Hello, friends, and welcome to Chapter Two! I admit, I'm a little nervous about where the characters are headed from here, but… I guess the best I can do is put it out there and hope you all enjoy it! Please don't hesitate to read and review, I greatly appreciate any and all feedback!

Disclaimer: All characters owned by Kohei Horikoshi

Chapter Two

"I… you, um… what?"

Midoriya's voice came out garbled; Momo could barely piece together what he'd said. She rose, her eyes examining his features: his face was a shade of reddish pink she hadn't previously known existed, and was shining with sweat—whether this was from his embarrassment or his earlier training with Bakugo, she didn't know. His eyes were wide, but bright, and his eyebrows were pushing into the green hair matted to his forehead. He had a white-knuckle grip on the notebook she'd returned, his right hand pulled tight around the upper corner as he hugged it to his chest, the scars there nearly invisible from the tightness of his hold.

Momo's eyes paused on those scars, remembering how they'd felt on her fingertips as she'd been tying his bandages; rough lines of skin on either side of his palm, a marked contrast to the hand around them. His fingers, as well, were gnarled, damaged… healed, and functional, but still distinct from his other hand.

They were a reminder of his determination. His unbreakable drive to better himself. One of the main reasons she needed him.

She reoriented herself, and tried to push down the flush rising in her face. Yes, she'd had to grab his hand, but it was only to bandage his wounds.

"Midoriya," Momo started again, closing her eyes and placing a hand over her heart. "I would like to ask for your help."

Repeating herself seemed to snap Midoriya out of his embarrassment. "You, uh, I mean…" he looked left and right, as if he expected someone else to be watching them from the shadows. "What could you need my help with?"

Now it was her turn to become flustered. She hated this. She hated the fact that she couldn't help but compare herself to her classmates, to find herself wanting. She hated feeling like she needed help.

But she couldn't think of any other way to improve. She needed fresh eyes.

"I… feel like I'm falling behind," Momo said, her voice, though barely above a whisper, echoing in the concrete chamber. "After our final exams last week, I just… I saw so much improvement from everyone!" Her face fell. "Except for myself."

Midoriya's mouth hung open slightly, his eyebrows knitted together tight. "What…?"

"The test was so difficult for me! I barely managed to make it through!"

For their final exam of the year, the students of Class 1-A had been put into one-on-two battles against their classmates, specifically those who held considerable advantages over their peers in terms of Quirks. The solo student's objective was to find a way to escape, or to survive fifteen minutes, by which point, it was determined, help would have arrived. The pair of "villains" simply had to capture their opponent before the time limit was up.

Momo had been set against Iida and Kirishima; the former due to his speed, the idea being that he would be able to capture her before she had enough time to create anything that could slow him down, and the latter because his Hardening Quirk would allow him to plow his way through any traps she might set if Iida should fail.

The only reason she'd passed was because neither of them had anticipated her hiding down a long corridor; Kirishima had gone first, as planned, but Momo's first trap was a gas grenade filled with tranquilizer. While the filters in Iida's helmet had protected him, Kirishima collapsed rather quickly. The rest of Momo's traps, however, had all been designed to prevent Iida from using his speed; the result was that, by the time Iida reached the room where Momo was hiding, there was barely a minute left on the timer, and she managed to hold him off with some well-placed riot shields and her bo staff.

It was not what she would have considered a decisive victory. If it had been a real fight, she never would have been able to escape that room.

Midoriya, on the other hand, had been put up against Bakugo and Todoroki, objectively the three strongest students in the class. He'd forced Todoroki to keep his focus on the exits by using his enhanced speed to run between the three different doors; finally, with two minutes remaining, Todoroki froze all the exits, and with Bakugo constantly chasing him down, Midoriya was left with no choice but to meet them out in the open.

He fought them to a standstill. With thirty seconds remaining Todoroki managed to freeze his arms and torso, and it looked like he was about to lose. Bakugo moved in to bind his legs and secure their victory, but instead Midoriya goaded him into launching another explosion, the heat from which weakened the ice enough for Midoriya to break free. With a final shout and a green flash of energy, he kicked out, throwing a blast of air down the street, and sending both of his opponents flying. The buzzer sounded just as Bakugo and Todoroki had been recovering.

Momo shook her head, trying to relieve herself of the memories of her performance. She just needed to be better.

"Yaoyorozu…" she heard Midoriya say her name, but the sound didn't fully register.

Hot tears stung in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. "That's why… I…"

"You were amazing…"

"I need… what?" she said, snapping out of her reverie. She looked back to Midoriya, and saw that his face was set, his eyebrows low above his eyes, his mouth downturned in a slight frown. He'd carried the same look both before they'd rescued Bakugo and just before the start of their provisional licensing exam.

"You were amazing!" Midoriya repeated, his face brightening with energy. "The way you knew they would send Kirishima in first, so you thought of something that could get past his Hardening… it was awesome! And then making sure Iida kept tripping himself up getting down the corridor; it was a perfect strategy!"

Momo shook her head again. "No, if it had been a real fight and not an exam—"

"But it wasn't!" Midoriya said. "You acted within the parameters provided! I'm sure if the situation had been different, you would have come up with a different solution!"

"I'm not!" Momo almost shouted, and immediately caught herself. Midoriya was taken aback by her outburst; she saw him retreat from her, as though her words had pushed him back a step.

With a breath, Momo tried to regain her composure. She closed her eyes and clutched a fist tight over her chest, pausing to choose her next words carefully. "You are very kind, Midoriya," she said, her eyes opening again, not to look at him, but at the stone beneath their feet. "But I have trouble believing you." Her head snapped up, and she looked in his eyes. A bright shade of green. She remembered reading somewhere that green eyes were a rarity in the pre-Quirk era.

Midoriya looked away first, down to the concrete that seemed to be so interesting to them both. "I don't know how I can be of help to you," he said, the air in his voice so light it pushed away any possibility of echo.

Momo took a step forward, bridging some of the space between them. "My Quirk…" she started, twisting her fingertips in the grips of her other hand, "It should be versatile. But I feel like I always end up relying on others." She nodded toward the notebook in his arms. "I was hoping you might have some insight. I don't know anyone else who's studied Quirks and their applications as much as you have."

"I—wait," he said, looking up into her eyes. "Are you… you mean you didn't…?"

"Read your notebook?" Momo asked, slightly taken aback that he would consider it. "No, of course not. I would never invade someone's privacy like that."

His face fell. "I'm sorry," he said. "I just… I guess I just thought—"

"It's alright," Momo said, shaking her head at him. "I understand."

Heartbeats passed between them; slow at first, then faster, pulsing at the base of her neck. Midoriya reached up and scratched the back of his head. She tried not to notice the size of his arm.

"So, um…" she said, stamping down on the heat rising in her face. Instead, she tapped the spine of the notebook. "Anything in there that might be able to help me?"

Midoriya turned a shade of red that, when contrasted with his green hair, made him most closely resemble a tomato. Momo found herself unable stop the light chuckle that grew in her chest as she smiled down at him. "Ah, well, uh, not—not this one, necessarily, but I…" he grinned back at her, a genuine look, and one that she found warm. "I might have a few ideas."

A squeal escaped Momo's lips, and she clapped her hands together before placing them to her sides and bowing to him slightly. "Thank you so much, Midoriya! I greatly appreciate it!"

"You're welcome, Yaoyorozu!" he replied, scratching at the back of his head again. "Honestly, I'm looking forward to it. Your Quirk has so many potential applications, after all."

"I'm glad to see you're taking this seriously," she said, a grin pulling at the edges of her voice. She gestured to the door, taking a step in that direction. "Shall we?"

Midoriya followed, and they exited the gym together. The trek back to the dorms would take them several minutes, and Momo was loathe to let it pass between them in silence. There was something she had been wanting to know anyway. "Midoriya," she said, her voice uncertain. "May I ask you something?"

He smiled at her again. "Of course," he said.

"Your notebooks," she said, "Are they just your notes on heroes?"

A finger scratched at his cheek. "Well, not entirely," he replied. "But pretty much, yeah."

"How long have you been keeping them?"

"Since I learned how to write."

Momo took a breath. That surely couldn't have been long after he'd discovered his Quirk.

"I've wanted to be a hero my whole life," he continued, his voice low as they walked. "But my Quirk… it manifested a little bit later than most people, and… well, you saw what it could do to my body." He scratched at the back of his head again, and a small laugh escaped his chest. "The first time I used it, I shattered my arm."

Momo gasped, her hand flying in front of her mouth. "What? How?"

Midoriya laughed again, the freckles on his cheeks glowing pink. "I was playing All Might."

She laughed with him. "I feel like I should've seen that coming. How did it happen?"

"I was maybe five?" he started. His eyes and face lit up as he told her the story. "I was in the small yard behind my apartment, wearing an All Might hoodie, and I was pretending I was fighting a villain. I rushed forward with all my childhood strength, acted like I was charging up a Detroit Smash, and, well…"

Green lightning danced around Midoriya's arm briefly, then carried down to his fingers. He raised his hand, his middle finger held down by his thumb, before he released them both. The grass and trees beside the walkway blew sideways for a moment from the strength of the straight-line winds that blasted from his fingertips. Momo had to tuck several errant strands of black hair back behind her ear.

He glanced back at her. "It was only about that strong, but at that age I was lucky my arm didn't fly off."

Momo stared at him. It had been so long since they'd seen Midoriya hurting himself with his Quirk, it was difficult to remember just how much power he really had.

How much power he had to keep contained.

"Did you keep trying over the years?" she asked.

He shook his head. "The doctors told me not to," he replied. "It was too dangerous. After that day…"

Tears shone in his eyes, briefly, before he pinched the bridge of his nose. "I lived my life Quirkless."

Momo knew what that meant. She might have attended a prestigious, expensive private middle school, but there were still Quirkless kids; few and far between, but they were there all the same. And she'd seen how they were treated. It was subtler, in her school, but she'd noticed how they all would eat lunch together at the same table, regardless of year. Or how Quirkless kids always seemed to be the last ones chosen for gym activities, or to represent the class by the teachers.

She couldn't imagine what it might have been like in a public school.

"Which is kind of where the notebooks came in," he continued. She was thankful that he'd changed the subject; she knew she wanted to say something about his past, some words of comfort, but she didn't know what they could be. So instead she filed the information away, just grateful to be learning something about her classmate.

They paused outside the door to the dorms long enough for him to open it for her, to which she nodded her thanks. "I wanted to learn as much as I could about Quirks and heroes, and I took notes as I studied," he said as they proceeded into the kitchen, where Momo took a bottle of water from the refrigerator and handed it to him, grabbing an orange juice for herself. They seated themselves on stools around the island in the center.

"I can't imagine those early ones were very detailed," she said, opening the bottle and taking a drink.

Midoriya chuckled into his water, and had to wipe some away from his mouth with his forearm. "No, they weren't," he said. "I'm pretty sure the first one is just a bunch of crayon drawings of All Might. But I wanted to keep them all." His eyes became distant, a small smile crossing his features. "They're good memories."

Momo noted how sad his smile seemed. She imagined, and worried, that his memories of studying heroes, of pursuing his dream of becoming a hero himself, might be some of the only good ones he had.

For herself, her entire childhood had been filled with good memories. Loving parents, great friends at school… in fact, her only troublesome memories were ones here at U.A. Ever since she'd lost to Tokoyami in their first sports festival, she'd been doubting herself. She knew her Quirk was strong, or at least it should be; it's only limitations were the physical barriers of the universe and her own imagination. But somehow she was stuck. Whenever she found herself in a fight, she would end up making defensive options for her friends, shields or barricades, and then maybe a cannon or her bo staff. She was rarely if ever proactive, and almost never went on the offensive.

She kept relying on others and their Quirks to get her out of trouble. And it was time that stopped.

If that meant having Midoriya help her come up with some new ideas, then so be it. Maybe it would mean that, in the heat of battle, she might be able to be a bit more creative. She was called Creati, after all.

"So," she said, finishing her drink, "When would you like to get started?"

Midoriya looked down at the table, the only sound in the room for a few moments the hum of the refrigerator. "Give me a little while to think of something," he said finally, his eyes locking on her own. "Would tomorrow morning be okay?"

"Yes! That's perfect, Midoriya, thank you!" On reflex Momo grabbed his hand and squeezed, and felt the pressure in her fingers as he did the same. She smiled at him, a gesture she hoped conveyed just how grateful she was.

A breath passed before Momo realized where her hands were. A small squeak escaped her throat, and she snatched her hands back as though his were the eyes of a hot stove. Midoriya, for his part, just kept growing redder in the face; he was giving the fruit bowl on the counter a thousand-yard stare, as though the assortment of grapes, spotted bananas, and various colors of apple held the key to the secrets of the universe.

"Well, um…" she said, stepping around the kitchen island. She paused in the archway, turning back into the room. Midoriya was still contemplating the mysteries of the fruit bowl. "Thank you again," she said with a polite nod. "I suppose I'll meet you in the morning?"

The question seemed to break him out of his trance, as his body visibly snapped to attention upon being addressed. "Oh! Uh, yeah! Yes!" he said, nodding at her with such speed and severity that she feared for the integrity of his neck. Still, she felt a smile inch its way onto her face, and a hand moved up to cover it. "I'll meet you in the common room. Is nine o'clock okay?"

Momo's smile stayed as she tilted her head. "Yes. I'll see you in the morning." She bowed again, her eyes closed. "Good night, Midoriya."

"Good night, Yaoyorozu," he replied with a bow in kind, as much as he could manage without falling off his stool.

As she walked toward the elevator, Momo couldn't stop grinning. Elation like she'd never know coursed through her, tingling into her fingertips. She almost skipped to the elevator, but managed to keep her composure. She passed Mina Ashido on the way, who extended an invitation to join the rest of the girls for a movie night; Momo politely declined, however, citing the need to rise early the next morning.

Tomorrow. The elevator doors closed before her, the electric hum of the machine melding with her thoughts. No more standing still. Tomorrow I finally start taking steps forward again.