Chapter Six

The rest of the exercises were pretty basic. Honestly, the situps and seated toe-touches just seemed incongruous, until I realized these exercises were picked to display Quirks. The first would help anyone with a non-standard musculature, and the second would let someone like Asui, or my mom, show off, the frog girl nearly folding in half as she reached a good foot beyond her toes.

The long distance run was just amusing, my enhanced musculature letting me place near the top, Tenya 'engines for legs' Iida finishing it in under a minute. Asui hopped it in three, Mina slid to victory in three and a half, and Bakugo tried to ride his explosions all the way there, but they gave out at the halfway mark and he was forced to hoof it with the rest of us.

Then came the results, which were gold encrusted bullshit. Izuku fell behind on the run, the pain of his broken finger getting to him, but Toru, the invisible girl, had done worse than him in literally every other event, only finishing a couple dozen seconds before him on the last one. Even if a single outstanding event could massively tilt your score, Ochaco somehow ending up as number ten despite being beaten out by Deku in every event other than the throw, and distance run by just over a minute, the transparent teen had had shown no single outstanding performance.

Looking at Midoriya have a small breakdown I considered that it might push him to do better, but, from what I remembered, it really hadn't. Momo's comment that it was obvious that Aizawa wasn't going to expel the lowest ranking student, however, gave me pause, as I distinctly remembered something to the contrary.

Dismissed, and ordered to head back to class to pick up the syllabus and leave early, Mina pranced over to me. "I can't believe he'd try to trick us like that!"

As everyone started to drift over to the locker room, I shook my head. "I'm not so sure about that. Meet me at the gates, I need to tell Momo something."

" Momo?" Mina echoed, "Kinda informal, aren't ya?"

Right, japanese manners. "We're all in the hero class. We're gonna be beating the stuffing out of each other on a regular basis. I figure that deserves some informality. Gates?"

She just rolled her eyes, "See ya there, Sparky."

Leaving on a trail of weak, short-lived acid, she sped off, and I jogged over to the girl in question, who was slowly heading in the same direction as everyone else. "Yaoyorozu!" I called as I closed, now acutely conscious of how I was coming across.

She paused, turning around, "Yes, Kaminari?"

"Call me Denki," I smiled. "Just thought you should go look up what happened to Aizawa's class last year."

"I. . . alright, I will," she replied, unsure. "Was there anything else?"

I shot her a grin, "That's enough. See ya later!"

Jogging off, it was easy to rush through everything, grabbing a syllabus. We'd have regular classes in the morning, though oddly enough it was literature, math, English (as a foreign language), and History, but 'Hero Art History', whatever that was, instead of literature, math, history, and science. Then 'hero training' in the afternoon, whatever that would be. I'd never heard of the books in our lit-class, but at least it wouldn't be boring.

"Sparky!" Mina called, running up to me. "Today was so great. Did you see! I got fourth! Can't believe you only got eighth!"

I shrugged, "The tests were either brute force or mobility based, and outside of a very specific circumstance I'm not the first, while the second is still something I'm working on. You on the other hand can keep going, and going, and going with your Quirk. Like a cuter Energizer Bunny."

She gave me a skeptical look. "I don't know, bunnies are super cute."

"Well," I said, leaning in and whispering, "I've never wanted to kiss a bunny."

She pulled back, whining "Spaaaarky!" with a smile, looking around at everyone around us.

"Ya did good, Pinky," I smiled back. "The jump was particularly impressive. How'd ya figure that one out."

"I didn't need it to hold, so I made it a square under my foot, and then just a thin rod, instead of a column," she explained. "Took forever to get it right, and I still can't do it fast. With time though, it's up, up, and away!"

Before I could reply, another woman's voice called, "Kaminari!" clearly out of breath. We both glanced over, to see Yaoyorozu run over to us. Stopping, she leaned over, getting her wind back. "The entire class?" she asked in shocked disbelief as soon as she could.

"Yep,"I nodded, explaining to Mina. "Remember how Eraserhead said his 'lowest score gets expelled' thing was a lie all along?" she nodded. " That was a lie."

"Then Midoriya's getting kicked out?" she asked, frowning. "He seems like an okay little guy."

I shook my head, "No, but if anyone had pissed him off, they would've been 'last', and gone. Year before this one, dude expelled his entire class. It was a scandal and everything."

Yaoyorozu nodded seriously. "The students were all accepted into other schools, and the only reason Mr. Aizawa gave for his actions was that, 'They weren't hero material.' I never though he'd do such a thing, but. . ." she trailed off, glancing at the school, looking worried.

"Oh, hey, introductions," I said, getting her attention. "Momo Yaoyorozu, meet my friend Mina Ashido. Mina, Momo."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Ms. Ashido," Momo greeted, almost on autopilot.

The pink-skinned girl smiled, "It's nice to meet you too, and call me Mina. Ms. Ashido's waaay too serious," the pink-skinned girl smiled.

"We were gonna go hang out, hit an arcade or something," I said, both girls looking towards me. "Do you want to come with?"

"Oh, I. . ." she sputtered, unsure as Mina shot me an annoyed look.

"You look like you could use something to distract you, and it's always nice to make new friends, right?" I asked Mina more than Momo.

The pinkette mouthed 'Saturday?' and I nodded slightly. She rolled her eyes, giving the other girl a goofy grin. "Yeah, come on. This dork's the only person I know in class, and I totes want a girl friend. All my old friends were kinda annoyed I got in and they didn't."

That was news to me. "Really?" I asked, frowning with sympathy.

She grimaced, "Yeah, but they're just total sticks in the mud, so let's not talk about them."

Momo looked between us, expression doubtful. "Really? I wouldn't be intruding?"

I glanced toward Mina, who jumped forward, grabbing Momo's hands. "Nah, it'll be fun! We can even go shopping and make him carry it!"

I laughed, shaking my head, "As long as it doesn't turn into strength training, I'm fine. Just remember that you'll need to carry it home on the train."

"See, when else are you gonna get an offer like that?" Mina entreated.

Biting her lip cutely, Momo considered it, before she nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, yes that sounds lovely!" she agreed, bouncing on the balls of her feet, smiling widely. "I'll call Mother to inform her to expect me home later. I'm sure she'll be overjoyed to hear I'm making friends!"

As she pulled her hands out of the pinkette's grasp and fished a cell-phone out of her backpack, Mina looked to me, mouthing 'Mother?' I mouthed back 'Be nice," which just got her to stick her tongue out at me in response. Momo didn't notice, excitedly talking to her parents, and I could catch "Yes, on the first day!", "No, I had to give him my name, he was talking to the student in front of me.", and "No, two people. A girl and a boy"

Putting the phone away, Momo nodded with a serious look, under which hid a smile, "Let us go!"

There was a shopping center nearby, so we headed over there, finding the arcade like Mina and I had planned. While I aced the shooting games, and Mina dominated the dancing ones, Momo was a deft hand at the fighting games, defeating us both. "It's just an optimization of tactics and openings," she shrugged. "Certain characters have weaknesses that others can optimize their performance upon."

"But how did ya know that," Mina smiled teasingly, "You said you've never been to an arcade before."

"That genre of simulation is useful in training timing and tactics," she defended, looking away and blushing slightly, before meeting the other girl's eyes. "It's not my fault if you underutilized the tools given to you."

"Oh it's on!" Mina laughed, starting another game and waiting until Momo picked her character before Mina selecting one herself. She still lost. "Oh come on! I was so close!"

"Having the proper tools is of no help if you can't use them," the brunette commented with a cool smile, demeanor cracking as Mina shot her a sour look. "Uh, I can teach you, if you'd like?"

"Maybe we should get lunch?" I asked instead, both girls looking to me, then the time, the growling of Momo's stomach prompting her to quickly agree. Sitting down at the food court, we relaxed. "So, what'd you two think of today's class?"

" Super fun! Though the stakes were super lame," Mina grumbled.

"Was it really that different than normal?" Momo asked, with a frown.

"Pff, yeah? Haven't you always wanted to let loose with your quirks in PE?" the acid-user asked in turn.

The other girl blinked, "Not particularly? Are you saying you weren't allowed to?"

"Neither of us were," I chimed in. "It's, like, national policy. Where did you go to school?"

"I was home-schooled by personal tutors," Momo replied absently, like that was no big deal, continuing thoughtfully, "Is it really that different in public school?"

"Yes," we replied in unison. "Actually, I wanted to ask you about that. What's your Quirk, metal creation?" I asked, the girl not really having made that much, doing moderately well, but nowhere near the 1st place rank she'd gotten in the test.

"Close," she nodded, "My Quirk is Creation. I transform the molecular structure of my lipids into whatever I want, though I do need to understand the molecular structure of whatever I'm creating."

My response came out my mouth without being checked by my brain, " Bullshit."

"I, excuse me? There's no need to swear," she replied a mix of disapproving and defensive.

Shaking my head I explained, "Momo, you made more than your body- weight in materials today. That's not how molecules work, they don't gain in weight if they're rearranged. Density and size, absolutely, but unless everything you made was hollow, that explanation doesn't work, and if it was it would've broken, and even then you'd still have to have started the day so heavy you'd be nearly round to end up the healthy-looking weight you are now instead of a skeleton. Unless you're super dense and are several hundred pounds right this second and only look like you weigh about as much as Pinky does, that's not how physics work."

Mina looked to me, "Lipids are fat?" I nodded. "He's not mad at you, honey," she reassured Momo, once she understood what I meant. "But ya gotta admit, that doesn't sound right."

"But. . . that's what my tutors said was happening," the other girl frowned. "And I do need to understand the molecular structure of what I'm making to do it correctly, and it does use my fat stores, so what else could it be?"

"Cost of doing business," I shrugged, getting confused looks. "You have the ability to create things, but the process of doing so might be what's energy intensive, burning fat to do so instead of just nebulous 'energy' like Recovery Girl's healing does. Or maybe the process does utilize fat cells to make materials, both inorganic and organic, but it's not a one to one conversion, and has a lot of extra steps. Though if you're building it molecularly there wouldn't be any traces that could be pointed directly to it being converted fat instead of just powering the creation process, and the ratio of use might be the same for each process. Think of the difference between getting iron ingots from iron ore and burning wood to power the forge and thinking the wood becomes the steel. Only you end up with less iron in ingot form than you start with iron ore normally, so something is screwy."

"But, my tutor. . ." she trailed off. "He was an expert in Quirk application. If he was wrong about that, what else was he wrong about?"

I shrugged, "No idea. Sometimes experts get things wrong. It's always worth listening to them," I offered. "So you ready for combat training?"

"Ooooh, you think that's what's next?" Mina asked, running with the topic change. "Robots again, or are we gonna be fightin' each other?"

"You know what's coming next?" Yaoyorozu asked, looking up in interest.

"Sparky knew about today's class weeks ago!" Mina bragged.

I held up a forestalling hand, "It just made sense." I also knew what was going to happen, but there'd be no way to explain my foreknowledge. "Just like it makes sense that we're gonna end up fighting each other a lot. It'll give us combat experience against actual people instead of robots we can go overboard on. We're gonna be fighting criminals and Villains, and while occasionally you get someone with a Master power, er, a minion making Quirk," I corrected, having slipped into the wrong dimension's jargon, "those'll be rare, and it'll normally be people we have to fight to disable, not destroy."

"That quickly?" Momo asked. "We have only begun our schooling. Surely it would be better to provide a baseline competence for combat to ensure a universally good grounding in the basics."

I shook my head, "UA tends to drop its students in the deep end and watch us figure out how to swim ourselves. It makes sense, kinda, in that when we're heroes we'll have no one to hold our hands, but training wheels are a thing for a reason. That and. . . I've got a bad feeling we're not gonna have as much time as you think. I can't put a finger on it, but I think we're gonna have to get to base proficiency sooner rather than later."

"Base proficiency?" she echoed. "You don't mean that the way I mean a 'good grounding in the basics', do you?"

"He means able to fight like a pro," Mina explained, having heard this from me before. "Do we gotta talk about that now? I thought we were gonna re- lax!"

"Ah, yes," Momo agreed, though she couldn't help but ask, "And how long do you feel like we have?"

I shrugged, "A couple months for the first hurdle, but at least until the end of the Spring term before things get bad. I've heard some things, but nothing definite, only enough to make me worry. I know we can do it, if we're smart about it, and work hard."

" Yaoyorooooooozuuuuuu," Mina whined, though she was smiling. "We're supposed to be having fuuuuuuun."

"But isn't training both enjoyable and rewarding?" the girl replied with complete confused honesty.

Pinky shot me a pleading look, and I just laughed. "We can train a different day. While I don't think we have three years, we have time. Now, I believe someone suggested shopping?"

"Yeah!" Mina cheered, grabbing her trash in one hand, and Momo with the other, practically dragging the girl away as I cleared our table and followed her.

Mina and I waved goodbye to Momo, as her family's chauffeur came to pick her up. "Did you know she was rich?" the pinkette asked out of the corner of her mouth as the other girl was driven away, a wide smile on her face as she waved back to us from the back window.

"Yeah," I said as her car turned the corner. "But I don't see why that makes a difference. Girl seemed kinda lonely."

That got me a sideways look, "And you thought she needed a special friend?"

Turning, not caring about the other people on the street, I leaned down and gave the pinkette a kiss on the lips. Not anything too deep, but more than a peck. "I thought she needed two."

"And if I suggested we invite the little guy with us next time?" she questioned.

"Midoriya? I think he's already friends with Tenya and Ochaco," I replied.

She shook her head, "No, the little guy. The one who kept staring at my chest when you were all. 'Pretty eyes'"

"I'm like that right now," I quipped staring into her black and gold orbs, "So you're gonna need to be more specific." As she started to respond, I continued, "If you mean Mineta, the ball-headed boy, then. . ." I winced. "Dude's kind of a perv. Like I appreciate the feminine form, as I'm sure you're aware," I pointed out, and she blushed a darker shade of pink, "but he's kinda immature about it, and I'm pretty sure that'd make Momo uncomfortable. I mean, I fuckin' swore, like, thrice, and every time she looked like I pissed on her shoes."

"'Fuckin' thrice'?" she echoed, shaking her head. "Only you." Reaching out, she tugged on my new shirt, my uniform top folded inside my backpack, leaving her hands against my chest. "Like the new threads?" It was a mottled thing, with purples and teals that seemed very familiar.

I shrugged, "It's okay. Not something I would've picked for myself, but that's just personal tastes. I care more about the fact that you think I look good in it."

That got another disbelieving laugh from her as well, walking away. "I don't need to go home for a bit. Karaoke?"

"Sorry, I need to get home. Parents want to talk to me 'bout my first day over dinner," I explained. "I'm pretty sure they'd like to meet you, if you want to come over."

That caused her to stumble, head whipping over to look to me in surprise. "Meeting your parents? Isn't that a little fast?"

"They want to meet my new friend," I stressed. "They notice how happy I am when I get home, and want to meet who's making me like that."

"Just your friend?" she asked, sounding a little hurt, trying to hide it behind a wan smile.

Stepping close to her, I wrapped my arms around her. "My very good friend," I insisted. "Maybe something more, but I didn't want to move too fast for you. We're teenagers, we've got time."

She stiffened, before relaxing into me. "What about training. You keep saying we don't have time."

"Which is why I want you strong, so whatever happens, you're safe. You're a hero, like me, I'm not gonna suggest you not fight, so that means I want you good enough to do so without getting hurt," I told her. "And so we can take whatever this is with us at your pace."

I could see a few disapproving looks we were attracting, but I didn't care about them, only the girl in my arms. "And what about Yaoyorozu?"

I shrugged, "She seems nice, and like she needed friends. I don't want any of my friends getting hurt. Hurt badly," I corrected. "We're heroes, getting hurt's kind of expected."

"The fact she's beautiful wasn't part of it?" she asked.

"It helps," I admitted. "Would you have been so quick to take me up on hanging out if I wasn't all muscle-y?"

The lack of answer was an answer all to itself. Again, had I been my younger, heavier self I would've taken offense to that, believing 'it was the inside that counted'. However, like a lot of 'truisms', it was true in a certain sense. Your personality was what made things work, but your appearance is what got you the interview, and sometimes the job, so to speak. It wasn't fair, and it wasn't nice, but it was true.

My Body Talent would let me get close, where the Stamp would take care of the rest. Instead of using it, however, I needed to rely on the strength of my personality.

I was doomed.

"It's fine," I told her. "Just how the world works. That doesn't make you a bad person, just normal."

"Okay, fine," she admitted, wrapping her arms around me as well. "Maybe a little. But if you were a jerk I'd dump your tight butt!"

I laughed, "I'll hold you to that. So, want to come home with me?"

She let go, and I let her step back, as she gave me a raised-eyebrow look. "Do you ever stop?"

"Do you want me to?" I asked in return.

"Nope!" she cheered, lunging forward to give me another hug. "But not yet! Walk me to the station?"

"Of course," I agreed easily. "And not just because I'm going there anyway."

She laughed, turning and walking away from me. "You're not supposed to say that, Dork. Ugh, I can't believe it's only Wednesday! Why couldn't it be Friday?"

"That eager?" I grinned, falling in step beside her, my voice pitching low as I snaked a hand over and pulled her close. " Me too."

" Spaaaaarkyyy!"

AN: Poll up on the thread. Not sure how to handle the next chapter, as all three options have pros and cons, so I'm putting it to a vote instead of just figuring it out myself.