a final observation - the mics in the building were more sensitive than she thought? Asking her how she distracted Himiko?
Instead he went back to gathering his papers.
"Like I said, major issues with all of you, some more than others. However, I don't pass students to cater to their or their parents' feelings, so even the worst performers among you can trust they're fully meeting the expectations of this institution. So far."
He got up, grabbing his papers as he went. "These packets contain all my observations, recommendations, and the assignments I gave you during your review. Treat them as homework, because they are."
Aizawa went down the room, passing reports to students one by one. Momo couldn't bear to read hers quite yet, so she slipped it into her bag - only for it to jostle a loose strip of paper out into her hands. It read:
I'm sorry for harassing you and bumping you like this, it was the first thing I could think of to get close enough to slip you this message.
A lot of heroes hold the media in contempt for multiple reasons, and I won't say they don't have a point sometimes. But secrecy doesn’t benefit anybody, and sometimes a hero needs somebody to get their story out and fight slander or someone stealing credit.
It's entirely up to you whether you want to burn this paper. I wouldn't blame you if you did. But if you need somebody to help you figure out things powerful people are hiding from you or how to get your hands on counterspin, just reach out to the number or email on the back. Every hero needs a media contact and I'd be honored if you let me be yours.
- Hasegawa Makoto
Momo was considering whether or not to memorize the info she found on the back of the paper when Aizawa stopped at the door.
"Oh, forgot to mention. Bakugo Katsuki was suspended yesterday after attempting to use lethal force against a classmate and repeatedly attacking a teacher. That evening I stepped in and advised the administration expel him outright, which they agreed to. Consider his seat empty until somebody at the Sports Festival proves they have what it takes to fill it."
The class burst into rumors as he left.
History with Miss Nezumi went better than she had any right to expect, but Momo wasn't really in the mood to be around others for lunch. She slipped out to the roof to find a few others had beat her up there, all equally quiet and keeping to themselves. She felt she should have expected that.
She didn't expect Himiko to stride through the roof door and flop down just close enough to her Momo couldn't ignore her if she wanted to. She popped the lunchbox open, and Momo did a double-take at the interior.
While the box itself was wood, the lining was 3D-printed biodegradable plastics, each compartment shaped to precisely match its contents. Said contents were simple and straightforward, mostly rice and pickled vegetables, but with a few oddities standing out: a halved pomegranate just barely fitting its custom-made lining (Himiko's eyes lingered greedily on it), a small, complicated-looking red thermos, and three little octopus hot dogs with identical smiling faces. Momo had never seen one in person - the Yaoyorozu kitchens wouldn't deign to make such a thing - but the pictures she'd run into online always felt off to her; something about the uneven, empty features that looked more like parodies of emotion than the real thing. But Himiko's were perfectly regular, with parabolic smiles and eyes filled with mustard that vaguely invoked hers. The overall effect was odd, the whole thing executed with almost robotic precision yet carrying a subtle human touch.
"My sister made it for me," Himiko said proudly, then somehow swallowed an octopus hot dog whole.
Momo picked at her food for a moment before Himiko spoke up, just quietly enough the other students couldn't hear.
"Yesterday - you weren't trying to get me killed, right?"
If Momo was eating anything, she would have choked on it. "No," she said, feeling sick. "The fight was already supposed to be over. I..." She hung her head. "I'm sorry."
"Eh. I've been put through worse by worse people." She could hear the shrug in Himiko's voice, bizarre as the sentiment was. "And hey, it came off clean!"
"No, it didn't! I..."
Momo knew this was a terrible idea, not out here in public, not where someone might hear with the right quirks about a conspiracy that definitely broke school rules.
Momo felt very tired of suppressing her thoughts and feelings.
"Izuku... his body is mostly normal, but that Grimmstuff he uses - if concentrated, it's corrosive and destroys flesh. Even his, which is why he looks more Grimm as fights go on. But his quirk also uses it to heal him, so fast it doesn't even hurt sometimes. I don't think he can die violently. The problem is that Grimm are inherently aggressive towards others, so until his body converts the Grimmstuff into natural flesh, he gets angrier and more violent.
"There was a - a something that happened when he was a kid, about a year before we met, so bad his aunt scrubbed it from every record she could find. He doesn't like talking about it, but it made him not like fighting up close so he doesn't lose control. I keep telling him it's okay to be afraid, but... he was pushed a lot farther back then and still wasn't a danger to civilians. I was confident he wouldn't break school rules even at his worst.
"He also told me about Bakugo, and even if Izuku didn't want to admit it - they used to be best friends - it was pretty clear Bakugo hated him. So based on what he told me and what I was seeing, I thought I knew what he'd do. And I don't know why, exactly, but you seemed to hate Bakugo too..."
"Yup," Himiko said, crunching pomegranate seeds.
"...So I thought I could get you on board. I prepared for the match by bolstering Izuku's confidence to make absolutely sure he'd be all heroic like he always wanted to be and go face Bakugo alone, which meant you'd go after the bomb. Then, once the match started, I did what I could to make Bakugo angry and get violent enough for the teachers to step in - not enough to him suspicious, just too riled up to think straight.
"I had to time it right, though. I needed Bakugo to have enough time to let his anger get out of control, then end the match when he couldn't stop himself. So..."
THE PREVIOUS DAY
Momo stared Himiko down from beneath her.
"Don't take me out yet. Keep fighting me without capturing or disabling me and I'll show you where to hit the wall and break it. I set things up so
Bakugo will break the rules around treatment of classmates if I time it right, and Aizawa should expel him for that if the school doesn't."
"And Izuku?"
"He regenerates from anything, nothing Bakugo has could seriously hurt him."
Himiko thought for a moment and gave a nearly imperceptable shrug. "Eh, I'll give it a shot," she said, before Momo kneed her in the stomach.
PRESENT
"I believed Izuku would goad Bakugo into acting by refusing to surrender or stand down, but because he wouldn't lose control or take damage he couldn't heal from, plus me irritating Bakugo every time I called him up, eventually Bakugo would snap. At that point, I'd throw the match, right when he was too furious to listen to anyone telling him to back down. He'd break the rules until the teachers stepped in, then hopefully Aizawa would follow through on the sorts of things he keeps threatening and expel him. It was subtle and it wouldn't have gotten him in any trouble if Bakugo was a regular student instead of... him."
"Not seeing nothing going wrong," Himiko said through a mouth full of white rice.
"I wasn't expecting Bakugo to be that sadistic," Momo said. "He dragged it out, torturing Izuku and putting you in the line of fire when you went to help..."
Himiko suddenly swallowed and made an odd noise, so Momo looked up to see her body language shift. Her posture was subtly different, straighter, almost dignified.
"I could talk about the ups and downs of that plan, but I think my only question is simple," Himiko said, her voice slightly deeper than usual. "Do you regret it?"
"If I did it just to help the rest of the class," Momo said slowly, "I probably wouldn't. But I... just wanted to feel in control, I think. And that let people get hurt."
"If anyone would know what it's like risking your allies' trust to maintain control of a situation, only for it to backfire, it would be me," Himiko said, her voice drier than Momo thought possible. "I can't say I don't do that, even now. But I learned not too long ago that, while keeping secrets sometimes is necessary, taking the risk of letting others in can be even more important. You may need their perspective, and you may be surprised how willing they'd be to listen to you. No man is an island, Miss Yaoyorozu. Or woman, I suppose."
Momo blinked a few times at that, and Himiko relaxed suddenly.
"Yup, that's pretty much it," she said as she shook herself out, then popped open and started drinking down the thermos.