Tara's Note: This idea came to me after the first six chapters but I recently discovered how to move chapters around on AO3 so you can enjoy it anyway. Apart from Izuku/Tsuyu, my favorite ships are Bakugo/consequences and Mineta/consequences and as of this chapter, this story officially has both. Other than that, this chapter mostly serves as setup for the following chapters so sit back and enjoy the quality filler.
Dedications & Thanks: To Nicholas, Howard, Jade, Alexander, Tibor, Alonsis2, Daniel, Clark, Adrien, erlking, ridillin, Haematite, Charles, Jacky, Edward, Andrew, Roofcrawler, Wil, PbookR, Samuel, Mikey, Beverly, Daniel, Charles, Crygon20, Subtle, Christopher, Stephen, Fablesrogue, Morgan, Joseph, Jason, RileyWestfall, bloodylord, Marc, Ziryo, Chris, George, Koby, William, Devin, JJbelle, David, Gavin, TheTenthAncestor, Lookshy, Mauday, John, Roman, Warren, and Jess for sponsoring me on Patre0n, and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.
"I can honestly say this isn't how I saw my second day of school going."
"Uh, Midori-bro, who are you talking to? Because I mean, wow, definitely in your case but I feel like that wasn't aimed at me."
Moving to stand in front of his locker, Izuku jerked his thumb at a spot a few feet to his right. "Um, Tooru? Now that you guys all know she exists, I can actually talk to her all I want instead of her just following me around silently. Going to have to be careful in the halls and stuff... possibly in the classroom. Do you think All Might will tell Aizawa about this?"
Kirishima open and closed his mouth several times, but was cut off by Iida chopping his hand enthusiastically. "Midoriya! You can't bring your girlfriend in here with you! This is the boys locker room!"
After debating for a second or two, Izuku decided that he had no qualms about throwing Tokoyami under the bus. "Why not? Tokoyami brings Dark Shadow in here and she's a girl."
Even as the shadowy entity peeked out from under Tokoyami's cloak, the rest of the boys looked at each other awkwardly. Iida frowned, his robotic chopping slowly dramatically. "I do not wish to insult Dark Shadow's personhood, given that she is also a sentient being, but... is there not a difference between a sentient quirk and an actual human being?"
"Forget about the girl in the room and think about the girls in the other room!" All attention shot over to where Mineta Minoru was standing next to the shared wall with the girls locker room, a poster pulled to one side as he gestured enthusiastically at... "Look! A gift from our senpais! A glimpse of heaven!"
Iida edged around Izuku - giving him an unnecessarily wide berth to avoid bumping into Tooru - so he could get a better look at what Mineta was talking about. "Is that... a peep hole? How deplorable! To think that the facilities of this noble school have been disgraced in such a way! To say nothing of the violation of our classmates' privacy!"
Cackling, Mineta pulled the poster off the wall and dropped it to the floor as he pushed up onto his toes to get eye level with the hole. "Just think of what we can see with this! Yaoyorozu's Yaoyoroppai. Ashido's supple thighs. Toga's perky rear! Jirou's..." Trailing off, Mineta thought for a second before shrugging. "Eh, I've got nothing there."
Izuku opened his mouth to respond but was brought up short by the feeling of Tooru's larger and more muscular body brushing against his as she passed him. "I have exactly two words for you, you despicable little pervert: Detroit. Smash!" Her fist glimmering into visibility, Tooru plowed her fist into the back of Mineta's head, slamming his face into the wall so hard that it cracked. As he toppled backwards onto the floor, completely unconscious, she cheered and pumped her fist in the air triumphantly. "Oh my God, Izukun, now I know why heroes have super moves. That was so fucking satisfying. Just... one punch and it was over."
"I mean, that tends to happen when you surprise someone with forty-five hundred newtons of force to the skull." Peering over in her direction, Izuku raised an eyebrow. "He's still breathing, right? You didn't kill him? Because a lot of this school is made out of concrete for obvious reasons. And good god, that is a face-shaped crater in the wall. Are you sure he's alive?"
Pushing her shoulders into shimmering visibility just long enough to shrug, Tooru kicked at Mineta's body before making her way back over to Izuku. "Don't know. Don't care. If he's dead, maybe we can get a new girl classmate for you to date."
With the excitement over, the rest of the boys looked around awkwardly before coming to the unanimous decision to change in the private bathroom stalls, leaving Izuku and Tooru alone in the main portion of the changing room. Shrugging, Izuku began stripping his costume off. "Yeah. About that. First of all, I feel like I should have found out that you were serious enough to be thinking about marriage... I don't know, not in the middle of class?"
"You know what, that's completely fair. I didn't really mean to say it to the class before I told you. It just slipped out." Standing behind him, Tooru reached up to pull off his grinning metal respirator, placing it in the costume case for him. "Um, well, can't unring that bell. Surprise?"
Snorting, Izuku placed his costume gloves in the case before unzipping his bodysuit and tugging his arms out of the sleeves. "Surprise. I mean, you're literally the best thing to ever happen to me so I'm not against the idea of thinking long-term. It's kind of reassuring, actually. If you ever get bored with this whole thing and leave me, there goes my chances of being a hero. Unless I want to be like, a D-lister protecting some isolated town on Shikoku."
Tooru leaned forward, wrapping her arms around his bare shoulders and resting her chin on top of his head. "I would never. It would be super uncool of me, considering most of what I can do is directly because you helped me figure out how to do it. We make a hell of a team, why would I ever want to break that up?"
Well that was certainly reassuring. After spending so many years as a social outcast due to his quirklessness, Izuku fiercely treasured every scrap of affection that he was given. He wasn't entirely sure what he'd do if Tooru ever wanted to go her separate way from him. To say nothing of... heroes as a legal structure required the usage of a quirk, as he'd found out when he and Tooru started hatching this scheme. It was literally impossible to be a quirkless hero because you couldn't legally be a hero without a quirk. If Tooru left him, what would he pretend his quirk was and how would he perpetuate that particular fiction?
Although at this rate, he wasn't going to be alone for a good long while. "Well, I'm sure my mom will be thrilled to hear that you're thinking of sticking around. And bringing more girls home for her to fuss over. Which, yeah, that was also a surprise. I mean, I know we've talked about the idea a little in the past because you were self-conscious about me having a visible girlfriend but I thought we tabled that idea on account of, I don't know, I love you just the way you are?"
"I, uh, panicked? In a very gay way?" Letting go of Izuku, Tooru moved around to lean against the locker as he began tugging his boots off. "I mean, I never really brought it up when we were having the polyamory discussions, but I'm bi as fuck. And some of our classmates are super cute. Can you really blame me for wanting to get us a girlfriend when those are the prospects?"
Fair. Very fair. He may have been a socially awkward introvert, but he wasn't blind. Izuku was well aware of the positive qualities that Mineta had mentioned about his female classmates and then some. Namely, he could think of plenty of things that made Jirou pretty. And more than one positive trait about each of the others, for that matter. "I mean, I see your point. I guess. It was just a surprise. I feel like we should have discussed it first? Discussed it again? Maybe like, gotten home from class tonight and 'gee, Izuku, you know what would be cool, maybe dating one of our classmates'. Emphasis one. How did we end up with three girlfriends?"
Her hands glittered minutely as Tooru threw them up in the air in exasperation. "I don't know! I saw you looking at Ochako and her looking at you and so I thought she'd be the easiest one to get to agree, and then Mina jumped in and so did Tsuyu of all people? Who I can completely understand, there's some major discrimination toward heteromorphs that means she probably hasn't had a boyfriend before. Not due to lack of trying, I'm guessing, considering that whole 'frog with needs' thing. Which is hilarious. I feel like her bluntness will suit you very well."
Was she uniformly blunt or just forward? Because one of those would probably be good for him, while the other promised to have him blushing frequently. Despite having dated Tooru for over ten months at this point, coming up on their year anniversary, Izuku was absolutely no good with girls. Well, he was adequate enough with one girl... but having a girlfriend had yet to extend to being comfortable around other girls, with whom he tended to be a blushing, stuttering mess.
Stripping out of the bottom half of his costume, Izuku tapped lightly on the locker door beside Tooru's shoulder and she moved out of the way so that he could open the door and remove his uniform. Considering they both liked to lounge in bed until the absolute last possible minute each morning, Izuku had gotten very proficient at getting dressed very quickly and in a matter of minutes, he was ready to return to the classroom. Deciding to take pity on his classmates, several of which were still awkwardly lingering near the limited number of stalls, he grabbed his costume case and made his way out of the locker room.
Not spotting any of the girls waiting to head up to the classroom, Izuku assumed that they were the first ones out of the locker room and decided to take the long way back to 1-A's classroom. As they made their way down the silent hallways, Izuku turned to Tooru. "So how is four girlfriends going to work? I mean, two girlfriends would be easy: Monday and Wednesday for you, Tuesday and Thursday for her, Friday for us, weekends for ourselves. But four is like... one girlfriend a day through most of the week, and then group stuff on Friday? Maybe? How do you balance partners in polyamory? I never really looked into this kind of stuff because our discussion didn't get that far."
"Pfft, if you think I'm going to get demoted to a once-a-week girlfriend, you've got another think coming. Especially because, hello, we live together. How would that even work? Not to mention that once you get your provisional and then your hero license, going out without me means you're quirkless." All very good points, Izuku was willing to admit. Especially the quirkless one. While he wasn't bad at punching things on his own, the majority of his offensive capability came in the form of his tall jacked girlfriend. "No, we're going to be a singular unit that the girls are dating. You plus me plus whoever. As for how we're going to balance them, I have no idea. Maybe we can just... exist as a cute poly blob thing? All of us together all the time except when people need to do other things?"
The idea of existing as a perpetual fivesome sounded like something that would regularly exceed Izuku's limited allotment of social energy, but Tooru was enough of an extrovert that she could probably take up the slack for him. Maybe? They definitely needed to come up with some sort of solid plan, though, and fast. Unless they wanted to tell one or more of the girls 'hah, just kidding, we're not going to date you' which seemed... was there a worse word than rude? Inconsiderate wasn't as bad as rude, and impolite was either better than inconsiderate or possibly between inconsiderate and rude. Pulling out his phone, Izuku looked it up. No, rude was about as bad as it got, evidently. Hmm. So yeah, definitely rude. Not to mention that if he did that to one or more of the girls, whoever was left might decide he wasn't worth dating. Which... wouldn't be terrible, but at the same time he didn't want to ruin this for Tooru.
There were a lot of things that they would need to figure out in relatively short order. Not at this second, though. Meaning he could procrastinate at least a little.
Looking over at Tooru, Izuku was idly reminded of his interactions with Jirou today and a thought that he'd been sitting on since then. "So now that everyone in the class at least knows, do you think maybe we should get you eyeliner?" Tooru made an inquisitive noise and he gestured to her face. "So people can like, look you in the eye and stuff. I'm really good at keeping track of you, but Mina was talking to a spot literally feet to the side of you."
"Yeah, that was pretty fucking funny considering we've known each other for years. I'm not sure if she's just terrible at visualizing or just an airhead, but she's failed to look me in the eye when I'm in full uniform wearing a headband." While her face was literally the first part of her that she'd learned to manifest into visibility, practicality meant that she didn't use that particular skill much. Still, it meant that she could sparkle her head into golden visibility as she brought her finger up to trace around the outline of her eye. "I've tried wearing makeup a bit and it's not affected by my powers. Meaning there's just floating makeup. Maybe I'll talk to Jirou about learning some good punk eyeliner techniques and mix it up with some colorful eyeshadow? Enough to be visible in social settings but still minimal enough that I'm hard to see coming?"
Izuku nodded agreeably. "Maybe ask her tomorrow, since we're evidently going out to a cafe with the girls after school today?"
Swatting his arm playfully, Tooru shook her head as it dissolved back into invisibility. "I mean, we didn't agree to that. I had the idea but nobody was committal. Personally, I'd rather go to a Wendy's if we're taking Mina out with us." When he gave her a curious look, she snickered softly. "Memes. You'll understand when it happens."
Ah. Pop culture. His eternal nemesis.
