It's time for a fight and an awkward teenage conversation!
IX. Back to Basics Part II
Sometimes Izuku really, really hated his tendency to mutter his thoughts out loud. Sure, it really helped him collect his thoughts when taking notes for hero analyses, but out of all the things that he could have said, it had to be the single most awkward thing ever.
When All Might began announcing what it was that the class was going to be doing in the mock city, he felt an overwhelming urge to just walk up and hug his mentor, along with thanking every single god he currently knew the names of at the top of his head. Honestly, the man couldn't have chosen a better time to give Izuku the opportunity he needed to discreetly inch away from what was sure to be an awkward conversation with Ochako.
Why couldn't he have just kept his damn mouth shut? Instead of just thanking her for how she liked his costume, he ended up making her uncomfortable, just like Mineta had the day before. No doubt Katsuki was thinking of a way to make fun of him for 'pussying out', but what else could he have done? Tell a girl he had only known for two days in total that he had a weird crush on her?
He'd rather be Quirkless.
When All Might announced that they would be partnered up through the use of lottery, he almost breathed out a sigh of relief when he realized that he would have a lot of time to prepare himself for the inevitable conversation with Ochako. "However, before we continue," the hero began. "I must note that since there's an odd number of you, one of the teams will have to have three people, so I will give the person who does not get picked for a team the option of which one to join." Reaching into a small box, he pulled out two small slips of paper, where he began to read them out loud. "And for Team A, we have...Midoriya Izuku and Uraraka Ochako!"
Izuku sighed as he suppressed a groan. 'Why must you do this to me, Kami-sama?' This was the absolute last thing he wanted to happen. All he wanted was to have the rest of the day to regret everything in his life before walking with Ochako, Tenya, and Katsuki after school, but now it looked like he only had mere minutes.
One by one, All Might continued to announce the names for each team, until there was only one person left who had not been called. "Hm. Well, looks like you get to pick which team to join, young Tokoyami!"
Fumikage paused for a moment to consider his options. While he was interested in seeing Midoriya's power in a fight and comparing Gold Experience's strength with Dark Shadow's, he had only known about the other boy's power for a day, not to mention there would be other times to confirm if there was any truth to Jōshirō's stories. "I will refrain from making a decision for now, Sensei."
All Might nodded. "Fair enough, but if you haven't chosen a team yet by the time the last two teams go up against each other, then I will have to pick for you."
"Of course."
"Do you have a plan in mind, Bakugō-kun?" Tenya asked, as he watched Katsuki pace back and forth in front of the false bomb they would be defending.
Katsuki grunted in reply as he continued his pacing. He didn't like admitting it, but when it came to a close-quarters battle, Izuku would always have the upper hand. It was bad enough that Gold Experience was invisible to everyone but its user, but just about every time they tried to spar with each other, all he had to do was use that damn Life Giver to stun him and win the fight, until Toshinori asked him to stop relying on it.
He glanced towards the large grenade-like gauntlets on his wrist. Thankfully, even if he ended up outmatched, at least he had some counter-measures Izuku's dominance in close range. It was a good thing he didn't have One For All, at least. Otherwise, Deku would have been virtually unstoppable.
He snorted as the irony of the nickname wasn't lost on him. While the word itself was generally used as an insult, he started calling Izuku that when they were four because it really was the other way of reading the kanji of his name, and he was far from useless. Where Gold Experience lacked in raw power (Katsuki had him beat there, at least), it more than made up for in its sheer versatility. Due to growing up together, he knew many of Izuku's weaknesses, and unfortunately, he knew his as well.
"All right, Iida, I've got something," he began, as he explained the plan he came with that would best be able to deal with Izuku and Ochako's Quirks.
"So," began Ochako, who was looking up at the building that she and Izuku were tasked to infiltrate. "What do you think they'll be doing, Deku-kun?" When she didn't hear a response, she turned to her side. "...Deku-kun?"
Izuku, meanwhile, was in deep thought as he thought of a strategy against the defending team, with a hand to his chin. "Kacchan and Iida-kun's Quirks are reliant on close range, so they'll have to get close in order to be effective, unless Kacchan has something planned for his lack of range, but knowing him, he'd try to play it safe, unless he wants to risk damaging part of the building..." He looked towards Ochako. "Uraraka-san," he began. "Their best bet is to try and split us up. When it comes to one-on-one battles, I'll be able to win easily, so they might try to-"
"Villain team!" interrupted the booming voice of the number one hero. "The time for the planning phase has now expired. Hero team! Your mission starts...NOW!"
'Well there goes the plan,' Izuku thought, as he and Ochako walked through the front door of the building.
"Deku-kun."
"Yeah?"
"Let's...let's talk later, okay?
"Uh, s-sure."
It was quiet as Izuku and Ochako slowly walked through the first and second floors of the practice building. A bit too quiet, if he had to be honest. By the time they reached the third, his suspicion was now starting to grow into paranoia. Standing at the top of the stairs, he held out a hand behind him and towards Ochako, in a gesture for her to stay where is she was.
"What is it?" she asked in a whisper. "Did you hear someone?"
Without a reply, Izuku pulled a brooch off of his chest, before throwing it to the ground ahead of him with a clatter. A short moment later, the brooch then transformed into a common garter snake, which he commanded to search for any nearby heat signatures. After about a minute had passed, it began hissing loudly, and he walked towards the edge of the room to see Tenya casually standing there.
"Well, well, well," he began, sarcastically clapping in sync with the greeting. "I'd say 'welcome', but I'm sure you've no patience for such pleasantries. I would congratulate you on deducing our locations, but I'm sure you're not the type for such pleasantries." Neither Izuku nor Ochako said anything in reply, causing Tenya to dramatically sigh. "And still, you don't speak? Very well. I will personally see to it that this building marks your final resting place, hero."
Izuku only had a split second to stick out a hand in front of Ochako and command Gold Experience to push them away as hard as it could, before Katsuki suddenly shot out from a nearby wall with his Quirk activated, having made contact with the area the two had just been occupying, causing the powdered debris to kick up and create a smokescreen.
"Uraraka-san, are you okay?" Izuku asked urgently, quickly standing up to defend his teammate.
"Yeah, I'm fine!" Ochako replied. "But how do we get past them?"
Izuku quickly scanned the grid-like structure of his surroundings before answering her. "I'm going to try and distract them, and I want you to try to see if you can flank around and go up the stairs."
"Got it!" With that, she went off towards the side of the room, leaving Izuku in the middle, as he dropped into a fighting stance in anticipation of the next attack. A few moments later, the smoke cleared to reveal Katsuki displaying a manic grin on his face.
"Fight me, if you're ready to die."
Izuku braced himself as the other boy ran towards him with his hand outstretched, commanding Gold Experience to stand in front of him and stop him in his tracks. Before he could attack, however, Katsuki shot out his other hand and fired off an explosion, changing his momentum and allowing him to vault over Izuku. Quickly turning around, he saw Katsuki pull the pin on the large grenade-like gauntlet on his arm, which triggered an extreme blast of energy to erupt from it, and was quickly destroying everything in its path.
Gold Experience yelled out a cry as it threw a fist to match the blast. "MUDA!"
Elsewhere, Ochako was busy running up the stairs towards the fifth floor, where the bomb the villains were tasked on guarding was supposed to be housed. When she finally reached the floor, she looked around in confusion at seeing nothing but an empty room. "C'mon, where is it, where is it...?" she muttered, as she walked around the room.
This wasn't making any sense. Was the bomb actually something that was small, and All Might didn't tell them on purpose? Or did they actually end up moving it to a different room?
Hearing a snort behind her, Ochako whipped around to see Tenya casually standing in the doorway. "Did you seriously think that we would leave the objective unguarded? If you wish to help your partner, then you will face me." He began to slowly walk forward, causing her to instinctively take a step back and look at her surroundings. Remembering his speed-oriented Quirk, Ochako knew that simply rushing to the doorway before he could would obviously fail, but seeing the large window to her left was starting to give her an idea.
Tenya, however, noticed her movements and quickly came to the same conclusion. 'She can't be serious,' he thought, assuming that she was only trying to come up with any solutions to escape her current predicament.
But it seemed Ochako really was serious, as she made a break towards the window, before jumping out of it. Tenya let out a rare curse, as he activated his Quirk in the hopes of intercepting her. Unfortunately, he was too far away, and was now looking down to see Ochako floating above the ground. "R-release!" she faintly cried out, before dropping to the ground and running back inside the building.
Tenya immediately turned around to make a mad dash back down to the third floor, as he put his hand to his ear. "Bakugō-kun! Uraraka-kun's figured it out and is making her way back to your location!"
Izuku cursed as he threw out a Gold Experience-enhanced fist, only for Katsuki to dodge it again and send a blast to his side. He knew that the other boy was well aware that he would end up winning the fight if he managed to get close, which was why Katsuki kept his distance and was dodging all of his attacks, almost always countering with his own, which the golden being thankfully kept tanking or parrying.
However, he wasn't sure if he would be able to keep this up. The ten months spent training with All Might (alongside cleaning the beach) was largely spent sparring to develop the use of their Quirks, and he had admittedly gotten lazy more than once, confident that Gold Experience would be able to take care of things for him. And now it seemed that mindset was coming to bite him in the ass.
Eventually, Katsuki ceased his attack and was now standing a few meters away, giving Izuku a few precious moments to rest. "Damn..." he panted, as he struggled to stay standing. "You...sure are relentless...Kacchan..."
Katsuki let out a low chuckle in response. "That's the point, Deku."
Izuku's eyes narrowed at the other boy's words. It made perfect sense for Katsuki to fight him instead of Ochako, considering that both of their Quirks were oriented towards combat and that they knew how each other fought the best, but seeing as how there's been no announcement of Ochako being captured or the bomb being secured...it meant that there had to be something else going on.
As if on cue, he heard Ochako's voice in his communicator. "Deku-kun! The bomb's on the third floor!"
Izuku's eyes widened as the reasoning for Tenya and Katsuki's attempt at an ambush wasn't on the top floor was made clear. But if the bomb was near his location, then where...
Katsuki noticed Izuku's posture shift into that of someone getting ready to run. "Now, Iida!"
Izuku whipped around, issuing a command to Gold Experience to protect him, but Tenya had managed to slam into him first, and was now quickly pushing him into the wall. Imbuing his entire body with the golden being's and bracing himself, Izuku hissed as his back impacted with the wall, making a small crater. But before he could attack in retaliation, he paused when he noticed that there was something oddly bright that stuck out like a sore thumb.
Tenya had wrapped the capture tape around his arm during his tackle.
"Nice work, Glasses," Katsuki said, who was casually jogging up to them. "Now, all we need to do is find-"
"The bomb has been defused!" boomed the voice of All Might. "Hero Team...WINS!"
After an anticlimactic ending to what was quite the decisive showdown, the two teams were met with cheers and applause from the majority of their classmates. When prompted by All Might, Ochako explained that she had waited for several seconds inside the first floor of the building, before floating herself up to the fourth floor, much to Tenya's chagrin. Although, he ended up being given MVP due to his diligently following Katsuki's plan, as well as not making decisions that would have set off an actual, fully armed bomb.
The rest of the class period passed by with the rest of the teams facing off against each other, and ended with Fumikage Tokoyami joining Momo Yaoyorozu and Tsuyu Asui's team, versus Rikido Satō and Kōji Kōda.
'I go to die,' Izuku thought, as he awkwardly walked with Ochako outside room 1-A and towards U.A.'s main entrance, with Katsuki and Tenya trailing behind from a distance.
"Tell me again why we're following them, Bakugō-kun?" Tenya asked, as he watched Katsuki 'discreetly' walking around, like in those spy movies he used to watch with his family when he was younger.
"Because I wanna see how this goes, that's why," replied the other boy, who immediately pushed Tenya behind the corner of a nearby building when he saw the pair finally stop walking.
"So..." Ochako began, as she turned to face Izuku in an attempt to ease into the conversation.
"...so..."
"That was a pretty eventful day, don't you think?"
"Yeah...it really was."
It was an immediate failure, as the two teenagers knew the real reason they were standing outside of the school's main auditorium, with a tense silence slowly filling the air between them, and Ochako knew then that it was either now or never. "Deku-kun," she said softly.
"Hm?"
Ochako cleared her throat. "Did...did you really mean what you said back there? That I looked..." She left the word hanging in the air, but it didn't take two brain cells to figure out what it was.
'Shit.' If he denied it right here and then, it was sure to do so much more damage as opposed to just admitting it, and he wasn't enough of a jerk to dodge the question and pretend that his mother was calling him. "I..." he began, before stopping himself and sighing. "...Yes, I thought you were...pretty...when I saw you back there..." he awkwardly trailed off.
Ochako, however, was in denial. "It's because of how my hero costume looked, right?" she found herself asking, just barely loud enough for Izuku to hear her. "You just thought it looked good." Or in reality, he was actually just looking at another girl and was just trying to be nice. Surely there was no way a boy like him would ever think of her like that.
...Right?
At hearing her words, Izuku felt a burst of courage swell up inside of him, and he doubled down on his answer. "No. It wasn't just because of that," he began, shaking his head. "I...I actually said that you looked gorgeous." He paused to consider his next words, before taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. "And the truth is...you're one of the prettiest girls I've ever met."
Ochako was floored as she took in Izuku's words. Her entire life, she had thought she was just plain-looking, and that her parents' words saying otherwise were just to make her feel better. Not to mention how much her confidence dropped from the bullying she went through because of her family's financial situation. Because of that, she was never the recipient of a boy's confession during middle school (not intentionally, at least), but she wondered if this was what the popular girls would regularly experience. And while she hadn't known him for long, Izuku was this brave, kind boy who wore his heart on his sleeve and risked his life to save her from the titan-sized zero-pointer.
He could do so much better than just settling with her.
Even if she wanted to try and see if anything could happen between them, she couldn't forget the reason why she wanted to become a hero in the first place. She wanted to tell him 'thank you, but I think we should just stay friends', but as soon as the thought formed in her mind, she was overcome with a feeling of wrong, as if rejecting him would be the absolute worst decision she could ever make in her life.
'Why...do I feel this way about him?'
She recalled the feeling of being safe and comfortable in Izuku's arms when he carried her out of harm's way in the entrance exam, the sleep she had lost that night thinking about how he moved to save her and the need to see him again, and the happiness she that he lived relatively close to her apartment and was accepted into U.A.
Unlike all of the boys she used to have crushes on, Ochako felt a natural...gravitation towards the one standing in front of her.
Izuku was growing more and more dejected as the silence went on, feeling that it would soon lead to rejection. Feeling like it had gone on long enough, he decided to take initiative and deal with it in stride, as he turned around to walk towards the school's front gate. "I...I'm sorry for making you feel uncomfortable, Uraraka-san. I'll just...leave you alone-"
He was interrupted by a hand grabbing hold of his wrist, and turned back around to see Ochako staring at him, with a blush slowly growing on her face. Turning back around, he briefly looked at her in confusion, before wondering why she began leaning in towards him, with her face slowly inching towards his. Before long, she suddenly stopped, and he felt something warm and soft brush against his cheek.
'Oh.'
A few moments passed where Izuku was trying to comprehend what in the actual fuck was happening, before Ochako slowly pulled back. "Thank you, Deku-kun," she said, giving him a soft smile.
"I...you...wha?"
She giggled at seeing his stupefied expression. Eventually, Izuku managed to recover from his shock at Ochako having kissed him on the cheek, and was now awkwardly staring at her again. "So, uh...what now?" he asked, resisting the urge to touch his cheek.
"To be honest, I'm not really sure," Ochako admitted. "I haven't really done this sort of thing before."
"Well, neither have I," Izuku replied, scratching the back of his head, and thought about what he should say next. "Do you...do you wanna exchange numbers and go from there?" he asked tentatively. Ochako smiled as she replied in the affirmative, and the two of them gave each other their contact information, before heading to the train station.
(And if they started holding hands along the way, neither of them brought it up.)
A good distance away, Katsuki was watching Izuku and Ochako walk away, with the smirk on his face threatening to break out into a grin.
"They're going a bit fast, don't you think?" Tenya asked next to him.
"Nah, looks like they've been pining for each other for a while now, so I think they know what they're doing," he replied. "Besides, the nerd could use something else to focus on besides all the hero worship."
This is literally the first fight scene I've ever written, so I apologize if it seemed a bit too fast.
I wanted to do a Gold Experience vs Dark Shadow Stando Battle, but I didn't feel like changing up Izuku's matchup here. Maybe in the Sports Festival (wink wink, nudge nudge).
I'll also be taking somewhat of a break to work on getting chapter 2 of my DBZ fic 'Dancing With Magic Dragons' out. It's a fusion AU with MHA where Kakarot lands in MHA and is basically Izuku.
To Diavolo (Guest): Eh, I actually really don't give two shits about Mineta, and the people in the MHA discord I'm in that I've consulted with have told me to 'yeet the grape'. If you wanted him to be kept in, then you should've said so (not like it would do anything).