Takuma could feel the emotions of living beings around him. It was a fact ingrained in his life as much as the sun rising in the morning and the moon replacing it at night. Pain was the most common element that came through his link with the people around him. And one thing he had gotten accustomed to with time was a monthly visitor most women despised with all their heart. Periods sucked. And they sucked even more when you had to go through the pain of every woman in a hundred-meter radius around you. It was one of the many things he had learned to ignore and push as far back from his awareness as he could, but it didn't mean he could ignore it completely.

So when Mei came back feeling absolutely awful one evening, he pretty much knew they were both going to have a long week. Just because the second-hand pain he felt wasn't as bad as the original didn't mean he enjoyed the process any more than her.

Also, he could use this opportunity to work on his mental wall against a single person. His defense against her thoughts and feelings wasn't as bad as it used to be, but it didn't mean he could rest on his laurels and expect no one to take advantage of it.

Between the moment Mei entered the range of his Quirk and the moment she stepped a foot through the front door, he had a steaming cup of hot chocolate, a hot water bottle, and a blanket waiting for her.

"Welcome back."

"I'm home," she called back.

"Rough day?"

"Yep, today was just the worst," she told him as she let her bag down and flopped on the couch with a long-suffering groan. Only then did she notice what was waiting for her on the coffee table.

He felt her embarrassment and wondered if he had gone too far. "Empathy Quirk, remember."

"So you feel what I'm feeling, that must be a pain," she said while making herself comfortable on the couch. She slid the blanket on top of her, then the hot water bottle under said blanket, and finally grabbed the cup and took a long sip from it.

The palpable relief coming from her lessened his own discomfort, and he stopped cleaning the counter to join her and sat between the couch and the coffee table. He grabbed her school bag and started to lay out its contents in front of him.

"It's something that I've had time to get used to," he informed her while grabbing her agenda. "You'd be surprised what you can get used to when you don't have a choice."

Studying together had become part of their routine. Mei studied better when she had someone to bounce ideas with and keep her on track. It also offered him a refresher course on things he'd learned and never used after obtaining his degree, so he also got something from it even if he doubted he would ever end up in a situation where academic knowledge would ever matter.

"Your Quirk sucks."

He let the book fall on the coffee table and raised both hands in the air. "Thank you!"

Mei giggled behind him. "And I thought having terrible night vision was bad."

Takuma turned his head toward her. "I thought your Quirk sharpened your sight?"

She nodded with a smile. "It does, but my eyes have a hard time focusing when I don't have a specific target. Anything lower than dim light and I'm completely blind."

He raised an eyebrow as a thought rang into his head. "Do you sleep with a nightlight on?"

Some red went into her cheeks, and she looked away. "It's not a nightlight; it's a weapon holding the concentrated power of the sun!"

Takuma chuckled. "This is the cutest thing I've ever heard."

"Meanie," she pouted before sticking her tongue out at him.

He was glad she took his teasing with a smile and focused his attention on her homework, or to be more precise, their homework. Looking through her agenda, he learned she only had some English for today. It was strange since she usually had more than a single class's worth of work to do.

"There was a Villain attack near the school this morning," Mei informed him. "Some of our teachers are still missing, so we were stuck doing nothing most of the day. We only had English this afternoon."

Takuma felt his stomach drop. "How close to the school?"

"Not too close; Kamui Wood did a good job," she informed him between sips of her cup. "It was a robbery, I think."

He nodded in agreement. Robberies were rarely something Villains bothered with, in his experience. Criminals who were either too desperate or full of themselves bothered doing something so eye-catching. Half of the heroes in the city must have been salivating like starved dogs at the news. A robbery gone wrong, add a few hostages, and you could easily find the one who dealt with the situation climbing a dozen ranks in the top one hundred and maybe two or three in the top fifty. Those Villains had given Kamui Wood his lucky break, a few more, and he would be a contender for the top twenty, which was a whole different beast altogether.

What worried him, in truth, was that a robbery could imply two things. The local criminals were either too weak and were hoping for a stroke of luck, or they were sure of themselves and thought they had a good shot at succeeding. Meaning that either way, the area surrounding Mei's school would suffer a rise in criminal activity in the short term until the hierarchy sorted itself out, with the old gang keeping its place and humbled or replaced.

He would need to check it out just to be safe. He wasn't about to let something like this slide so close to where Mei spent most of her day. Takuma wouldn't lose another friend to some jumped-up criminal who felt too big for their boots.

'Not again, never again.'

"I'll go with you tomorrow; maybe I can help look for them with my Quirk," he proposed. Just because he had an ulterior motive didn't mean he couldn't watch out for her teachers.

He felt her think on his proposition as he grabbed her English textbook.

"You would do that?" she said with a small amount of hope in her voice. "But you still have a bounty on your head."

He shrugged. "I'm in better shape now, still not a hundred percent, but enough to sneak around and keep an eye out for a few missing people. I'm not going there to look for a fight, and if I find one anyway, I'm going to run at the first opportunity."

Again, not entirely true, not entirely false. Lying to her left a bad taste in his mouth, and he hoped she wouldn't mind too much if she could see things from his perspective.

He felt her shift behind him, and he found himself suddenly hugged from behind, Mei's head resting on his shoulder and her arm holding him tightly. He was again shocked at how different the way she touched him was. It wasn't an excuse to feel him or grope around. It was warm and...affectionate? He wasn't yet used to how tactile Mei could be, and he had to get himself back together quickly.

He leaned slightly into the hug and pressed a hand against the one resting on his chest. He couldn't return it fully since she was behind him, and it was rather an awkward position, actually. "Be safe, okay?"

"I will; I'm pretty good at sneaking around. It's hard to get detected when you can tell who is where at any time," he told her with a reassuring smile.

Somehow the same tingle he had felt from her before went through her again. It was a strange feeling he couldn't quite place, and he wasn't about to dig into her head, so he simply tried to ignore it. She relaxed her embrace, and he made himself comfortable again. She also started playing with his hair again.

He was more ready for the overwhelming relief this time. He also noticed the way Mei relaxed, and she even seemed to breathe easier since she started her motion over his scalp. Takuma didn't understand why this simple task seemed to help her so much, but he was absolutely there for it. This was better than crack, and he'd gone through enough second-hand highs from junkies to know what it felt like.

"Can you recognize a specific person from a crowd?" Mei wondered aloud. "I know you remembered me, but does this work with everyone?"

He had to clear his throat, not trusting his voice after she had started working on his scalp.

"I can," he confirmed. "It's pretty easy, in fact. Everyone has a way of dealing with their emotions differently. Think of it as a color; every shade is a different way to deal with what goes through your head. And when I'm looking for someone, depending on the information I have on them, I look for certain things. A child will broadcast his feelings a lot harder than an old lady, and vice versa. Of course, if I was looking for someone I know, it would be easier. For example, I've been around you for a while, and I know what shade of color to look for."

"What color am I?"

"It's an image; I don't see color in a literal sense," he corrected.

"But if you had to choose, what color would I be?" she asked again.

Takuma had a harder time thinking of her question with Mei's finger trailing through his locks. "Gold."

"Gold? Not pink?" she said with genuine interest.

"Gold is like energy in a sense, something that changes, always moving forward, powerful yet steady and lumbering," he said, trying to explain his thought. "Pink would be softer, more malleable, something to be shaped yet can never be."

Her breath hitched behind him, and he wondered if he had said something wrong. "You think I'm powerful?"

He decided to turn his head her way to meet her eye. "Mei, you build weapons and gear that many would kill for, as a hobby. Of course you are powerful."

Takuma knew Mei's work would definitely attract the eyes of some big players in the underworld if she decided to dip her toe into this lifestyle. A good engineer, one specialized in creating Hero-level support equipment, would be worth fighting for. He would expect a few dozen dead before the board grabbed her and sold her service through the usual channels, with a hefty tax for their help, of course. Criminals weren't known for doing charity work.

"I never thought of it that way; I just want my babies to get the recognition they deserve," she admitted with a small grin. "If U.A. doesn't work out, maybe I should give it a try."

"Please don't," Takuma pleaded with genuine distress. "Whatever you earn, be it respect, infamy, or money, the underworld will take it back, one way or the other."

"Alright, I won't. But only because my assistant is against it," she hummed.

"You have an assistant?"

She giggled; he rather liked that sound. "It's you. Remember when I fell from the death pile?"

"Yeah, I remembered now." "May its death be a warning for the others," he intoned dramatically.

"The beast has been vanquished, sir knight. What is the reward you wish to claim?" she said in the same old parodic tone.

"Homework shall be my recompense," he declared while giving her her textbook opened at the right page for her to start her homework.

"You, sir, have terrible taste," she deadpanned.

He started laughing lightly and shook his head. "You're not getting out of homework today."

"I hate you," she lied before grabbing her textbook. "You're not getting out of it either," she added before shifting on the couch in a way that allowed her to bring him closer to her so he could see the exercise she needed to do.

"Whatever shall I do?" he deadpanned in turn. He let his head fall against her shoulder and followed along as she started working on the exercise, sometimes asking him for his input since he had a better grasp than her on this particular subject. He was glad he could help, learning or relearning a few things along the way was just the cherry on top.