Senji woke up much later, after evening was setting in and the rest of the class had finished their various tasks for the day. Kirishima and Bakugo were seated around the table in her corner or the office again, with Kaminari and Sero added in. She stretched her arms out in front of her, bumping a cold glass and nearly knocking it over.
"Hey, watch it!," Kaminari yelped, just barely catching the drink before it spilled all over him.
"Hm? Sor'y," Senji opened one eye, apologizing half-heartedly. She let out a yawn and pushed herself off the table, sitting there with her eyes closed under her messy hair. She shivered, suddenly very cold, and remembered the ice adorning her wrist.
"Cold?," Kirishima asked.
"How?," Sero joined in, oblivious to her frozen bracelet.
"What time 's it?," Senji ignored them, or wasn't paying attention in her half awake state, and asked a question of her own. There was some commotion in the main office area, and a sudden burst of excited chatter.
"Ah, she's over here," Todoroki's voice stood out, along with another man's voice. A moment later he was peeking into the room, escorting one of the doctors from the local clinic toward Senji to check on her condition.
"Oh," Todoroki noticed the group of people gathered, and let out a small reaction.
"Oh, perfect timing," Senji rose slowly and meandered over to the boy, seemingly unaware of the doctor's presence behind him.
"Oh, I forgot. My bad," Todoroki answered nonchalantly, and stretched out his left hand to melt the ice.
"Ah! You shouldn't be moving around, should you?," the doctor finally spoke up, and Senji glanced over at him while tilting her head.
"He heard you collapsed from heat earlier, and wanted to check on you," Todoroki explained, melting the ice. Senji flicked her wrist to shake off the remaining moisture while eyeing the doctor. He was an older man, with dark hair and a nervous look to him.
"I'll take it easy for the rest of the evening, if you think it's best. Feel fine now though," Senji offered. Her speech didn't seem convincing enough for the man, though.
"Did you bring any stuff with you? Can check me out if you really need to," she sighed.
"Ah! Um, you do look pretty healthy. Next time, just stop by the office for a check in, alright?"
"Okay," Senji agreed to do so, if only to ease the doctor's clearly frazzled nerves. The man nodded and excused himself, clearing a path for Senji to see the students and several locals setting various food items on the tables and desks in the main area.
"Hm? Some sort of event?," Senji glanced back at Todoroki, who was having some sort of staredown with Bakugo from across the room. Senji shot a look back at the blonde, then tapped Todoroki's shoulder and motioned at the busy scene in the other room.
"Looks like they brought us some food, as thanks for helping out," Todoroki answered her question, and got the attention of the other boys behind Senji.
"Oh! Do you guys wanna come get some grub?," Ochako noticed the pair in the doorway and invited the group to join everyone.
Everyone filed out of the little room, grabbing spare plates and moving around to stack up their own little platter of food. Senji eyed the arrangements, eyes wide and practically drooling. So many choices, and such a small little circle to stack them all up on. She eventually found a place between some of the more talkative students and snapped up a healthy portion of meat and fresh vegetables. She packed some sweeter options along the edges of her plate and returned to her table, moving slowly so as not to topple her tower of tasty treasures.
"Bruh," Bakugo gave her a deadpan stare as she wolfed down the plate of food.
"Wha'?," she returned his look, but didn't stop shoveling food into her mouth as she did so.
"Did you even have breakfast?," Sero asked.
"Hm? Yeah. Was a light one though," Senji gulped down her glass of soda, and her tail waved with barely contained contentment as she cleared her plate.
"Hey, Senji! Try this one," Jiro, who had joined the group along with Mina, offered up some sort of fried morsel. Senji happily accepted, eating it straight off the other girl's chopsticks. Her eyes lit up as she chewed, pleasantly surprised by the juicy burst of corn inside the fried ball of dough.
"What was that?," Senji asked after she finished savoring her surprise treat.
"Here, try one of mine," Mina offered up some kind of white meat. Senji repeated the same action and was shocked by the hearty flavor of the mystery fish.
"D'you just eat anything someone hands you?," Bakugo grumbled from across the table at her. The rest of the group enjoyed their newest game of feeding Senji random items, and were all struck by the same tug Kirishima had felt earlier in the day at her heartfelt reactions. Eventually the girl had eaten her fill, and stretched out on the floor while the others cleared the table.
"Bakugo, you're on night duty again!," Iida burst through the room to deliver that announcement, already gone before his classmate could protest.
"Why," the blonde shouted his displeasure.
"Because you've been chillin' here all day again, duh," Kaminari answered.
"Even Senji went out and did stuff today, and has been doing…some kind of work all on her own," Sero pointed out. The string of comments against his lack of visible effort were stacking up fast, and pressing his nerves.
"Least you could do is help out with patrols," Mina gave her two cents.
"Even if nothin' happens," Jirou also offered her thoughts.
"Tch! I wasn't askin' you!," Bakugo shouted out.
"Hey, it's not that bad right? I can stay and help out, too, if you're that mad about it," Kirishima offered his own time, despite working hard around the island all day.
Bakugo fumed silently while everyone else cleaned up and cleared out. Izuku headed outside to get some more exercise in, with a warning from Senji to not overdo it. Kirishima stayed along with Bakugo, though was obviously near the end of his energy reserves. Senji worked on her computer for a while, and rapidly sent off some texts. Bakugo, finally, spoke up and snapped.
"Who the hell're you messagin'?"
"Huh?"
"Who's the chicken," the boy pressed further, earning a baffled look from Senji.
"It's nothing fun, if that's what you're worried about."
"Then why's it a secret."
Senji sighed heavily at that. She knew there was a lot of stuff she had failed to explain to her classmate, and now partner. It wasn't like she was trying to hide anything unnecessarily. She just had a lot of things that she wasn't able to share, for her sake and for another's. She stretched her arms out, thinking things over.
"Come on," she finally said back to Bakugo. She stood up, stretching some more.
"Huh?," Bakugo was visibly confused by the sudden switch in subject.
"We're gonna go out and patrol. Can talk then."
"Okay…"
Bakugo wasn't entirely following, but went along with it anyway. They passed a conked out Kirishima on their way outside, Senji putting a blanket loosely over his shoulders before getting her shoes on. Her and Bakugo headed out, turning down the road away from town and the hushed count of Izuku as he did some obscene number of crunches or something.