So much dialogue I cant I hate dialogue wifheihgwehgew

But it was necessary

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It started simply enough. He would message her a question, she would reply, and he would move on with his day. It was a simple arrangement, but one that lent him a sort of contentment he hadn't experienced before. True, he wasn't paying her, but it felt nice to have someone he could count on that wouldn't immediately report to his father.

Even U.A. had that obligation, to an extent. With Viveca, though, there was no connection to Enji. She wasn't in his employment, nor was she star struck. The latter was perhaps the biggest plus, in his opinion.

The first time he messaged her was after his class's battle trials. His question hadn't been about his own quirk, so at first he had been apprehensive to ask. He hadn't been specific in their agreement, but he knew he'd led her to believe that his question would be specific to his own quirk. But it was for that same reason that eventually, he sent his message.

S. Todoroki: How much force would it take to instantaneously break every bone in a limb at once?

He'd asked because at that point, he had watched Midoriya Izuku wreck his body twice while using his quirk. While unpracticed, Midoriya was undoubtably strong. That strength caught Shouto's attention, and while he didn't feel as if Midoriya was a threat, he still found that he wanted an idea of just how much power the green haired boy had.

He also wanted to test the limits of Viveca's knowledge in order to see how useful she could actually be.

V. Goulding: ?

Her response was brief, completely unhelpful, but it did make him realize he should probably clarify.

S. Todoroki: It's a quirk I've seen that I wanted to know more about.

That did the trick.

V. Goulding: There's a long and a short answer.

S. Todoroki: The most detailed will suffice.

It took a while for her to respond, but when she did he found that she had texted him a voice message. At the time he had been displeased because he had been in class and couldn't listen to it, but he realized that it was probably easier for her to say it then type it. He assumed she had things to do during the day just as he did.

Her answer was worth the wait, though.

"Okay so it really depends on which limb we're talking about. Though bone density is pretty uniform in an individual, it does very due to size, positioning, and primary function. A femur, for example, would take around 4,000 newtons of force to break. That's about 400 kilograms give or take a few. Now again, that depends on the bone. If you factor in musculature and the angle at which the bone was hit that changes things as well. An entire limb being shattered would take huge amount of force, though. Let's assume that the limb in question is hitting an object that has a fair amount of mass to it, like a brick wall. In order to break every bone in that limb, the force would have to be enough to pass through all soft tissue and continue up the arm. Such force would actually damage the wall as well, which would mean that the wall itself absorbed some the shock which complicates the actual numbered amount of force itself. With all that said… I want you to understand that I can't give you an exact number. If you want an estimate, then 400 kilograms is the best I can do, but understand that the force itself may actually be more, but most probably not less. I hope that… helps."

The answer wasn't as precise as he'd wanted, but it did help. It also showed him that she knew what she was talking about. She'd spoken with a confidence he hadn't heard from her before, and a clarity he hadn't known she possessed. All in all, it reassured him that he had made the right decision. So he kept asking.

Almost every question he sent was responded to with a voice message. Her explanations were as detailed as possible in accordance to what he'd asked of her. Still, he sometimes had follow up questions and she answered those too. Over the next few weeks, he learned about all of his classmates. He learned about the natural range of human hearing, understanding that Shoji Mezo could hear far beyond that. He learned about human capacity for elevation, figuring out that Uraraka Ochako would only be able to float so high before her own organs started to compress.

He also learned that Viveca knew far more than just basic human biology. She could also figure out quirk biology if given the time. He hadn't expected much of an answer, but again she had surprised him.

S. Todoroki: I know what ice does to living materials, but do you know how it would affect non organic materials?

He'd observed enough of Kirishima Eijiro to understand that the other boy could harden his skin into stone, which by his observation would be a natural defense against ice.

V. Goulding: It depends on the composition.

S. Todoroki: It's rock, I believe. I'm not sure exactly what type, but it hardens from skin and stays flesh colored.

He'd expected a short answer, but she sent him a voice message instead. That meant that she had an actual answer for him, and if he was a little more pleased than usual he didn't show it.

"Again, it would depend on the composition. Some minerals react to extreme temperatures negatively, cracking or shattering. Some do the opposite and strengthen. Some don't react at all. Stone is usually comprised of minerals, but I can't say for sure what exactly the rock your referring to is composed of without seeing a sample. As it is, I can say it's most likely not normal stone if it's created from skin. If it is just the skin that's hardening, though, then the flesh underneath should still be just that. So long as the surrounding stone reaches freezing temperatures, the inside will freeze as well. Kind of like a reverse boiled egg situation, I guess. That's only if the stone in question is susceptible to temperature change, though. If it is, then the inside flesh should still freeze, just at a varied rate from what you're probably used to. This also means that the inside flesh may be more susceptible to decay as well. Human bodies are fragile when it comes to heat or the lack of it, and even if the stone protects the outside, it may unintentionally insulate the inside."

Once again she had given him useful information, and so he expanded range of what he asked her.

Slowly, he began to notice a change in their exchanges. He asked questions, she answered them, and nothing else was said until he had another inquiry… But then she started asking questions of her own.

They started subtly. He asked, she answered, and then followed with

V. Goulding: Do you have any other questions?

He said no every time, because he'd had more questions he would have already asked. Still, though he said no, she didn't stop asking. Then it became his fault, because his response changed from 'no' into a very different question of his own.

S. Todoroki: Do you have any questions?

He'd sent it originally because he'd felt it fair. She answered him every single time without fault or getting off topic. He hadn't expected anything really. In hindsight, he should have.

S. Goulding: Actually, I do.

When he'd read that, Shouto had expected questions about his quirk. He'd prepared for the uncomfortable examination, but again thought it only fair. He wasn't paying her, after all. There was of course the fact that he could tell her job of their arrangement at any time, but he didn't see a reason to do that. She wasn't doing anything wrong and would only get in trouble on technicalities. He had no desire to see her chastised for something as simple as his questions.

S. Todoroki: Ask then.

If he hadn't been expecting her own curiousness, then he surely hadn't expected what came next.

She called him.

At the time, he'd been in his room. Not seeing a reason not to, he answered.

"Okay so I have kind of a weird question," she said the moment the line connected.

He immediately tensed, and realized that perhaps allowing someone in the medical profession to question him without any restrictions wasn't the smartest idea. He still had vivid memories of his brother, Natsuo, asking him if his pee came out hot or cold.

He could only imagine what Viveca would come up with.

What she actually asked, though, surprised him more than any questions about his bodily functions would have.

"What's it like at your high school?"

"At… U.A?" Shouto clarified even knowing he didn't really need to. He was still trying to figure out why exactly she wanted to know.

"Yeah I mean… Unless you switched schools in the past few weeks?" she asked.

They both knew he went to U.A, and he didn't understand what she'd been getting at.

"I haven't. U.A. is just as it's described," he told her.

He heard her sigh, then she seemed to shuffle the phone around.

"That's not what I meant. I've seen the website and the pamphlets and the news coverage. Everyone has. I mean what's high school like. In general."

It seemed whenever he had an idea about Viveca and who she was or what she would do, she did something else to confuse him. Realizing that he wasn't going to be able to puzzle it out, he decided to take the simplest path and outright ask her.

"Why do you want to know?"

There was silence, then

"You know what? Nevermind."

She sounded irritated, though he couldn't figure out what he'd said to offend her. She was expressive for sure, but that didn't mean he understood her expressions.

"Is something wrong?" he asked her outright.

"No," she said after a moment," I just wanted to know."

And he wanted to know why she wanted to know.

"But why?"

She laughed, then, and it startled him. He'd had brief conversations with her twice before, but both had not been ideal situations. He'd heard her voice plenty of times due to their agreemen. Despite that, it was odd to hear her laugh because she'd never done it around him before.

It wasn't a bad sound.

"You're real straightforward, aren't you?" she said, humor changing her voice.

"I don't see any reason not to be," he told her honestly.

"You don't ever… get afraid? Like, of what other people might think of what you say?" she asked.

"No," he told her, knowing that she was asking because she obviously was. It made sense, in retrospect. Her confidence seemed to a fragile thing. Honestly, he didn't much care what other's thought of him beyond his own power. If he focused too much on others, he would never be able to attain his own goals.

"Right… Well I guess if you're going to be like this then I might as well be," Viveca said, her uncertainly, "I just want to know because I've never been to one."

He thought on it for a moment. If she was an intern for the hospital, then she'd have to be at college level. It hadn't even crossed his mind that while she looked young, she couldn't have still been in high school with her job. He realized he didn't know much about her at all.

"How old are you?" For all he knew she could've been an adult who either looked that young or had an age defying quirk.

"I'm 15, I just finished school early."

Early was an understatement, and he hummed in thought. Shouto had met intelligent people before, but no one who had managed to finish high school by 15. He knew it was possible, and knew people had done it younger ages, but still.

It made sense, though, and he finally understood why she'd asked her question. She'd never been to a high school, and never would.

"It's like any other school," he started," just with more physical training. We have normal class periods, but we do attend 6 days a week."

"Oh…" she said simply, though he had a feeling she was dissatisfied with his answer.

"Anything else?" he prompted.

She sighed again before saying "Not today", and his mind began to drift back towards his schoolwork.

"So then what? You'll have questions tomorrow?"

Too late, he realized it sounded like an invitation.

He didn't take it back.

"Maybe. Goodnight Todoroki-San."

"Goodnight Goulding-San," he replied in like.

For some reason he could picture her cringing at the sound of the honorific.

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She called him the next day.

She hadn't planned on it. In fact, she'd specifically told herself that she would do the exact opposite and never ask him anything ever again. Their conversation had been short, embarrassing for her, and she'd felt like she'd bothered him more then anything. But he had humored her. He'd responded with no qualms or dancing around the subject like she tended to do. Even if it did rub her the wrong way, it was refreshing.

Shouto wasn't her friend, and he was hardly even an acquaintance. Most times they interacted she felt like a glorified librarian.

But he had talked to her. For a girl who spent every day either working or studying, that meant a lot. Viveca couldn't even recall the last time she'd talked to someone that wasn't a doctor, patient, or teacher. Hell, she didn't even talk to the cashier when she picked up her groceries. She was a quiet girl to begin with, but at least when she was younger there had been activities here and there to keep her social.

She'd given all that up with her move to Japan, though, and she hadn't ever attempted to get it back. She'd had the option to enroll in school, but had been too nervous. She didn't tell her parents that, of course. She'd told them that she wanted to just do her studies at home and get them over with.

She had made the same excuse when she buried her roller skates in her closet, her favorite activity only a sad reminder.

She'd made the same excuse when she avoided the military gatherings, not knowing where to find the will to socialize.

Viveca used the same excuse for many of her shortcomings, and it left her alone. It was especially ironic now that she found she wanted to try to connect with people again that it was hardest for her to do so.

So, she called Shouto, because even if he was hard to talk to, he was honest. He didn't hide behind pretenses, and at least if he was going to judge her, he'd do to her face, so to speak. So, she came up with a question, and she called him.

"Hello?" he answered on the fourth ring. She'd called him around the same time as the night before, and it worked to her advantage.

"Hi," she said, trying not to lose her nerve, "I have a question."

"Good," he said surprising her," I have one too.

Her eyebrows rose as she asked "Why didn't you text me earlier then?"

And if she was off her game before, well then, his reply finished blowing any nerve she had left.

"I assumed you'd call so I figured it could wait."

Smooth and even, he spoke in a way she never would.

"What made you so sure?"

She wasn't even sure she wanted to know.

"I don't know," he said simply.

At least he wasn't afraid to admit that he didn't have an answer. She, on the other hand, had always had that problem. Of all the questions he asked her, she really only had answers to half. The rest, she used what she knew to gather information to spew back at him. She didn't think he realized that yet, but she didn't mind. She liked to learn, and his questions challenged her in a way she enjoyed.

"Alright, well… What's your question?" she prompted first.

He didn't waste any time.

"Is there a way to slow cellular decay due to temperature fluctuation?"

Vee tilted her head as she thought, her eyes losing focus. Normally she could tell which questions Shouto had about his own biology versus that of others. This one was very obviously about him. She usually just went off on a tangent about whatever information she had in response, but with him right there on the line…

"Are we talking fire or ice here?"

Though she honestly didn't remember much of his file after she'd input it, she'd gone back and opened the attachment she'd sent him to familiarize herself with the information for his future inquiries, but she needed to know information to figure out how to best go about helping him with what he wanted to know.

"Ice," he told her.

Without really thinking about it, she told him "In general, your self-regulation does that for you."

She wasn't done, but she'd paused to keep thinking, and he took that to mean she was finished.

"What do you mean?"

She knew he'd read the file, but she parroted back the information on instinct, adding her own thoughts along the way.

"Humans tend to maintain a very specific homeostasis. Yours is different. Homeostasis implies one set physical state of being at optimal capacity. You have two, though. Your core temperature should be between 97 and 99 degrees which would be about 36 to 37 degrees Celsius. You're split perfectly down the middle to the point of almost inefficiency. Your left side is almost five degrees lower than it should be while the right is five degrees hotter. In any other person either of those extremes would result in sickness and bring the body well on its way to brain damage and death. Your tissues don't seem to react negatively to it, though. Even when forced from one extreme to the other your body self regulates… Eventually. I mean obviously at some point the skin cells can be damaged or else-"

And then Vee realized just how insensitive what she was about to say was and she stopped. That was the difference between being able to record her responses and having him listening to her in real time. She couldn't filter out any of the stupid things that came out of her mouth.

"Or else I wouldn't have the scar on my face," Shouto finished where she couldn't.

She wanted to die. She wanted to find the nearest hole, crawl into it, and never leave. She wanted to-

"It's fine, please continue," Shouto said before she could finish offing herself in her own mind.

She didn't want to at that point, but her alternative was to wallow in self-pity, so she pressed on.

"If, uh, if the cells can be damaged… that means there is obviously a point between the shift in temperature that leaves the cell vulnerable. If you can find that point, then you'll be able to go from m there in order to figure out whether or not that vulnerability can be bypassed or protected. How much can you regulate your personal body temperature?"

She hadn't wanted to stop talking so soon, because it brought her out of focus and back into her head. She couldn't continue without that information, though.

"You're not going to ask how I got the burn?" Shouto questioned instead of replying to her.

Shocked, Vee shook her head before remembering he couldn't see her.

"No."

He didn't let it go.

"Why not?"

"Because… It's not my business?"

It truly wasn't. She tried not to make any assumptions about their interactions, and while she wasn't the best with social graces, she wasn't totally inept. You didn't ask people about big injuries like that, especially if you weren't close. She wasn't going to push the issue.

But Shouto did.

"Would it help you to know?"

'Would it help you to tell me?' she wondered to herself. She didn't know much about him, but it seemed almost as if he wanted to tell her. His voice didn't waver, she couldn't see him, but something just felt… off.

So she gave an open ended answer.

"It… could help."

His answer was more specific.

"It was boiling water."

If Vee had taken a breath, her lungs didn't feel it. She was picturing the size of his burn and calculating the amount of boiling water it would take to cover such a large surface. But as she thought, something didn't make sense.

"How did you treat it?" she asked," Because it shouldn't have scarred given your body composition."

She knew quirks could develop differently with age, but even then, he should've been able to handle the heat if his medical history was anything to go by.

"…My mother iced it," he said after a short pause. It was the first time she'd heard him falter since she'd made the faux pass with her name.

"Todorki-san, though ice immediately on a burn isn't good, you still shouldn't have scarred like that it should have healed." She wasn't trying to push, but she didn't have the answers he was looking for with what he'd given her.

"My mother has an ice quirk. She froze through the skin."

If the revelation that he'd been doused in boiling water had stopped her breath, then the idea that he'd had the burn frozen through so solidly nearly made her heart stop.

Because the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. Shouto's burn had looked smooth, the skin burnt deep. It looked that way because it was an ice burn. To freeze so deeply into flesh would deaden it on a normal person. It normally wouldn't have done so to Shouto, but the skin had been superheated first then supercooled. His body hadn't been able to keep up with the sudden change from outside forces, and so the decay had probably been immediate.

Immediate and excruciating.

"I… I can't even…" she didn't know what to say, because she didn't want to sound like she pitied him. She didn't think he'd want that.

She was right.

"I don't need your pity," he said, and she had Deja vu to their first meeting as she heard anger finally shift his voice.

Feeling like a fool, she closed her eyes and tried to figure out how to fix the situation.

"It's not pity. I just know how much that had to have hurt. That's not the type of pain anyone should go through," she said carefully. For someone who didn't feel temperature as others did, it would have hurt doubly so. New sensations were always the most startling.

"It was so long ago I hardly remember it," he said after a moment.

Instead of making her feel better, that made her feel worse. If it was so long ago that he couldn't remember, that meant he had been young.

"I don't take it back," she said softly," I'm still sorry, and I'm willing to do what I can to make sure it doesn't happen again."

"At least now you know what it takes to kill my cells," he said.

She pretended not to hear the bitter edge in his voice. Instead, she let her mind turn back to the original topic.

"Yeah, I do. I think I have an answer too, but it won't be easy."

"I'm listening," he told her.

So she began to hypothesize.

"You may be able to essentially overturn your body's natural inclination towards a specific temperature. I assume you're worried about the overuse of one quirk causing damage, so it's really just going to come down to how much control you have over it. Your ice output may be colder than what you can naturally handle at a given point, but you have a natural counterbalance. If you produce the ice, you just need to create enough heat around the point of concern in order to protect that area, but then the issue becomes the effectiveness of your ice quirk in relation to the necessity to provide heat in the same area. It would be dependent on how your quirk manifests at a cellular level. Are you producing ice, or just the absence of heat? "

"I don't understand what you're getting at," Shouto told her. She nodded to herself, then decided to switch up her wording.

"Some quirks are literal, while others are really just the byproduct of another occurrence. It may seem like the ice is produced from nothing but ice does have mass that has to come from somewhere. It could be that you're using the water already present naturally, or maybe you're producing it yourself. Either way pose different limitations. The temperature is what's important here, though. There's no such thing as 'coldness' really, just the absence of heat by scientific definition. The question really becomes how much heat are you controlling, and in that creation of ice, can you fine tune it so that you pull less of the heat, creating a cooler 'ice' near your person so as to prevent injury. Alternatively, can you offset it by simply using your other quirk to add heat in order to protect yourself?"

"I've never thought it about it that way," he said," but I suppose you're right."

"So do you know which it is?" she asked, already knowing that if he'd never thought of it, then he wouldn't know. Still, she was mostly thinking aloud at this point, with him guiding her train of thought.

"…No," he said simply.

Thinking the answer obvious at this point, Vee pressed him.

"So if you don't know, then the only thing left to do would be to find out, right?"

She'd thought that would be the end of it, assuming she'd done her part. True, she knew she hadn't given him the straightest of answers, but she'd done her best. She'd already told him that she wasn't actually a doctor yet, but when he asked her his next question, she wondered if he'd forgotten.

"What did you have in mind?"

She hadn't had anything in mind, so she told him as much.

"I don't know how to-," she paused, trying to figure out exactly what to say," Test quirks? Is that what you're asking me?"

"I was, but I should have realized that your knowledge has to end somewhere."

Shouto had no way of knowing how inadequate that statement made her feel, but she didn't bother to tell him. He hadn't meant it that way, but it still somehow felt that she'd let him down.

If there was one thing she hated, it was disappointing people.

"I could help you brainstorm, but I think your school could probably do better than I could. Isn't U.A. supposed to help you go 'beyond', or whatever?"

Try as she might, she couldn't recall the school's mantra, but she knew it was something along those lines. She felt her face heat at her own ignorance when she heard the smallest huff of amusement from across the line.

"You're probably right about U.A. being able to help me, but I thought it would help to use all available resources. For now, I think it's time for me to answer your question."

Feeling a bit more accomplished, if still a bit embarrassed, Vee tried recall her question. Though she'd come up with something to ask him, there was a different inquiry buzzing in her mind now. It could go one of two ways, she knew, but after all the talk of quirks…

"What's it like to have a quirk?" she pushed out. Even saying the words inspired an odd feeling in her. She didn't even know why she'd asked.

Over the years, she'd had plenty of opportunity to ask if she'd ever so been inclined. She'd seen her Mom's quirk in action many times over the years; everything from taking pans out of the oven without gloves to accidently dropping heavy objects on her toes without so much as a wince. It had been much the same with her Dad, except the occurrences of her seeing his quirk were few and far between.

Still, she'd had the chance. She could've asked her parents, or even any of her colleagues, yet there she was asking him. The worst part about it all was that she knew talking about it would only bring her down. Speaking of quirks, and her lack thereof, only ever soured her mood.

Yet something about their conversations, about him, made her want to ask. She'd braced herself for his response, expecting the inevitable: him to ask about her not having a quirk. Everyone did, eventually. She'd always thought it extra exasperating considering that it was still a regular occurrence for people to been quirkless.

"It is… a lot of responsibility," Shouto surprised her with instead.

"I can see that," she responded, understanding that he especially had a large amount of destructive force at his disposal. Fire and ice were both core elements, forces of nature all on their own. More then that, she'd noticed something important: Shout didn't seem to like the fire portion of his quirk very much. Whether it was because he couldn't control it as well, or he controlled it well enough that he no longer had questions, she didn't know. What she did know was that in all his questioning, he rarely ever asked her about what heat would do to him. On the off times she may have led in that direction, he redirected her.

It brought up many entirely new questions, but those were for a different day.

Wanting to lighten the mood, she said "I bet it means you never worry about your popsicles melting while you eat them, though, huh?"

To her delight, she was graced with another one of those amused huffs. Now it might have been wishful thinking on her part, but she did like to think she could be funny.

It wasn't as funny when instead of acknowledging her joke, he asked "Why are you being so nice to me?"

Lips piercing, Vee could recall the day they'd met as clear as if it'd just happened. That meant, of course, that she could recall the shame. It had been the first time she'd interacted with someone her own age in a long time, and she'd acted out because of what? Her own frustration? It hadn't been fair.

But Shouto had done the same thing, and while it should have made her livid, it lit a sort of understanding in her. The more she thought about it, the more a small voice in the back of her mind said that if he'd done it too, then maybe it hadn't been so bad… Because it reminded her that she was just as human as everyone else. People made mistakes; sometimes even the same ones, at the same time.

"I'm just… treating you the same way I'd want to be treated," she told him, opting for the simplest, but still honest, condensing of her feelings. Now, more than anything, she wished she could see him. Talking was one thing, but Shouto was hard to read.

"I think an apology is in order, then," Shouto said, making Vee's stomach clench uncomfortably.

She'd already apologized to him, but of course it hadn't been enough, she'd been so rude to him before and a few bad jokes and long lectures weren't going to fix that, she'd fucked up, she'd-

"I never did say sorry for what I said to you the day we met," he said, freezing her thoughts as easily as if he'd used his quirk," but I am sorry. I was… out of line."

Vee's heart, which had begun to go into overdrive with her mind, was now in her throat. She wasn't sure if she felt worse or better, because in all her scrambling… she never had realized that he hadn't apologized himself. She didn't care, one way or another, but hearing him now… It was a relief she didn't often feel.

"We all have bad days, sometimes," she told him gently.

"Were you having a bad day?" he questioned.

She had been, but even in all their conversation, she wasn't sure it was appropriate to tell him. Telling him about her day would have involved sharing emotions she wasn't sure were appropriate for someone who wasn't her friend, but he'd asked… and Vee wasn't brave enough.

Negativity lived in her mind, and she knew it wasn't an attractive trait… and with a start she realized what she was doing. She was trying to connect, because she wanted to tell him, to have him listen.

But she doubted he really wanted to know, and was too much of a coward to ask if it was polite curiosity, or if somehow, he cared. Between the two of them, she was not the one who was supposed to be brave, though. She was supposed to be smart; or at least just smart enough to keep his attention.

Right then, though, his attention was too much.

"That's a question for another day, maybe," and the words sounded hollow to her own ears.

"Of course," was the prim and proper reply she received," it is getting late. I shouldn't keep you."

So they said their goodbyes, and when the line went dead, Vee sat in the silence of her home heavy with the knowledge that she already missed his voice.

'Fuck.'

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Lonely kids make the best companions. Also I should have edited this more lmao.