Shinsō missed the free period on Saturday, which was ordinarily when he and Kei would take a break for snacks. Without the hero kids, General Studies basically had the cafeteria to themselves until a Support student's experimental design accidentally-on-purpose exploded from inside their bag. There was no smoke, but most of the people who'd already gotten food from Lunch Rush decided discretion was the better part of valor. Kei heard later that Hatsume was involved.

Kei didn't see him again until free period was over, and he stared into space as much as she did instead of taking notes. Since Kei sat behind him and just outside of peripheral vision, she decided not to risk drawing attention while Ectoplasm was trying to teach mathematics. While yes, she'd snuck notes past people with better observation skills before, Ectoplasm had a penchant for clones and Kei hadn't built a reputation of being a good student. She ended up waiting the rest of the school day out in time marked by silent sketches.

By the end, she had a decent scribble-comic of Sensei being flattened by all eight of Kakashi's dogs. It was cute.

It was also distracting her from a serial killer's blatant escalation. Even if Backdraft was nearly useless in combat, he was a Musutafu hero and Stain had gone after him right in the middle of town. UA was right fucking there. Hell, All Might was right there.

It is the kind of occurrence that gives one a headache, does it not? I am suddenly glad my brain is all chakra and no meat components.

Kei did the mental equivalent of throwing her hands up in frustration. Fuck it. This time we're crushing his arms. Permanently. Obito would be around to give her a quick getaway if she needed it. It shouldn't take this much stressing to put this shithead down.

Supervillains were such drama queens.

And then the final bell rang. With little else she could do as a UA student, she cornered Shinsō by the shoe lockers for an explanation about his earlier absence.

"What happened?" She lived in Musutafu. She had a reason to be jumpy. Shinsō didn't. That she knew of. But if there'd been an incident with his family—civilian or not—wouldn't the school have pulled him out of class for the entire day?

Kei's brain leapt from bad possibilities to worse ones if left alone.

Kei had seen Shinsō shell-shocked after his first real fight, spiraling in frustration, being a smug jerk to get people going, and laughing helplessly at the antics of people around him. The mood she picked up from him now was…something new. Shinsō's behavior all day had been dazed, but in a vaguely positive way. Being giddy with excitement wasn't cool, so Shinsō'd patched his persona together through sheer force of will. It had the side-effect of planting his head firmly in the clouds and keeping a mild tremble going through his body for the entire fucking afternoon.

If he'd had a super speed Quirk like the Flash, Kei imagined he'd have accidentally vibrated a hole through the floor by now. "Seriously. What's going on?"

Shinsō snapped to attention when she poked him. His eyes darted around, took in the other students seemingly for the first time, and he hissed, "Not here."

Kei allowed herself to be dragged to one of the first-floor classrooms, which had long been abandoned by the resident class. Ah, third-year students. So studious. So not here. Kei managed to slide the door shut behind them without Shinsō even really noticing. She ended up settling by the demo desk while Shinsō paced around the front of the room.

"So, are you going to actually say—"

"Eraserhead wants to train me!" Shinsō burst out, his voice almost cracking. And Kei took it back—if she'd thought he was buzzing before, this took the cake. He looked like he'd willingly run a ten-kilometer route with that much energy. If he'd had Uraraka's Quirk, he'd be dancing on the ceiling.

This wasn't a surprise, but Kei ruthlessly cut down her second thoughts about Aizawa-sensei and their repeated unpleasant encounters. Her third thoughts went through as, "Congratulations, Shinsō-kun! That's amazing."

"I didn't—I wanted someone to see me in my first year. To see what I can do." Shinsō paced around the room, whatever product in his hair giving up the ghost as he ran his hands through it. "Holy shit, holy shit—h-he's an underground hero, exactly like—"

Shinsō talked fast when he was excited. Kinda reminded Kei of Midoriya. Or Rin when a new medical development was in the works and she needed to infodump on all the research she'd done to get it so far along.

"His Quirk works best from ambush, just like yours. And no strength boost or explosions," Kei put in, because it sounded like Shinsō would appreciate the fuel being dumped on this fire. She kind of liked watching runaway chemical reactions.

"Yeah! Only real hero fans even know he exists most of the time," Shinsō went on, jumping on the thought bandwagon. He bounced in place a little, eyes shining like they hadn't since the Sports Festival. "And his main thing is a carbon fiber nanoweave capture weapon, and it's not a power—I could learn to do that! I-I don't care how hard practicing might be, I can do it!"

"I'm glad somebody else is finally seeing it," Kei said warmly. "It's about time."

Then again, a month into the first semester of school wasn't that bad of a record. She'd had teachers who took two months to learn everyone's names, and if she'd lived long enough in that first life to get a teaching degree, she probably would've been one of them. Her skill at attaching names to faces now was a survival instinct.

"Do—do you know if I can get something from the Support Department?" Shinsō's eyes were still wide with excitement. "We've talked about ambushes and getting around people knowing what my Quirk is, so if—that thing, the voice-changer?"

"I've been calling it a vocoder."

"Right, one of those. If I could get voice samples and use that to get past people—" Shinsō's hand covered his mouth for a split second as he contemplated. His thoughts had to be rushing around in circles by now. His internal hamster wheel was pulling overtime. "If I'm not in the Hero Department, I don't know—"

"I'm sure Aizawa-sensei will tell you about that technical stuff." Kei pressed a knuckle to her lower lip. "Honestly, I'm not an expert on the rules between departments or things like that."

Shinsō nodded, suddenly somber, as though something was sinking through the wall built by his enthusiasm. Sort of like ice destroying stone over time. When he finally spoke, his voice was a lot less energetic and his gaze dropped to the floor. "What if—fuck, what if I'm not good enough?"

"Huh?"

"This is Eraserhead," Shinsō mumbled. He leaned heavily on one of the desks as though his knees had turned to jelly. " Eraserhead. The hero kids keep saying he's a total hardass. He threatened to expel the worst-performing student at the beginning of the year."

Kei frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. "He clearly didn't. His class still has twenty kids."

Aizawa couldn't expel people who weren't in his homeroom class. He'd told her as much the first time they'd officially met under Nezu's watchful, beady eyes.

"But he has before. He's expelled an entire class."

Exactly how badly did an entire class of hero-hopefuls have to fuck up before Aizawa-sensei booted them all out of UA? Kei only knew what Aizawa-sensei was willing to tell her and her observations were colored by her biases, but she doubted that kind of decision was made lightly. Kakashi would hurl someone back into the Academy for a relatively minor fuckup, but even if UA had more safety nets in the forms of the other hero high schools…no. There'd be a rationale behind extreme action.

"Hey, you've never given up that easily before. Where'd that energy go?" Kei crossed the room and stood squarely in front of Shinsō, who was slumping on the desk like a wet blanket. "Aizawa-sensei wouldn't say he wanted to train you if he didn't think you had potential."

"I don't know how long that's going to last." Shinsō's head drooped.

"Who cares?"

"I do!"

Kei shook her head. "No, I meant more… Look, are you going to turn him down?"

Shinsō's head jerked up as he stared at her in shock. "Of course not!"

Yeah, Kei had expected that kind of answer. "Then what's the point of worrying? Aizawa-sensei wants to train you, so ideally he'd be teaching along the way. And unless you screw this up on purpose, which I doubt, I'm sure he'll be willing to help figure out where you might need help. That's what good teachers do."

This argument steadied Shinsō a little.

"Not sure if he'll be as cool with getting backtalk as I am, but hey, it's a part of your method." Kei shrugged. "He's a better teacher anyway." Seeing as he probably had a degree and all.

Shinsō fidgeted. "If—no, when I do this, it's gonna be after school. I won't be able to make it to our training sessions anymore." He hesitated, then said, "Sorry."

"For what?"

"We're not going to be able to hang out as much?"

"Shinsō-kun, the whole reason you even decided to take up training was because you wanted to make it into the Hero Department." Kei made a sweeping gesture with her hands, as though to encompass all of UA. "Aizawa-sensei gets you one step closer to that dream, so of course you should take the chance." She let her arms rest at her sides. "And training with him doesn't mean you're suddenly not my friend." She saw Shinsō perk up again. Good. "We'll just work out other times to hang out instead of beating each other into the ground."

"I'm pretty sure those training sessions weren't actually that equal. I can tell when someone's holding back, now," Shinsō countered. Steadier, now, that he knew Kei wasn't going to kick her assigned pillar out from under his sense of normalcy.

"That means you've improved." Kei glanced at the wall clock. "When are you supposed to start?"

"Monday, right after school. I heard 'paperwork' before he told me to go away."

Kei clapped her hands together. "Sounds perfect for a start. So, how about we go celebrate?"

Shinsō blinked. "Right now?"

"Sure. I'll buy." Kei walked to the door. "I think there's a cat café around here somewhere."

And just like that, the spring was back in Shinsō's step. "I know where it is."

Of course he did.

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's go!" Kei punched the air for effect, and then they were off.

While the usual rubberneckers were hanging around UA, Kei and Shinsō managed to avoid being slowed down too much by their cameras. Neither of them stopped to give a comment regarding Stain, or the Sports Festival, or the attacks on UA, or whatever else was being asked. Tabloid questions, probably. There were some people who weren't worth answering, especially if speaking to one would mean their faces and voices were plastered across every worthwhile news feed in the country.

Once away from UA, the attention dropped to normal levels. Commuters basically ignored them. Everyone had somewhere to go; someplace else to be.

"I've never actually been to a cat café before." Kei thought of herself as a dog person, though she had a weakness for anything small and fuzzy and cute. Cats fell squarely into that triple-threat category and with distinction.

"You've been missing out," was Shinsō's response. He readjusted his school bag on his shoulder as they walked. "Does your apartment allow pets?"

She hadn't asked, but… "No. Does yours?"

He shook his head. "Right, well, I guess we've both been missing out at least a little. But the one by UA is pretty nice. Calm."

"That's good. I mean, I already said I'd pay," Kei said with a shrug. "So, are you going to tell your parents the good news?"

"Already did. Though I think my hands were shaking really bad by then. I misspelled half the words the first time." Shinsō rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. "They were really proud of me. And then Dad ran off to deal with an emergency."

Kei blinked. "Is your dad a police officer?"

"No. He's a doctor. Mom's a nurse at a clinic in Shinjuku." Shinsō's smile was faint, but there. "We'll come up with something to celebrate after they come home."

"Sorry for stealing their thunder a bit," Kei said, but it wasn't a real apology and Shinsō didn't take it as one. "But hey, cats!"

Shinsō nodded. "Exactly."

They eventually made their way to a storefront with four adorable cats looking out the front window. Shinsō, who'd been here before, took the lead in speaking to the attendant once they were inside. Kei just plunked money down—twelve hundred yen per hour—and was already poking through the place before Shinsō sorted out rules and so on. There was food available for purchase, mostly in the form of themed drinks and sandwiches and baked goods from someplace else. Kei's focus, however, was on the array of bookshelves, cat conveniences, and of course the cats themselves.

The bookshelves were loaded down with manga volumes for series she'd never seen except in Akihabara. She didn't know what most of them were about. Maybe they were collector's items, but there was a library inside the café. They had a checkout system with colored plastic shelf markers and everything.

The center of the main cat room was taken up by a huge wooden structure in the shape of a tree. It was literally a cat tree, and four more cats were sitting on or climbing the structure and its little shelves. Most of them were looking at the newest customer with a sort of general friendly air, so Kei turned her gaze away to avoid seeming aggressive. She remembered that much from dealing with strays around Konoha.

"Oh, hello there," she said to one of the flat-faced cats on the floor. She extended a hand for the cat to sniff, fingers curled, and was rewarded by tickling whiskers. "What a pretty kitty you are. I'm sure you know, don't you?"

The cat allowed her to gently scratch its ears. In fact, it bumped its head up against her hand and insisted.

Eeeeee! Kei only belatedly remembered Isobu was also there to complain.

I can hear your gleeful screaming even if you suppress it, you know. It is still audible in your head.

They're so cute!

And I have lost you. To mammals.

Shinsō walked past where Kei was crouched on the floor, saying to one of the other cats, "Hey, Poki-chan. Do you remember me?"

He got a "mrrrrp."

"Good girl."

Kei spent most of the next twenty minutes slowly accumulating cat hair on her school uniform because she insisted on sitting in range of all of them. Dog person or not, the cats here were friendly, calm, or playful by turns. And while she didn't know much about cat body language, she knew enough to let the cats who didn't want to be touched leave her reach. And they seemed to think her apartment keys were adequate toys when they were feeling silly.

Shinsō ordered sandwiches eventually. Tuna salad, because of course. It was the only time they really tried to stay away from the animals, who were shameless mooches.

Then Shinsō spotted the cat-ear headbands. He picked one up from the rack. "Want to try one of these?"

"Sure," Kei replied. She couldn't get her hair entirely sorted out, but it never was. She mimicked cat paws with her fists long enough for Shinsō to get a good picture, then turned her phone on him. "Your turn."

Shinsō sighed, but he did put on a black pair of cat ears. "Any good?"

"Your hair's too tall. I can't even see them." Kei glanced at the shelves and picked out another pair, this band white. "Here. Stack this one on top."

"Now?"

"One more pair," Kei insisted, before holding up her phone the instant Shinsō was about to follow her suggestion.

"I call bull—" Click. "Dammit."

Kei flipped her phone around and showed Shinsō his picture, which was of him wearing three pairs of perfectly visible cat-eared headbands. Well, he wasn't technically wearing the last pair, but it was close enough to count in her opinion.

"I'm going to draw whiskers on yours," Shinsō muttered, before taking all of the headbands off and setting them aside.

"Could you show me how to do that? I've never done photo editing on this thing."

"Isn't that like your fourth new phone this month?"

"Third, actually."

At the end of the headband incident, Shinsō and Kei each had photos of each other to manipulate. True to his word, Shinsō drew whiskers exactly where they'd be on a cat and proved that his art skills weren't totally nonexistent. Kei managed to instead draw calico cat patterned spots around each of Shinsō's eyes in his picture so his eyebags were a lot less visible.

Then Kei got back to being swarmed by cats. It was easier once Shinsō bought cat treats and upended the bag on Kei's lap. Brat.

Kei made sure to throw a few treats at Shinsō to get him swamped, too.

When their paid relaxation time was up, Kei and Shinsō took advantage of the lint rollers the staff kept around for incidents like this. Once de-furred, they made their way back to the public streets. It was probably the most relaxing afternoon Kei had experienced in a while. Especially considering the patrols she'd been running lately. Even with Obito back, there was still only so much ground they could cover when their target kept defying tracking.

"That was a lot of fun," Shinsō said, stretching. "I thought you said you didn't like cats."

"No, I said I like dogs more," Kei corrected as they headed down the street. "But cats are pretty great. In the end, I just like cute things."

Shinsō raised an eyebrow. "That's…"

"If you say it's the only girly thing about me, I'll cram a last five-kilometer run into your bones before you're officially Aizawa-sensei's student."

He held his hands up defensively. "I didn't say anything."

They continued to playfully snipe at one another for a few more minutes, passing Tatooin Station as they walked. It was a peaceful Saturday, and a lot of the office-worker types were either at home or out shopping, which fed into the crowds everywhere.

And then there was a familiar voice, just after the most recent train pulled out of the station. "Shinsō-san? Gekkō-san, too! Hi!"

"Hi, Midoriya-san," said Shinsō. While ordinarily seeing a hero-hopeful carrying his costume in a case would've probably sent a little swirl of resentment through Shinsō's features, it appeared that cats were a panacea for ill feelings. "How was your internship?"

"It was really quiet," he replied, "but I really learned a lot!"

"Did you fix the bone-breaking problem?" Kei asked.

Midoriya grinned. "Actually, yeah! There was a trick to it I didn't see, but Gran Torino really helped me figure it out. We sparred and nothing bad happened. I'm sure Recovery Girl will be happy about that." He held up his costume case. "I, uh, I think I'm supposed to return this to UA… Is Aizawa-sensei still there?"

"Maybe?" Shinsō took the lead. "It's Saturday, but I'm not sure he actually leaves except to go on night patrols."

Midoriya shifted his weight from foot to foot. "If I wait, do you think he'll be mad?"

Honestly, Kei half-suspected he'd allow 1-A to nearly get away with murder. Aizawa-sensei put up a good front, but he'd almost died to keep them safe within half a week of knowing them.

Shinsō shrugged, which about summed up Kei's perspective too. "You'll probably be fine as long as you don't go vigilante while wearing it."

Kei, however, wasn't really listening. When she strained her ears, she could hear something past the general city noise of people and vehicles. It wasn't the industrial roar of jet engines. It sounded like…

Wings?

I thought using Quirks in public was illegal.

"Then I just won't put it on!"

"…Midoriya, no offense, but what the f—"

Then the ground shook with the force of a powerful explosion, drowning out anything else Shinsō was about to say and knocking both boys to the ground. Kei stayed on her feet through the power of chakra and stubbornness, arms held defensively over her face until the worst of the heat and force dissipated.

Smoke rose in the direction opposite UA, in a big black cloud that still glowed in the middle. A gas main? Kei wasn't an expert, but she remembered grainy footage of burning oil fields in a desert someplace, even if she couldn't recall too many details.

Screams. Crowds. Kei scooped each boy off the ground with a single hand apiece, dragging them up and into a run to follow her away from the chaos.

Behind them, monsters shrieked.