It was late at night, later than any of the players assembled had been expecting to continue playing, when the debut session of Izuku's campaign reached its climax. After vanquishing the mysterious moss creature, the party realized that it was actually a traveler who had left the Wanderer's Reprieve several days before, having ventured off into the nearby forest. The tavern's owner, Reina Coldaxe, offered the group a modest sum of gold to find out what had happened to turn the traveler into this violent creature, and to prevent any others from causing trouble to her establishment. This quest given out, the group followed the path that the traveler had taken, fighting off several more creatures like them and engaging in some light banter along the way. Eventually, however, they tracked the problem to the source: a large, monstrous tree covered in the same moss as the former travelers, that appeared to have been infected and corrupted by some malevolent force. Unable to defend itself, the corrupted tree instead acted through several other infected travelers, as well as a dryad who was evidently bonded to that particular tree. Unfortunately for the party, these defenses were proving difficult to break through.
"Come on, man, you can do it!" Kaminari said encouragingly.
"'You got this, Whisper, I believe in you!' And Joy is gonna give him bardic inspiration with her bonus action."
Koda began to fidget under the mounting pressure, while Jirou moved to calm him down. Izuku, meanwhile, nodded thoughtfully.
"Alright, Ashido, is that your turn?" he asked, to which she nodded. "Okay, Whisper's up. What are you doing, Koda?"
Jirou turned to look at Koda, expecting him to whisper what he was going to do as he had done throughout the entire session. To her surprise, however, he actually turned towards Izuku, speaking directly to him in as loud a voice as he was willing to muster under the circumstances.
"H-how many of them are, ah, still standing, again? A-and, uh, how's everyone else?" he asked, trying his best to hide the anxiety in his voice. As everyone else was left slightly surprised by Koda speaking up, Izuku responded without missing a beat.
"Well, Rona and Alis each took out one of the moss monsters, and Rai and Joy just finished off another. Scratch has been fighting the dryad in front of the tree, while Rona's stuck fighting the last moss monster not too far away. Rai and Joy are okay. Rona and Scratch are looking pretty rough, but they're still standing. Alis is unconscious." After taking a couple seconds to let Koda think, he asked, "What's Whisper planning?"
Koda sat there for a moment, muttering to himself and looking over his character sheet carefully before he eventually decided on a course of action.
"O-okay, so, with my bonus action, I'll, uh, put down a bear totem. It's a 30 foot radius, and it gives, ah, temporary health equal to, eh, twice my level to anyone I want inside the circle when it appears. So, if I put it down in, uh, the center of the clearing, I can give it to myself and everyone else, right?"
Izuku thought it over for a moment before nodding. "Yup, based on where everyone is, that works."
"Cool," Koda said, as everyone else noted down the extra two hit points they received, at least temporarily. "S-so, then, I'm going to cast Faerie Fire around where all the fighting is going on. It's, uh, a 20 foot cube, so, Rona, the tree, the dryad, Scratch, and the moss monster, t-they, uh, all need to make dexterity saves. Ah, D-dC 13." Koda fell silent as Izuku, Momo, and Toru rolled, thankful for a chance to stop speaking for a bit.
"I'm good!" Toru confirmed just as Momo breathed a sigh of relief.
"I am fine as well, thankfully. I wasn't expecting to be with a negative modifier, let me tell you," she said, chuckling slightly.
Izuku's eyes widened as he looked at the results behind the security of the DM screen. "Alright then, all the enemies failed the save," he said, to which the group leaned in expectantly, wondering just what Koda's spell had done. Koda himself took a deep breath, composing himself before he continued speaking.
"A-alright, so, they all start glowing with, uh, with a deep blue light, and, ah, any attack roll made against them has advantage now, s-so long as I can keep concentrating. I-I'm just gonna move back towards where Joy and Rai are now. That's all."
"Okay then," Izuku said, while the rest of the party extended their thanks to Koda for the temporary hit points and his helpful spell. "Scratch, you're up."
Toru began to giggle in a manner that was at once maniacal, yet also strangely endearing. "Ohoho, thanks a lot, Koda," she said with genuine appreciation in her voice. "Now it's time for death! By! Sneak Attack!" As she let out her unconventional battle cry, she proceeded to roll two d20s and leaned onto the table slightly in order to get a better look at the results. Although no one could tell for obvious reasons, her eyes widened as she looked at the second roll, and she immediately put her hands on the sides of her head in disbelief. "Natural 20!" she cried out, eliciting reactions of surprise and delight from everyone else around the table. Izuku chuckled, already anticipating that this may well be the coup de gras.
"Alright, uh, double the damage die from your shortsword and sneak attack, then add on your modifier as normal," he said, a task which Toru gladly carried out. She eagerly accepted Mina and Kaminari's d6s before she rolled them all at once, counting up the total once they all came to a stop.
"Uh, 10, 16, 22, so...27!" she said. "How's that?" she asked, the anticipation in her voice evident as all the other players looked towards Izuku at once, eager to hear his ruling. Izuku took a brief moment to review the notes he'd been keeping on the entire battle before clearing his throat.
"Okay, uh, the dryad has been looking fairly alright until now, but with this especially vicious strike from you, Scratch, he's, uh, he's not having a good time. He coughs up a bit of dark green blood, and the moss seems to recede from his body where your blade struck. Likewise, the tree isn't doing too well. It's withered bit by bit as you've taken down each one of the moss monsters, and with this blow, it withers a lot more. And yet, even with all of this, the dryad's still standing, albeit heavily wounded. One good hit ought to do it."
"Awesome!" Toru said before getting back down to business. "Alright, so with Fast Hands, I attack with the dagger in my other hand as a bonus action!"
"Oh, nice!" Mina and Kaminari said almost simultaneously, while Izuku simply nodded.
"Alright, uh, roll it, with advantage," he said, and she immediately did just that, only to abruptly slam her invisible hands against the table and turn away after looking at the result. A split second later, she looked back with a hand on her head, as if to double check that she wasn't seeing things.
"Another natural 20," she said in disbelief, prompting an excited outburst from everyone at the table, Izuku included.
"Two in a row, that's insane!" Jirou cried out, trying to hold back her laughter, while Momo nodded rapidly.
"1 in 400 odds. I-it's incredible!"
Izuku let out a chuckle of disbelief. "Uh, okay, double the damage die, again." Toru promptly did so, before letting out a small delighted squeal.
"10 damage!" she said, causing Izuku to begin nodding immediately. The party, having grown aware of what this likely meant over the course of the session, all began grinning expectantly, waiting for Izuku to confirm their suspicions.
"Uh, yup, the dryad is unconscious," he said, eliciting another round of cheers and congratulations. After a moment, once everyone had calmed down from their revelry, Izuku looked at Toru. "Is that all for your turn, Scratch?"
Toru took a few more seconds to compose herself before responding. "Uh, I'm just gonna move up to Rona's side so I can help her out. That's it."
Izuku nodded. "Okay, uh, top of the round. Alis will make another death save," he said as he rolled a d20 behind the screen, letting out a small murmur of surprise as he looked at the result. "Man, it's, uh, it's like the game wants us to, you know, wrap this up already. Alis, you're up with 1 hit point," he said, Izuku's awkward joke nevertheless eliciting a chuckle from the party. Jirou, meanwhile, took a deep breath, ready to take her turn.
"Alright. Alis looks around, sees all the stuff going on, and they're gonna limp on over to the tree, and when they're sure they're close enough and won't hit their allies, they're gonna cast Burning Hands. It's gotta make a dex save."
Izuku promptly rolled the save before nodding slowly. "Alright, it failed. Roll 3d6 fire damage, then double the total because it's vulnerable to fire."
Jirou chuckled lightly to herself as she assembled enough die to roll, then looked down at the total. "12, so 24."
"Alright, after all of the damage the tree's sustained through its minions being taken down one by one, in the face of this powerful wave of fire, it's going to burst into flames, shining bright like, uh, like a massive torch in the darkness. The moss monster lets out a harsh shriek as it falls prone, the moss turning black and withering away into nothing, uh, to reveal an older elvish traveler with solid black hair. You all see the other moss monsters reverting to normal as well, and it's, you know, same kind of thing: they're all elves, and they all look like they were just ordinary travelers. At the center of it all is the dryad, who begins tossing and turning as the tree continues to burn, like he's having a nightmare. You guys are out of initiative, what do you all do?"
Koda immediately turned to Jirou and rolled as he began whispering rapidly, to which she simply chuckled before turning to Izuku. "Whisper's gonna run up to Alis and heal them with Healing Word, using up his last spell slot to give them 4 hit points." She then turned over to Koda and got into character. "'Thank you, my friend,' they say kind of weakly, because, you know, they almost died." Koda simply nodded with a smile, causing Jirou to smile a bit herself while Mina spoke up.
"Joy's gonna move up and cast Cure Wounds on the dryad guy, using up her last spell slot. He looks like he's not doing too good, so yeah." With that, she rolled the necessary dice and tallied up the result. "He's got 4 hit points," she said.
At the same time, Koda began whispering again, prompting Jirou to speak once more. "After that, he'll walk around to each of the elves and cast Spare the Dying on them, in order to stabilize them." Izuku nodded before turning to look at Mina.
"His eyes open blearily, like he, ah, just woke up, and he sees you all. He's both confused and clearly in a great deal of pain."
"'Sup?' Scratch says, kinda looking down at the guy she just stabbed a minute ago, not really sure what to think about him."
"The dryad's only more confused now." Izuku cleared his throat, and began to speak in a voice slightly deeper than normal, but also sounding incredibly pained. 'W-who...? What happened?' His nose kind of twitches, now that he's smelled the smoke from the fire, and he turns to look at the burning tree. He's, just, completely horrified. He tries to rush towards it, but in his, uh, haste to get up, he ends up tripping and falling towards the ground."
"Joy immediately tries to catch him."
Izuku nodded. "Alright, roll athletics," he said, prompting her to roll.
"15," she said.
"Yup, you manage to grab him and pull him up into a sitting position," Izuku replied.
Mina nodded. "Joy looks at him and asks, 'Hey, are you okay?'"
"He looks back at you, Joy, the cracks in his bark-like skin slowly growing bigger as tiny pieces seem to break away. He, uh, he glances back at the burning tree with fear in his eyes. 'The tree...no, it can't...no...' He kinda struggles to get back up, clearly very weak from his fight with you and now his tree being set ablaze."
"'Is the tree important to you?'"
Izuku nodded. "'If my tree dies...I will die...soon after.'" With those words, the entire party began to murmur to themselves, only to find their musings interrupted as Izuku held up a finger. "And that's where we'll be leaving things for right now," he said, prompting various reactions from the rest of the group.
"Ah, come on, Midori, you can't leave us with a cliffhanger like that!"
Momo simply sighed. "It's for the best. It's getting rather late, after all." As she spoke, Toru just so happened to be checking her phone.
"Yeesh, it's 10:35," she said. A couple seconds later, Jirou yawned.
"I can believe that," she said. "Thank God I tend to stay up late anyway."
"Well, I believe it would be best if we all retired for the night. Even if it is a weekend, it still isn't good to stay up too late."
Kaminari chuckled. "Whatever you say, vice-prez. I'll get right on that," he said, getting up from the couch and stretching his arms with a long sigh.
Izuku looked at Mina, that weird fuzzy feeling entering his chest as he saw her pouting slightly. "If it helps, you guys are all level 2 now," he said, causing her deep black eyes to widen in excitement.
"Really?!" she asked eagerly, as the others turned to look at Izuku, less enthusiastic but still pleased.
"Yup," Izuku replied cheerfully. "Which means it's, uh, it's only gonna get harder from here," he said, prompting a chuckle from Mina.
"Oh, we'll see about that. I've already got my next spell picked out. It's gonna wreck everything."
Izuku smiled, that fuzzy feeling seeming to grow in intensity. "I'm looking forward to it. Same time next week?" Within seconds, the entire group had confirmed that they would be willing and able to play again, in one way or another. "Alright, I'd appreciate it if you guys had your characters leveled up by then. If you need any help, let me know, but otherwise, I think I'm gonna go to bed." He glanced at Mina, smiling awkwardly. "Here's hoping Mineta doesn't kill me in my sleep," he said, causing Mina to laugh a little.
"Oh, God, what did he do to you?" she asked, dying to know the answer.
"A lot of shouting and punching my legs, but nothing too serious...yet," he said, still maintaining the smile but nonetheless betraying his own apprehension. Mina laughed again.
"Well, if he gets to be more than you can handle, just say the word and I'll have a...chat, with him."
Izuku, too tired to think about what else Mina might have meant by that, simply nodded before walking up to the elevator. "Will do," he said as he pressed the button and looked back at Mina. For a couple seconds, he found himself simply looking at her, that fuzzy feeling growing by the second before the ding of the elevator doors opening snapped him out of it. His face became beet red in an instant, and he immediately rushed into the elevator with a higher-pitched "Uh, b-bye!" In no time, the doors closed, and Izuku was on his way to his dorm room. Mina giggled as she watched him leave, likewise caught up in her own thoughts for a moment. However, she quickly noticed that others had been looking in on the exchange.
"Uh, what's Mineta's beef with Midoriya this time?" Jirou asked, causing Momo to scoff.
"Don't tell me that he's still berating him over that petty nonsense from the license examination," she said, to which Mina shook her head, chuckling.
"No, no, it wasn't that. I, uh, I hung out in Midori's room for a bit yesterday, that's all. Mineta's right next door, he must've heard us talking about the game and got mad at Midori for having me over there."
As Toru's eyes widened unbeknownst to the others, Kaminari couldn't help but chuckle a bit. "Midoriya let you into his room? Alone? Huh! Man...you think you know a guy."
"I think the aforementioned petty nonsense shows that you are not always the most astute judge of character, Kaminari," Momo countered simply, causing Jirou to burst into laughter while Kaminari groaned.
"Aw, come on, I told him I was sorry!"
Momo scoffed again, with a hint of amusement in it. "You're lucky that Midoriya appears to be predisposed towards forgiveness for minor slights."
Kaminari seemed to squirm a bit. "A-anyway, I was just saying he didn't seem like the type to be cool with that, you know? I mean, I'm still not entirely sure that that isn't breaking a rule around here."
"I'm pretty sure if it was, you and me would both be in trouble by now," Mina countered. Meanwhile, Jirou, having finally calmed down, began to smirk.
"Was the game the only thing you talked about in there?" she asked, in a slightly sultry tone. Kaminari smirked as well, while Toru was grinning like a madwoman. Koda started to look around uncomfortably as Momo chuckled softly.
"Now, now, that's quite enough, you two. Mina's private conversations are her own business, regardless of their subject matter. Besides, I really think we should all be heading to bed."
Mina glanced at Jirou with a sly smile, knowing that she probably deserved the punk rocker's teasing on this subject, at least to a point. "We talked about the game and scheduled this session. That's all I'm free to talk about to you guys."
Jirou held up her hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Alright, fair enough," she said, while Momo rolled her eyes with an amused smile. Meanwhile, Koda finally mustered up the courage to speak as he walked up towards Mina.
"U-um, Ashido, c-could you, uh, help me level up Whisper for next week's session?"
Mina smiled at the animal whisperer. "Of course, Koda, I'd be happy to. The rest of you down to level up before turning in?"
Kaminari and Jirou both signalled their agreement with a shrug, while Toru could only nod, still processing things. Momo politely shook her head.
"I really must be turning in, I'm afraid. Still, I had a marvelous time. I'm looking forward to our next session. Good night, Jirou. All of you." With that, she gave a curtsy before walking to the elevator to the girls' wing. It wasn't long after she left that Kaminari decided to speak up.
"You're the only one she mentioned by name," he said quickly, to which Jirou immediately smacked him on the cheek with her left ear jack.
"Shut up, Sparky!" she snapped, beginning to blush profusely. A few seconds later, Toru began squealing.
"Ahhh, I knew it, I knew it-ow!" she cried as Jirou smacked her on the cheek with the right ear jack. After the pain subsided, she cocked her head in confusion. "Wait, how did you even manage to hit my cheek when you can't see my face?" she asked aloud, forgetting about the pain for a moment.
"I guessed!" she shouted, beginning to stew in her own embarrassment as Kaminari laughed softly to himself. Koda began fidgeting, unsure whether or not to speak up, while Mina looked at Jirou with a smirk of her own.
"So, if everyone here already knows, does that mean I get to talk about it now?" Jirou looked back at her with a look of pure rage.
"I will kill you next session," she said, in a tone that would've made most people shut up right then and there. Mina, however, was not most people by any stretch of the imagination.
"You mean you'll try," she said, her smirk getting bigger.
"I will succeed," Jirou retorted, every word dripping with venom.
"Not with 7 total hit points you won't."
"Oh yeah?!" Jirou said as she angrily grabbed a d6 and rolled it, looking at the result and doing the math before looking back up at Mina with a malicious smirk. "14 total hit points. Double the potential for death."
As the two girls continued to stand off with each other, Toru and Kaminari began to grow worried. In the end, it was Koda who took action.
"C-can you all stop?!" he asked, in what was effectively a normal register. For him, it was practically an angry shout, and it immediately turned everyone's attention off of the argument and towards him. "P-please," he added, shrinking under the pressure of everyone else's gazes. "Y-you're being really mean, a-and I, uh, I don't like it. I just want to level up Whisper and go to bed, o-okay? S-so please...stop." By the end of his outburst, he looked like he'd collapse into a black hole from how much he was shrinking into himself. After looking at him for a second, Mina and Jirou looked at each other, both of them stewing in a different kind of embarrassment.
"Koda's right, I...I'm sorry, Kyoka. I was being a jerk," Mina admitted, rubbing her arm with her other hand in a sheepish manner. Jirou, meanwhile, twirled her right jack with her finger, looking down at the ground.
"Yeah, I, uh...I'm sorry, too, guys. For...acting out, and...smacking you two in the face."
"To be fair, I think I deserved that," Kaminari admitted, small currents of electricity running up and down his arm as he held his hand up to his cheek. "I'm sorry for being an ass."
"Ah, w-what he said," Toru said, holding her invisible hands clasped together in front of her chest.
"A-and I'm sorry for shouting like that," Koda said in his usual quiet voice. "N-now, from now on, let's have a, uh...what is it called? House rule? Table rule? I-I don't really know that much."
"I think table rule is right," Mina offered, to which Koda nodded nervously.
"O-okay, table rule. The table rule is, a-as long as any of us are t-together, anything like this," he said, alluding to what had happened by gesturing vaguely to the surrounding area, "is off-limits, uh, unless the person involved says it's okay. What people might be, uh, feeling about certain other people, or, ah, what people talk about in, eh, other people's dorm rooms...is their own business. D-does that sound good?"
The four of them all nodded almost in lockstep. "Y-yeah, that's good," Jirou said, continuing to twirl her jack around her finger. "I-I think I speak for all of us when I say...we're really sorry, Koda. I just, I know speaking up like that wasn't easy for you, and I'm sorry for putting you in that position. It was...something a friend shouldn't do." The others nodded in agreement, causing Koda to blush and fidget some more.
"T-thank you. I-I'm glad we could, uh, you know, talk this out," he said, unsure where to go from there. "Um, s-so...what was it that Jirou was doing earlier? Do we, uh, roll for our hit points this level?"
Mina nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, you, uh, you take one of your hit dice and roll it, and you add your constitution mod to that, to see how much you add to your max hit points. See, uh, for you, that's a d8, so you take one of those and add...it looks like 2, to the roll..."
As Mina slowly settled back into her role as the most "experienced" player, that night's arguments in turn faded from everyone's minds...at least for a time.
Jirou: Hey, Momo, you up?
Jirou sat at her bed with the lights on, a clear sign that she still wasn't going to bed anytime soon. She didn't quite expect Momo to respond, but her phone pinged in less than a minute.
Momo: So it would seem. I haven't yet managed to fall asleep.
Momo: Did you need something?
Jirou: I dunno, I guess, just...someone to listen to me ramble for a bit?
Momo: I think I can manage that. =)
Momo: What's going on?
Jirou: After you left, me and the group kind of, uh, got into a pretty bad fight.
Momo: =0 A fight?!
Jirou: Yeah...
Momo: What on Earth were you fighting about?
Jirou: Well...Kaminari was joking about you liking me or whatever, so then I tried to make him shut up, but then Toru butted in...well, you know how Toru is. Already planning the wedding in her head, you know?
Momo didn't respond for some time, which left Jirou feeling worried. She better not have let anything slip. Eventually, after a long while of her phone simply saying that Momo was typing something, Jirou got a response much shorter than she had expected.
Momo: I see.
Momo: What happened next?
Toru: Well, after I slapped both of them upside the head with my jacks, Mina started talking crap too, and at that point I was pretty pissed off, so I started threatening to kill Joy next session.
Momo: =0
Momo: Jirou, you can't keep hitting people with your ear jacks like that, at least not for something like this!
Momo: If it were Mineta making a lewd comment about you, I'd understand, but this is little more than petty schoolyard teasing! It shouldn't be met with such a reprisal, and it certainly shouldn't come to have any bearing on our campaign.
Jirou: I know, I know, it just...everything they were saying made me really angry. And embarrassed. I don't know why, it just did.
Another pause. Jirou let out a long, soft groan. She knew that this would all be water under the bridge the next day, but she couldn't help but feel like she was disappointing her friend all the same. Getting chewed out by a teacher was one thing, but getting chewed out by Momo was one of the worst feelings she had experienced.
Momo: I see.
Momo: I trust you were able to come to a resolution?
Jirou: Yeah, we all apologized. Koda, he...he made us all cut it out.
Momo: I see. I can imagine it was hard for him to speak up like that.
Jirou: Yeah, I apologized to him for that too. I think we're all more or less cool now. I don't think anything like that will happen again, from any of us, but...agh, I dunno. I still feel twisted up about it, you know?
Momo: I understand.
Jirou: ...Are we cool? I know you've told me not to do stuff like that a lot. I...I can't help but feel like you're super disappointed in me right now. ={
Momo: ;{!
Momo: I'm not disappointed in you, quite the opposite! I'm proud of you!
Jirou blinked a couple times.
Jirou: Really? Why?
Momo: Well, you apologized! You recognized and admitted where you went wrong, and you promised to do better for the future.
Momo: I'd say you handled that situation pretty well.
Jirou: ...Huh. You're really not mad at me?
Momo: Jirou, there are very few things you could do that would make me mad at you for any length of time, you know that.
Jirou found herself smiling slightly, such that she didn't even notice her cheeks blushing.
Jirou: Ah. Cool.
Momo: Hopefully the others will stay true to their own agreements. I'd hate for any of our newly strengthened friendships to fall apart.
Jirou: Yeah, I haven't really hung out with Midoriya much. He seems like a pretty cool guy, even though he is pretty awkward.
Momo: Yes, I must say I've been very pleasantly surprised by Midoriya. At first I was rather vexed when we were partnered together as Class President and Vice President. His awkwardness around me was fairly off-putting, to be sure, and I have to admit, I assumed he would behave like some of my old classmates back in middle school, after I, uh...well, you know.
Jirou began to blush even further. She did know.
Momo: I realize now just how wrong I was about him. He's really quite a kind and earnest fellow. Extremely skilled and intelligent...if also, unfortunately, extremely lacking in any sense of self-preservation.
Jirou snorted. Yup, that was Midoriya, alright.
Momo: I also admittedly don't talk to Kaminari all that often. I guess it felt slightly awkward to, after, uh…
Jirou: After he asked you out? ;)
Jirou couldn't help but laugh a little. She was immeasurably glad that she had been in the room when he tried it. Those cheesy pick up lines he tried to use on Momo would never fail to make her laugh over just how terrible they were. Momo took a couple seconds to reply.
Momo: Well, ah, yes. I'm glad that he took my rejection in stride, at least.
Momo: Besides, I think I know a very attractive woman who would like him much better. ;)
Jirou turned beet red almost instantly, while at the same time feeling very exasperated at her friend calling her out like this. She frantically typed out a response while trying to compose herself.
Jirou: Noooo, stoppit!
Jirou figured that Momo was probably laughing to herself in that annoyingly beautiful way she did whenever she found something Jirou said or did funny. She was glad they were texting, because she knew if she actually had to hear it, it would make the task of calming herself down a lot harder.
Momo: Oh, very well. I really think you ought to say something to him one of these days, Jirou. It's fairly obvious that he likes you.
Jirou: Well, you don't know that. Besides, he's all...smelly. A-and stupid. I don't know what makes you think I like him, because I don't. Because he's smelly. And stupid. And...smelly.
Momo: I see.
Momo: Well, I know you do, in fact, like him because I know you, Jirou. And I've seen how you look at him when you know he's not paying attention. True, there are moments when you seriously contemplate if disciplinary action is worth it purely for the sake of quite literally slapping some sense into him, but when he isn't placing his foot firmly within his own mouth...you care about him, a great deal. And I think you would be a lot happier if you admitted that to yourself, and to hjm.
Momo: ...*hum.
Momo: *him.
Momo: sorry, tired.
This time, it was Jirou who didn't respond for a while. She couldn't, really. Momo had hit the nail on the head, in her typical fashion. In a few lines of text, she had managed to distill exactly how Jirou felt about Kaminari, and left her questioning why she didn't just admit it. Momo was rarely wrong about things, after all, and she'd gotten such a good read on Jirou that she may well have gotten a similarly accurate read on Kaminari. And even if she hadn't, what was Jirou so afraid of? That their friendship would be screwed up? Kaminari wouldn't let that happen. He knew all about being rejected; he wouldn't let anything change between them if he could help it, because he wouldn't want her to feel the same way he had in the past. He'd take her confession in stride, the same way he'd taken Momo's rejection in stride. And come to think of it...wouldn't Momo do the same?
For how perceptive Momo seemed to be about Jirou's feelings, Jirou didn't know what to make of how Momo felt about her. Momo cared about her, that much was obvious. They were very close friends, and sometimes when they talked, she got the sense that there was something more, some...unspoken thing, between them. Kaminari had noticed it too; that's why he was so damn insistent that Momo liked her that way, no matter how many times she smacked him in the face. And yet, at the same time, if Momo knew Jirou so well, wouldn't she have realized Jirou had a crush on her by now? Jirou wondered, as she occasionally had before, whether Momo knew, but wasn't going to tell Jirou she knew because she didn't feel the same way and wanted to spare Jirou the pain of rejection. And yet, as she wondered about it, she came to the same conclusion as all the other times: that wasn't something Momo would do. Momo would tell Jirou she knew and discuss the situation openly with her. So, if she knew, Jirou should've already known that she knew.
All the same, the idea of Momo not knowing seemed ludicrous on the face of it. Kaminari figured it out, and he was about as lovably dumb as you could get. Toru had evidently suspected that Jirou had a crush on Momo for some time, and Mina had probably figured it out long ago. Momo was the smartest person Jirou knew; she had to be able to figure it out by now. But, then again...maybe Jirou just wanted her to be able to figure it out. If Momo figured it out on her own, then the ball was in her court. Jirou didn't have to go up to her closest friend and confess her feelings, with all the risks that such a bold step brought. She could just sit back and wait, for as long as it took for Momo to figure it out and give her an answer, yes or no. But, then again, that wasn't too far off from how she was handling her crush on Kaminari, was it? Waiting, for the right moment, the right feeling in her gut, the right information that she had which showed that the odds were in her favor. A wait that could last a day, or a month...or longer. A wait that may never end. Jirou hadn't thought too hard about that fact before now, but Momo had. Momo knew full well that, when it came to Jirou and Kaminari, the wait wouldn't end. Because when it all came down to it, Momo knew that the ball wasn't in Kaminari's court, and Jirou was starting to realize that it wasn't in Momo's court, either. It was in Jirou's court. It had always been in Jirou's court.
And maybe tonight was the night she stopped waiting.
Jirou: You're right, of course. He can be annoying, obtuse, and dumb as a bag of rocks more often than not, but...I gotta admit, I wouldn't have him any other way.
Jirou: And, uh, he can actually be pretty smart sometimes. That's why I smacked him in the face earlier tonight. Because, uh, what he was saying...he was right.
Jirou watched her phone with bated breath, waiting for a minute. Then two minutes. She set her phone down, stared up at the ceiling for a bit, checked back once five minutes had passed. Nothing.
"She's asleep," she muttered softly, believing it.
She set her phone back down, stared up at the ceiling even more, tried to calm down her racing heart and quickened breathing. Picked up her phone at the ten minute mark. Nothing.
"She's asleep," she repeated, believing it less.
This process continued until she couldn't keep her eyes open any longer. She drifted off to sleep still muttering that same simple mantra, not long after she had stopped believing it.
As the clock on his phone read "11:45," Koda walked slowly out of the elevator and towards his dorm room, opening the door as gingerly as he could so he didn't disturb his neighbors. When he closed it behind him in the same manner, as soon as he was satisfied that no one had been bothered by it, he let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. This then led to several quick breaths, each one seeming to get a little bit quicker as he sunk down against the door and sat down at its base. The little background noises that ordinarily didn't bother him started to become oppressive, and he blocked his ears as soon as he hit the floor, still trying to calm himself down. So preoccupied was he that he failed to notice his roommate sneaking up on him, only realizing that she was there when he felt a small nuzzle against his knee. Although he still covered his ears, his rapid breathing began to slow down at the sight of his pet rabbit curled up against his leg.
"Hey, Yuki," he whispered, far too low for any ordinary human to pick up. Nevertheless, his rabbit could hear him just fine, and cocked her head questioningly. He chuckled a little. "I'm okay, Yuki, really. I just...I just need a few minutes." In response to that, Yuki looked up at him and twitched her nose, a signal he had grown accustomed to. "Alright, alright, you can come up," he said with a smile, slowly removing his hands from over his ears in order to pick up Yuki and hold him close to his chest, stroking her soft fur and giving her scritches.
For several minutes, nothing more was "said." All Yuki wanted was for Koda's breathing to return to normal, which it eventually did, and for the sounds around him to stop butting in on his thoughts, which they eventually did. These tasks accomplished, she turned around such that she was looking right at him, a question in her eyes.
"A lot happened today, Yuki," he answered. "Classes were, you know, the usual. Nothing bad to report there. I learned about a really fun game, I got to play it with a bunch of people I don't really talk to that much, and...we all had a really fun time. We're going to be playing next week, I think it's gonna become a regular thing." Yuki cocked her head again, causing him to sigh as he recalled the rest of the night's events. "Yeah, after Midoriya and Yaoyorozu left, the others got into a big fight. There was people being hit with Jirou's jacks, lots of screaming, threats of in-game murder." Yuki squeaked, prompting Koda to comfort her. "Don't worry, we talked it out. I think we're all good now, I just...I had to speak up to get them to stop, and...well, you know I don't like doing that. It was...rough. It was really rough, and I just kinda needed to let it out a bit, that's all."
Yuki pressed her head into his palm, causing him to laugh. "Thanks, Yuki. You always know just what to do." There was, of course, a reason for that. Anivoice could be adjusted to an extent, depending on the urgency of what Koda needed from surrounding wildlife, but it couldn't be turned off. Koda had always been able to understand animals, and they always had a kind of connection to him even when he wasn't making any noise except for breathing. It was like they instinctively knew what he needed, at least on a subconscious level. Yuki knew exactly what he was feeling and that he needed to be calmed down before he even shut the door. This was the very reason that he had requested to bring Yuki into his dorm in the first place, and why that request had been approved. She wasn't the first animal to perform that service for him, or even the first rabbit. And yet, like all the pets that came before her, she was specially suited to help him and only him, no training required, simply through the power of his Quirk.
After a brief moment of silent contemplation on Koda's part, Yuki looked up at him with a questioning glance once more, and Koda knew instantly what she was trying to ask, in her own unique way. He smiled, a smile that was drained and clearly under some duress, but still embodied a positive outlook all the same.
"Yeah," he said softly. "I think it was still a good day."
Holy crap, I've been working on this for way longer than I should have.
I decided to try and whip up the next chapter of this story just for the heck of it, and I ended up writing for the better part of a day. I've got this chapter and the next chapter more or less ready to go, and I'm probably going to upload the third chapter in a week or two. I honestly don't know how to explain it, I've just been really motivated to write these, it kind of became hard to stop. I think after these two chapters, I'll slow down a bit before writing more, but at this point, I am definitely writing more. For now, though...I really need to go to sleep. Be sure to leave your thoughts in reviews. Thank you all for reading, hope you all have a fantastic day, and take care.