The process of discovering a new symbol was equal parts random and time consuming. She could go weeks of practicing, drawing, and banging her head against the wall with there being absolutely zero progress beyond her drawing speed maybe getting a bit better.

And then there were times when she discovered a whole other layer to her quirk that made everything about it better.

In this case, it was a whole new category of runes for her to try and learn. Target was the name of her newest category, and currently, much like the rest of her categories, it was very limited. Right now she could only target objects. A single object. But that was okay; unless she was dealing with someone that was naked, everyone had an object she could target. And her force arrows did have a bit of splash damage to them.

There was also a difference between how the targeting an object worked with her two shape effects.

"Alright Momo!" Izumi held her fingers in front of her, the glowing light of her quirk at her focus. "Fire when ready!"

"Right!" Momo shouted, standing near a catapult she had made during their mutual quirk practicing session. Of the main reasons that Izumi loved going to Momo's house, the giant yard where they could do lots and lots of mildly dangerous and stupid quirk related stuff that wouldn't be allowed during the few hours a week of quirk practice they got at school was a major one. "Remember! Only destroy the water balloons and save the matryoshka doll!"

Apparently those russian dolls that were stacked inside of each other were called Matryoshiki...Matryoshark...Marty—

Momo pulled on her catapult and all the objects were sent high into the air. One matrywhatever doll floating alongside three water balloons.

Target-object, force, ball.

The doll-thing spun in the air like it was trapped inside of an invisible washing machine as its momentum was slowly dissipated inside of the force sphere.

Target-object, force, arrow.

Target-object, force, arrow.

Target-object, force, arrow.

The first arrow appeared beside her and flew straight, hitting the first water balloon in the air with a satisfying splat.

The second arrow shot off and missed the target on its downward arc, exploding in the air nearly a foot above the target with a flurry of sparkles.

The last arrow never happened.

Izumi looked at her glowing fingers and sighed. She still needed to get faster at drawing. Even with just three runes, it took her way too long to draw the pattern, and by the third time she had already screwed it up. Speed and accuracy needed to be worked on a lot if she was going to be a real hero.

But that brought up a problem with how her new rune worked.

Target-object plus arrow only targeted where the object was right as it was casted, meaning that if the object was moving, it would likely miss. The only reason why she hit the first one was because she fired the arrow right at the apex when it was going slower.

On the other hand, Target-object plus ball made the sphere appear around the target.

"Wow!" Momo clapped and ran over to her. "That was amazing Izumi! Your new Rune is really useful!"

The bright pleasant smile on Momo's face made all of Izumi's doubt vanish, if only for a little while. "Thanks Momo, your quirk is amazing too! At least this way I don't have to worry about breaking targets."

It was the best of both worlds! Momo got to use her quirk without having to figure out what she was going to do with the stuff she made, and Izumi got to break stuff without worrying about replacing it. Win-win.

"But, I'm not sure it's really useful right now." Izumi sighed and stared at her finger again. Her new combinations had a lot of problems.

"What do you mean?" Momo pointed towards the russian doll still floating in the bubble. "If that alone was a quirk, you'd be able to save people by protecting them, or even capture villains!"

Izumi shook her head and ran her hand through her now very silky hair. Ever since Momo had gone through the trouble of taming it for her, maintaining her hair had been the least she could do. Besides, she liked having her hair be manageable, and she looked cuter now! "I don't think that would work. For one," She picked up a rock and chucked it towards the floating sphere, only to miss. Again. "Ball is really fragile and not as destructive as arrow is. I might be able to get more out of it with a different effect, but right now it doesn't take much for it to stop working."

Izumi looked towards Momo's catapult and stuck out her fingers.

Target-object, force, ball.

She felt her stamina drain, she felt the spell work, and she saw the runes shimmer that blue glow, but nothing happened on the catapult.

"Plus, it doesn't work if I target something too big. I think that ball might be kinda useless."

Momo popped out another doll from her arm and held it up to Izumi. "It doesn't matter how specific a tool is, eventually you might need it more than anything else." Momo gave another bright smile. "You know, I'm really happy both of our quirks are rather difficult to use. Everytime I see you do something amazing, it makes me want to try even harder."

Ahh, genuine praise from Momo, one of the few things that could actually make her feel flustered. The only other person that could really do that was her mother, and for entirely different reasons. Like when her mother cried when she first showed up back home with straight hair, which resulted in photos being sent to every single family member and friend her mother had.

Izumi nearly died then.

"But," Momo tossed the doll helplessly behind her. "You're looking a bit pale Izumi. I think that means you should stop before you pass out." She paused, sucking on her lip and blinked a bit before tucking a strand of hair behind her head. "Again."

Izumi crossed her arms and pouted. It wasn't like she was prone to fainting or anything like that. She'd overdone it a few times, but she hadn't actually passed out, especially since she started with the swim club. Nejire had been so right with swimming being great for her stamina. "I guess I am feeling a bit tired."

"Besides, we do still need to study for Byleth-sensei's exam as well."

And there was that. At least Byleth-sensei was good at teaching, even if she did go on tangents a lot. Plus, she had really cool designs on her tights a lot of the time!

"Fine! But, uhh, we should have some of those really super good snack things that we had last time. The little rolled things!" Izumi flailed her hands as she tried to gesture about what she was talking about. She already forgot their name but they were super duper yummy.

Momo gave a cute laugh into the back of her hand. "You ate more of those than I did last time, Izumi."

"So?"

"I'm just saying, I have an excuse with my quirk, but in your case…"

"Hey! I'm a growing girl! Besides, they're so good!" She continued to flail her arms, her cheeks feeling a bit on the red side. She placed both hands on her hips and tried to act proud, "Besides, I'm a swimmer! I'll burn the calories."

"How are you enjoying the swim club?" Momo asked, head tilted to the side a bit.

"It's great! Tomorrow we have a meeting to clean the pool, which is supposed to take all day I guess." She was not looking forward to it at all, but she understood why it was important that they do it as a team or something. "So, yay."

"Oh, well if that's the case, would you like to stay the night again? I know that my house is closer to the school than yours."

Barely.

"I mean, I kinda need to get there early," Izumi gave a light smile, "and for some reason whenever I stay over at your place we stay up all night talking in your bed." She shot both arms up and outward. "I don't even know what we talked about last time."

"Hmm, well, at one point you were talking about how uhh, thick, Kuro-sensei is."

So thick.

Momo gave a light blush and continued. "You were also talking about all your favorite heroes, and I was talking about how soft your hands are, but, uhh, don't worry about all that Izumi, I'll make sure that we go to bed at a reasonable time tonight."

Momo kept her word, as they did get into bed at a reasonable time.

But, they stayed up well past unreasonable just talking about nothing again.

XXXX

"Nyooom!" Nejire Hado, third year at Haruno Junior and future hero hopeful, came equipped with her own set of whimsical sound effects that could put a smile on just about anyone's face with how fairylike Nejire really was. Currently, Nejire was abusing her quirk to push the large fat brush around the bottom of the pool with more speed and vigor than the rest of the class combined.

Just looking at her made Izumi just the slightest bit more tired.

Izumi let out a long yawn and smiled, propping herself up on her own large brush and watched as Nejire did another lap. The effectiveness was two fold really, on the one hand she was actually cleaning the bottom, and on the other she was making things a bit more exciting and entertaining. "I hope that I can get that much energy one day."

"You get like that by actually helping, and not sleeping," Her white haired senpai Spee commented. Her own quirk, Aqua Tail, was activated, allowing her to scrub the ground behind her twice as fast. Unlike Nejire who was as excitable as could be, Spee was much less so, oftentimes being even more pragmatic and responsible than Kuro-sensei. There was no doubt among the first and second years that next year Spee would be the team captain. "Why did you stay up so late?"

Izumi nearly slipped on the slick ground as she was jolted just a bit more awake at Spee's biting words. She grabbed her brush firmly with both hands at a slightly awkward angle and smiled. "Oh, umm, well I stayed the night at Momo's again last night, and we, uhh, ended up talking a lot and stuff, so I uhh, might have just kind of ended up not getting any sleep. I promise it won't happen again."

"I didn't…" Spee let out a long sigh. "I didn't say to not stay with your girlfriend, but just wanted you to be aware that Nejire is like that because one, she's an idiot—"

"Hey! I heard that Spee!"

"—and two, she worked really super hard to get to where she is now, and I, uhh…" Spee stopped mid-sentence and looked down towards Izumi's brush.

"Hey, hey!" Nejire came to a skidding stop between the two girls. "Why are you talking about me? Is it about Izumi's hair? Oh or is it—" Nejire stopped too, but only for a second. "Hey, hey, Izumi, Izumi, why's your broom glowing?"

"Huh?" Izumi looked at her broom. The brushes on the end were glowing, and so far she had left a trail of hundreds of brush marks on the ground that were quickly fading like she was using her quirk with hundreds of incredibly small fingers all at once. That was new. Izumi felt her hands, remembering their position, and then she did something that was probably going to be really stupid.

She began to cast. The runes were larger than she had ever attempted to draw them before and the lines were much thinner, but they all blended together. More spells failed than not, but, more than a few were a success.

Light, forward, ball.

Dozens of football-sized spheres of light began to appear, most bursting when they made contact with the ground, but a few managed to float forward until they too hit something and exploded with a gentle, soundless sparkle.

Her tiredness was completely gone now.

This was just as important as any rune she could have discovered! "Omg! With this, I won't have to worry about casting the same spell so many times so quickly, I bet I can even get a cool support item made out of this, I'll even be able to cast a lot of force arrows too! Oooh, I should see if it'll work with something smaller too, but, maybe something that I can wave around, ooh, like a staff."

"Or a witch's broom!" Nejire offered and squealed in delight. "Oh my god Izumi! You'd make such a cute witch! Especially if you learned to fly on the broom like this!" Nejire straddled her own broom and hovered off the ground for a few seconds. "Only much more cool looking!"

"Okay, first of all, this isn't a broom, it's a brush." Izumi pointed towards her own broom… dammit, brush, and then glared. "And second of all I'm—"

"Actually it's both. Brooms are a type of brush, and depending on where you're from, they can mean both," Spee answered with a cold, always-right smile. "And I agree with Nejire, you'd make a good witch."

"I'm not a witch!"

"You totally are."

"Oooh!" Nejire clapped her hands. "I want to make you wear a really cute witch's hat! Kuro-sensei!"

Izumi pouted. Why did everyone want her to be a witch?