Notes: Hello can I interest you in some pointless cell phone headcanons

The two halves of this story are only vaguely connected by the common theme of a phone in the Soul household so the overall flow might feel a little off, but it just didn't make sense to post them as two separate stories. And because of that we have a rare instance of me switching POVs mid-story/chapter. I prefer not to do that usually, but when it works, it works... I guess?

I ALMOST FORGOT TO MENTION THIS but there are some spoilers about Rody's living situation during the movie so yeah

In any case, I hope you enjoy!

Small Connection

The first thing Rody purchased with his first real, honest paycheck was a cell phone. He bought it second-hand, and it was old, outdated, and scratched, with a few dead pixels here and there, but it still worked fine, and that was the most important thing.

It had been a toss-up between the phone and study books, honestly, but after all that he had gone through he thought it was more important than ever that there was a phone in the Soul household. Juuuust in case someone got him caught up in another crazy adventure that had him gone from his siblings for days at a time. (Though there was only one person in the world he would forgive for doing that to him, again.)

Besides, it hadn't felt really great when Deku had asked for his phone number at the airport, and he had had to admit that he didn't even have one.

Deku, for his part, had answered with an understanding smile. "Then I guess we match!" he said brightly, pulling his SIM card out of his breast pocket, the only part of his shattered cell phone that was worth salvaging.

Rody would never admit aloud that if Deku was getting a new phone, then he wanted to match with him again.

But in any case, since it was primarily meant for contacting his siblings at home, Rody didn't tend to take the phone with him while he was at work. Roro and Lala couldn't take it with them to school or when playing with friends, either. It was a strictly at-home device.

Which was totally fine. Rody didn't have anyone he'd want to be texting during breaks at work or anything. Not at all!

The study books were what he bought with his second paycheck. If Rody wanted to go to flight school eventually, he had a lot of catching up to do. So he bought books on all the relevant sciences he could think of and set aside time to study every night, after he was home from the bar and his siblings were asleep.

It didn't take Rody long to realize that diving right into such difficult concepts when he hadn't been to school at all since the age of twelve wasn't the greatest of ideas.

He tried his best, struggling to comprehend the large blocks of text and complicated formulae—he remembered his father teaching him some more advanced mathematics when he was younger, before it would have been part of his school curriculum, but he couldn't remember any of it. After a few hours he had to concede defeat and admit to himself that he needed help, but there were very few people he would willingly show such vulnerability to. Hesitantly, he reached for the phone.

Between the time difference and their schedules, there weren't very many opportunities for Rody to call Deku. He could count on one hand the times they had had a lengthy conversation on the phone, and one instance when he, Roro, and Lala had all woken up early to video chat with the hero, but other than that they tended to stick to sending text messages that could be answered whenever they had the time. When it came to study help, though, wouldn't an instantaneous two-way conversation be best?

Would Deku even be available to talk? Rody glanced at the clock; just past midnight on a Saturday. It wasn't a school day for Deku, and from what Rody had gathered about his sleeping schedule, he'd likely be awake, too.

Without letting himself spare any second thoughts, Rody opened up Deku's contact page and hit the call button.

The phone rang for a few long seconds before Deku answered, sounding cheerful but a little confused. "Hi, Rody! What's up?"

Rody forced a casual grin that the hero couldn't see while he used his free hand to calm a nervously excited Pino. "Hey, Hero! Not much going on here, I just thought you might like to be graced by my voice is all!"

Deku chuckled, a low, pleasant sound that carried through the line. "Well, sure, it's always nice to hear from you. But you don't usually call out of the blue like this. Did you need me for something?"

"Ahh..." Rody released Pino to scratch at his head awkwardly. "Yeah, you got me. I was actually, um..." He looked down at his open textbooks, frowning. "Deku, you're pretty smart, right? Good at studying?"

"I guess...? I'm not the best in my class, but..." Deku trailed off. "Rody, do you need help studying?"

Rody gave a soft, self-deprecating laugh. "Yeah, a little. Kind of hard to teach myself from textbooks, I guess."

"I can imagine! What subject do you need help with?"

"Right, so..." Rody pulled one of his books toward him, glaring at a particularly complex formula as if it were the most offensive thing in the world. "What do you know about..." —algebra, he needed to start with basic algebra, but that made him sound so uncool— "...aerodynamics?"

"Aerodynamics?" Deku hummed thoughtfully. "I don't actually know much about it specifically—"

Rody sighed. "I guess I shoulda figured..."

"—but I'm trying to get the hang of mid-air battling right now, so while the scale is a bit different from what you need to fly a plane, maybe I could stand to study it, too..."

"Mid-air battles?" Rody raised an eyebrow. "Why? You don't have a flying quirk."

"Huh? Oh, uh, that's just...!" The hero-in-training suddenly sounded a bit panicked. "It's nothing really, don't worry about it! Just, you know, developing new uses for Air Force and all...!"

Rody whistled approvingly. "Whoa, you can use Air Force for sustained flight? That's pretty awesome."

"Ahaha, something like that! So anyway, aerodynamics! Let's turn on video chat and take a look at your textbooks for a few minutes before I go to breakfast!"

Rody may not have known algebra, but he wasn't stupid; he could tell that Deku was hiding something. Still, he wasn't going to push the guy who was offering him help, so he shrugged and got himself set up for video chat.

And when Deku inevitably figured out exactly how behind Rody was on his schooling, he only smiled encouragingly, kindly, without a single disparaging word.

Izuku had never really felt an intense connection to his cell phone before. It was vitally important in case of emergencies, sure, and it was good for keeping in touch with his friends, but he saw his friends every day. Heck, when he was still in school, he lived with them.

The one exception was Rody. For obvious reasons, they couldn't feasibly meet on any regular basis, so after he entered Izuku's life his phone became more important than ever. After all, it was the main factor in maintaining their long-distance friendship, later becoming a long-distance relationship.

Due to time zones, though, there were limited timeframes when Rody and Izuku were both awake and available to call each other. Usually calls would be made after Izuku was done school for the day—and after he graduated and was working, during his afternoon break—while Rody prepared breakfast for his siblings. Occasionally they would video chat right after Izuku woke up in the mornings, while Rody was preparing for bed. Personally, the latter were Izuku's favorite—curled up under the covers, whispering softly to each other with blankets blocking out the outside world to create the momentary illusion that they weren't on opposite extremes of the night.

But one day during his first year out of school, Izuku received a call from Rody's cell phone at 11 PM, right as he was about to go to bed.

Drying his hair from the bath, Izuku frowned down at his phone for a moment. Rody should still be at work for a few more hours at this time, and he knew that the phone stayed at home. Had something happened? Suddenly worried, he picked up the call. "Rody? Is something the matter?"

There was a pause on the other line before a voice answered. "Um... Deku...?"

Izuku's face softened with affection at the sound of the high-pitched voice, though the abnormality still concerned him. The younger Soul siblings often made appearances during his calls with Rody, but rare was the occasion that they'd try calling him independently. "Lala-chan! Is something wrong?"

"Um, no, not really... I'm sorry, Rody always says not to call you in the afternoons unless it's an emergency..."

"No, no, it's fine!" Izuku assured her as he sat down on his bed, relieved that there didn't seem to be anything serious going on. "I wasn't in bed yet, so your timing's perfect. Did you need me for something?"

Lala was quiet on the other side of the line again, and suddenly Izuku had a hunch he knew the reason for both the silence and the strange timing.

"Is this something you don't want Rody to know about? Don't worry, I'll keep it secret."

The nine-year-old made a small sound of affirmation. "I..." She trailed off again, before continuing in a quieter voice. "I kinda wanna be a hero..."

Izuku's eyes widened, and he could feel an excited kind of brightness glowing in his chest, threatening to split his face from the resulting smile. "That's awesome, Lala-chan! You should go for it! What kind of hero do you want to be?"

This time, Lala answered with a voice that was a bit stronger, with steadily growing conviction. "I... I want to be a hero that will help save anyone even if they don't have money...!"

Really, Izuku was more than old enough now to have shaken off his crybaby tendencies, but he couldn't help tearing up upon hearing that, pulling the phone away just long enough to keep him from sniffling directly into the receiver. "That's... that's really, really amazing! Have you told Rody that?"

"Please don't tell him, Deku!" she hurriedly clarified, and Izuku could hear her starting to clam up again. "I don't want him to be mad... The only hero he likes is you."

"Don't worry, I won't tell him before you're ready," he quickly assured her. Lala wasn't entirely wrong, he reasoned; Rody still didn't have a very high opinion of pro heroes in general, judging by his attitude whenever Izuku accidentally slipped into fanboy ramblings while they chatted. If anything, Rody seemed to be marginally more interested in hearing about vigilante heroes who worked despite receiving no salary. He highly doubted that Rody would outright hate the idea of his sister pursuing hero work if that was what she wanted, but Lala was at a vulnerable age, and if there was even the smallest hint of disapproval from her eldest brother it could break her spirits entirely. "I promise, this is just our secret."

"Really?" Lala sounded a little doubtful. "You'll really keep it secret? Rody says you and him tell each other everything..."

Izuku spluttered a bit at her precociousness, but managed to quickly gather himself. "Really really! I keep my promises, especially to little girls who are in trouble. Rody won't hear a peep from me about this!"

"Okay..." She sounded a little more encouraged, but still uneasy. "Um, but... Deku?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think I can really be a hero with my quirk?"

Izuku hummed thoughtfully as he considered. Lala's quirk was something that Roro had named "Soulread"; by looking at a person, she was able to tell if they fell under some nebulous definition of "good" or "bad." Basically a type of imprecise mind-reading that could ideally be refined and expanded with practice. It certainly didn't have much offensive usage, though he could immediately see it being helpful in hostage situations where the perpetrators might try to mix in with their victims, or in cases where robbery suspects try to blend in in crowded areas, but... "I know lots of people who became strong heroes despite having quirks that didn't seem ideal for fighting," was the answer he settled on. "You'll have to work hard, but I think you're up to that, right?"

"Right!" Lala answered immediately.

Izuku smiled. "For now, how about you ask Rody to teach you some parkour? If he asks why and you don't want to tell him the real reason, maybe say it's to get better in gym class."

"Okay...!"

"And when I come to visit next month, we can train together, okay?" He raised a finger to his lips and made a shushing sound. "In secret!"

The girl gave a giggle that sounded like little bells echoing across the phone line. "Okay!"

Izuku chuckled. "Then it's a date!"

There was a brief pause. "I'm flattered, Deku, but please don't cheat on my brother with me."

"Lala-cha—!" Izuku struggled to keep the phone from slipping from his fingers. So precocious...! "I didn't mean that kind of—"

She was laughing in earnest finally, and the embarrassment Izuku had felt from the allegation was easily dwarfed by the relief to hear her in such good spirits.

"I think Roro will be home soon," she said once her laughter had eased, "and I don't want him getting mad that I called you."

"All right, so let's leave things here for now. It's my bedtime now, too."

"Bedtime..." Lala sounded a little perplexed. Izuku couldn't remember exactly what degree of understanding he had of time zones when he was her age, but perhaps the concept was still a bit too abstract for her. "Okay, then I hope you have sweet dreams, Deku."

"Thanks! You have a good rest of the day, too!" Suddenly an idea struck him. "Oh, Lala-chan, one last thing! Could you turn on video chat for just a second?"

"Video chat? Umm... okay." There was a light shuffling sound as she fiddled with the phone, but within a few seconds Izuku had received the request to share video, and he accepted.

Lala appeared on screen, a little bit taller than the last time Izuku had seen her, and looking a bit self-conscious as she ran fingers through the braid that Rody must have done up for her.

Izuku smiled gently and said the words that had become his favorite piece of wisdom to impart on the next generation of hero hopefuls. "Lala-chan. You can be a hero."

The way that her eyes brightened was a sight he had quickly become familiar with, but it was no less heartening every time—and doubly so to see it from the little girl that had become like a sister of his own.

"Th-thank you, Deku!" she stuttered, her smile straining her rosy cheeks. "I'll do my best!

Izuku's phone really was an invaluable tool, and it went far beyond connecting him with Rody. There were others out there that normally he wouldn't be able to save—but he could still reach them in some way; small, but no less meaningful.