It was time for the school festival and Izuku was so excited!
He had practiced the dance enough to perform with his class, and he was so excited for their song!
Izuku would be helping the other animals with their little cafe too. They had spent the entire night baking treats and making sure they were ready for the big day.
Izuku hopped across the school grounds to where his animal friends were setting things up.
He watched as tables and chairs floated around on the concrete square Cementose has set up for them. The tables lowered down into a grid pattern where each small table had two chairs.
Apple Kick neighed loudly in displeasure as she stood next to the large spider crab.
"Watatsumi! What are you thinking?! Push some of the tables together so we can have groups of four!"
Watatsumi nodded and rolled their eye stocks before raising their tables and chairs rose up into the air and rearranged themselves according to Apple Kick's demand.
Izuku hopped over to his friends. "That looks great! You both are doing an amazing job."
His crab friend walked over, wearing black stiletto shoes on each leg as well as a leather jacket with metal studs on it. Apple Kick wore a gorgeous purple gown and her mane was beautifully braided and even more luscious than usual.
"We wanted to help extra with the setup since we'll be busy during the day with the beauty contest."
"That's fantastic! You two are going to do amazing!"
Watatsumi nodded. "They didn't want to let me in at first, but when I explained to Nezu that I am every gender but also genderless, he thought it was fine for me to join the contest, even though it's intended for ladies."
"Nice! I love your shoes!"
The three of them chatted while setting up the basics, such as where they would sell baked goods from, where they would make coffee and tea, and where people could grab cups and plates-
"We forgot cups!"
Apple Kick turned around when he yelled. "Hm?"
"We forgot to get the paper cups for people to drink from!"
By now his other friends had arrived and Spinner walked over with a talking bird on each shoulder. "That's not a huge deal, we have some time before we open so someone can make a quick run to the store to buy some. It should probably be me or Izuku since we know the area and how to get to the store."
Izuku binkied a little, happy he could help his friends. "I'll go! Let me grab my wagon real quick and then I'll be back super fast."
He jumped through the air over to the dorms, where he grabbed some money and slipped into his harness that attached to his little red wagon so he could easily carry the things back with him.
Since he had lived in the area for a while now the shop owner simply smiled and waved when he entered. "Hey there Izuku. Don't you have that big festival today?"
"Hi store friend! I have a cup emergency! We forgot to get cups for the coffee and tea!"
She just chuckled lightly. "Oh dear, well we better fix that immediately, you wait there for a moment and I'll make sure to load up your cart with enough for that cafe you told me about."
Within a few minutes Izuku was out the door with a little red wagon pulled behind him.
Oh no!
When one of the wheels hit a rock the package of cups on the top fell off. And since he didn't have hands it would take soooo long to get it back where it belonged.
A friendly man wearing a scarf leaned down and picked it up for him. "Here you go."
"Thank you mister!"
"Of course, one must always help those in need, especially if it is of no cost to them."
He started on his way again when he realized he was going the same way as the nice man and a small lady.
"Are you two going to the festival?"
The man laughed, "In a way, little hero, we most certainly are."
"That's so exciting! I can introduce you to my friends!"
As they got closer to the main entrance the small lady was typing a lot of things on her computer.
"What were your names?"
He gave a wide grin right before they crossed the school's boundary line. "I am the Gentle Criminal and this is my assistant LaBrava."
"My name is Izuku Midoriya, but you can just call me Izuku."
The man was baffled by the lack of response from the rabbit, and that he didn't seem concerned at all. When someone came to take their payment to enter, he was ready to jump into action when Izuku wriggled something out of his pocket and held two bright yellow tickets in his mouth.
"Don't worry Saki, I have guest passes for them."
She leaned down and took them from him. "Of course Izuku, have fun today."
They entered without any fanfare and they never even had a chance to break in. Labrava looked over at him. "Why did you bring guest passes? Were you planning to invite friends of yours?"
"Nope! Most of my friends are already here. I brought them in case I made friends along the way. And I did!"
Labrava looked up at the silver haired man. "Gentle, are we going to continue with the plan?"
"Of course not, it would be far too rude to reject this kind rabbit's hospitality and not gentlemanly at all. We shall create our fame another day."
"Bye bye, new friends!"
The odd duo wandered off as he went back to the cafe, which was getting ready to open.
Hina flew over and grabbed one of the cup packages with her feet before flying it over to a nearby table. "Just in time, Izuku, your classmates were looking for you, squawk, they wanted to do a final rehearsal of your dance."
Oh no, he didn't want to miss the dance practice. As soon he took off the harness he ran over to the dance stage.
The dance wasn't too complicated, but he was so excited to be a part of it!
Mostly he hopped around on just his back legs while turning left and right with his friends. It felt silly to wiggle his arms on stage for a big crowd, but humans were silly like that and it was lots of fun since his friends were there.
He had been so busy lately it was nice to do this fun thing with his class.
Kachan was being loud on the drums.
His double friend was playing a guitar thingy.
His orange friend was leading the dancing group.
All his friends were working together!
Even his confused friend helped by making big ice sculptures for everyone!
His little unicorn friend was in the crowd and she looked so excited too! He was excited that she was excited!
After the song and cleanup was over he hopped back to the cafe to see how they were doing.
He wove his way through a bunch of people's legs because they kept getting in the way.
The cafe was super busy! They were doing such a good job!
Apple Kick trotted over to him alongside Watatsumi. "Izuku! Take over for me or else we'll be late for the contest! You just need to say hi, answer stupid questions, and tell them where to sit."
He nodded and jumped up onto a stool so he could better see customers. He knew how to do all of those things, but what kind of questions would people ask that were so stupid?
The next person in line was a lady with some small humans with her. She spoke very slowly as if he didn't understand her and then started asking about if 'animals' would really be able to keep things sanitary. Someone else asked if they were serving rabbit stew and laughed as if it were a funny joke.
Oh, so this is what Apple Kick meant by stupid questions.
He did a very good job and didn't kick anyone, even if they were super annoying.
Not much later the two of them came back, but by then things had calmed down.
Izuku hopped to the back of the little cafe to check on the others. Hina was working the cash register since she was pretty good at numbers. Mikan took orders and would repeat them back to Spinner and Watatsumi, who were making the drinks and bringing them out alongside the treats they made the night before.
They were like a well oiled machine, but with a lot more squawking, squeaking, and scuttling.
It wasn't too much longer until the festival would end, so they started to clean up along with all the other shops and food stands. All of them made sure to go and vote for their friends before time was up.
Then the big announcement came, for who the winner of the beauty contest would be.
Midnight stood on the stage and was getting everyone's attention with all the contestants behind her. She held the tiara that would go to the winner, and he was excited even though he found the entire thing very confusing. He was friends with a bunch of them, there was his big hands friend, swirly friend, pink hair friend, and of course his non-human friends.
"Alright everyone! We had a lot of… different competitors this year who showed off their stuff, but there can only be one winner! You casted your votes, and by popular demand, this year's Miss UA is-." The hero opened up a sealed envelope and her eyes widened a bit, but she quickly regained composure. "Apple Kick!"
There was a gleeful whinny as the massive horse pranced up to her and shook her head around happily before lowering herself down to receive the little crown.
She continued to strut around the stage posing for the many cameras. Apple Kick was a very happy horse who was completely content to bask in the attention that was thrown her way.
In the background one of the contestants was in tears and ran off as she shouted. "I can't believe I lost to a horse!"
She got a huff in response, but no pity or guilt from said horse. "It's not my fault I'm prettier."
She also posed with her fellow classmates, which turned into an impromptu interview of the new SNH class. Most of the questions were pretty simple and just intended to be fun.
"So, Watatsumi, we saw a few different things from you today, and it has left many people wondering what exactly is your quirk? You seemed to glow, fly, speak perfect Japanese, use tekenises, and I believe we saw you teleport at one point."
"Hmm, I believe the most accurate answer to that question would be yes. But at the same time the answer is also no."
"Oh, um, ok. Well, there was also some confusion over your gender. Are you a boy crab or a girl crab?"
"You are a fool if you think my magnificence can be contained within a single gender."
While the reporter gave a flustered response to those answers, Izuku let his mind drift away from the conversation as he heard something odd. It sounded like Aizawa was arguing with someone. It was far away from all the other people still at the festival, so he was probably the only one listening to it.
"What?! You can't just show up and take her from me. The Commision has no right to her and as her guardian I won't allow you anywhere near her!"
"Actually, you only had temporary guardianship of her, your request to become her permanent guardian was declined. And as a child with no remaining guardians, we are well within our rights to place her as a ward of the government under the care of the Hero Commision as a minor with great heroic potential."
"You're just after her quirk and it's not even subtle. You people disgust me and I will see you bastards in court over this."
"Bring us to court for what? We have broken no laws. Feel free to contact your local representatives if you have concerns over these laws."
The men in the fancy suits turned to walk away while Aizawa looked very ready to fight them.
Izuku listened around even harder and found Eri not too far away and made his way over to her. He saw her standing alone with the hero who had the big red wings. "Hey there, Eri. Do you want to be a hero like me?"
First off, in case it was unclear, Watatsumi the Japanese spidercrab uses any and all pronouns and is the genderqueer icon you didn't know you needed. If you are asking yourself 'hey author, why is there a genderqueer spidercrab in this story?'. If you've read some of my other works you might have a guess. Whenever someone in the comments complain about lgbtqia+ things I add more out of spite. So, to the reader that complained about the relationship between bakugou and kirishima, congratulations on inspiring the creation of this amazing creature.
I refuse to create a story that bigots can enjoy. Please inform me if you dislike lgbtqia+ inclusion but like my story overall, that way I know to add more until you don't like my stories.
That aside, I hope you all enjoy this chapter and the definitely not at all ominous cliffhanger.
As always, please share any thoughts or questions that you have.