As Ochako scrolled through theory after theory on her phone, she couldn't help but feel terrible. A growing pit of guilt was beginning to fill her stomach, and it just wasn't going to go away until she could discuss things properly with him.

The sound of a door swinging open didn't actually do much to alleviate her troubles.

"Sorry I'm late, got caught up by some reporters and-" Izuku stopped. He took notice of the look across his wife's face, and slowly closed the door behind him. "What's wrong?"

"It's..." Ochako paused. She knew saying it was nothing wouldn't work. Saying it wasn't important or that she was simply being stupid certainly wouldn't convince him of either notion. Quite unfortunately for her, her only recourse was the truth. "Well, you know that rankings are coming up soon."

"Yeah," Izuku replied nervously. "Are you worried you're going to drop? Because you've been doing great lately, and we're not exactly hurting for money-"

"It's not me. I don't really care that much." Ochako had been sitting comfortably around the high teens to mid-twenties the last few times the Hero Chart had come out, and that was perfectly fine. Rescue heroes were well-loved, but didn't capture the public eye to the same degree as heroes who fought villains directly.

"Is... is it me?"

"God no, are you crazy?!" Ochako replied with a laugh. "You're the Second Symbol of Peace. You're going to be Number One with a bullet, no question."

"Then who-?"

"Yaomomo."

Izuku's face grew puzzled. "I haven't heard much about any public distrust in Creati lately. Last I checked her fans seem as happy as ever for her. Especially with-"

"The baby," the brunette finished. The Everything Hero and the Half-and-Half Hero had recently gone public with the fact that they were pregnant with their first child. A fact that Izuku had been well aware of after Todoroki had called him about how he feared he wouldn't be able to serve as a proper father. Izuku simply pointed out he had a great set of guidelines as to what not to do.

"I mean... I guess that's not unusual," Izuku reasoned. "Heroines who become pregnant have to take a good deal of time off or be relegated to desk work for maternity leave. Yaomomo likely even more so since her quirk requires her to use up her extra amino acids, which she wouldn't want to do for risk of harming the child. And since she wouldn't be on active duty for the next few months her ranking would likely drop, but given the support in the hopes for a healthy child-"

"Deku."

"Ah! Rambling, sorry!"

"She probably won't drop much," Ochako agreed. "Current theory is she'll drop from 5 to 7. Meanwhile Shoto'll get bumped up from 3 to 2."

"Kacchan'll love that," Izuku noted. The two had been jockeying for second for years now, though Bakugou to a more fervent degree. "So, what's the issue?"

"I just..." Ochako groaned. "It's frustrating. He gets a boost thanks to everyone congratulating him on the kid, and people are saying she should retire for the same reason."

Comprehension dawned on the Number One Hero. "You're upset at the dichotomy."

"Well, yeah!" she exclaimed. "Creati's the highest ranked female hero, and suddenly now that she's gonna be a mom, everyone wants her to stop? Being a mom's just gonna make her more badass! When we were kids, none of the top-ranked heroines were moms, and... I just..."

Izuku put a hand on his wife's shoulder. "This is personal, isn't it?"

Ochako sniffled a bit. "I don't..."

"Don't want... kids?"

"That's not..." the gravity master wrapped her husband in her arms. "I love you. I'd love to raise a family with you, but... I don't wanna stop being a hero."

"No one's making you stop. I don't think Yaomomo's going to stop-"

"But everyone'll say I should!" she complained, tears beginning to form. "Headlines saying I'm a terrible mom for not putting my kids first. The kids wondering why I'm not home. And even if I do retire, I'll still feel like I'm letting the world down, 'cause if there's some situation where I could've saved someone, then..."

"It's okay, it's okay..." her husband reassured, stroking her hair in comfort. "If you don't want to give up being a hero, you don't have to. And if that means you don't want kids..."

"But I do!" she explained. "I wanna see the kinda person we'd make. I wanna teach 'em right from wrong, help 'em figure out their powers if they have any. I wanna be a mom and I wanna be a hero. I..." Her tears began to overflow. "I wanna do both. But I don't think I can."

"Hey, hey," Izuku whispered, slightly breaking away, guiding his wife to the couch, where the two could sit face-to-face. "Who do you think you are?"

The tears slightly trailed off. "Huh?"

"You're Uravity," Izuku reminded her. "You've saved more people than I can count. There are little kids all across the country, the world, who wanna be just like you. You're the woman who helped put down some of the nastiest villains the League has ever thrown our way. You're the woman who took a huge beating in her first-year sports festival, and came back swinging next year to take silver. You're the woman who first showed me that I was capable of saving someone. You're the woman who helped me have faith in myself. If the entire world says you can't be a hero and a mom, then there's no doubt in my mind that you'll prove them wrong."

"Deku..."

"You used to think you couldn't be a hero and be in love, too, and, well..."

She smiled, and wrapped her husband in a far warmer hug than the last. "You always know what to say."

"I support 'Maternal Hero: Uravity', if that's what you want to be. Anyone who says you can't gets a Detroit Smash to the face," the green-haired man continued.

"Try not to do that," she joked. "If you start punching reporters, your rank might drop, and I don't know if we can afford a kid if both of us start losing money."

"You're the boss."

"And don't you forget it." She punctuated the remark with a kiss. Said kiss began to trail away from the lips and across the cheek. "You know-" *smooch* "I didn't ask-" *smooch* "do you-" *smooch* "want kids?"

Growing increasingly flustered as the array of kisses began to trail down his neck, Izuku asked, "If I say 'yes' does that mean we start-" *gulp* "now?"

"If you really mean it, then yes."

"I want kids a lot. I want, like, two or three," he admitted.

Ochako smirked. "Then we definitely need to get started."