Izuku stared at his dark-haired neighbor as she rolled a pencil between her fingers and glared at the paper in front of her with uncharacteristic heat.

"Uh, Nana-neechan?" he queried and gently poked her shoulder. "Are you okay?"

She turned, eyes flashing with pent-up anger. "No."

"Oh…" he discreetly leaned back. This was a look he knew well. "Do you… wanna talk about it?"

Her frame tensed for a brief second before she blew out a long breath and slumped forward. "Yeah sure I guess." She pushed her paper away and settled her head on her arms, facing him.

"Kenta-nii and me got into a dumb fight the other day, and he left in a big huff so I didn't really care when he didn't come home the whole night," she seemed to deflate a little before his eyes. "Then I found out that someone tried to mug him. They broke his arm and ran."

"Oh no," his eyes filled with sympathetic tears. "Is he okay now? Did you guys make up?"

"Sorta," she shrugged. "He had to get a cast but he wasn't hurt aside from that. He told me not to worry about it and that it wasn't my fault, but I still feel really bad…"

"I'm sorry," he wasn't sure what to say.

"Yeah, me too," she sighed heavily. " 'Specially now since my mom's making me sign up for self-defense classes." This after she had narrowly dodged getting dragged into joining a club by her friends and classmates…

"Your mom?" he tilted his head curiously. "What's she like? I don't think I've ever met her."

"You haven't. She's… hm," Nanako dug into her pocket and pulled out her phone. "Well, I look kinda like her except my hair is crazier. She's a really famous surgeon or something so she works overseas at a fancy hospital."

She angled the screen his way to show a woman with straight black/brown hair wearing green scrubs standing in front of an operating room. She had Nanako's sleepy sage green eyes and wide mouth, but together it looked more severe on her face than on her daughter's. The next picture was the same woman, but wearing a dress and smiling.

"Wow, she's almost as pretty as you," he said without thinking.

She reddened and yanked her phone away. "Mn."

"What's her name? Why does she work so far away?" he searched her face for more similarities but couldn't find anything more concrete. "Is she nice?"

"I mean, I haven't really seen or talked to her much since I moved here," she stared at the woodgrain beneath her arms. "She was kinda strict when I still lived with her, but not mean or anything- so, yeah, I guess she was nice? Not sure why she moved so far away for work. Her name's Akemi."

He nodded. "Does she like All Might?"

"Doesn't everyone?" She sat up. "But even if she does, you don't have to worry about her taking your spot as his #1 fan or anything."

His eyes darted over to his All Might themed sneakers that were lying by the door. "… Do you think she could do that? Would she?! What if she's already met him and they're super best friends!?"

She laughed and ruffled his hair. "I doubt that, Izu-kun."

"But what if?" he pressed and felt a wave of calm overcome him.

"How about we bake some get-better-soon cookies for Kenta instead of making up conspiracy theories, hm?"

He smiled widely at the prospect of getting cookies in the near future and jumped to his feet. "Okay, let's go!"

-[-]-

Self-defense class was hell on earth. Not only was Nanako the youngest in the class, but she also showed up in her gym class uniform while the older, more confident students were decked out in designer brands or outfits that emphasized the best parts of their shapes- unlike her baggy t shirt and clingy, too long shorts that made her look like a blob balanced on two chicken legs.

When Kenta came to pick her up after class, she threw herself at him and begged never to go back. Her cousin, of course, was unsympathetic to her frantic pleas but took her to buy cuter workout clothes and promised her that if she stuck with the class he'd convince her mother to let her get a new laptop. Otherwise, if she didn't give it a real effort he'd tell Inko-ba that she didn't want to learn how to protect herself, and the woman already looked like she was going to burst into tears whenever she saw his broken arm.

"You're evil," she frowned over her soft serve ice cream cone.

"Yeah sure," he took a sip of his milkshake. "Just take the class seriously and you won't have any problems, okay?"

She grumbled but when she walked into the next class on Thursday she did as he said and it was slightly less terrible. Still bad because she didn't know how to throw a punch and her default response to being grabbed suddenly was to either freeze or slump like a rag doll, but less terrible. She made a few kind-of friends with the older ladies in the class by the third week, which helped a lot since they were as clueless as her.

"Oh, my little Chiyo was so concerned when she heard the bank next door to my work had gotten robbed," Eri-san said between sips of lemon flavored water. "She showed up at my house with a list of local dojos a week later and had this big, passionate speech about how dangerous it was to not know how to defend myself- it took her forever to get through and it was obvious she'd thought a lot about it… Still, I didn't have the heart to tell her I'd already signed up for this class!"

She laughed with her whole body and Nanako found herself giggling along.

-0-

"Alright now, you've gotta stand like this," Nanako demonstrated. "And twist with your body like this."

Izuku mimicked her as best he could and nearly fell over.

"Woah, not that much!" she fixed his stance with a few quick tugs when he found his balance. "And hit out, like your fist is going through the pillow."

He tried again and it was better.

"You got it!" she exclaimed. "Now we can move onto kicks. It's really important to…"

By the end of the eight week course, Nanako could break a chokehold, get free from being picked up, and a whole host of other things she didn't think would be possible when she first started. True to his promise, Kenta-nii got her mother to agree to let her get a new laptop and she was over the moon when the sleek, matte black computer flickered to life under her hands. She quickly transferred over any important files from her old model onto the new one then stayed up until two AM playing random games.

She woke up four and half hours later to get ready for school and wanted to die.

-[-]-

After a day or two to adjust back to a normal sleep schedule, Nanako felt less like a zombie and more like a human being again. As a reward, when Kenta and Inko-bachan went grocery shopping she hopped on her new (!) laptop and started an account for the MMORPG her classmates had been gushing about.

Izuku became curious about what she was doing and stuck his face in the middle of her screen after twenty solid minutes of her clicking around like a madwoman. "What're you doing nee-chan?"

"I'm playing a game," she tried to angle the screen to see past his head of wild hair, but his curls were as bad as her waves and that failed. With a huff, she elbowed him and made room on the couch so he could sit next to her. "Or rather, I'm going to play a game but I gotta make my character first and I can't decide what kind to make."

"You should make All Might!" he exclaimed and gasped when she somewhat followed through on his suggestion. Her androgynous cat person became a tall, strong man with a healthy tan and blond hair.

"Ah, but I think making someone exactly like him will cost money," she grumbled as she eyed the golden outline around the All Might customization options. She hovered over the box with his same hair and scrunched her nose at the price that appeared. "See, even something little like this is expensive."

"Oh," he frowned. "Well… I guess you could make your favorite anime character?"

She hummed then slapped a smattering of freckles onto the avatar and changed the blond to black with green highlights. He squawked and nearly leaped face first into her laptop.

"THAT'S SO COOL!"

Nanako adjusted the muscle slider and snickered when he made a wounded noise at how scrawny his character looked. With a little more tampering, it started to actually look like him and not just a dark haired man with freckles. They got as far as selecting a race before she had a lap full of Izuku and couldn't see the screen anymore.

"You wanna try?" she pointedly moved the computer away.

"Yeah yeah yeah!" he vibrated in place.

She set the laptop on the coffee table and went to fetch her old one from its spot in her closet. It had been almost completely wiped so there was plenty of room to download the game's demo and Izuku threw himself into the character creation wholeheartedly. By the time their older counterparts had gotten home, he had a folder full of screenshots of the many pro-heroes he had tried to recreate and Nanako was walking him through what the steps of the scientific method were so he could improve his Hero Analysis notebooks.

Said notebooks were spread across the table as reference and the scene reminded Inko strongly of working overtime with the company accountants at the end of the fiscal year. Kenta, on the other hand, was reminded of the midterms he had coming up and slunk away to his room to avoid responsibility.

"Mom, Mom, look!" Izuku pointed excitedly at Nanako's laptop screen. "Nana made you!"

She looked at the screen and pursed her lips to avoid bursting into laughter. "I see."

Game!Inko was slender with a generous hourglass shape and skimpy clothes. She had the same hair as real Inko, though it surrounded a considerably more pouty and seductive face. Still, her crop top was pink and the floor length skirt (with very high slits) was dark blue which matched her current outfit of a pink sweater over a dark jean skirt. A game like the one they were playing probably didn't have normal clothes or average features; they did the best they could, she assumed and nodded appreciatively.

"I take it you two had fun?" she glanced at the quietly arguing pair as they went back and forth between two similar hairstyles for a character she guessed was supposed to be Kenta-kun.

"Lots!" Her son cheered while Nana-chan nodded.

"Hm, then I suppose I ought to get you this game…" she trailed off mischievously. "Or we could get that new All Might figure that's coming out next month."

"REALLY?" He gaped dramatically then barreled into her legs. "ALL MIGHT ALL MIGHT ALL MIGHT!"

Inko chuckled to herself and nodded along as he gushed about the number one hero; it wasn't even a contest.