The sound of the glass shattering is far too loud, and small shards cut into her feet as she walks forward. She feels it too little and then she feels it too much. Her hands reach down, scooping up the glass into her palm, the slivers nicking into her flesh, drawing out the sharp sting of blood. She's grown too sensitive in here.

"Uraraka? Are you okay?" She turns, seeing a messy shock of green hair.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she says, her voice sounding far too bright and airy. Before she knows it the rest of her friends are on her, helping her pick up each piece of glass, examining the cuts in her hands, her feet, pulling out bandages and ointments she doesn't fucking want-

All of a sudden, she misses home. She feels a frustration rise up in her, and she wants wants wants to be back somewhere more real; among the grimy alleyways of the slums, in the small spaces between the squeezed little shops, where the brawls and the fun and the life is. Anywhere but here. She wants her pulse to pound, feel the adrenaline again and again and again and oh fuck, she needs to fight. She needs to show them.

She wrenches her hands away, and it's far too jerky- and Deku pauses. He has scars like her, she notices. It draws her to him even now. Yet she can see his wide green eyes narrow and she feels her classmates' gazes on her, clammy on her skin. Oh god they'll know. They'll know how she doesn't belong, how she doesn't doesn't doesn't want this and then she does.

She's here to be a hero.

"I'm fine!" she says, pumping her fist in the air. "Don't worry."

Back in her room, she runs her hands over her arms- feeling all the old little scars and all the memories. Somewhere in Kyoto, there's a market she knows by heart; fluttering tarpaulin blue against a hollow grey sky. Squabbling vendors squatting on the ground, selling leftovers. It's small- a stew of human sweat and writhing bodies of hungry young thieves that dart and paw and take and then get chased by desperate people who weren't desperate enough. There's no law there, no men in uniforms, because they don't care. There are just the small spaces between one worn carpet and the next and the thumping sounds of one's heart sounding against bony ribs and a toughweak body. Who can blame the stealing children? She can't- she's one of them. She's scoured the market for her supper on a weeks empty stomach. It makes sense, if she thinks of it that way. But the daily theft to quench hunger had grown into something more. The adrenaline was like a drug, and sometimes she liked to take. She likes to take. Small things at first- glittering sets of fake jewellery, photos, and maybe a few dusty coins from the insides of rattling cans. Apart from the money, she never used them; she liked to keep them pretty in a cardboard box by her bedside. It wasn't much about the things themselves as it was about the memories that came with it, a special kind of- oh who the actual fuck is she kidding? What memories? She doesn't care about the memories. She cares about the danger. The small thefts at first- negligible danger; maybe a call after her when she's hurtling down the streets- but that was all. Not enough. So more and more and more until she found herself scrabbling out of third floor windows, floating, feeling her body hit the ground, roll and get up and run. Run because they're after you. Run because it makes you feel alive.

They've not caught her yet. It's like an inexorable high- just like her quirk- all heights and danger and edge; flashing police sirens behind her and the slums and another day ahead. They've not caught her yet- even when she's inside their halls- to become one of them.

There's something inside her. Someone different. The same someone that cackles whenever Aizawa Sensei asks them to fight. The someone whose lips tear into a smile when they beat another opponent into the ground, when they emerge bruised and bloody and beaten and can still stand. They're all feral and raw and uncouth and all the worst parts of her. They're someone she doesn't want to be (but she does because they're strong and she can't be weak she can't- not again).

Uraraka Ochako loves to listen. She listens to the buzz of her heart inside her chest, the animalistic snarls from inside dark alleyways, the shrieks of crows feeding on limp carcasses that used to be human. She has listened to the tales of the heroes and the villains, passed by word of mouth- through the narrow streets of Kyoto. The tales waited for her, behind crippled bones and broken bodies, waited for her to become something more. And now, cocking her head to one side, she listens to the humming of the night and it calls to her.

In a flash she's out of the window, perching on the windowsill before even knowing what she's doing. The ground is below her, and she feels her pulse catch in her throat as she lets go and it races up to meet her. The wind around her fades into a dull tinny scream as she falls, and her eyes sparkle. Her face is inches from the ground as she nullifies her gravity, and she gazes at it for a few seconds before kicking off the ground and into the air.

She's weightless and she pulls herself up to the next window, and the next, dangling from the railings, the wind whipping through her hair and she laughs. The city sprawls out beneath her like a giant glittering oyster and she wants it.

Her laughs echo out into the night sky, and dizzyingly she hopes that someone, somewhere, will hear her. What is she doing? This isn't right this isn't right but then why does it feel right? Why does it make her crave for more?

She feels something rippling just beneath her skin, something ill fitting and ugly and she wants it off off off (she has always wanted to help people).

Inside her is a creature that lives on feeling. A creature which wants to feel its tongue taste metal, a creature which rears and shudders and bites. She wants to feel flesh give way against her fingers, feel stinging blood erupt in rosy stains across her lips.

She lets go and feels the zero gravity take hold of her, and then she's speeding through the city, past apartment complexes and suburbs, kicking off from walls and propelling forwards; a breathless laugh on her lips.