Shahryar - I mean, you aren't wrong xD
Detrametal - Time will tell. And you'll get all the answers you asked for :v
lamartoon - I wrote 52 chapters, so the entire Book One [it's going to be a timeskip afterwards and then here we go again], so... high chances of me finishing it :v
(***)
The next day began absolutely ordinarily.
Except, the balcony door in his room was still broken after the unexplained assault of some supernatural 'thing', he had a genuine book about magic on his nightstand, and, although it was more of an afterthought, his father still didn't return home AND wasn't picking up his phone.
He didn't have the phone number of his workplace, AND he had no actual basis to phone the police. What was he supposed to tell them, that he was worried because a monster attacked him? Besides, Hisashi had a tendency to let his phone battery run out of juice or something. It really wouldn't be the first time.
He ate his breakfast, phoned someone who could replace the balcony door for him (he wasn't skillful enough to do it himself) - they were supposed to show up after the school. Then he went to school, the magic book hidden for now in his backpack. He simply had no time to read through it and…
… well, he kind of didn't feel like leaving the book behind. It felt like a bad idea.
(***)
Kacchan was waiting for him at the school entrance. Like he tended to do most of the days. Why? It was a mystery. He had enough friends to not have to bother with his childhood friend, but for some reason, he did just that.
"Fucking finally, Deku." He groans loudly.
"It's nice to see you too, Kacchan." Midoriya replies. Outwardly, he sounds as sour as it's humanly possible. On the inside, he is on the verge of starting to dance and cheer. Because Bakugou Katsuki is as colorful as always.
Now he just needs to wait for his dad to return home and, if he isn't a Shade, everything's alright. The positive side of not developing emotional bounds with… well, almost anyone around him is that the chances of the people important to him being Shades were relatively small.
"What happened?" Bakugou asks immediately once they depart towards the school building. There is a short walk between the fence gate and the actual building.
"Why do you think that something happened?" Midoriya replies with a question.
"Deku, I can read you like an open fucking book." Bakugou announces. "Something happened."
Alright, time to go with a white lie.
"Some asshole broke my balcony door by throwing a rock at them, probably." Midoriya replies. "I've spent a whole night sleeping with an open door outside, so it was cold as hell. I've slept badly, AND dad's not picking up his phone. Again."
Silence.
"Alright, if you find out who threw the rock, tell me their names." Bakugou announces. "I'm going to… talk with them."
"Kacchan, no murders." Izuku replies adamantly. They are almost at school. "Even if they deserve that."
"Grrr, fucking fine." It's clear that despite Bakugou offering a verbal agreement, he's still planning murder of whoever did that. In the meantime he decides to change the subject. "What the hell is Uncle Hisashi doing?"
"Beats me." Izuku shrugs. "You know him, weird working hours."
"Right." Midoriya is 99% sure that he and his parents are going to complain about Hisashi being himself over that. Again. "What about Messy Hair, then?"
Oh goddamnit.
"What about her?" They are almost in the classroom. Midoriya is looking forward to the teachers taking Bakugou off him.
"You know what I mean." Bakugou refuses to stand down. "Are you going to stare at her the whole time again, or…"
"Look, I don't have a crush on Himiko Toga." Midoriya announces as officially as possible. "I'm not interested in a relationship with her, okay? You have imagined some sort of odd connection between us and you're continuously returning to the same subject, despite my repeated pleas to just… give up. Please, cease your inquiries on that particular subject, Kacchan."
Four steps of silence. The corridor is almost empty, so the steps are rather loud. Then, Bakugou speaks.
"You know what, fine." Midoriya almost trips when he hears that. He looks at Bakugou, with shock written on his face. "STOP LOOKING AT ME AS IF IT WHAT I JUST DID WAS HARD TO BELIEVE, DEKU!"
"Okay, okay!" Izuku takes a step back. "No need to get loud, Kacchan! It was just… rather reassuring that you have finally found reason and…"
Just one corner left before they're at their classroom. Unfortunately, Kacchan's shout brought unwanted attention. The worst type of unwanted attention. Because Midoriya didn't even finish his reply before Himiko Toga (in the Black Course uniform) appeared at the horizon, approaching them from the front and…
… and then she randomly grabbed Izuku, pinned him to the nearest wall and kissed him. And it wasn't a simple kiss - it would be way too easy. No.
He can feel their tongues intertwining. In his mouth, as she was clearly the more aggressive one. Reason flies out of the window and he returns the favor to the best of his ability.
Then she pulls back from him, but not before playfully biting his lip. On her face, a rather healthy blush, all while licking her lips and staring at Izuku with a LOT of thirst in her eyes. Midoriya has no idea how his own face looks, but he is almost certain that it's of at least the same hue. He is certainly too busy panting loudly, his mouth half-opened, to say or do anything constructive.
"That really hit the spot, Izucchan." Himiko announces, blushing furiously and smiling widely at the same time. "That's for the last night. Now I gotta go. See you later, drop by my home if you want to test what we talked about yesterday in private."
Then she dashes away, leaving Midoriya Izuku… Well, he had no idea that the corridor was so… warm. And… tingly, almost?
What made him instantly sober up was the sudden realization that Bakugou Katsuki was standing right next to him the whole time. With an expression on his face that could only be described as 'worryingly neutral'.
"I-it's not what it looked like!" Midoriya replies with the first words that come to his mind. As one can expect, those aren't the right words.
"So… Himiko Toga didn't just French kiss you in the middle of the corridor?" Bakugou asks. Once again, he is worryingly calm.
"N-No, w-wait, I mean, yes, but it was a surprise to me as well!" Midoriya tries once again. Then the rational part of his mind suddenly realizes how easily one could misunderstand Himiko's earlier words.
"Deku." Bakugou says. On his face, terrifying scarcity of emotions. "She just examined your tonsils with her tongue. Right in front of me. And you're trying to tell me that it's not what it looked like?"
Midoriya shrinks. He has no idea how to escape. Or explain. Or… honestly, he simply has no idea about anything right now.
"I'm SO fucking done with you, shitty Deku." Bakugou says, still worryingly… not, now he's terrifyingly calm. "You could have just fucking told me the truth, but no. It was better to lie, because what? Because you were afraid that I would tease you about it?"
"Kacchan, I swear to god, it's more complicated than it looks, okay?" Izuku hurries with his answer. "She was in the area when that rock was thrown, she chased whoever it was away, then she randomly told me that she is going to get a kiss as a reward for that, if anything it's Toga that seems to have a crush on me and a rather aggressive one on that, and I have absolutely no idea why, okay?"
"... and the 'test what we talked about yesterday in private' part?" Kacchan decides to surprise Izuku by being actually reasonable for a moment.
"Believe it or not, she suggested a book to me." Midoriya hurriedly replies. "And her 'home' is the school library, she is… I mean, it turns out that she reads a lot of books. And hangs out in the library often."
"So she just… consciously made it sound that way to tease you in front of me?" Bakugou asks. Midoriya hurriedly nods. "Alright, so I just discovered that I don't exactly like her. Also, you're tease-free for a few days, because gods, being on receiving side of that fucking pissess me off."
"... wait a second, Kacchan." Midoriya blinks at his best friend a few times. "You believe me?"
"OF COURSE I FUCKING BELIEVE YOU, YOU DUMBASS." Kacchan suddenly explodes at him. "YOU CAN'T LIE FOR SHIT! What you just said was incredibly fucking stupid but it's clear to me that you were telling me the truth so why the fuck do you act as if you expected me to act like an idiot?! Just be more fucking open about stuff like instead of waiting until something explodes in your face to provide me with a fucking context!"
… a bit too expletive-laden, but damn if it wasn't pretty wholesome in the end.
"O-oh." Izuku actually fidgets a bit. "T-thanks? I kind of didn't see that coming and…"
"... and now I want to fucking slap you in the face for thinking that I'm NOT going to figure out that you were actually saying the truth ONCE YOU FUCKING SAID THE TRUTH." Kacchan decides to further press his point. "One last word: what EXACTLY do you feel towards her, in five words or less?"
"... absolute confusion?" Midoriya replies after a few seconds of staring in space. "And slight horny." Which only multiplied the confusion, to be honest.
"Yeah, that checks out." Bakugou replies, suddenly much calmer. "If she goes too far, tell me about it. I'm going to punt her into the fucking sun for messing with you."
Midoriya has a vague feeling that if he did so then he'd be missing a friend, but it still works as a vocal support from his best friend so he'll just… not think about it too much.
(***)
Nothing particularly interesting happens during the classes. Midoriya doesn't spot any more black uniforms in his class. He saw a handful from a distance during the breaks, but without a black uniform of his own, no one approached him.
Small mercies.
He decides to depart for the library once the lessons end, with an intent to take Toga's offer of figuring out magic in her personal safe room. What exactly happened to his self-preservation instinct is anyone's guess.
Todoroki is there. Once again, he is standing awkwardly behind a shelf while staring at Midoriya. Does he even have the lower half of his body or is he just a ghost frequenting the library, staring at people from behind the low shelves?
"Uhm, hello?" Midoriya waves towards him. Todoroki acknowledges his presence there with a nod.
"It's great to see you still alive." Todoroki deadpans. "Here to visit the ghoul?"
"Actually, yeah." Midoriya has no idea what Todoroki's opinion on that is.
"Did she invite you for dinner?" Todoroki asks, his head tilting to the side a little. It's probably the most notable expression that Midoriya has ever seen on him. "And if so, did she specify if she invited you as a guest or as a food?"
That actually gave Midoriya a pause.
"... is that a joke?" He asks back.
"Yes." Todoroki states. His face remains frozen solid.
"Okay, so a quick question." Izuku decides to risk it. "Is your lack of emotions a side-effect of your magic or…"
"Yes, it is." Todoroki cuts in. "My magic is about ice. Side effects, aside from high risk of frostbites, include a… suppression of non-verbal language, so to speak. This, together with emotional coldness, pun intended, results in what can be misread as an utter lack of emotions. I assure you that I'm genuinely happy to see you again, I just fail to properly display it with the tone of my voice and my facial expressions."
Oh. Well, that explains a lot.
"I'll take that into account." Midoriya replies. "She actually invited me to use her saferoom for study and, probably, my first use of magic."
"Fascinating." Todoroki announces. The utter emotionlessness actually makes it somehow amusing to watch. "She doesn't seem to be planning to eat you, unless she learned how to play with her food. Incredibly surprising."
… she isn't just playing with her food with the whole 'tease the hell out of Midoriya', right?
"She really makes me feel as if she is… less hungry and more thirsty for me, if you catch my drift." Midoriya says. Todoroki graces him with two blinks in short succession. "She just randomly french-kissed me in the corridor and I have no idea how to deal with that."
Seven seconds of awkward silence in the library. Midoriya begins to seriously consider the fact that he might have given Todoroki a brain aneurysm or something, but no. That's when he suddenly speaks.
"Do you want advice?" Todoroki says. When Midoriya nods, hoping for something helpful, he continues speaking. "Use protection. They can get pregnant with humans, although the children will all be ghouls."
…
"I'd have attempted murder right now if not for the fact that you'd probably kill me in an instant with magic." Midoriya announces. Todoroki looks vaguely surprised with his reaction. But then decides to change the subject.
"Speaking of magic, what are you going to learn?" Todoroki asks.
Well, he DID admit to being an ice magic user. Unless it was an elaborate lie, but Midoriya just… kind of fails to figure out what would be the point of that.
"Apparently, fire magic." Todoroki looks even more emotionless for a moment, and it's actually suspicious. "... what are the side-effects that I can expect?"
"Burns." Todoroki replies. "Amplification of emotions. Development of pyromania, sometimes rather extreme. Spontaneous combustion." Well if that ain't reassuring as hell. "Just be careful about it and you'll be alright. If it's Primordial of Fire, the risks of really bad things happening are relatively small."
Okay, a new term was just mentioned and Midoriya naturally wants to know more.
"Primordial of Fire?" He asks. Todoroki tilts his head again.
"... you're really lacking in the common sense of the magic world." WELL THANK YOU FOR THAT GOOD SIR. "I'll leave explaining that to your magic teacher."
Right. Midoriya decides to bid Todoroki goodbye and head for Toga's safehouse. Todoroki stays behind the shelves. That's when curiosity gets the better of Izuku.
"I forgot to ask." He says and he turns towards Todoroki. "Why do I keep running into you here?"
"I'm here to read books." Todoroki replies. Yes, that was extremely helpful considering the fact that they were in a LIBRARY. Then again, Toga had her personal fridge filled with human meat tucked into one of the rooms here, so… "The Black Course library has only magical stuff. I'm here for the normal things."
"... normal things?" Midoriya is somehow curious enough to ask.
Todoroki raises an open book above the shelf. Then he turns it around. Midoriya promptly discovers that he was hiding a romance manga in it, reading it in plain sight without any teachers and/or librarians passing by noticing.
"... I guess that I really should judge the book by the cover." Midoriya comments. Todoroki looks down at the book in his hands for at least three long seconds before his eyes return to Midoriya.
"Ha. Ha. Ha." He lets out. This time the emotionlessness actually makes him look quite creepy.
(***)
Part of Midoriya actually suspected Toga to step up with her games. But to his surprise, the entrance of her 'home' was almost suspiciously… well, the same. And, to his additional surprise (and maybe a slight disapp… stop), she was actually wearing her Black Course uniform.
"Took you a while." She says, eyeing her from her chair next to the table.
"I had a very… interesting talk with Todoroki." Midoriya replies honestly. Despite him telling Izuku about Toga's habits, Himiko clearly didn't attempt to murder him. "Emotional, even."
"Wow. 'Emotional' and 'Todoroki' are two words that I never expected to hear in short succession. The more you know!" Toga replies cheerfully. Midoriya ends up chuckling a little at that. "Is he still reading romance mangas while pretending to be studying mundane stuff?"
"Actually, yeah." Midoriya replies. Toga groans. "Wait, if he pisses you off, why didn't you try to… well, you know."
She actually stares at him for a solid few seconds before she manages to organize an answer.
"Did you just… imply that you're surprised that I didn't murder him?" She asks, while staring at him questioningly. When he (slightly reluctantly) nods, she chuckles loudly. "Wow, you're adapting fast. I considered that. I mean, seeing as he's casually walking around the entrance to my lair, it's like he is picking a fight with me. But he isn't a Candidate but an actual Black Course student. And he's freakishly strong. I should be able to take him out if I sneak up on him, but if he notices me before I strike, it'd get ugly. And the whole point of having humans as your prey is to strike against those that can't defend themselves, because, well, you know. If every prey leaves you badly injured, you won't make it very far as a predator."
This is a perfectly logical assessment, if existentially dreadful when you remember that she's talking about killing and eating a human being. Todoroki, actually. Who might not be Izuku's friend, but…
Oh, well. He better gets used to stuff like that.
"Alright, so… magic?" Let's move over to the main subject. If she was hurt by him not digging deeper into the 'Todoroki murder & dinery plan', she didn't make it known.
"Just sit by the desk and read the book." She replies while pointing towards the place in question. "We'll see where it goes."
(***)
The majority of the book (well, more like a booklet, it was about 40 pages long) was a mess. Nonsensical words that occasionally formed something resembling cohesive sentences (that still didn't make much sense). Other parts were readable, but whoever wrote them was clearly deranged.
And probably a pyromaniac.
There were entire pages of nothing but someone's mad ramblings about the beauty of flames and the 'art' created when they enveloped various things. Including humans. It was… sickening, at least some parts of it.
It all made precious little sense. But as he kept reading, he couldn't help but notice… things. Sometimes letters, sometimes syllables, sometimes entire words (or so he thought, there was little sense in those too).
They were just… different? Meaningful, despite him not understanding the meaning?
It was a… trip. To say the least. But eventually, he read the last few words. And suddenly, things clicked in his mind. He found sense and logic where there was clearly none.
Fire. It was all about fire, wasn't it?
"Fire." He mumbled, looking around, his mind clouded. "I need fire."
If he was slightly more conscious, he would notice the surprise that bloomed on Toga's face. It lasted only for a few heartbeats before she grabbed a lighter from a pocket and handed it to him.
He switched it on. The fire. It was there. The words. He could under… no, he couldn't, but he could repeat those. It made sense. It also didn't make any sense at all. What just…
He blinked a few times, and realized that he was staring at a lighter's fire up close. Up very close. Honestly, a bit closer and he'd probably set his own hair on fire.
What he just went through was one of the weirdest things in his life. He had a fire talk to him. He had no idea what it said, yet somehow he… understood it? Was that word too much of a stretch?
"I… I think that I just had a talk with fire." He says towards Toga, his mind suddenly much clearer. "That was… wow. Just, wow." He really has no idea how to properly describe what he just went through.
"Yeah, learning stuff is always a trip." Toga chuckles. Slightly nervously, but Midoriya is too busy with himself to notice that. "Do you feel anything weird?"
"Uhm, no?" He replies. "I mean, aside from the general confusion thing, I feel pretty normal."
"That's… surprisingly fast and smooth." Toga eventually admits, still eyeing him a bit weirdly. "You must have been naturally gifted towards fire magic, I guess. Okay, now try to cast the spell towards that empty wall." She points towards the wall in question.
"... Toga, you just asked me to cast a fire magic spell in your room." Midoriya says slowly. "Don't you think that it's a bit…"
"Oh." She actually facepalms at her own stupidity. "Right, my bad, I kind of didn't expect that one lecture to get you there so I guess you've managed to throw me off a bit. Come, we'll do that behind the school building."
(***)
Todoroki is STILL behind the shelf. Midoriya decides to not comment on that. Is he surprised that Midoriya made it out of the ghoul's lair once more? He is certainly staring at them rather intensively, not moving for an inch even when Toga hisses at him.
(***)
The second he knew that he wanted to cast the spell, he knew how. The knowledge that wasn't there for a second, the understanding of the flames that he didn't know was there, the words he never read or spoke - suddenly, they were all there.
He spoke a word. He didn't know what it meant, but something did know. He felt power flowing through him, concentrating on the palm of his extended hand. A second later a dark green flame burst forward from it. It wasn't much, maybe a meter or two long and wide fire that quickly disappeared, lacking fuel.
Then he felt the heat. His own flame burned his hand. IT HURT!
"Shove it here!" Toga clearly expected that to happen. There was an actual bucket of cold water right next to them. Midoriya promptly put his hand in it, enjoying the sudden wave of relief. "How bad is that?"
He pulls the hand out of the bucket before putting it back in.
"I think that it's just a mild first degree burn." He replies, trying to not flinch in pain. "I guess it will get worse if I try to use the spell several times in a row… not like I can even imagine the pain of that." She doesn't seem awfully freaked out by the mental imagery accompanying it. "Any way to obtain fire-resistance?"
"That depends on how much of yourself you are willing to sell for it." Toga promptly replies. Yeah, Midoriya had a hunch that it works like that. "Any idea why the flames were dark green? I don't think that's normal."
"Uhm, no." Midoriya replies. "If anything, it was me who wanted to ask you about that."
"Great." Toga looks vaguely worried for a second, before snapping back to cheerfulness. Although this time Midoriya noticed it. Yeah, magic working weird is… weird. And worrying. "Any idea about the spell's name?"
"I think that it's called Ignition." He has no idea where he got the name from, but… somehow he knows that it's the right one.
"Cool." Toga grins. "You look kind of cute even when you're in pain, did you know that?"
There goes the mood.
(***)
Izuku casts his first spell, yay. Also canon Toga is here. Might be the first time in my fics where she actually acts like her canon self. Also Izuku just had his first kiss and wow, if it wasn't a serious one.