A/N: It's still looking like the last piece of the chapter will be a long one, so no guarantees that I'll have it out by the 25th, but I will try to finish the chapter by the end of the month. Hopefully you all have been enjoying the rapid updates, even if they are shorter! Let me know one way or the other whether you prefer fast chapters or big ones - I may adjust my publishing schedule going forwards.

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For a long time, I'd wondered why UA's lunchroom was the way it was. Despite the fact that there were over six hundred students at the school, everybody ate lunch at the same time. A normal school probably would have done something like making first-years eat at 11:15, second-years eat at 12:00, and third-years eat at 12:45, but UA had decided to build a cafeteria three times as big as necessary, and then decided to have all of their students descend upon it like hungry locusts simultaneously.

To make matters even worse, instead of a full kitchen of staff, the majority of the food preparation at UA was done by one man: Pro Hero Lunch Rush. Somehow, not only did he prepare food for over six hundred people more or less by himself, he also was able to cook personalized meals for students who requested them. He had assistants, and there were robots to actually serve the food out (luckily, they were his own personalized chef-bots rather than the weird robots that helped out around the rest of the school - probably because those 'bots somehow would have figured out a way to spit in the students' food) but when it came to the actual cooking, UA's lunchroom was a one-hero show.

But surprisingly, when I asked one of the chef-bots manning the lunch line what I should do to set up an appointment with Lunch Rush in order to get a specialized meal plan, they told me to just go around the back and talk to him in the kitchen. "Hello?" I asked nervously as I poked my head inside the enormous room. The kitchen was a practically space-age installation of white tile and polished chrome, filled with enormous machines that bore the same resemblance to modern stoves and ovens as a main battle tank bore to a compact sedan. After a second, I saw Lunch Rush come bustling over, moving at a near run while flipping dials and pushing buttons on the huge walls of ovens as he passed them.

"What can I do for you?" The hero's voice was smoky, gravelly; it sounded like the croak of a lifelong smoker, only further muffled and baffled by the fume hood-like contraption that served as Lunch Rush's combination facemask and fume hood. Every part of his face not covered by the gas mask was hidden by the chef's hat that continued down over his eyes instead of stopping at his hairline. It made it completely impossible to see Lunch Rush's face, but somehow I thought I could detect a bit of irritation at having his holy ground of cooking disturbed - or that could be my nerves talking.

"Sorry, the bots at the front said that I should come around and disturb you, but I can see you're pretty busy, so maybe I should just go and talk to you another time -" I started stammering, only for Lunch Rush to turn around and wave me forward even as he started fiddling with another machine.

"Come," he said, "walk and talk." Not looking over his shoulder to see if I had done so, Lunch Rush hurried back to the oven he had just left, pulling a drop-in tray full of yakisoba noodles out from the oven and handing it to one of his chef-bots.

"Um, uh, right," I said, timidly stepping into the kitchen proper. I couldn't help but keep looking around, both because I wanted to check out the industrial cooking equipment and in order to avoid the chef-bots as they wheeled to and fro around the kitchen. "I, um, I wanted to set up a, um, a meal plan thing. Recovery Girl wants me to gain weight fast, and I have a quirk that can help, but…"

"Did she give you a list?" Lunch Rush's gravelly voice asked. I was about to answer, but suddenly his hands moved in a blur of chopping, the rapidfire thud-thud-thud of one knife in each hand loud enough to drown me out.

I waited until he paused in his chopping, then said, "Uh, yeah. Is, um, is there somewhere I should put it?"

"Over on that desk," Lunch Rush said before his hands started up in another blur of chopping. "Any foods you hate? Allergies?" He yelled over the noise.

"Uh. No allergies, but I don't like tomatoes," I said. "Uh, raw, that is. Pizza and stuff's fine."

"Okay. Put the list on the desk. Personalized meals start tomorrow," Lunch Rush said, "ask the bots for them. For today, burgers okay?"

I blinked. That was it? I didn't have to beg, or sign a million pieces of paperwork, or ask my parents to spend even more than UA's already harsh tuition cost them? "Uh, sure," I said. That had been… surprisingly easy.

As I walked past Lunch Rush to put the paperwork on his desk, I watched him pull a few pieces of pre-flattened and shaped hamburger and a few slices of bacon out of a refrigerator, drop all of them in a single oversized pan, then stick them in an oven for all of ten seconds before pulling the pan back out. Somehow, despite the brevity of the time they were cooking, they suddenly looked browned and cooked through. He assembled them with cheese, lettuce, onion, and pickle into stacks of bacon cheeseburgers in a matter of seconds, poured a basket of french fries onto the side that he somehow fried with one hand while I hadn't been paying attention, and had the plate ready for me before I even made my way back to him. "Bon appetit," Lunch Rush said. Again, it was impossible to tell his facial expressions behind the respirator and chef mask, but I could swear I heard a smile in his gravelly voice.

I reached out to take the plate full of delicious-smelling hamburgers from him, and almost deliberately tried to stretch my hand out to touch Lunch Rush's hand by 'accident' so I could copy his quirk, but something about the fact that the Pro Hero had been so forthcoming and seemed so happy to be feeding me made me stop before I could. I bit my lip. No. I couldn't keep stealing people's quirks forever. The worst he could say was no, right? "Uhm. Before I go, canIcopyyourquirk?" I blurted out all at once.

Lunch Rush stretched out his hand towards mine, then as I reached out maneuvered things so that suddenly he was giving me a high-five. The ability to breathe out a field that increased organic matter's thermal conductivity, effectively making it cook multiple times faster than normal, sparked to life as a new star in my consciousness; it displaced an arm-stretching quirk that I hadn't used in weeks. "Careful with it," he said. Unplugging the bottom of his respirator from a device on the back of his hero costume, he plugged it into the side of the ovens he had just used to cook and breathed out heavily. As he did, I saw the interior of the oven start glowing a brighter orange - orange that I belatedly realized was coming from the aura of Lunch Rush's quirk, rather than flames as I had originally assumed. "Brighter light you see, easier it is to get hurt. Now go eat. Lunch rushes are for chefs, not customers."

"Thanks," I mumbled, tucking my head down as I walked quickly out of the kitchen, holding my plateful of burgers. Somehow I felt ashamed of myself. Getting enough food, copying quirks; had they really been this simple all along?

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As promised, Yaoyorozu had saved me a seat at the usual table. Almost immediately, I noticed that Totsuka was missing, and then I suddenly remembered - our deal, our request for our HEART group, had been to help him do well in the Sports Festival so that he could help build the Tennis Club. On the one hand, I felt satisfied in a job well done; on the other, it was a little sad that he didn't really have a reason to come and sit at our table anymore. Shaking the melancholy aside, I took my seat at the empty corner next to Yaoyorozu. "Hey," I said.

"Hi Hikki!" Yuigahama bubbled cheerfully. "Hey, did you watch Amateur Hero Tournament this weekend? They did a Sports Festival episode, it was great!"

I couldn't help but smirk. "The one where they did an Obstacle Race, but all the obstacles dumped you in green slime if you fell, and then they added padded foam rollers to bump people off the course?"

Yuigahama beamed. "Yeah! Did you see that one guy got almost to the end and then, boom, and he just went rolling down the whole mountain like 'aahnoononoaaah!'?"

"Mmm-hmm," I mumbled through a mouthful of hamburger, chewing hungrily as I set up a doubled connection to my Digestion quirk. "Sorry," I said once I swallowed. "I kinda have to eat all this before the period ends."

"And here I thought I'd gotten used to your ludicrous eating habits," Yukinoshita said with a faint note of disgust in her voice. "I can hardly believe that you can stomach that much in the first place, let alone all within twenty minutes." She paused for a second, eyeing my plate with incredulity. "Actually, that's an astonishing amount of food even for you. Are you already back to your masochistic training routine?" She asked.

I shook my head and briefly contemplated answering, but with my mouth so full of food I just settled for rolling my eyes.

"Oh, did Lunch Rush help you out with a specialized diet?" Yaoyorozu asked. "I mean, sorry if I'm being nosey or anything, it's just that I think I've gotten that hamburger set before."

Again, I nodded, trying not to waste time talking as I continued shoveling food into my face so fast that I almost couldn't taste it. Which was a shame, because it tasted amazing.

"Yo, I'm stealing some of your fries," Bakugo declared as he reached across the table to my plate. My hand snapped down to guard my food, but that only inspired Bakugo to sneak around the other side, where my hand was occupied holding my burger up to my mouth. He grinned cockily as he finally managed to snag a loose fry hanging off of my plate and popped it in his mouth in triumph. "Heh. Not bad, but it could use some ketchup."

Yukinoshita sighed in disdain. "How is it that the person trying to devour half his body weight in fifteen minutes still has better table manners than you, Bakugo? On the other hand, given how devoid you are of anything resembling mannerly behavior in the other parts of your life, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised."

"So, were you born with that stick up your ass?" Bakugo countered. "Or did you just get so constipated from being a tightass bitch that it formed there naturally?"

I groaned internally as I started scarfing fries, having noticed the gleam in Yukinoshita's eye that I normally saw aimed in my direction before she was about to embark on a particularly inventive series of scathing insults. Just as I was about to enjoy the novelty of Yukinoshita's razor-sharp tongue being wielded on someone else, however, her tirade was interrupted. "Well, well, well," a smug voice said. "What have we here? Why, it looks like 1-A's little alliance is already falling apart!"

Raising one eyebrow, I turned to look, only to see the blonde, blue-eyed figure of Monoma Neito. One of his hands was pressed up against his forehead, lifting his long bangs away from his face in a dramatic (melodramatic) pose. "Enjoying the fruits of your treacherous labors?" He asked accusingly. Trailing behind him were a boy with short brown hair and oversized eyes - I'd forgotten his name, but he had a Quirk that let him spit solid walls of air - and a girl with wavy green hair whose name I vaguely remembered was Tokage.

"Who the- oh, right, it's Baldy," Bakugo replied. "I almost didn't recognize you with hair." As Monoma coughed and sputtered, Bakugo sneered. "If you're just here to bitch about losing, wait until later. I just ate lunch, and your whining is so goddamn pathetic it makes me want to hurl."

Monoma's chin raised so that he could look down his nose at Bakugo, even as his face twisted into a victorious smile. "Whining?" Monoma said arrogantly. "I'm here to let you know that not all the Pros were hoodwinked by your cheating. You see, it just so happens that I've been offered an internship from Endeavor." His shit-eating grin widened. "And since All Might is teaching at UA and can't take interns, that means that it's 1-B who has this year's number one internship! Not 1-A! What do you think about that, huh? Huuuh?" He asked, stretching the word out even as he deliberately leaned forward to get in Bakugo's face.

I twisted slightly in my seat to watch the fireworks, munching on french fries like they were popcorn.

Bakugo snorted in disbelief. "Like fuck you do!" He shouted back, not backing down from Monoma's aggressively close face. "Either you're fucking lying, or Endeavor saw how fucking terrible you were at setting shit on fire and gave you a fucking pity internship!"

Monoma's smile fell slightly, but he soldiered on, still leaning over with his face a few inches from Bakugo. I heard a commotion coming from a few tables away, as if someone had suddenly passed out with a shriek of joy that sent shivers down my spine, but neither Bakugo nor Monoma paid it any mind. "Oh, I assure you, the offer is very real," Monoma said. With a fluid movement, he slammed a piece of paper down on the lunch table; his list, Endeavor's offer front and center on it.

Bakugo's gaze traveled from Monoma's face, to the offer list, and back. "What, is that it?" He said, reaching into his backpack only to pull out his own offer list - all hundred-plus pages of it. "This was my internship offer list," he said smugly. "So you can take your offer from the number two hero, and shove it up your ass. Oh, and when you show up at the internship, you can tell Endeavor that 'Claymore' is on his way past him to number one."

Outraged, Monoma snatched his offer list from the table. "Keep dreaming," he said, standing up straight with all of his affronted dignity. "Mark my words, Class 1-A, starting at these internships, this is the beginning of Class 1-B's comeback!" Monoma turned on his heel and started storming away.

Tokage and … Tsuburaba, that was his name, seemed to be unimpressed by Monoma's antics. As he left, Tokage rolled her eyes expressively, while Tsuburaba started turning to follow Monoma, but stopped and turned his head over his shoulder to look back at our table. "Monoma's a drama whore," Tsuburaba said dryly, "but he's not the only person in our class who's pissed at you guys. Don't count on us playing nice when we get our chance for a rematch," he warned us.

What a mess. This was all my fault. I mean, Bakugo being himself wasn't helping, but that didn't change the fact that I had manipulated my class for my own personal gain, and now they were going to be at odds with their fellow heroes because of it. And all I had to do to solve that problem was to take responsibility. To admit, in front of people who I saw and interacted with daily, that I had played them.

I didn't want to. Confessing my sins now would mean an end to the easy camaraderie of having a group to sit with at lunch, a return to finding hiding spaces to eat alone, risking being isolated from my HEART group during class the same way that Todoroki was isolated from his, losing Yaoyorozu's respect and destroying our working relationship as co-class presidents. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut, and I could live in a world where two classes full of genuine heroes hated each other, instead of everybody hating me.

"It was my plan," I said, two hamburgers and a hundred french fries sitting like lead in my stomach. I met Tsuburaba's uncomfortably large eyes. "I pushed everyone into it, because I wanted to impress people at the Sports Festival." I watched Tsuburaba's face, waiting for the anger, the recrimination, the blame. "I figured I had more of a chance of making it to the finals if I wasn't competing with my classmates. If you guys are going to be angry at anyone, you should be angry at me." I couldn't bear to look behind me to see the expressions on the faces of the people who could have been my friends, had I been a better person.

Which is why I missed my chance to keep them from talking. "And me," Yaoyorozu suddenly spoke up. "I helped him put all the worksheets together that we used to convince the class." I whipped around to stare at her in shock, wanting to keep her from talking, but as I looked at her I saw her return my look with a face full of respect and approval. "If people are upset, they can bring it up with the two of us," she said determinedly.

"And me too," Bakugo jeered. "I didn't plan it, but I sure as fuck enjoyed all of us stomping you into the ground like trash. If you can't get over yourself, you can just come at me anytime you like. I'll crush every single one of you losers that steps up to the plate."

"I mean, um, except for maybe Bakubaku, the rest of us do kinda feel bad that you guys didn't do so well with internships and stuff, but, um, it's not like it was against the rules or anything, and you guys did kinda come by our classroom to try to spy on us first, so…" Yui trailed off a little. "I guess what I'm trying to say, is, um, sorry but, um, better luck next time?"

As my … friends spoke up for me one by one, I noticed that alone among them Yukinoshita Yukino kept silent, looking at me with narrowed eyes. Part of me lamented the fact that someone had taken my serious admission of guilt for the truth that it was, but mostly I felt incredibly frustrated that everyone else, including Tsuburaba and Tokage, appeared to have interpreted it as some sort of hot-blooded challenge.

"You're not nearly as sorry as you're gonna be," Tokage said, her almond-shaped eyes narrowing in a fierce glare even as she bared her pointed teeth in a challenging grin. "I hope you enjoy your internships and your brief moment in the spotlight, because from here on out they're the last victories over us you're going to get."

"Don't worry," Tsuburaba added, "we'll make sure everybody knows just who they have to blame."

As Tokage spun on her heel and walked away, Tsuburaba following close after her, I let out a heavy sigh and tried to put my face in the palm of my hand only to realize just in time that my fingers were still a little greasy from the burgers and fries. As I reached out and grabbed a napkin to clean them off, Bakugo stole another fry from my plate. "You know," he said thoughtfully, chewing with his mouth open, "I thought the cookie plan was kinda dumb before, but now I kinda wanna do it just to see what their faces would look like. Maybe we can write 'you suck' on them with frosting or something."

I groaned in frustration. "Goddammit Bakugo," I muttered.

"Cheer up," he said. "Now all the slackers in the class will have even more incentive not to fuck around."

"Silver linings, I guess?" I said with a roll of my eyes. Despite the fact that I had completely lost my appetite, I turned back to my cooling meal and forced myself to pick up the third hamburger, taking big bites in the hopes that I could finish it before my stomach caught all the way back up to my brain and told it that I was full.

"Hey guys, what was up with the people from 1-B coming over to your table?" As I kept eating, Kirishima decided to stop by our table on his way to the dishwashing conveyor belt. "It looked kinda intense."

"Yeah, they stopped by to bitch about losing and to challenge us to a rematch," Bakugo said, completely skipping over the part where Monoma was bragging about having gotten a better internship than he did.

"Dude, that's manly as hell!" Kirishima said excitedly. "Oh man, we've got a hot-blooded class rivalry going on now! I'm getting fired up!"

"So it seems," Yukinoshita said, dry humor in her voice. "Of course, we were trying to repair our relationship with 1-B, but Bakugo apparently decided that bridges were for bombing, not building."

"Whoops." Bakugo replied sarcastically. "Anyway, this weekend was boring as shit, and it looks like all they're having us do for hero classwork today is research internships and crap. Who's up for training after school?" His eyes turned towards me expectantly.

I shook my head. "Can't," I said, waving the hamburger for emphasis. "Recovery Girl said no exercise until I get my weight back up."

"What? Hikki, you didn't tell us that!" Yui shouted in alarm. "What happened?"

I shrugged uncomfortably. "Too much healing and other quirk use in too short a time."

Yukinoshita smirked. "Hikigaya, are you familiar with the combat technique known as ... 'dodging'? You should check it out. It's fairly useful."

Yaoyorozu looked at me with an evaluating expression. "I apologize, Hikigaya, if I'd realized that your copied quirks also had metabolic costs, I would have brought up the possibility of an enhanced meal plan to you sooner."

I rolled my eyes at Yukinoshita, then turned to Yaoyorozu. "Not your fault," I said with a shake of my head. "I thought I had it under control."

"Fuck," Bakugo said in disappointment. "Guess I'll just have to do some more solo training, then."

"You might consider actually resting," Yukinoshita said waspishly. "If the teachers aren't giving us much in the way of work to do, it's possible that they're trying to make sure that we're all in our best condition for our internships."

"Ooh, maybe we could all do something together?" Yuigahama said excitedly. "It can be like a celebration for everybody doing well in the Festival and getting internships and stuff!"

"Yeah?" Bakugo raised an eyebrow with interest, crossing his arms. "Like what?"

Still standing by our table, Kirishima suddenly looked excited. "Oh man, I know! Bakugo, you live close to UA, right? And Hikigaya, you're in Chiba, yeah? We should go to Jawa Arcade!" He turned to the rest of the table, looking at the girls. "I dunno where any of you guys live, but if you want you should totally come too! More the merrier, right?"

"That's the one in Funabashi, right?" Yuigahama asked. "I think I've been there once or twice. I guess that'd be fun?"

"Hmm. You know, I don't think I've ever been to a real arcade," Yaoyorozu said thoughtfully. "I wonder how different it is to my parents' home arcade."

Bakugo sighed in frustration at having his workout plans stymied, then grinned savagely. "Fuck it, fine. I suppose I can kill some time slaughtering you noobs in Fatal Strife."

"... I'm not much of one for videogames," Yukinoshita interrupted, looking a little uncomfortable at killing the mood. "Perhaps we could try something else instead? Visiting the mall, maybe?"

Bakugo rolled his eyes. "Listen, Ice Queen, if you're too chicken to play because you're afraid you're going to get your ass kicked, you can just say so. Nobody will judge you for it, honestly," he said sarcastically.

Yukinoshita narrowed her eyes at him. "I refuse to rise to such base provocation," she said evenly.

"Buck. Buck buck. Buck-caw!" Bakugo muttered with his hand over his mouth.

Yukinoshita stared Bakugo down for a few long minutes, then turned to look at the rest of us. As she saw Yuigahama's wide, hopeful eyes, she flinched. "...Fine," she sighed helplessly.

As the five of them turned to me, despite the looming dread I felt over the possibility of losing my shot at the Nomu investigation due to my weight, despite the jangling nerves left over from the confrontation with 1-B and my failed attempt at confessing my manipulations, I felt the corners of my mouth turning up in a smile. "It looks like I don't have a choice," I said.

Even friendships based on lies are friendships of a sort. When it came to making friends, I was basically the opposite of an expert, but even I could tell that the people I sat with every day for lunch, who were now offering to spend even more time with me outside of school doing something fun, probably considered me their friend. It was more than I deserved. If they knew what sort of person I really was, I imagined that they would probably reconsider. But for as long as they were going to treat me as a friend, based on false premises or otherwise, I was going to return the favor.

Making that mistake once was enough.