AN: I find myself looking up shit I'd never even concern myself with if I wasn't writing about it. Do you guys know what capillary action is? 'Cus I do now! It's a fancy name for wicking, and deals with a liquid's ability to flow through a narrow space in opposition of external forces, (like gravity). It's what causes some liquids to soak into fabrics the way they do, it's really traveling through the spaces between the thread. Most relevantly, some liquids, (like Mercury), have internal forces that are stronger than the surface tension and adhesion to the other material, and nearly incapable of capillary action. I'll leave you alone to guess why I needed to figure that out in the first place :] I'll give a hint: It was for a chapter you won't see for a while.
If any of you are writers yourselves, have you ever had to look up something random like this for your own work before? Let me know in the reviews.
Alright, that's enough learning for today. This chapter is not too action-centric, but I really like it all the same. I've combed through it several times, but I still feel like I'm missing some errors, so let me know if you catch anything please.
Enjoy.
Chapter 4
And Time Goes On
ooOo Katsumi oOoo
She'd been suspended. For a week.
Even worse, they'd suspended fucking D- Izuku too, and he hadn't even done anything!
Apparently Ushiwaka Ikai, the… unfortunate victim of her demonstration, was the son of one of the higher ups with the school district. Even the idiot instigating the fight hadn't been enough to get her out of punishment.
And what the fuck was a zero-tolerance policy?! The principal had pulled whatever that was out of his ass for sure. That, along with destruction of public property and an unauthorized usage of quirks on school property, had been enough to push for the suspension.
As if they'd ever fucking enforced that rule before. What a joke.
She grinned. At least that punk, Ikai, had gone down with her, serving an equally severe punishment. It was a step back on her path to U.A., but that only meant she'd need to be even more flawless when she finally applied.
Unfortunately, but certainly not unexpectedly her mother hadn't seen it the same way.
Katsumi had the misfortune of walking through the front door right when the school called her home phone to relay the news of her suspension. Mitsuki hadn't torn into her like that in years, but curiously, the Bakugo mother relented after Katsumi had mentioned she'd spent some of the morning ditching with Izuku. The old hag had always doted on the kinder boy like a son, always giving Katsumi shit about playing nice with him.
But letting her get away with something so huge?! Apparently, she had underestimated just how much her mother and Aunty Inko wanted their kids to get along.
Which brought her to her current predicament: standing outside the Midoriya apartment, with absolutely zero clue on how to proceed.
Just... knock?
No, couldn't do that, that was a nightmare. How could she even contemplate being so brazen as to-
No… wait, she was Bakugo motherfucking Katsumi and she could go to her friend's house if she damn well pleased!
"Are you going to stand out there all day, hun?"
"AHH!" Katsumi let out a shriek, a small gout of flame reflexively leaving her palm.
"Oh, that is quite impressive, dear." At the door stood Midoriya Inko, wielding the same kind eyes and sunny disposition as her son. Though this time they were widened slightly in amazement. "Izuku is always raving about it, so its nice to finally see it in person."
"W-what?" Katsumi stuttered out. Ugh, she was doing that way too much lately. What was Aunty Inko talking about again?.
Inko seemed to stare right through her, leaving her feeling small in a completely different but no less effective way than her own mother. Her comment also made her realize that in distancing herself from Izuku, she had also deprived herself of the lovely woman standing in front of her.
"Your quirk, Katsumi-chan," Inko said.
"Oh! yeah," she said, breaking eye contact and holding out an open palm making it spark and pop with a thought. It was the way she'd always show people her quirk when meeting them for the first time. Katsumi had always found it funny to introduce such a destructive power with a glorified party trick.
But the fact that Inko hadn't even seen her use her quirk yet was like a punch to the gut.
She felt arms wrap around her in a tight embrace. "It's good to see you after so long Katsumi-chan."
Oh, so this's what she was missing.
"Yeah, you too, Aunty Inko."
oooOo Izuku oOooo
"Hmm, I'm a bit disappointed, nerd, there's not nearly enough All Might merch for a fanboy of your caliber," Katsumi said, peering around his room curiously.
Was she weirded out? No that wasn't it, but for some reason Izuku was nervous about having Katsumi alone in here. Things were simple as four-year olds, but this Katsumi was older, and much more unfamiliar to him. He'd talked a big game the day of the fight, but now, without emotions flying high, he was having trouble deciding how he should act.
He eyed the girl as she shamelessly explored his room, quicksteel twirled in place with his pensive mood. Katsumi was looking more and more like a slenderer version of her mother every day. He'd sometimes heard his classmates make fun of her 'boyish' haircut, never in the blonde's hearing range of course. But in his opinion, they couldn't have been more wrong, he'd always though it suited her. In fact, her whole outfit today was particularly flattering as simple as it was. she looked really cute in th—
Holy shit, Kacchan was a girl.
This may have seemed like an obvious observation, but to Izuku it came with a whole host of other issues. Primarily: he had a girl in his room. What could be ignored as a toddler was all too apparent as almost-teenagers, as Izuku had already had a particularly embarrassing talk on the subject with his mother just a few months previously.
Luckily, Katsumi seemed preoccupied enough with her investigation to notice his miniature breakdown.
Deeps breaths, Izuku, you know her. It was just like when they were kids… except he'd been yearning for her to see him as an equal for years… and now she was probably the prettiest girl he kne—
No! stop, stop, st-
He snapped out of his thoughts at the sound of Katsumi rifling through a box of his old manga volumes, the ones they'd sit in his room looking at for hours as kids.
The furniture hadn't really changed all that much since she'd last seen it, but it was the décor that was the real difference.
She'd already known about his obsession with heroes of course, since she'd kind-of started it. He still remembered the day Katsumi had told him all about what a hero was. She was most likely just repeating something her mother had told her. But the next day Izuku had come over, having spent the previous night begging his mother to help him watch hero videos online. Katsumi had proclaimed him a hero nerd for the very first time, before they launched into a discussion about who their favorites were. Or, in Kacchanese: which hero kicked the most butt.
There were All Might posters of course, not to mention a couple figurines of the muscular hero at choice locations around his room. But as Izuku had gotten more proficient at tracking heroes over the years, he'd started documenting them in ways other than his hero notebooks. Primarily, taking snapshots of them in action.
The entire wall over his computer desk was ordered chaos. From action shots of local heroes stopping petty crime, to evacuation pros handling large scale disasters, the evidence was plastered all over the wall. He'd never invade a pro's privacy of course, only taking shots when they were both in-costume and on the job.
Becoming a bit self-conscious as Katsumi continued to stare at the photos dominating the walls, Izuku felt obligated to offer some kind of explanation. "I… uh, get around a lot," he said lamely.
She stilled for a second, not turning to face him. "Yeah, no kidding, being able to fly must make that a breeze," she said, turning to give him a look.
Izuku shook his head with a grin, "I'm not that daring, Kacchan, you should know that. If some kid started flying around the city on floating metal board it might draw a bit too much attention."
She scoffed, "Damn cops'll let you get away with using your quirk to travel if it's weak, but if it's flashy like ours there's no chance." Her fingers fondled the air as sparks danced across her palms like she was remembering a particularly unpleasant situation.
Ours? Katsumi had said it so nonchalantly, but she had to have known what phrasing it like that meant to Izuku. Equating his quirk to her own level was the greatest compliment she could have given him. He didn't acknowledge it though, he knew she'd prefer it that way.
"Yup, that's what the longboard was for initially," he said, suppressing the grin threatening to split his face. "I needed to practice my balance but couldn't use my quirk so blatantly around the city."
"And last Wednesday?"
That was true… Izuku had mixed feelings about the fight from three days ago. On one hand, the brawl and its aftermath had directly led to Katsumi and him talking again. This was something he hadn't even dared to hope for, only to avoid the disappointment when it never came to be.
But on the other hand, he'd been suspended due to a technicality. By stepping in and stopping Kacchan's explosion, he'd technically been a part of the fight. Zero-tolerance policies really were a bitch.
Izuku almost wished he let her knock that idiot silly. After all, he'd known she'd been ambushed from the get-go, Katsumi didn't go looking for fights, she just finished them when kids wanted to take on 'the prodigy'. The only reason he'd even stepped in was because he knew she sometimes got caught up in the moment. He knew she'd regret taking things too far, or at least the consequences of taking things too far. Since they'd both been suspended anyway, he shouldn't have bothered.
But that wasn't the thinking of a hero, and Izuku hadn't actually had the time to think before he moved. He hadn't thought that the older boy he'd saved from Katsumi's rage would rat him out along with her though. Though in the long run it wasn't surprising, he'd learned long ago that even those aspiring to be heroes were still human. They were capable of jealousy and greed, and indeed, they could be cruel.
"That…that was a special circumstance," he said after a moment.
She hummed noncommittally, peering at some of the hand-drawn diagrams pinned throughout all the photos and posters. "What about these?"
"The first designs for my skyboard," Izuku said joining her in front of the drawing. "I can't really make things on the fly, so I have to plan them out ahead of time then practice until it's second nature. I haven't really had time to test it much in the city, but even after the short time I had the other day, there are some things I'd like to twe—"
"What does your quirk really do nerd?" Katsumi said suddenly, cutting off his lapse in focus. She tried to be nonchalant, but Izuku could tell she was burning with curiosity. "Trying to take me head on was reckless," she added softly. "You trynna' die?"
Izuku couldn't help but laugh at that, "And here I thought you pulled that explosion to avoid hurting the guy, was I mistaken? Would he have died if I didn't block it?"
"Shut up nerd, I ain't that soft," she scowled.
He stopped his laughter but retained his smile. Under that prickly exterior she really was, but he'd let it go for now.
"As for what I can do…" he brought his palms up at waist level, metallic orb revolving slowly in between. "I call it quicksteel, and it's quite a bit more useful than we'd both initially thought," he said, grinning at Katsumi's narrowed eyes.
Izuku ceased the orb's movement before separating four smaller spheres from the central mass, commanding them to wiz around each other in the imitation of an atom. "At first I could only move it around and it always stayed a liquid." Katsumi prodded suspiciously at the quicksteel, frowning as it wobbled in place.
"So you can harden it then?" she bit out.
"Essentially, but there's a step in between," Izuku said, enjoying keeping the girl in suspense.
"Just spit it out nerd I don't got all day,"
"We're both suspended, Kacchan, where could you have to go?" he laughed.
"Shut up! just tell me already," Katsumi fumed.
Izuku grinned but conceded. "For some reason I can manipulate the tempurature of the material itself... Whether it's an ability I got from my dad's flamebreath quirk or something else, I'm not really sure." Izuku pinched his thumb to the middle and forefingers of both hands then stretched his arms apart, the quicksteel thinning and lengthening in response. He snatched the newly formed rod out of the air, solidifying it as his skin made contact. He twirled it slowly between his hands.
"Lower it under its melting point, and it turns to a solid," he said, holding the quicksteel staff aloft with a smile. "I can only make basic weapons right now, but most of my training was focused on this," he liquified the staff and coated his hand like a second skin, flexing his fingers experimentally. "Well, this and learning to skyboard, but that was just me being selfish," he said a bit self-consciously
"Tch—Hero nerd," Katsumi said under her breath, "That's pretty fuckin cool."
Praise? From Kacchan?
"Oi, quit smiling so much, its creepy as hell,"
He tried, he really did.
For the next couple of hours, they fell into a familiar routine, hanging out and catching up with what they've missed of each other after all of these years.
Izuku wasn't surprised to learn that Katsumi had started learning Muay Thai, thinking it would complement her quirk better than other martial arts. He agreed, especially after she'd demonstrated a few simple katas for him. The concentration on elbow and knee blows could be enhanced with explosions from her palms, and maybe even the bottoms of her feet. It was an idea she'd apparently toyed with in the past, but the sweat glands on her feet weren't capable of secreting her explosive yet.
The thought was intriguing to say the least. Could her sweat glands be expanded? It made sense for her to be capable sending explosions from her feet as well. Izuku's quirk had undergone many stages since it had appeared, so he was confident someone like Katsumi would figure hers out no sweat.
Well… not really but you know…
Izuku had eagerly regaled her with the tales of an up and coming hero that had made an impressive showing at the most recent UA sports festival. He'd dedicated practically an entire chapter to the rookie's quirk: Arbor. Izuku would never expect her to share the same enthusiasm he had for quirk analysis but honestly, just having her tolerate it was enough. She even appeared interested at some points, especially when he brought up some clips from the finals. She'd agreed that Nishiya Shinji would most likely be a popular hero when he made his debut.
His mom called them for dinner not too much later, and Katsumi was treated to his mother's famous Katsudon for the first time in years. Izuku couldn't help but laugh as she flooded her bowl with extra-spicy sauce, and that was after his mom had made Katsumi's breading with hot chili flakes.
They'd scarfed down their own portions, both having a second round as well. It was Izuku's favorite dish after all.
Before he knew it, he was watching his first friend's retreating frame as she walked towards the stairs of his apartment complex. "You're sure you don't want me to walk you home?"
"Jeez, let it go, nerd, its just around the block," she sighed, rubbing at her nose.
"Alright then, see you Monday."
"I'm suspended until Wednesday," she said drily.
Oops. "Wednesday then," he said with a laugh.
Katsumi paused at the stairs that led to the first floor of Izuku's apartment complex. "You want to see my mom too right?" she said, glancing away after a moment.
"Huh?"
"You can come over tomorrow, she's been asking about you." Katsumi shot him a glare without any heat, "Just come over around noon, nerd."
And with that she stomped off with a huff, making her way down the stairs complex.
Izuku kept an eye on her retreating form until she was just about to disappear around the corner, uncomfortable with letting her walk home in the dark no matter what she said.
A buzz from his pocket interrupted his thoughts, a message from Katsumi? She'd just given him her number earlier today after she'd found out he actually owned a cellphone.
Kacchan [8:23 pm]: quit starin nerd its creepin me out
Izuku slumped against the wall by the door of his apartment. So cruel….
oooOoOoOooo
"So why the hell haven't you pounded those idiots yet anyway?"
"What?" Izuku said, not following the abrupt question.
It had been two weeks since the day Katsumi had visited his house for the day, and though it wasn't as obvious as when they were children, they'd spent nearly every day together in some capacity since then. He had indeed been welcomed with open arms by Aunty Mitsuki when he'd visited the next day and was still puzzling out her brash proclamation as he'd walked through the doors.
She'd been 'glad Katsumi finally grew a pair,' whatever that meant, and wrapped him into a tight hug. The fact that she had inadvertently planted his face right into her generous cleavage had been an interesting start to the visit. Izuku may have improved his social skills a bit, but he'd still been sporting an atomic blush as Katsumi practically kicked him up the stairs to her room. Family friend she may be, but Bakugo Mitsuki was still drop dead gorgeous on her worst day.
"Oi Deku! Quit zoning out!"
Izuku hid a smile. Last weekend Kacchan had brought up the fact that he still called her by 'that dumb nickname', calling it childish. He'd knew he'd never have been able to call her Katsumi after so long, so he'd doubled down instead.
She'd flipped out when he told her to call him Deku. But how could he not like that name? It was a nickname she'd given him, and she'd never said it with any bad intention. Katsumi caved surprisingly easy after he'd voiced his reasoning.
"What was the question again?"
"The extras, why haven't you beat em down yet?" she huffed.
"Ah… they hardly bother me anymore, so what's the point?"
"The point is to show them the difference between us and the commoners," she said, punching her fist in her palm with an explosion. "I don't know why you don't at least show off your quirk, they'd probably back the fuck off if they even knew what you could do."
That… actually made a lot of sense. Izuku paused for a moment before replying. It was something he'd found helped with his stuttering problem when he was younger, which had often resulted from feeling rushed to get his point across. Simply taking a step back to think about what he had to say helped immensely.
"I just… I guess since I've been keeping it to myself for so long that it would feel weird to flaunt it." He rushed to clarify, seeing her about to interject, "It's not like I'm afraid to stand up to them. It's just… our goal is UA right? So I don't really have anything to gain by winning them over. I don't really know how to explain it right," he said frowning in thought.
"No, I understand perfectly," she said nodding seriously. "The extras aren't worth your time."
"Kacchan that's not wh—"
"Relax, Deku, we've only got six more years of this shit then we're outta here." She stuffed her hands into the big pouch of her white hoodie, as if the matter was settled.
He sighed. Convincing the prideful girl to see her classmates as any more than stepping stones was not a chore Izuku was willing to undertake. He instead carved back and forth as much as the narrow boardwalk allowed while still keeping pace with a walking Katsumi. The gentle sway of the motion eased his mind as he simply enjoyed the constant growl of wheels on concrete.
It took a mere five more minutes to reach their destination. The towering piles of mechanical junk loomed over the pair as they plodded through the soft sand of Dagobah Municipal Beach.
"What are we doing here, nerd?" Katsumi bit out from his side.
"This is where I've done the majority of my quirk training," he explained, squeezing his way through an opening in the junk heap. The path opened up into a clearing that spanned around a third of the beach. "Welcome to my humble slice of paradise," he drawled theatrically. He turned to a see a wide-eyed Katsumi admiring the beautiful horizon. The sun lit up her hair so it glowed like liquid fire. She seemed a bit ethereal in that moment, mesmerized as she was by the sight.
Izuku was as well.
"You did all this?" Katsumi said after a moment.
He coughed into a fist trying cover how he'd been staring. "Every weekend for sixish hours a day. Not that it was all spent clearing the beach." He waved dismissively, "I've experimented too and practiced flying over the sand."
She seemed lost in thought but eventually spoke up, eyes resolute. "Why are we here?"
"I actually need your help testing something." He said and Katsumi perked up in interest. "When I blocked your explosion before, I felt really drained afterwards." He clenched his fist, pondering the cause. "It was weird because my quirk had never had any drawbacks like that before and I wanted to find out why."
"Don't you think it would be stranger if you didn't have a drawback to your quirk nerd? You of all people should know how emitter types work."
He nodded along with her point. "I'd always written it off as a side effect of my quirk's mutation from my mothers. If I had simple telekinesis it would be strange to have no side effects from overuse. But the quicksteel itself is a part of my quirk, and my telekinesis is limited to that mass of metal alone, not to mention it's grown along with my body." Izuku paused to think for a moment. "I thought that might have warranted a mutant classification, where physical drawbacks from overuse are less common." He shrugged, "guess I was wrong."
Izuku ignored her muttered 'hero nerd' in favor of taking several paces away and turning to face her. He placed a palm on his quicksteel, molding it into a simple convex shield. He willed it through the air to face Katsumi, brushing just the tips of his fingers along the interior. He found that at his current level just a touch was enough to keep quicksteel in its solid state and braced in place.
"Think you can give me a blast around the same strength as before?" He gave her a confident grin over the top of his shield.
"Don't get cocky, Deku," she said with a fierce smile. Katsumi didn't even hesitate as she strode forward, a flexed palm flickering with tiny sparks.
She dashed the last few steps, unleashing a vicious explosion that rung like a gong against his quicksteel. Fire and sand filled his vision as the force of the blast upset the ground beneath them. His shield held strong, but he once more felt that same fatigue come over him.
That was expected, and part of the reason they were there in the first place.
"Tch- not even a dent huh?" Katsumi drawled, rapping her knuckles against his shield. "Alright then see if you can handle this."
"Kacchan wait!" She froze with an arm cocked back, air around her fist blurring from the heat.
"Ugh what now?"
"That was just a baseline, I need you to reduce the heat in the next explosion but keep the power the same… you can do that right?"
"It's creepy that you know that, nerd."
Izuku shrugged, "I've seen you fight enough at school, I think I have a decent handle on your abilities." He was downplaying that a bit. Kacchan's hero entry took up as many pages as some of the top ten in his hero analysis journals.
She sighed. "Fine, same power, low heat. You ready nerd?"
A nod from Izuku and she let loose once more, a hissed "die!" slipping from her lips as a sharp crack echoed over the beach. Izuku actually had to brace his forearm against the disk slightly, the power behind the blast formidable enough to force him back a bit.
Just as he had suspected, the drain this time was not nonexistent, but significantly lower than before. He'd been pondering the cause of the strange fatigue since the day it had first occurred. Why did blocking Katsumi's explosions drain him so much when he could haul refrigerators for hours without rest? The only explanation that he could come up with was the thermoregulatory aspect of his quirk. Solidifying quicksteel required him to cool it to a temperature below its melting point, which fortunately was slightly higher than water's. Under normal conditions cooling quicksteel to a measly five degrees Celsius was effortless with skin contact and even without he could now even pick up small objects.
The problem came when external heat was introduced to the equation, ie. Katsumi's explosions. In this case, Izuku now had to expend energy to keep quicksteel at a constant temperature in order to retain its solid state.
That's where the drain came from. It was a subtle limitation to his power but would be a fatal weakness against the right opponent.
"So?! You've got your answer eh Deku?" Katsumi's voice cut through his thoughts. "You've got that stupid look on your face."
He smiled, "Yeah, thanks, Kacchan, I guess we can go now."
"Woah, woah, woah, hold up just a fucking second, you think you can just show me you can take some of my stronger hits, on a beach away from noise complaints, and you think you're just gonna walk away with two hits. I don't fuckin think so." Her palms glistened in the sunlight and Izuku caught the cloying scent of burnt sugar on the breeze.
What had he gotten himself into?
oooOo Katsumi oOooo
"How about Dyno-might?" Izuku asked, and with a glance she confirmed that, yes, he was being serious.
"Deku, I didn't think it was possible, but you may have just out-nerded yourself, I'm not gonna be a hero with such a lame-ass name.
Of course, he was undeterred, scratching his chin in thought as he tried to come up with another title. He'd been at it all morning as they walked to school together. Well, she walked, Izuku just coasted by her side on his board as usual.
She'd made an offhand comment that she appreciated the simplicity of All Might's hero name, which had led to her current headache.
"What about Die-nomite," he muttered under his breath.
She paused, that actually wasn't that bad.
"Kacchan, I wasn't serious, you cant have a hero name like that!"
She cackled merrily, "Then don't suggest a name if you don't like it!"
It had been nearly a year since they had started talking again and Katsumi couldn't remember a time in her admittedly short life where she had laughed so freely. She couldn't pinpoint one particular cause, but Izuku seemed to brighten all aspects of her day in a way. He was the friend she'd missed, the rival she never had, and with the way he sometimes looked at her, she thought there might be something else. But each time her mind strayed to such dangerous territory, she quickly nipped that kind of thinking in the bud. There was no way he'd ever look at her like a… girl, not with her brash personality, foul mouth and violent streak a mile long.
She turned to see him scribbling in a familiar notebook, however this one looked battered and worn with age. "What have you got here?" With lightening precision, she snatched the book out of his hands, laughing at his indignant squawk. He seemed to sigh with resignation as she peered curiously at the cover. "Volume one? I thought you had a gazillion of these things filled, why are you writing in volume one?"
He hesitated slightly. "Well… I was writing all the names I could come up with so I didn't forget them."
"Yeah and?" she pressed.
He looked at her as if she was missing something obvious. "Who do you think was the first entry in my notes?"
Oh. A warm something welled within her before she silently opened the notebook to the first page. At the top was the title just like every other entry in his hero notes:
Subject: Bakugo Katsumi
Quirk: Explosion
Following was the most comprehensive breakdown of her abilities she had ever seen. The pages following had obviously been edited and amended several times over the years. Sticky notes were plastered to the pages with additional information as it was discovered.
Unconfirmed theories followed, and she wasn't surprised that many of them were spot on. The nerd was usually right about that kind of stuff. Interspersed throughout the factual analysis was the odd personal commentary from Izuku himself, most of it incredibly flattering to the blonde girl. She knew her quirk was powerful, but she also had the perspective of how much work was put into the finesse she wielded it with. To have that effort acknowledged left her with a strange fuzzy feeling in her gut.
She... didn't hate it.
"It's fuckin creepy that you know more about my quirk than I do, nerd." That's what she said, but she couldn't quite hide the flush that she felt warm her cheeks.
"Creepy?! Kacchan, you know it's not like that!"
She snickered at how his voice cracked with indignation, turning back to the notes that actually had a few good ideas she had yet to try. The 'tentative hero name' section was worth a good laugh, with gems on the level of 'Nitro-glistenin' or 'Da-Bomb' scrawled and crossed out across the page. Though names like, 'Ignitro,' or 'Ground Zero' were filed away for further thought. She hid a grin at the realization that Deku had been fucking messing with her, only mentioning the shittiest names he could think of.
But it was when she reached the next section that she paused.
"Possible mutations?" she said, somewhat afraid to ask. She noticed Izuku perk up a bit at her interest. Was he really so starved for attention? She'd have to be more blatant with her praise from now on. Katsumi knew she could come off as cold, but Izuku at least deserved more effort from her.
"Yeah," he started enthusiastically. "Even if your quirk isn't a mutant type, there are still ways that your body adapts to use your power safely."
"Right, like how Endeavor doesn't torch himself?"
Izuku nodded, "Right in one. In your case, you probably have something like higher bone density, or some kind of alteration to your musculature." He paused, looking over at her as he rolled along. "To handle the kickback… ya' know?"
She glanced back to the pages of the notebook. "Constricted pupils? The hell's that supposed to mean?"
Izuku rolled to a stop in front of her, wide, jade eyes peering curious into her own.
God he had changed, the nerd could never meet her eyes for too long before. Always staring at his shoes, head hung for some reason unknown to her. But curiously, it was her that had the urge to look away in embarrassment.
His eyes were really pretty.
"That was just a guess," he said cracking a smile. "Our pupils constrict when they're exposed to extreme light, I think yours are particularly small to handle the constant flashes." With that he rolled away, leaving her frozen in the middle of the street.
That was the day Katsumi realized that Izuku really payed attention.
oooOoOoOooo
The day that Endeavor burned down half of the Musutafu shopping center was a wakeup call for Katsumi.
Granted, it wasn't exactly clear who'd caused the majority of the damage. A villain with a emitter quirk that allowed him to boost his agility by expelling fire from his feet, had been on some kind of mass shoplifting spree from the various storefronts, all while wreaking havoc on the general populous. It was the kind of lawbreaking that would disrupt your day but otherwise be written off as petty crime.
Unfortunately, the situation had escalated when Endeavor had arrived on the scene and attempted to apprehend the criminal. By the time Katsumi had tuned into the livestreams broadcasting the situation there were several buildings already engulfed in flames and several more following quickly. It was with intrigued horror that Katsumi watched from the safety of her room as people trampled each other to escape the burning plaza.
The villain was eventually captured, but by that point the damage had been done, and most of it not by him. Endeavor was already facing public backlash, his careless pursuit of a relatively minor villain causing millions in property damage. Even his number two spot on the billboards was coming into question. The already palpable outrage from the endangered shoppers and their families was only twisted and exaggerated
To add insult to injury, Izuku had come racing into her room soot smudged and exhausted, asking If she'd seen the news. Apparently, he'd been passing by while chasing down another hero when shit hit the fan.
Of course she'd seen the damn news! But what the hell had the nerd been doing down there? His dismissive explanation that he'd only been helping get people out of danger hadn't calmed her in the slightest, nor did she believe his insistence that he wasn't even using his quirk. Though that may have been her worry asserting its presence. The whole situation was reminding her of why she hadn't wanted him to be a hero in the first place. He was hardly defenseless anymore and didn't need her to worry for him. Not that she would ever stop.
But perhaps most impactful of all was the realization that for all of Endeavor's power, some quirks were simply not suited for certain situations. In the most literal sense of the phrase, fighting fire with fire would most certainly lead to someone getting burned...
She'd always held her own quirk in the highest regard, feeling it was both versatile and powerful enough to handle any situation. But evidence to the contrary was currently staring her in the face. What was truly terrifying was how easily that could have been her, a hero that was undisputedly strong yet completely helpless to offer aide. That idea had wedged itself in her psyche, self-doubt plaguing her thoughts. It had gotten to the point where Izuku had notice something was up as they sat together finishing their homework for the following school day.
She was glad that he took some time to really consider her worries, rather than offer useless platitudes like nearly anyone else would have.
"I don't think you'll have to worry about that, Kacchan,"
"What are you talking about nerd? Were you watching the same thing I wa—"
"I was," he said abruptly, and Katsumi was startled by the steel in his eyes. "I was there, remember? There were plenty of injuries, luckily nothing particularly lethal but it was a shit situation all around."
"Then why—"
"Your quirk is more versatile than Endeavor's for one. You can already adjust the destructive capabilities of your explosions, not to mention you can use them purely for mobility," he said simply.
That was true, she could tweak her secretions to have more heat or concussive force and had been practicing practically since she first got her quirk.
"But more importantly," Katsumi looked up from her math homework to face her friend once more. "More importantly, you're already thinking about the consequences of such careless quirk use." He grinned, "that alone makes me think that you won't run into the same problems."
She deflated a bit. Maybe she'd been worried for nothing, but when the hell had Izuku gotten so wise?
She rifled through her box of green tea pocky and stuck out two sticks to her friend while looking the other way with a scowl.
"You're welcome, Kacchan!" He said happily, grabbing one of the treats, leaving the other for her.
"The hell is that supposed to mean, nerd?" She refused to acknowledge the heat that rose to her cheeks, she'd been telling the old hag to fix the thermostat for ages. It wasn't her fault that no one listened to her around here.