"Ren!" Mitsuki exclaims as she opens the door, quickly giving the girl a side-hug before ushering her in. "How are you doing, sweetheart?"

Ren manages a half-smile and a shrug. "I don't know," she admits. Ever since the sludge villain incident, a lot has been on her mind. Her parents haven't been able to let her out of their sights and even gaining permission to visit their neighbors' home has been a hassle.

Kin had even left his game half-way through the match when news broke about the incident. For the past few days, he's insisted on coddling her, sleeping on the floor of her bedroom at night, and being a general menace. She understands that they're worried, and she doesn't blame them, but she just wishes they could all move past it. She's embarrassed enough as is without all of them babying her.

A warm palm meets the top of her crown and ruffles her indigo-blue locks. Mitsuki's warm smile reminds Ren to breathe.

"I'm so thankful that you were there for my idiot son."

"Shouldn't I be the one thanking you for raising such a brave idiot?" Her voice cracks at the last word. She doesn't think she deserves any credit for how the situation played out. It's not like she made a difference.

Mitsuki laughs wetly and gently rubs at her eyes before giving Ren another full hug. "Can you talk to him for me please?" She asks, "He hasn't left his room for days. He won't eat or speak. I'm worried about him."

Ren nods before untangling herself from Mitsuki's arms and heads down the hallway, towards Katsuki's room. She knocks.

"Katsuki? Can I come in?"

Silent, except for a very faint taptaptaping.

"I know you're awake. I can hear you."

The rhythmic sound of skin meeting leather halts. Katsuki had picked up the habit from Kin when they were kids. Whenever he finds himself deep in thought, he ends up picking up a baseball, throwing it at his ceiling, and catching it. The exercise helps calm him and keeps his thoughts organized. Ren hears the creaking of Katsuki's bed's springs and some shuffling, then an aggressive thump.

She exhales air from her nose. He probably just rolled over on his bed and threw the ball at a wall.

"Okay," she sits on the floor and rests her back against his door, "if you don't want to talk, I will."

Complete silence.

"Do you remember when we first met?" She asks, "You and Izuku literally fell into my mom's bakery. It was really funny. You guys fought a lot back then, but it wasn't like it is now. I wonder when it got this bad…"

Still silent.

"I'm glad I met you guys, though...Hey, if you don't start answering, I'll just keep talking until my voice goes hoarse. You know I don't talk a lot in the first place. My mouth is already getting dry. C'mon, Katsuki."

A slam against the wall, close to where her head is. " Then shut the fuck up," she thinks he's probably cursing her in his head.

"I won't shut up!" She declares childishly, "I'll annoy you until you open the door." she begins to sing obnoxiously.

"It's okay, Kacchan! It was only an accident!" Izuku gives him one of his infuriatingly bright smiles. "It doesn't even hurt anymore!"

Katsuki kicks at the dirt with the toe of his shoe. What a blatant lie. He's experienced his quirk backfiring enough that he knows that his blasts hurt like a bitch. His lips pull into a frown as he points a finger at the green-haired child. "That's a freakin' lie! Punch me back!"

He said freakin', not fuckin', so mom can't get him in trouble.

"Wh-what? No way!" Izuku crosses his arms in front of him, forming an 'X' shape. "Why would I want to do that?"

Katsuki glares at the bandages wrapped around the other boy's arm, then quickly glances up at the cotton eyepatch covering his left eye before looking back down and stomping at the ground in the emphasis of each of his words.

"THEN YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO ACCEPT MY APOLOGY!" Katsuki yells, "Now punch me."

"No!"

Fine. He'd just have to make the nerd punch him. Katsuki scrunches his face up in an expression of displeasure before stomping into Izuku's personal bubble and head-butting him, knocking him right onto his behind. "OW! Kacchan, what was that for?!"

"PUNCH ME." He seethes through gritted teeth.

Izuku stubbornly shakes his head. "No! I don't want to, I already forgave you and you can't make me take it back."

"WHAT THE FREAK IS WRONG WITH YOU?" Sparks fly, "I HURT YOU!"

"It was an accident!" Izuku juts his chin upward.

"YOU PITYING ME OR SOMETHING? POOR BAKUGOU CAN'T CONTROL HIS OWN QUIRK, HUH?"

"What? No, it's not like that at all!"

"Whatever, Izuku, I don't want to play anymore."

He stomps away and grabs his mother's hand. "TAKE ME HOME, HAG! I ALREADY APOLOGIZED TO STUPID IZUKU."

"You know," Ren's voice interrupts his thoughts, "Kin wouldn't stop talking about you two for days. Apparently, mom scolding boys who weren't him really tickled his fancy...after that day, he insisted that we went to the playground and found you two."

"What do you mean you're quirkless?" Katsuki hisses.

Izuku shrugs.

"That doesn't make any sense!" The blonde yells, throwing a rather large rock into the pond, the resulting splash punctuating his anger. "Everyone has a quirk, even if it's crappy."

"W-well, I don't even have a…" Izuku's eyes dart left to right before he whispers, "crappy one."

Katsuki throws another rock into the pond. "You better not be lying to me, crappy Izuku."

Izuku's shoulders curl forward and he bows his head in shame. He wishes he were lying.

"THIS IS FREAKING DUMB! How are we supposed to become heroes if you don't have a quirk?"

"W-well," Izuku looks up at him with hopeful eyes, "We can still pretend!"

"Che," Katsuki kicks a whole pile of rocks into the water, "that's not the freakin' same." he wants to cry. He looks at crappy Izuku who seems so...okay with it. How can he just be okay with not having a quirk?

It's not okay!

"You're a freakin' loser, stupid Izuku!" He throws a smaller rock at the other boy. It bounces off of his head and Katsuki runs away.

"When we finally found you guys, I was so excited! I didn't have many friends my age," she drones on, "And you were so excited to eat mom's taiyaki, too. You just didn't want to admit it because you were a little brat. Actually, you're still a brat, do you know that? Why are you so mean to Izuku?"

It's so annoying that Izuku can smile like that when he's quirkless. Katsuki can't even smile like that and he has a super strong quirk — his mom said so! When their classmates surround Izuku with, 'I'm sorry! That sucks!' and 'Dekiru, Midoriya-kun!' anger bubbles inside of Katsuki. Izuku is supposed to be upset right now, not smiling, and the selfish extras can't even give him that! Why does Izuku keep having to smile for these stupid extras? If Katsuki were ever told that he could never use his quirk again, and idiots surrounded him with empty words of pity, he'd kick up a storm and throw a fit, but here the nerd is, smiling! Izuku has to be aware of what these assholes say behind his back.

Katsuki kicks his desk over and walks out of the classroom. Conversations halt, and Izuku's eyes follow after Katsuki's form as his back slowly becomes smaller and smaller.

When his teacher calls after him, he proclaims that he needs to use the bathroom.

Useless Izuku doesn't even know how to express his own feelings. It fills Katsuki with some sort of disgusting feeling that he can't explain and he can't look at him anymore.

"I'm worried about you." Ren says, "Have you eaten at all? Are you drinking water in there? Your mom says that you haven't been leaving your room...which means you're not going to the bathroom either, right? That's not good. Your body needs a lot of water, especially because of your quirk. Katsuki, you're always yelling at me to stay hydrated and you always take my energy drinks away when I buy too many. You're a hypocrite. You're a dummy. You're a brat-"

"STUPID IZUKU, STOP FOLLOWING ME!"

"Why? We used to play here together all the time!"

"S'NOT THE SAME!" He blasts the boy away, but he's careful not to use too much.

Izuku looks up at him with a teary smile. "Oh, so now you cry?" He's still freaking smiling, though.

"Everyone's been treating me differently since they found out that I'm quirkless. I guess...I just thought that we could at least still play together. It didn't matter before…"

"It's not the same," Katsuki grumbles again before turning away with a huff. Maybe if he makes friends with some other kids with stronger quirks, he'll finally scare Izuku off and he'll stop following him. He doesn't want to play hero with the nerd anymore.

Dumbass Izuku can't even protect himself.

Ren's singing some anime opening, finally giving up on lecturing him. He obviously knows that he should be drinking water; hence the two gallon-sized containers sitting by the foot of his bed that she can't see. He knows how to take care of himself, unlike a certain other idiot.

It's not like she should be talking, anyway. Ren only eats like a meal and half on a good day and maybe sleeps four hours a night. And her quirk actually requires her to eat. And bask in sunlight. She doesn't do that either— she'd stay shut in her room for months at a time if he'd let her.

"Isn't an alternate way to read Izuku 'Deku?'" He laughs as he rips Izuku's name tag off of his shirt, "Doesn't 'deku' mean useless? Looks like you were doomed from the start."

Stupid Deku finally stops smiling at him.

Good.

Being quirkless isn't anything to smile over.

"I'm going to have an aneurysm, Katsuki." She says, completely deadpan. He hears her flop over, then his door frame rattles twice.

She's laying with her back on the floor and her legs propped up on his door. "I'm dying. I'm dying and you're not even speaking to me. I'm going to die. Do you really want your last words to me to be 'I didn't ask for your help!' or whatever! Because those are some shitty last words!"

"I TOLD YOU TO STOP FREAKING FOLLOWING ME, DEKU!" Katsuki shoves at the other boy, "Why won't you just learn your lesson already?"

Izuku's brows furrow in confusion. He can't even comprehend the question. Isn't it obvious?

"Because you're my best friend, Kacchan." He responds with a tilted head before getting up and dusting off his pants.

"No, I'm not!" The blond storms away and Izuku hurriedly grabs onto his hoodie sleeve before he gets too far.

"What the hell! Let go!"

"No! Let's play at the pond like we used to!"

"No, I don't want to!" He starts running, but then Izuku grabs onto his hood and pulls him back and the momentum sends them tumbling through the glass double doors of the new bakery his father's been wanting to try.

"What. The. HELL, DEKU!" He screams, pink dusting his entire face and ears. He looks up at the pretty baker-lady who stares back at them in wide-eyed shock and he's so embarrassed.

Izuku quickly scrambles to his feet and is in the process of bowing in apology when Katsuki stands up so quickly, he's light-headed, but he doesn't care because they're on the floor again anyway after he tackles Izuku with a war-cry. He grabs the mossy-haired boy's shirt collar and starts shaking him. "What the hell did you go and do that for, useless Deku? First ya' follow me around like a lost freakin' puppy and then you send me rollin' in here?"

Katsuki can make out some hearty, childish laughter in the background, but he's so flustered that the pretty auntie saw him like that that he doesn't care. She's even prettier than his mom and his mom's a model.

"I-I didn't mean to!" Deku squeaks, "Really, Kacchan!"

"IT DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU DIDN'T MEAN TO 'CAUSE YOU ALREADY DID IT!" Katsuki roars and goes in for a punch….when suddenly, his wrist is snatched out of the air and he's pulled off of Deku.

"That's no way to treat your friend," the pretty baker frowns and Katsuki, unable to look her in the eyes, decides instead to direct his attention to the teal-haired fiend cackling at him and pointing a sharp-clawed finger in his direction. "What the HELL are you laughing at, stupid fox?!" He screams.

"Please don't talk to my son that way." The pretty auntie says before dropping his wrist, grabbing Izuku from under the armpits, and standing him upright. Ugh. Useless Deku can't even stand up by himself?

The older boy's ears twitch before his cackles die down to a snicker. He grabs a cookie from the table he's sitting by and obnoxiously chomps on it, eyes gleaming with anticipation; he crosses his legs, enjoying the show.

"Now, I don't know who you boys are, but you had better stop fighting in my shop. Friends shouldn't fight with one another like this." The lady says sternly as she checks them over for injuries.

"I'm sorry." Deku says with a trembling bottom lip, "Are you going to call my mom?"

She raises a perfectly shaped eyebrow, cocks all her weight to one side, and places a hand on her hip. "Should I? And it's not me you should be apologizing to."

"N-no?" Deku squeaks.

"No, I don't need to call your mom, or no, who should you be apologizing to?" Her eyes sparkle in amusement. They're a neon shade of yellow and when she tilts her head just the right angle for the lights to hit them, they appear to almost glow.

"Um," Deku's eyes dart between Katsuki and the baker-lady. "Both?"

"Then I won't call your mothers. But you both need to apologize to one another."

"What?" Katuski puffs up his chest indignantly, "Why do I have to apologize?"

He glares at Fox-face when he starts laughing again.

"I'm sorry for making you fall, Kacchan." Izuku says softly, a rosy hue tinting his cheeks.

"I don't forgive you!" He snaps.

"O-oh…."

Pretty baker sighs disapprovingly and raises a wagging finger. She opens her mouth.

"Ugh, fine!" He throws his hands up in the air, "I forgive you!"

Deku's face breaks out into that annoying grin of his and baker-lady smiles.

"Now apologize for tackling him and trying to punch him." She says.

"No way! Stupid Deku deserved it!"

Baker-lady crosses her arms over her chest and purses her lips, and Katsuki recognizes that look as the one his mother gets whenever she's about to go ape. She only gets the opportunity to inhale before he quickly blurts out, "'msorryfortacklingyou." in one breath.

Now it's Deku's turn to stare at him in disbelief.

"Shut UP!" He growls before Deku can 'forgive' him, "I didn't say anything."

But stupid Deku is already giggling.

"Now was that so hard?" The baker asks with an airy laugh, just as a tiny ding! sounds from another room.

He bites back the urge to grouch a 'yes.'

"Stay right there," she says as she disappears through a set of white double doors.

He just about makes a run for it, when she returns with a fresh tray of taiyaki in one hand, and the hand of a little girl grasped in her other.

"This is my daughter, Ren. You guys look about the same age, and she was watching you from the kitchen. Why don't you guys share some taiyaki with her before you go?"

Ren's mom places the tray down on top of the counter before wrapping three individual fish-shaped pastries in some cute paper and handing them off to each of the children.

"OI, MOM! WHAT ABOUT ME!" Fox-face yells, and Katsuki ignores him in favor of studying the new arrival.

"Um, we're new to the neighborhood," the girl smiles timidly after raising her fish-pastry. Katsuki thinks she looks sleepy. Did she just wake up from a nap? "My mom's taiyaki is really good!" she offers before taking a little nibble. Her voice is kind of quiet, but he supposes it's kind of nice to listen to. She glances between them with expectant eyes and the boys barely take the time to exchange looks with one another before they each take a bite of their own confections.

"Th-this is g-good! W-welcome to the neighborhood!" Izuku stutters, "I'm Izuku, and this is Kacchan!"

Upon hearing the nickname, Katsuki instinctively shoots out an arm and punches the idiot's shoulder. He ignores the resulting 'ow!'

"That's not my freakin' name! I'm Bakugou Katsuki!" He grouches and the girl's shoulder shake with silent laughter.

"I'm Ren."

She's almost as pretty as her mom. Katsuki looks away.

She's resorted to singing the ABC's in English, on loop, and is probably on at least the fifteenth cycle. She's probably got a sore throat, judging by the scratchiness of her voice. The stubborn girl actually went through with her promise. Katsuki finally swings the door open and dodges her legs when they plop down onto the floor.

"Eh?" Ren quickly sits up and smooths her uniform skirt over her thighs, "Katsuki!"

She's kneeling before him and looking up at him with those inquisitive yellow eyes of hers, and they somehow manage to converse with one another without even uttering a sound. He scans her and notices the puffiness under her eyes, the way she tries to swallow despite the fact that her mouth is completely dry, and all the fresh new sutures kissing the palms of her hands and her fingertips. She scans his room and takes a mental note of the gallons of water sitting by his bed, the empty chip bags scattered across the floor, and a hole in the wall that wasn't there the last time she visited, likely the result of a recent tantrum.

He pulls her into his room, kicks the door shut and locks it. He doesn't need the hag to walk in and get the wrong idea.

Bakugou Katsuki doesn't do hugs, but he doesn't fight her when she wraps her arms around his torso.

"I couldn't do anything." He mumbles, forehead pressed against her shoulder. She's taller than him at the moment. "I'm s'posed to be fuckin' strong. I have a strong quirk."

He grips onto the fabric of her blazer. "Why couldn't I do anything?"

If she feels wet spots on the front of her blazer, she says nothing. And if he feels her body trembling as she runs her fingers through his hair, he doesn't say anything either.

"I couldn't do anything either." She admits quietly, barely above a whisper. "I'm supposed to be better than that."

The following few weeks after the incident are slow, quiet, and uncomfortable. As the school year ends, most of Ren's year mates throw themselves into either studying for high-school entrance exams or training for a trade school. Of course, everyone hopes to make it into one of the top three hero schools, but most students also prepare for the worst; just in case they don't make it into their top-choice schools. Ren is not one of those students. She sleeps through damn-near every class, only waking up occasionally for snack or bathroom breaks. Dates blur into one another and she loses track of time. She never knows if it's Monday or Friday, and quite frankly, she doesn't really care. Though she has other things on her mind, Ren never drops in her academic rankings, often landing somewhere within the top five. It infuriates her peers.

Weekly meetings with the staff commence, as customary for third years, and Ren's teachers look at her with pity every time she goes to meet them. Her meetings never last more than five minutes. They think she's throwing her life away.

She grits her teeth and bows her head as one after the other, they lecture and scold her. She has nothing to say to them. She knows better.

Katsuki still escorts her to and from school every day, but he's a lot more...withdrawn. He's not necessarily any calmer, as he's still quick to go absolutely bonkers when even looked at the 'wrong' way, but he stops being provocative. Ren often catches him staring at the back of Izuku's head, lost in thought. He doesn't seem particularly angry per se, just considering.

At least she thought so until one day, Katsuki stares for so long that he loses his temper and snaps the pencil in his hand. (Then he gets so mad about getting mad that he blows the poor pencil to bits.)

Training together after school becomes a regular occurrence. The first time they spar, they only do so because Katsuki had needed to blow off steam. The simmering emotions that he had been sitting on had begun to surface, and he couldn't explain them with words.

Now they do it to ensure their spots at U.A.

Katsuki's a lot stronger than Ren. He always has been and he always will be.

She both loves and hates that about him. She spent the entirety of her last life chasing after his and Izuku's backs. She knows now that it's not enough; she was a fool to have ever thought otherwise. She spars with him and afterward, they verbally run through the spar, and then they offer one another words of advice.

"You have a tell…"

"All of your fuckin' movements are predictable…"

"You can only use that same trick so many times before your enemies'll start to expect it…"

"Why the hell do you punch like that? The proper form is…"

"You attack too quickly. A poorly timed attack is wasted movement."

"And you're too fuckin' slow. Your quirk hurts you to use, so you have to apprehend your opponents faster."

He blinks up at her. "Your vines are inherently fast, but you take too long to make up your damn mind. I ain't afraid of a little pain, y'know."

This gives her a lot to think about. In another lifetime, Ren was a pro-heroine famed for her quick thinking. In order for her to have sat in the top thirty as she did, she didn't have the time for hesitation. Speed is all she can rely on, she doesn't have a lot of power behind her attacks. Her vines are her muscles, moving about on the outside of her body. That's not how nature intended for muscles to work.

That said, she now knows that she can't do her job so half-heartedly ever again. Rank 26 should not have been her peak; not when Katsuki, Izuku, and Shouto shuffled the top three ranks between them every other week. Ever since she woke up in the past, however, anxiety gnaws on her every decision. She can't make the wrong choices, or she'll screw with the timeline so bad that the future will end up even worse than the one she lived in.

Were that to happen, she wouldn't even know how to face Eri. Would she ask the girl to send her back again?

Could she do it again?

Katsuki offers her some genuine eye-openers; perspectives that only a prodigy like himself would provide. But he's still young and experienced, so he hangs onto Ren's every word and improves with every spar. They push one another to be better.

They never ever mention the incident. It's heavy on their minds, and sometimes, one of them will call the other during the thickest of nights because it's so hard to sleep without thinking about it. But the incident is never verbally acknowledged. To be real honest, it's not a healthy coping mechanism, but Katsuki absolutely refuses to see a therapist, and Ren can't afford to sit in a building potentially full of mind-reading quirks.

Izuku starts avoiding the two of them as if they carried the plague. He's not very good at being subtle, so Katsuki notices immediately.

"What? He throws his fucking bookbag at a villain, and now the shitter thinks he's better than us?" She catches him muttering under his breath and she responds with a nose exhale.

Ren concludes that he's probably just started training with All-Might. Katsuki loses his mind trying to uncover Izuku's secret because he's competitive and he cannot believe that he just spent the last ten years trying to get Izuku to leave him the hell alone only for the damned nerd to leave on his own volition.

Summer approaches quickly. She bids a dry goodbye to her middle-school classmates, all of whom she knows that she will never see again. The celebration at home is a quiet but happy affair. Kin comes home from practice early, her father takes the day off of work, and her mother makes some of her favorite dishes— hủ tiếu noodles with tempura of every vegetable known to man and carefully made takoyaki as side-dishes. Daitan is no stranger to Vietnamese cuisine; her mother is a Vietnamese immigrant, making her a hafu. Multicultural dinners such as this are commonplace within the Ajisai household. It's an odd combination of food, but being able to bask in her family's attention while enjoying her mother's cooking absolutely fills Ren with unadulterated joy.

They finish the celebration with cake and gifts. Daitan presents her with a strawberry tiramisu cake and a set of five beautiful butterfly knives which seem to gleam a different color depending on how the light reflects off the blades.

"You're going to become a wonderful hero," Daitan says, "I know you're strong, but it would give me some peace of mind if I knew that you had a last line of defense. Use these well."

Her eyes water.

Ken sets a large palm on the apex of her head and ruffles her hair with a lazy grin. He hands her a box, carefully wrapped in pretty purple paper. Ren tears through the paper with shaky hands and within the box resides a glass casing full of first-aid necessities: antiseptic, vials of antivenom, various pills, various creams, a roll of bandages as well as a small box of band-aids, gauze, small "surgical" scissors for when (not if) she stitches other people up, an inhaler, and an epipen.

These are gifts that she did not receive the first time around. Her parents didn't even know that she wanted to become a hero until the day she left the house to attend the entrance exam.

She clutches the case to her chest and bows to her father in thanks.

"I made all the antivenom myself," Ken says, "let me know if you ever need more."

She knows what that means. Ken's quirk, poison ivy, produces toxins in his bloodstream which makes him immune to all poisons, venoms, viruses, bacteria, and fungi. He is also able to manipulate external plant life to do his bidding to a certain extent. Ren's quirk probably actually resembles his older sister's more; instead of keratin, her hair and nails are made up of thorny vines (rather than Ren's leafy vines) which she can freely manipulate. Ren inherited Ken's immunity to toxins, but her blood does not react as his does outside of her body, so she would never have been able to create an antivenom by herself.

Those vials are precious.

"Like father like daughter, huh?" Ken chuckles, "I always knew you were going to save lives. I just thought that it would be at a hospital, with me. You always loved playing doctor when you were younger."

Ren chokes back a wet laugh. "I don't have the energy for that much school."

Perhaps she would have become a doctor in another life. She was heavily considering it last time, up until the day of the entrance exams and she decided that she couldn't just sit still and look pretty while her best friends risked their lives to protect their country.

"She inherited that from you, too," Kin chimes in playfully. "She didn't even do anything but sleep for the first like...five years of her life."

"Yes." Daitan agrees, "I would leave him home alone to babysit, and come home only to find that they had both slept the day away and neglected to eat."

"I asked for a cat, not a sister. But I guess it more or less ended up being the same thing." Kin laughs at Ren's annoyed expression. "Oh, don't look at me like that."

He tosses her a plastic bag which nails her right in the face. She sputters indignantly. The jerk didn't even bother to wrap his present. She sticks her hand inside and pulls out a white thigh-holster.

"I don't think any of us intended to match, but it's perfect for keeping your new knives and the first-aid kit, huh?"

She blinks at him slowly before his words sink in and she excitedly opens her not-fanny pack and shoves her newly-acquired tools in.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Daitan asks, "Try it on!"

She zips up the bag's many pockets and stands. Daitan helps her adjust all the straps. One strap goes all the way around her hip, while a second one branches from the original strap and crosses her crotch area as extra support for the bag's weight. The third and final strap wraps all the way around her right thigh.

"It fits perfectly," She shifts her weight onto her left leg as she twists her body and kicks her right leg into the air. The bag doesn't move.

"Fits like a glove!" Kin winks.

She wraps her arms around his middle and he rests his chin on her head. "You're the best big brother ever." She declares, "Thank you for staying with me after…" She swallows, "I was mean to you, but you kept my nightmares away."

"That's what big brothers are for," he squeezes her extra tight, "I'll always be here to yell at the monsters under your bed."

Just like when they were kids and they had just moved to this neighborhood. Ren hadn't ever had a room to herself before; the siblings shared at their old house. She had nightmares every night for the first week and Kin refused to leave even after they stopped. Daitan had to slowly wean the siblings apart, and even then, she would nearly have a heart attack every couple of weeks when she checked their bedrooms in the middle of the night, only to find the first room she checked empty.

"Catch after cake?" Ren asks.

Kin smiles. "Always down for a good game."

He didn't always use to be able to use her head so comfortably as a head-rest. When had she grown so tall?

"Bakugou Katsuki, why are you at my house at the ass-crack of dawn?" Ren squints at him as the rising sun burns her retinas.

"We're going to the gym." He says, and her brow twitches.

With a flat voice, she asks, "but why at six in the fucking morning instead of like, nine? It's summer."

"Gotta keep your body in the habit of waking up early, 'specially since you have a fucked up sleeping schedule," he shoves her to the side and enters her home without invitation. He throws himself on the couch and sprawls his body across it as if he owned the place. Her ginormous Great Pyrenees dog takes that as an invitation to cuddle and flops over the boy. Katsuki raises an eyebrow as he pets the mountain of fluff. "Well? Go get fuckin' changed!" He hisses, but he's careful not to be too loud. Kin's bedroom is adjacent to the living room. The baseball player rarely ever gets to sleep in when he lives at the team dorms since practices sometimes start as early as four in the morning, and on top of that, both he and Daitan are extremely light sleepers due to their fox mutations. Learning to be at an acceptable level of quiet was a hard-learned lesson the first few times Katsuki came over as a child.

She flips him off (he snickers) before turning around and dragging her feet as she goes back to her room.

When she comes back out, she discovers that he's helped himself to her kitchen. He sits at her dining table with a plate of breakfast snacks and a glass of milk.

"Wow." She sniffs the air once before turning to look at Sua (milk, in Vietnamese!) who's happily munching his own breakfast. "You even fed my dog, but you didn't make me anything?"

"You have opposable thumbs," Katsuki says. Also, he knows that she wouldn't have eaten anything anyway, even if he did make her something.

She glares . "C'mon," he tosses her an apple after downing his milk, "you took too long, we gotta go to the gym." He places his dirty dishes in the sink.

"I barely took five minutes!" She argues, "How did you even eat that much in that amount of time?"

"I ain't a weakling." He grabs her by the wrist and drags her out of the house, grabbing her house keys from the hook by the door on their way out.

Ren snatches the keys from his sticky fingers and shoves it into her drawstring bag. "Did you move in when I looked away, or something?"

"Drama queen." He mutters under his breath, to which she smacks his shoulder— which she regrets. Immediately. His shoulder is as hard as a rock and her palms are still healing from their previous training session, making them extremely tender to the touch. She hisses in pain and he snorts. "Acting like a damn cat."

"You woke me up at the ass-crack of dawn, and you expect me to be happy? I'm grumpy even after nine whole hours of sleep let alone two ."

"Not my fuckin' problem," He sneers, "go to bed earlier then, Frankenstein."

She gives him the stink eye. "Shut the fuck up, Blasty!" She would if she could! Not everyone can be like Mr. Ass-In-Bed-By-8:30.

"Entrance exams are coming up," he changes the subject, "I'm fine, but your stamina fucking sucks. And you're too damn skinny. You trynna die?"

She sighs. She expected this conversation to happen. Her middle-school diet isn't really one that she's proud of. One, maybe one meal and a snack a day; and two of those days a week, she eats either instant ramen or taco bell rather than cook something healthy. Sometimes she doesn't eat at all for a day or two, until Katsuki registers the fact that her already milk-white skin is extra pale and he force feeds her. Daitan is too busy running the bakery to have the time to cook something at home every single day, Ken is banned from the kitchen (plus, he doesn't usually get home until really late anyway, and he eats all of his meals at the hospital's cafeteria), and Kin is a decent cook, but he's only home on the weekends. Ren's good at cooking; she's just lazy, and sometimes (all the time) she gets so caught up doing her own thing that she just forgets to eat. Or she's too lazy to get up, so she just ignores her growling stomach until she's not hungry anymore.

It's not healthy. She knows.

And Katsuki's also right about her quirk. Each of her tendons is a vine; thus, the more muscle mass she has, the more vines she has access to. The fact that she's currently pretty thin, and that she loses even more muscle mass each time Katsuki blows up one of her vines before she is able to safely retreat it into her body is really dangerous. She could actually die if she doesn't bulk up.

"I left a note for all of your family members to make sure you eat at least three meals a day, five if you can manage without puking, and on days that none of them are home-" which is almost every day, he knows this, "you come to my house. The hag already knows the deal, so either she or I will come and blow your door off of its fucking hinges if you try to hide."

Ren stares at him in horror. It's not that she can't eat a lot; she'd finish off an entire buffet if she had the time and energy, she just doesn't eat often. She'd prefer if she were slowly introduced to the new schedule Katsuki has planned for her, but she knows that her newly set meal times are effective immediately and not up for debate.

"You know one of the reasons you're always fuckin' tired is because you never eat, right?" He asks her seriously.

She knows. That's why she worked so hard over the span of years to build all of her strength up. She originally didn't 'bulk' up until her senior year of high-school, and now Katsuki expects her to look even better than she did then in the span of a few months.

"Gym every freakin' morning and spar every evening while you eat five meals a day until you look like she-hulk." He summarizes.

"I'm never going to look like she-hulk!" She huffs. It's literally impossible.

"Then you keep this up until you fuckin' look like Mirko. She fights more with her legs anyway— like you."

Well, she can't exactly throw punches when her hands are in a constant state of literally shredded, can she? But she knows he's got a point.

"I memorized her training regimen. Looked it up in the fan hero-database."

There are two hero-databases. One for public use, and the other for professionals only.

Ren tiredly drags her palm down the middle of her face as they finally enter through the glass doors of their favorite gym. "I'm guessing predominantly heavy-weight training, with intermittent bursts of cardio?"

Weight training she can do. Lifting weights is the perfect stress reliever. She absolutely detests cardio.

"We'll alternate between running and kick-boxing." Katsuki smirks.

He's been into fitness since he was a toddler. With Mitsuki being a model and all, it was important to her that he kept up with her healthy habits. Between the two of them, Ren has no choice but to get fit.

Their steps are in sync as they approach U.A.'s gargantuan gates.

They may be best friends, but at this moment, they are competitors. They agreed beforehand that they would split up once they entered the exam hall.

"Oi," Katsuki says after having stayed quiet during the majority of their trip, "I won't fucking lose. Not to you." Or Deku goes unsaid.

"Hah?" The competitive fire in her ignites and she tilts her head back, eyes narrowing as she puts her hand on her hip. "Well one of us has to, and it sure as hell ain't me."

He snorts. "You sound like me."

They straighten their postures and walk through the gates with their heads held high, chins jutted up, oozing pure confidence.

Neither one of them has seen Izuku in weeks. She's excited to see how much he's changed; if he's any different this time around than he was before.

A/N: Ren's eating habits are based on my own. Please don't roast me lol.

I mashed the original first two chapters together, and now they're chapter one.

I'm actually really sad because this is the fic that I want to write the most, but it's getting the least amount of traction. I feel like it's super hard for bnha fics to get attention? Sometimes I find really good ones with like...barely any kudos or followers (depending on the site.)

Of course, I'm writing this for my own enjoyment; it just feels nice whenever other people enjoy my stories as much as I do. Even my old discontinued fic from years ago gets notifications still, especially recently since everyone's at home, but this one's stayed pretty stagnant ; A ;