Their Hero Academia – Chapter 20: Kimiko Ojiro Stands Out
Kimiko was pretty sure the boredom was going to kill her. Of course, she'd said that about the rest of the morning's classes, but Hero Art History was probably going to nuke her brain the most. It was not nearly as interesting as the name made it sound, being more about the art of heroing throughout history. Which was boring!
At least their teacher was hot. Skyline was tall and blonde, with muscles that showed clearly through his sleeveless blue and white bodysuit. The big white cape was probably a bit much though. About half the time, he was nearly tripping over it or getting it caught on something. For an American, his Japanese was surprisingly good. Or maybe not so surprising, considering his father, Captain Celebrity, had relocated from America to Japan ages ago.
Even now, the boredom sept in, as Skyline was explaining about how, many years ago, an accident involving an American Pro-Hero had nearly lead to massive loss of civilian life and numerous lawsuits and injuries. This has led to several countries (but not Japan) deciding to revoke all Pro-Hero licenses for nearly twenty years. Boring! Who cared about something that had happened that long ago, before any of them or even their parents were even born? Besides, Quirks were a lot less common in those days. There'd been more people without them than with. These days, nearly ninety percent of the population had them. They'd never do anything like that again!
One of the nice things about being invisible? So long as she wasn't, like, completely slumped over asleep, no one could tell if she wasn't actually paying attention. Well, her dad could. But he could do the same for Mom too. He'd had plenty of practice with invisible people.
"All right, who can tell me the name of the law that led to the re-registration of Pro-Heroes in those countries that had outlawed them?" Skyline asked.
The hands in the front row all went up: Asuka Tokoyami, Toshi Midoriya, Shota Shinso, and Izumi Todoroki. Skyline's eyes scanned the room. "Ojiro?"
Crap! She had no idea what the answer to the question was. She'd zoned out during that part of the lecture. "It's, ah, um… I don't know, Mister Skyline."
"Perhaps someone—someone not in the front row—could help Miss Ojiro? No, not you, Mineta, you've got too much American in your background not to know this already."
Skyline's eyes looked over the other students again and Kimiko could tell he was making a concentrated effort to look around her, not through her, to look at the students in the back row. Not everybody did. She was used to it.
"Haimawari?" Skyline said. "What was the name of the act? And bonus points to anyone who can tell me something else about it."
"Ah, the official name was the International Hero Accord." Haimawari said. "In point of fact, the same Pro-Hero who caused the de-registration was part of the group that led to Pro-Heroes being registered again."
"Good," Skyline said. "Not many people know the second part. The people who write the textbooks usually try to hide that tidbit. How'd you know it?"
"My dad's a major Hero fanboy," Haimawari said. "I kind of am too, I guess."
Skyline grinned. "That does explain your essay from last week. I was pretty sure Midoriya or Shinso had written it, until I double-checked the name." A soft laughter rippled through most of the class.
Just what they needed. Another nerd! Midoriya and Shinso were too much sometimes as it was.
Their teacher shot a look at the clock. "Okay, almost lunchtime, so I'll shut up for now. Homework for tomorrow is Chapter 12 in your textbooks and one page on the repercussions of the Leopardon Act of '78."
Kimiko barely stopped herself from letting out a groan.
"Okay, Kimiko, we're recording," Takuma Sero (one of her total BFF's, even if he utterly failed at being a gay best friend. The thought of some of the things he considered fashionable made her shudder) said, holding up his phone. "And three… two… one!"
The two of them and Kenta Sato had finished their lunches and, being barred from filming more "Will Sato Eat It?" in the cafeteria, they'd had to adjust their filming scheduling and gone with one of the projects that starred her instead.
The irony of a video series starring someone who couldn't be seen was not lost on her. But she came from a long line of invisible people. Her mom was, both of her mom's parents were, and so were several other relatives of the Hagakure side, though some were more visible than others. She actually had a cousin who was just slightly transparent!
And sure, maybe she didn't really know what she looked like, having been invisible since she was born. But she knew who she was. And she had plenty of friends and family that saw her anyway. Dad could read her and Mom like a book, no matter how small the clues.
"Hello, everyone!" she said, grinning and looking into the camera, giving it an exaggerated wave. "Can you tell I'm smiling? Because I'm totally smiling! I'm Kimiko Ojiro and this is Gossip Corner! Bringing you all the juiciest gossip straight from the student body of U.A!"
She held up her own phone, showing Takuma's social media page and one of the selfies he had taken on his date with Tensei Iida. "Okay, so this one is old news, but it bears repeating! My best friend and total pink cutie pie, Takuma Sero, had himself a date with this pink-haired hunk of jet-fueled hotness, Tensei Iida! And they're going on another one! Let's all wish them well and hope we get lots more pictures come beach season! Hashtag—Pinkysquared!
"But wait… there's more!" She turned and pointed behind her, the sleeve of her uniform mostly showing the way. Takuma followed with his phone, zooming in on the table across the room where Midoriya sat with Tokoyami, Todoroki, Haimawari, Shinso, and Sora Iida. Iida was sitting as close to Midoriya as humanly possible while not actually sitting in his lap, pressed right up against him. Midoriya himself looked a little flustered, but ultimately happy.
"Yes, that's right, it's a two for one Iida Special! It looks like Sora Iida is now dating Toshi Midoriya! This one flew right under everyone's radar… even mine! That's right, viewers, I literally did not find this out until Monday afternoon!"
Takuma brought the phone back around to focus on her. "How did this happen? Will they stay together? Will she accidentally kill him testing some new gadget? Will someone have to explain the birds and bees to them in an incredibly awkward conversation?" She shrugged. "That's what makes this so great! We! Don't! Know! But I promise you all, as soon as I find anything out, you'll all be the first to know! Hashtag—Iidagreen!"
"And just so you don't think I'm just focusing on Class 1-A… I have it on good authority that David Togata, of Support Class 1-G…" She snapped her fingers and pointed to a spot across the room. Takuma followed again and focused in on where a tall, skinny boy with a mane of wild blonde hair, glasses, and extra-long, multi-jointed fingers, sat with others from the Support Department and also Tensei Iida.
"…Has broken up with his Junior High girlfriend! That's right, ladies, he's on the market! Get him while you can and remember to be direct! You know these Support Department types don't always pick up on subtle flirting! Hashtag—SingleScientist!"
Takuma returned the phone to filming her again. "That's all for today! But remember my promise to you, viewers! If it's worth knowing, I'll make sure you know it! I'm Kimiko Ojiro and this has been Gossip Corner! Remember to hit like and subscribe!"
Cutting the video, Takuma gave her a thumbs' up. "Great job, Kimiko," he said. "I'll add some stuff in post and get it uploaded tonight."
"That wasn't a nice thing to do to David," Kenta said, crossing his arms. "You don't know if he even wants another girlfriend that fast." Sure, he was happy to go along with whatever Takuma came up with, but apparently now he had standards?
She shrugged. "You worry too much, Kenta! I'm just putting it out there in the wild. I can't be responsible for what happens after that! He'll probably thank me for getting him out of those dirty workshops! Don't be such a wet blanket."
Besides, if you wanted to get noticed and you were invisible, you either went big or went home.
"She's got a point, Kenta," Takuma said. "And it's good for hits. Besides, it's a big school. Dave'll probably never notice."
"Just for that," Kenta said, holding up a paper bag, "I'm not sharing these donuts Dad made me."
Horror swept over her face, but Kenta and Takuma just looked at her. "…I'm making my horrified face, right now! If you don't share, I'll… I'll…" She waved her arms wildly. "I'll never forgive you!"
Kenta just laughed. "Relax," he said. "I'll share. I'll share. I've got enough for all three of us."
There was no way she was missing a chance at Kenta's dad's treats, and they were as good as promised.
"You know, Kimiko," Takuma said, "one thing I've always wondered… how do you find your mouth?"
She rolled her eyes. Not that he could see it. So she put a little extra irritation into her voice. "How do you find your mouth, Takuma?"
"I dunno. I just do."
"Same thing for me," she said. "I've just got better proprioception than most people. Mom and my grandparents do too."
"Proprio-what?" Kenta asked.
"It means I've got a really good sense of where my limbs and body parts are," she said.
"Oh," he said. "Learn something new every day."
Back at the USJ, Kimiko was working with Daisuke Shoji, Tokoyami, Haimawari, Tensei Iida, and Katsumi Kirishima-Bakugo. Having already worked with All Might and Water Spout, they were now working with Doc Clock. So far, the results had been somewhat mixed. While Tokoyami's Frog-Shadow and Daisuke's strength and Extendo-Limbs were ideal for rescue operations, and the mobility offered by Haimawari and Iida's Quirks at least offered them good options for extraction, neither her Quirk not Kirishima-Bakugo's was exactly good at clearing the rubble or getting into tight places to rescue someone.
Or at least, that's what she'd thought going into this week. She was used to using her Quirk for hiding things or hiding herself (thank goodness she didn't have to go into the field naked like Mom did!), or even occasionally disoriented a robot or security camera. But on Monday, All Might had suggested that she could use it to render rubble or walls invisible, letting her and everyone else see beyond them for easy visualization of rescues or finding buried people.
That had been a revelation in and of itself. She had some memories of using her Quirk to try and look inside Christmas presents, but all she'd managed to do then was make the entire package and everything in it invisible. But with a little coaching, she'd found she could do layers.
What Doc Clock was now suggesting was even more surprising.
"You're like a portable x-ray machine," Doc Clock told her. Both were sitting on the ground, each on one side of one of the rescue animatronics. She'd already put the others to work and was watching them through a small monitor, in-between offering Kimiko some instruction. Somewhere inside the simulated city, she was sure she could hear Kirishima-Bakugo cursing about how stupid the whole thing was and how she hadn't gotten to blow anything up in three days.
"No radiation, minimal danger of potential interactions with other Quirks, though if they've been really badly injured or burned, you may have trouble finding a safe point of contact," Doc Clock went on. "But you could do a lot for field triage, maybe a more if you went for a Hero-Paramedic's license. A first responder who can do an in-depth assessment and more than basic first aid? You'd be remarkable."
Remarkable? Maybe. She'd pretty much given herself to mostly being an Underground Hero. With her stealth and the martial arts training she'd gotten from her dad, she knew she could be formidable when the situation called for it. But even that was at odds with the media personality she wanted to cultivate along with Takuma and Kenta. This was something that had never occurred to her…
"Okay," she said, "so walk me through this."
Doc Clock nodded, looking down at the dummy. "So the animatronics aren't a perfect simulation of a person, but they have enough inner workings that we can give it a shot. If this works out and you want to keep going with it, we can find some live people for you to work on. If nothing else, I'm sure Dad can "persuade" some of your classmates into volunteering."
While Doc Clock—Eri—had been the unofficial mascot of her parents' Class 1-A and thus was familiar to all of them, Kimiko still found it almost impossible to believe that the laid-back, cheerful doctor was their dour Homeroom teacher's adopted daughter.
"But what you're going to do," she went on, "is concentrate on just using your Quirk to make a small portion of their chest invisible. Just enough so we can see through the top layer and see what's inside. Give it a shot. You can't break it."
Kimiko sucked in a breath and placed a hand on the dummy's chest, concentrating on her Quirk. Just a little bit invisible… just a little bit invisible…
Slowly and spreading out from her palm, the dummy's chest began to look like it was just fading away, revealing a most of mechanical workings inside. "I did it!" She threw up both hands in the air in a cheer. Of course, the second she broke contact, the invisibility went away.
Doc Clock gave her a smile. "You did. We were all pretty sure you could, but to see it… very impressive, Ojiro."
"Wait," Kimiko said, as things clicked in her head. "…If I do that on a real person, will I see all their guts and stuff?"
"I'm afraid so," Doc Clock said.
Kimiko shuddered. She hadn't considered that. "Eeeeewwww!"
"Most people have lots of "stuff'," Doc Clock said. "And with some Quirks, we're discovering new "stuff" all the time. You'd have to do a lot of studying to stay current."
"Double ew!" Kimiko exclaimed. Still… "But you think I'd be good at it?"
"You've got a good eye and an invaluable Quirk. I think you'd be great at it."
Kimiko fought the urge to fall asleep. After the day's session at the USJ, she'd actually taken up Doc Clock's offer of some more literature to review for Quirk-Paramedics as well as some general medical texts. While some of it was fascinating, some of it was as dusty and dry as could be. It wasn't something she'd ever thought of before and the thought of all those guts made her more than a little sick to her stomach… but it sounded like she might be able to do a lot more good than just sneaking up on people and smacking them upside the head.
"Hey, Kimiko!" she heard her door open and turned to see Takuma and Kenta barging their way in.
Kimiko was neither as girly as her mom, nor as plain as her dad, but her room was definitely her own. Her bookshelves were filled with "tell all" scandalous autobiographies and saucy romance novels, and posters from romance movies and other "chick flicks" covered most of her walls. She also did have a small sparring dummy in one corner, for when she felt like working out a little.
If Takuma had been able to see her, he would have been dead from the withering gaze she gave him. "I told you to knock! What if I'd been changing or naked or something!"
Takuma reared back his head and laughed. "One, if you're doing that, you should lock your door. Two, I'm gay. And three, it's not like there's anything to …"
Kenta put a hand on his shoulder as a warning. "I would not finish that thought, bro. You know she can kick your ass."
She held her gaze on him until he withered under it, even unable to see it. "Okay, okay," he said. "I should have knocked."
"Good," she said. "Now what's up?"
"Gossip Corner's only been uploaded an hour and it's already got nearly a thousand hits! You're gonna be a star, Kimmy, baby!"
She let out a high pitched squeal of delight. "All right!"
"I still think this is a bad idea," Kenta said. "We didn't ask anybody if we could put them out on the internet like that."
"Pshaw," Takuma said. "They'll thank us for making them famous. Besides, they'll never know. We all know all Toshi watches is Hero videos anyway."
"This is gonna bite us in the ass, I just know it," Kenta said.
"Relax," Kimiko assured him. "Besides, this is all on me and Takuma anyway. You're not in these."
"That doesn't mean I wanna see it explode in your faces!"
"You're sweet," she told him. "But relaaaaaax."
Still, as long as she had both of them here…
"Guys," she said, "do you think I'm smart?"
Both of them exchanged a look and seemed to be trying to communicate by some form of guy-telepathy. Takuma in particular looked like he wanted to get out of her room as fast as he could. Kenta, at least, looked inclined to stay.
"You're not dumb," Kenta said, "if that's what you're asking."
"Definitely not," Takuma agreed. "And you're all kinds of clever. Who came up with the plan that got me a boyfriend?"
"Boyfriend?" Kimiko asked. "Wait, you're not distracting me with gossip! Answer the question. Do you think I'm smart? Do you think I could be a doctor?"
"What brought this up, Kimiko?" Kenta asked.
"Just… something Doc Clock said today," she said. "She said I could be a great doctor or paramedic. And that my Quirk would be perfect for it. I'm kinda thinking about it. But it sounds like a lot of wrong. And a lot of studying. It's only been a week and a half and I already know I'm barely keeping up in class. What if I'm perfect for this… and I can't do it?"
"Then you'll be good at something else instead," Takuma said.
"Sounds like a lot of hard work," Kenta added. "But you put a lot of hard work into all that gossip stuff too. If you can quote chapter and verse on film and TV, you can definitely memorize how a body works."
"You wanna study this stuff, we can help," Takuma offered. "I bet there's hundreds of videos out there to help you study it. Finally, my countless hours on the internet are about to pay off!"
She had to laugh at that. "Your grades are worse than mine, Takuma. But I appreciate the help."
Later, after the boys had left, she scribbled something on top of the notepad on her desk.
The Paramedic Hero: X-Ray?