Chapter Text
The first time Ochako Uraraka saw Izumi Midoriya, it was at the Unforeseen Simulation Joint.
It should have been a nice, normal day for the brunette gravity manipulating Hero-in-training: go out for some disaster training, hang out with her new friends in UA’s Class 1-A, meet her favorite Hero in Thirteen, that sort of thing. She expected the day to be hectic - any day with Heroics training was apt to be hectic, if their first day of training earlier in the week was any indication - but she did not expect to abruptly get dropped through a portal and land in a half-destroyed building among a burning city. There were fires all around when Ochako hit the ground on her hands and knees with a thud, having fallen from the portal on the ceiling.
“Oof… Hey, wait…” She mumbled as she got up and rubbed her head behind her helmet’s headband. She made a mental note to ask the Support Department about reducing the weight of the thing because it was heavy to be wearing all the time.
But she was distracted from that thought because she realized she wasn’t alone. Ochako tensed as she regarded the other figure there with her. The other person sat at the edge of a destroyed wall that overlooked the city, serving as an impromptu window.
She looked… young, maybe Ochako’s age. The girl had curly, slightly wild green hair - about shoulder-length - along with a noticeable smattering of freckles and dark circles under her eyes. She wore a mostly black bodysuit with a short black scarf-cape… thing that went to the small of her back. Her gloves and shoes were vivid red and there were dark emerald lines down her cape and suit.
The girl turned towards Ochako and smiled. The smile didn’t quite reach her ears and, when she opened her eyes, they were a slightly dull green: much too old-looking for her appearance otherwise, like she’d been forced to grow up far too quickly.
“You aren’t in my class…” Ochako said cautiously. She took a step back.
The girl could be a hostage? She didn’t look properly happy anyway; she smiled because that was what Ochako would expect, not because she was excited.
“I’m not. Hi there,” the girl said casually, then she looked away again towards the burning city around them, through the hole in the building. “Sorry about you getting stuck here on your lonesome. Tomura is kind of a moron.” Ochako blinked in confusion and slowly readied herself into what she could only hope was an appropriate combat stance. She had about half a week’s worth of training under her belt and this girl didn’t look like a pushover in that bodysuit. She was definitely in better shape than Ochako, at any rate. Still, Ochako wasn’t about to just get kidnapped or killed without a fight. “Oh, I wouldn’t bother with that,” the girl said quietly. “I don’t really want to fight you and you definitely don’t want to fight me.”
Ochako narrowed her eyes at the green-haired girl, moderately annoyed in spite of herself.
“What, you don’t take me seriously? I’m a Hero-in-training!”
Ochako took a sharp breath and her eyes went wide as dinner plates when six red-and-black energy tendrils crashed past her - past her face, her raised arms, her sides, only centimeters from connecting - and hit the wall behind her with a devastating, shuddering impact and the sound of broken concrete hitting the floor. That was when Ochako realized that if this girl wanted to kill her, she already could’ve twenty times and probably could’ve twenty more times in the moments it took her to register that fact. The tendrils, bathed in crackling, crimson lightning, retracted back to the girl’s body and Ochako sank to the ground, feeling tears stinging her eyes.
Not of sorrow but of fear.
“I just want you to understand the stakes here, Miss…?” She trailed off with a questioning tone, and Ochako sniffled a bit. She decided to take off her helmet to rub her eyes, then she glared at the green-haired girl. No, she wasn’t going to be intimidated so easily. Maybe she couldn’t win - maybe she couldn’t fight - but she refused to be afraid.
“Why should I tell you my name?” Ochako asked defiantly. The green-haired girl smiled wryly and looked away, back out her makeshift window towards the flames. The harsh orange glow against her front was rather bizarre, as she gently kicked her legs back and forth over the edge. She had the lighting of an archvillain, orange light dancing in her green eyes, but the appearance of a girl who just was bored or, perhaps, lonely.
“You seem nice. We could be friends, y’know?” She held out a hand in front of her to appraise her bright red gloves. They had lines down the back in two-tone black and dark green, corresponding to the bones of her hand, and some gold buckle-like bits on the knuckles. Her sleeves were black, though, and it made her look like her feet and hands were meant to look bloody, covered in crimson.
“You just tried to kill me!” Ochako said derisively. To her irritation, the green-haired girl just chuckled.
“You’d be dead if I tried to kill you, Miss,” she said simply. Ochako found that she couldn’t actually argue with that - not truthfully, anyway - so she just continued to glare. “My name is Izumi,” the girl added, wanting to trade. Izumi turned back to Ochako with her big green eyes and, for a moment, they had a little more light: the light of someone who wanted a new friend, who was desperate for that connection. Ochako frowned at that idea.
“My name is Uraraka.” She adjusted herself on her knees so she could sit up straight, with her butt on her pink shock-absorbing boots. The fire in the city around them was carefully controlled by the USJ’s temperature and environmental systems, so it wasn’t spreading. But the air was uncomfortably hot and thick as Ochako rested her hands on her knees, pinkies-raised. Izumi looked down to Ochako’s hands, then back to her face.
“Uraraka Ochako. Quirk: Zero Gravity. You have to keep your pinky or thumb raised at all times or wear gloves, otherwise you’ll float yourself or others by accident. Still working on that lift capacity, though.” Ochako pursed her lips and looked at Izumi with a bit of a dazed expression. Izumi had rattled that off like one would a factoid for an upcoming test.
“If you already knew that, why did you ask?” Ochako said tersely. Izumi just shrugged.
“It’s more polite to ask or so I’m told. To be honest, you weren’t the one I was expecting but poor Kurogiri is always cleaning up after Tomura, so what can you do when he makes mistakes?” Izumi asked, more so to herself. Ochako frowned and tilted her head at Izumi.
“Was all this just so you could kill one of the teachers?” Ochako asked cautiously. Izumi smiled out at the flames but it wasn’t a very happy or mirthful smile. It was a smile that reminded Ochako that Izumi was still dangerous.
“Sort of. Tomura wants to kill All Might because he is a fool who hangs onto Father’s every word.” She turned to Ochako and her smile became a bit more maniacal still. “I have a specific one of your classmates I wanted to say hello to because he’s… an old friend, though he ended up somewhere else. A pity, for me.”
“Why are you doing this, though?” Ochako asked. She figured, as long as Izumi was talking, she might still be safe. Izumi frowned a bit - understanding that ‘this’ didn’t just mean ‘today at the USJ' - only for a moment, before it disappeared. She just shrugged again after that, to Ochako’s consternation.
“Father has grand plans and a vision for a world under his control; the man who would be king. Tomura just wants to watch the world burn.” Izumi looked back out towards the fires and sighed. “I don’t know what I want yet. Just… something different. I want the world to be different.” She looked so overwhelmingly, tragically sad as she spoke that Ochako didn’t even know what to say. She almost reached out to put a hand on Izumi’s shoulder but thought better of it. Part of her wondered if this was something a true Hero could handle: if saving hearts was the real goal and if Ochako could ever hope to achieve something like that.
Part of her just didn’t want to be stabbed, though, admittedly.
“I’m sorry,” Ochako settled for. She wasn’t sure what she was sorry for; did someone hurt Izumi? Was she lost? Ochako didn’t know; all she did know was that the villain before her had a remarkable façade of functionality that hid a deep, dark well of sorrow. There was something jarring to that realization, something that deeply contrasted everything she'd ever been taught about the concept of being a 'villain' to begin with.
“It’s not your fault.” Izumi turned back to her and narrowed her eyes, though not in a mean way. “You still struggle with controlling your quirk, yeah? Last I checked, anyway.” Ochako blinked in confusion, not sure if she should admit the truth of that. Izumi gave a kinder smile this time: the smile of someone who just wanted to be helpful. “Tomura never does his homework before these kinds of outings but I do. You struggle to float yourself and you don’t know how to deal with targets at range, I believe?”
Ochako nodded cautiously and Izumi just huffed a bit of air out of her nose.
“Consider grappling lines and ask the Support Department at UA to see about redesigning your boots. Those boots have good shock absorption but won’t be any good for running in.” Izumi leaned back to appraise Ochako’s boots a bit more closely and pursed her lips. “Consider rockets, too. Those would be helpful!”
“Why are you trying to help me, though?” Ochako asked. It came out in a quieter whisper than she intended but Izumi just hummed neutrally in response.
“Like I said: you seem nice. UA will try to turn you into a good little Hero who doesn’t think about the motives of your opponents and instead only of upholding the status quo. It’s up to you if you still want to be friends.” Izumi slowly stood and brushed herself off, while Ochako found herself rooted to the spot on the ground as she continued to kneel. That was bad: if Izumi was done talking, that might mean she was ready to fight. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m just going to go prevent Tomura from doing something really stupid,” Izumi said with a grin, reading the dawning panic on Ochako’s face.
She looked Ochako up and down one more time and furrowed her brows, as her cheeks were dusted with a bit of pink.
“Your costume looks good,” she said cryptically. Ochako couldn’t help the befuddled expression that crossed her face and Izumi laughed - genuinely laughed, in a kind way - as she stepped forward and fell gracefully from the broken hole in the wall. Ochako scrambled forward to look after Izumi, only to realize the villain was already gone and she had effortlessly disappeared from a six-story fall.
Ochako made her way back, eventually, to the front area of the USJ. There were a few minor villains in her way and she ended up dropping concrete blocks on them from above, with the element of surprise. When she returned to the front, she found that the main villains had retreated. As soon as their main bad guy, a ‘Nomu,’ was taken out, Izumi had somehow forced ‘Kurogiri’ to turn on a portal and dragged the hand-guy, ‘Tomura,’ through it, in addition to Kurogiri himself.
Ochako spent an hour debriefing with Detective Tsukauchi about her meeting with Izumi. She then dreamed for a week about the black and red tendrils of hard energy, with their crackling red lightning, as well as of Izumi’s laughter at the end and her desire to make a connection with another person, and how deeply those two things contrasted in Ochako's mind.
The second time Izumi Midoriya saw Ochako Uraraka, it was at the UA Sports Festival.
Izumi sat in one of the break rooms with a sandwich in her right hand and her left hand on her knee, her gloved fingers tapping gently there. She wore her costume and sat sideways on the table’s attached bench, so that she was straddling it and facing the door. Nobody else was in this room, since it was for students who were just about to finish a match.
Izumi wasn’t supposed to be there, naturally. Indeed, Father would probably be quite angry, if he knew she was. But he didn’t and Kurogiri had long ago given up on telling her she couldn’t have things, if she asked nicely. He was much too kind that way; probably a product of the poor young Hero Father had snatched away too soon to force into being Kurogiri in the first place.
Kurogiri was more of a father to her, anyway, than Hisashi Midoriya could ever hope to be. For all his gravitas and delusions of grandeur - of proclaiming himself All for One and declaring that he was the man who would be king - all he ever really was, was a cruel, derelict, delinquent father who thought he could swoop back into his daughter’s life after a decade of absence and everything would be fine. Never mind that he wasn’t even there when Inko Midoriya passed away; he wasn't there when it would have mattered. But the retribution for that would come in due time.
At least Kurogiri was nice enough to make her a sandwich to eat while she trespassed at UA. Tomura always acted like a spoiled brat towards Kurogiri, then acted all confused when Kurogiri was tired of dealing with him. She always tried to be nice to Kurogiri and he made her snacks. Give and take. The world was all give and take - as long as it judged you to have something worth giving, she mentally added ruefully.
She had come expecting Katsuki to be the one to come to this room, after his match. She expected him to win handily: he had the advantage in a ranged quirk, he had more overall practice in combat with his quirk, and Izumi was well aware of how much his quirk could do harm to a person’s body at close-range. Poor Ochako never stood a damn chance and the worst part was that Katsuki didn’t deserve the win at all. Not after what he’d done, at least. Izumi had the burn marks to prove it.
The door to the waiting room opened and Izumi waited silently - only for Ochako to be the one to walk in. She stopped dead upon seeing Izumi and Izumi could tell that she, too, had a silly, startled expression on her face as she stopped mid-bite of her sandwich. Ochako started to turn and walk right back out but Izumi waved frantically at her, so Ochako glared as she walked in and shut the door.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Ochako hissed, so Izumi quickly chewed her food and swallowed to respond properly.
“I wanted to see the tournament match of my old friend I mentioned!” Izumi said ‘old friend’ the way one might say ‘least favorite person on the goddamned planet’ and Ochako arched an eyebrow in response, registering that. She, against her better judgement based on how she scowled, trudged over to where Izumi was and plopped down facing the correct way on the seat in front of Izumi, then promptly rested her face in both hands and sighed.
Izumi straightened a bit and paid more attention. She had seen the match but she didn’t realize Ochako would be so upset about it.
“What’s wrong, Uraraka?” Izumi asked cautiously, and she was a bit surprised when Ochako shot her a withering glare from between her fingers. Izumi took that opportunity to set her sandwich down on the table, since she wasn’t hungry anymore, anyway.
“You. Are a villain. Trespassing at UA. I am not going to talk to you about it,” Ochako said with a great deal of venom. Izumi shrank a bit and frowned. Still, if she let people finding her weird or troublesome stop her from socializing, she’d socialize even less than she already did, and right now all her acquaintances were weird villains like she was.
“I saw the match. It sucks. But that’s no reason to be upset about it! You did your best and I, uh…” Izumi trailed off as Ochako began to cry.
Oh, Izumi was not the right person for this. She couldn’t talk to people normally at all, let alone girls around the same age as her that she found strangely attractive. That thought alone made her cheeks turn pink, which she cursed herself for, as that was not what Ochako needed at the moment.
“I needed to do better, dammit!” Ochako spat out through tears, and Izumi was a bit startled by both the sudden statement and Ochako’s tone. “My parents… I needed to do better than my best for them! How else am I supposed to support them? I already have a… a dumb quirk.” She stopped talking and dropped her right hand to glare properly at Izumi. “What the hell do you care, anyway?”
She then mumbled something that sounded like ‘why am I telling you any of this’ and looked appropriately defeated as she continued to cry, the tears tracking down her face and cheeks and wetting her permanent blushmarks. Izumi smiled sheepishly before responding.
“Katsuki’s explosions really hurt, don’t they?” Ochako blinked away tears in confusion and, for a moment, looked entirely too stunned to be sad anymore. Izumi quickly worked off her glove to show the nasty, wide burn scar she had on the top of her right hand and Ochako gasped. “He and I go way back,” Izumi added matter-of-factly, and Ochako looked like she was going to get a bit sick.
“I don’t… Why are you telling me that? I don’t want to… I am not supposed to know that,” she corrected herself halfway through to be less harsh, but Izumi didn’t hold that against her. If Izumi were in Ochako’s position, she probably wouldn’t want to know her star classmate was a douchebag and a bully, either. Izumi just shrugged and deflected.
“I saw your match. The artificial nature of the match - the small space and lack of combat gear - benefited him a lot. I think in a real engagement, you would’ve done much better,” she said observationally. Ochako snorted at Izumi and shook her head, then she began to wipe her eyes properly as she responded.
“It’s weird but also sweet that you want me to feel better about it… but that’s nonsense. In a real fight, he can fly and he has those gauntlets, too!” Ochako moaned. Izumi sighed at her.
“But he’s overconfident and you would be able to use the environment more effectively to your advantage.” She paused, then held up her right, now bare index finger at an angle. “Besides, one day, you’ll be able to fly, too, and you can use that to get the drop on him!"
Ochako was entranced by the scar tissue on Izumi’s hand and Izumi found she entirely didn’t mind that. Part of her just wanted someone - anyone - who was part of ‘polite society’ to recognize what Katsuki had done and acknowledge its cruelty. But part of her also just felt a thrill that someone ‘normal’ was paying attention to her at all.
“I appreciate your unfounded confidence, I guess,” Ochako said dryly after a moment, as she finished wiping off her face. “That isn’t going to provide for my parents or help them work fewer hours, though.”
Izumi nodded sadly. That much was true.
“Your internships are coming up, right? Pick somebody who knows hand-to-hand! Also, I’m telling you: grappling hooks. You need ‘em.”
Ochako still looked miserable but she had a squiggly, slightly bemused smile on her face now to accompany her red, puffy eyes. Izumi stood up and, fighting against timidity and worry that it wasn’t appropriate, reached out and gently patted Ochako on the shoulder with her right hand.
“Trust me, Uraraka,” she began, and gave her best ‘normal person’ smile she could muster as Ochako looked up at her, “even if you lose to Katsuki every single Sports Festival, you’ll always be a better person - and a better Hero - than he ever was or could hope to be.”
Ochako looked at Izumi’s scarred right hand meaningfully, then gave Izumi a sad look: a look that, in part, told Izumi that Ochako wished she could stay. That she could just stay and be normal, here with Ochako, like that was something she could ever hope to be. Then Izumi stepped away and slipped her glove back on, as a portal opened to spirit her away back to the League of Villains’ hideout. Before she stepped in, she offered one parting line to Ochako.
“Tell Todoroki that he’s a better person than his dad ever was, too, and he always will be, for me?” Then she walked through the portal without waiting for a response from a rather confused-looking Ochako. Aizawa and All Might burst into the room a few minutes later only to find Ochako alone, looking very conflicted but not quite as sad as she had been.
And if, after that day, Izumi created an automatic biweekly deposit of a hundred thousand Yen into the Uraraka family’s bank account, set up so that it wouldn’t set off any flags from the government, well… No one else needed to know about that.
Especially considering it came from Father’s money, after all.
The third time that Ochako Uraraka saw Izumi Midoriya, it was at I-Island, during the Expo.
Ochako had been invited by Momo and everything was very fun. Most of their class was there, one way or another, and even All Might stopped to say hello, along with a girl named Melissa Shield.
Melissa offered Momo, Ochako, and Kyoka a tour of the island, so they spent most of the day with her. It was thoroughly entertaining and Melissa was really nice. She mentioned her father was there to give some kind of presentation on support gear, though Ochako didn’t have the heart to admit she didn’t have any interest in support gear in the abstract. Momo was certainly interested, though, and the two brilliant girls carried on quite the animated and enthusiastic conversation as Ochako and Kyoka pretended to follow along.
Melissa got them invitations to the formal dance that night, so Momo was nice enough to make Ochako a cute little pink and white dress with black tights that was much fancier than anything she’d ever worn before. She even had a little flowery headpiece thing she could wear in her hair and the girls helped her do her hair and makeup.
Kyoka also looked wonderful in her slightly punk formal get up and, when they saw that Momo looked awesome in her long, lime green dress - and that Todoroki in turn looked thoroughly dashing in a white suit - the other two girls resolved to finally try and set Momo up for a dance with her crush.
The formal event was going so well at the start. Ochako and Todoroki had become better friends since the Sports Festival, when Ochako had relayed her message from Izumi without really understanding what it was meant to be for. Todoroki had looked like she had blown up his entire understanding of the world but, when he asked about it, she just explained that she had ‘a Hero friend’ who was watching and (apparently) knew Endeavor.
Still, it meant that Ochako started hanging out more with Todoroki and Iida, too - as much as they could, anyway, with his class president duties - and the three of them, along with Tsuyu, were a good little group. Ochako was a little sad that Tsuyu wasn’t going to be at the dance but she didn’t have much control over that.
The first thing Ochako and Kyoka did was try to convince Todoroki to ask Momo to dance. More accurately, Ochako chatted with Todoroki about it while Kyoka teased Momo and tried to convince her.
Todoroki danced with Ochako first, trying to work out his nerves, then Ochako switched off to dance with Iida next. Iida, ever the business professional, wore a rather plain blue suit. Still, he knew how to dance properly and they had fun chatting about his most recent escapades as class president. As Ochako danced with Iida, she saw that Momo and Todoroki indeed were also dancing now, so she shot them both a cheeky thumbs up.
After their dance, Ochako retreated to the punch bowl, which was when things went sideways.
“Oh, hello!” A dreadfully familiar, lyrical female voice said, so Ochako sighed as she turned and found Izumi.
Then she promptly sucked in air at the sight of what Izumi was wearing. She had a dress with a shiny green upper body, held on her shoulders by two dark green, silky straps and a dark black, floofy skirt that went down to her knees. Izumi also wore black tights, black heels, and long black cloth gloves that went up to her elbows, as her dress sat off her shoulders, exposing her collarbones and neck.
Ochako cringed when she realized she had seamlessly transitioned from checking Izumi out to staring at the long, faded scars on her shoulders and collarbones. Izumi smirked - smirked - at her and gently mimed the motion of brushing off her left shoulder with her right hand.
“I hope they aren’t too unsightly,” she said, trying to be sarcastic but there was a genuine undertone of bashfulness and shame there that brought Ochako back to reality.
“No, oh no, no sorry, uh… You look really pretty but also why the hell are you here?” The last part came out as a quick hiss as Ochako stepped closer, praying no one else would hear them. The party was getting louder, so she was hopeful no one could hear them, anyway.
To her surprise - and, perhaps, if she were pressed, amusement and enjoyment - Izumi actually turned pink in the face and looked entirely flustered at Ochako’s sudden proximity, so she stood straight on her feet and leaned her upper body back a bit in response.
“What, now you’re shy?” Ochako whispered in challenge, and Izumi turned even redder. The blush backlit her freckles wonderfully, even creeping down her neck, and Ochako distantly considered whether she had ever found another girl so damn pretty before. Deciding she hadn’t, she reached out and grabbed Izumi’s hand, then Izumi promptly turned all the way red to her ears.
“What are you doing?!” She whispered urgently, and now it was Ochako’s turn to smirk.
“If you’re going to crash my party, the least you could do is dance with me,” Ochako said. Oh, poor Izumi looked like she was gonna die now.
Good, serves her right for showing up uninvited.
Ochako promptly dragged the villain - who, she noted, had her hair more in order tonight, with it tied back in a ponytail along with a little black and green flower piece on the right side of her head - onto the dance floor, ignoring Izumi’s incoherent stuttering and sputtering along the way. Once Ochako actually got her… ‘friend’ to the dance floor, she realized that she had danced with two rich boys who knew how to dance and she had no idea what she was doing. But she was already this deep, so she spun around and put her hands around Izumi’s waist, pinkies raised, while Izumi turned fully scarlet in response.
“Uraraka, you’re drawing a bunch of attention to us!” She whispered frantically, but Ochako just grinned and got her to start swaying gently to the beat of the slower song. The idea that they were drawing attention wasn’t actually true, either - nobody cared about two teenagers dancing at this event that was mostly for stuffy scientists and rich people - but it did tell Ochako that Izumi was way more nervous than she was, which was satisfying in a way.
In spite of herself, Izumi brought her hands up to Ochako’s bare shoulders and clasped them behind her neck and she would’ve swore that Izumi was going to choke to death on air doing it. She pointedly ignored how nice the warmth of Izumi’s hands felt on her skin, too.
“You’ve never done anything like this, huh?” Ochako teased. Well, truthfully, neither had she, past some middle school dances and such, but Izumi looked one hundred percent out of her element. It was a stark contrast with how she was at the USJ: she looked alive and pretty good, too, with her dark green lipstick and a bit of makeup, yet she also looked way less confident, though perhaps not in a bad way.
Ochako swallowed a bit heavily but decided that, as deep as she was, checking out the villain girl who was roughly her age wasn’t the worst thing in the world, on balance.
“I didn’t… really have any friends growing up, honestly,” Izumi admitted softly, then she looked away and somewhere to Ochako’s right. Ochako frowned. That certainly explained some things, she supposed, but it still sucked. Their conversation about Bakugou and Izumi’s scars went through her mind again and Ochako’s frown deepened.
“Well… You said you wanted to be my friend, right?” Ochako said cautiously, and Izumi’s gaze snapped back to her.
“We probably can’t be friends,” Izumi said quietly. Ochako shook her head in response.
“You don’t seem suited to this whole 'villainy' thing. If me being your friend can make things better, then that’s good, right? Heroes can save people in more ways than one!” Ochako declared; she'd put a lot of thought into this since the last time she'd seen Izumi. Izumi was entirely and appropriately taken aback but Ochako maintained her enthusiasm.
“Y’know, theoretically, I’m here to crash the Expo,” Izumi countered. Ochako’s enthusiasm only slightly dampened as she raised an eyebrow and trailed her eyes around them, as if to say ‘so what are you doing right now?’ “The clowns that Father sent were useless, so I… borrowed their abilities. I’ll be going upstairs soon.”
Ochako frowned again, put off.
“You’re not gonna hurt anyone, are you?” She asked, a little sad and disappointed now. Izumi smiled wryly and shook her head, so her ponytail bobbed pleasantly behind her as it did, captivating Ochako for a moment.
“That was the problem with the clowns, they were going to be all obvious and loud. By the time I’m done, nobody is gonna know I was here. Except you, I guess,” she said, getting a little quieter at the end. She looked away shyly and Ochako took a half-step forward into her personal space, startling Izumi. She kept her hands on Izumi's sides, to keep her in place, and Izumi straightened and stiffened in response.
“You know you don’t have to do that, right?” Ochako asked quietly. She positioned her face so that Izumi would have to look at her, her bangs bobbing with the motion, and Izumi swallowed thickly.
“I do. But I sometimes wish I didn’t,” she said matter-of-factly. That was when the song ended and Izumi quickly stepped away like she’d been burned. “You’re very pretty, Uraraka. Thank you for dancing with me,” Izumi said, a bit too quickly and turning redder by the second once more. Ochako smiled, feeling her own permanent blushmarks getting darker.
“Thanks, Izumi. Please, think about doing something different, okay? For me? I promise we can be friends.”
Izumi smiled shyly and her cheeks pinked but she did not offer any kind of commitment, then she disappeared into the crowd. Ochako traced the lines of her back muscles - and the scars there, too - that were visible above the cut of her dress, before she disappeared entirely. Ochako then made her way back to her friends feeling very fuzzy and light inside, only to get relentlessly teased by Kyoka about the mystery girl Ochako pretended not to know, until she turned red herself.
A few hours later, it was discovered that David Shield’s prototype quirk-enhancing device he wanted to give to All Might had been stolen and nobody had any idea how, as none of the alarms had been tripped.
The fourth time Izumi Midoriya saw Ochako Uraraka, it was at the hideout of the League of Villains.
Things had gone so well and to plan up until that point. They had successfully tracked UA's Class 1-A and 1-B to their summer camp using a combination of well-placed bugs and tracking devices, as well as the root access that Izumi had gained to their systems when the League had infiltrated during the first week of classes.
Tomura, ever the small-minded young man he was, had only thought to steal planners and schedules. Izumi had obtained full backdoor access to UA’s systems entirely. The poor fools thought there was a traitor in their midst; Izumi knew this because she got to listen to their staff meetings now via live feed and they had no damn idea.
So Izumi had organized a plan to kidnap Katsuki. Tomura, always the optimist, believed he was going to convince the explosive Hero-in-training to switch sides, which Izumi found openly laughable. Tomura had sulked about it but Izumi had explained in very simple terms.
“First, he will never join an organization that involves me, point-blank,” she had said, to Tomura’s great irritation. “Secondly, he’s like Endeavor: he hates villains without realizing he was already the villain of someone else’s story.”
That got Touya’s attention. Of course, he still claimed to be ‘Dabi’ but Izumi was much smarter than anybody in the League gave her credit for. She was already well aware of Touya Todoroki’s sordid history with the number two pro Hero and his dear old dad, Enji Todoroki.
Still, Tomura was undeterred in his plans and Izumi was happy to indulge him, as long as she got to chat with Katsuki like she wanted to. Tomura could believe that the plan was going to result in whatever outcome he wanted to believe, as long as she got what she wanted.
They had a bunch of new members now, thanks to Izumi’s recruitment of Stain, the Hero Killer. Chizome Akaguro was quite the drama queen: his first introduction to the League had been a disaster, since it had involved Tomura. Izumi had to go find him when he left in a huff and only barely dragged him kicking and screaming out of an alleyway, before he permanently maimed one of Ochako’s classmates.
That would’ve been awkward. Tenya Iida was lucky to escape with only minor cuts and bruises. So was that useless pro, Native, that Stain had caught, even though he got stabbed a few times. Stain was none too pleased to have been interrupted but he and Izumi had a nice chat - at the point of her Rivet Stab tendrils, naturally - about Hero society and how it needed change. By the end, he was satisfied that Izumi had a reasonable vision of the future, even if Tomura and Father did not.
So she dragged him back and he, along with the new people - Spinner, Magne, Twice, Mustard, Toga, Dabi, Moonfish, Mr. Compress, and a rather brutish Nomu - were sent off to the summer camp to capture one Katsuki Bakugou. Stain rather liked the plan: a way to demonstrate that UA was leading society astray and that it was allowing little monstrous brats like Katsuki to become Heroes when they didn’t deserve it. Stain was a fun person to work with, Izumi decided; he was interested in ideology, even if he was a bit one-dimensional in his thinking, which made him easier to talk to about planning than Tomura was.
Regardless, Izumi had strenuously imparted to the group that they were not to seriously harm any of the other students or the teachers if they could help it. She did this first by demonstrating on Muscular, who made it abundantly clear that he didn’t take orders from sixteen year old girls. That little outburst cost him his quirk - though, of course, she would make more use of it than he ever did. Then he had the audacity to continue being a pest, despite being a mass murderer, so Izumi demonstrated that she could flay someone alive with her Rivet Stab quirk.
None of the other recruits dared question her again. Even Tomura was a little afraid after that. That was good.
Then Stain had come walking out of Kurogiri’s portal with… most of the crew behind him. Mustard and Moonfish were foolish morons who got caught but they were also the least disciplined of the group, so that didn’t really surprise Izumi much. Tomura had come down from his room to regard the group and that was when Mr. Compress dropped the bombshell on Izumi.
“We… captured two of them. By accident,” he said, then he dropped two of his little sky-blue orbs.
Out of one came a very dazed and angry looking Katsuki, who went as pale as a sheet when he saw Izumi in her costume, to her satisfaction.
Out of the other came Ochako, immediately dousing Izumi's sense of victory and replacing it with horror.
“Nobody can follow simple directions, can they?” Izumi said at a reasonable, indoor volume, covering her shock. She was satisfied, at least, that Dabi specifically looked appropriately terrified, though he tried to hide it; he was the most obvious ‘backstabber’ of the bunch.
“She and some of the other students came up with a plan to stop us and she jumped…” Mr. Compress said sheepishly. Izumi smiled and shook her head. Mr. Compress was nice and, more importantly, he was too smart to lie to her. Unlike most of the rest of these clowns and children tossed away by society, he had been around the block already and he recognized power when he saw it.
“It’s not a big deal,” she lied, “just cuff both of them and I’ll bring them to the recording room with Tomura. Everybody else, start packing up. The pros will be here in about an hour and a half.”
“How… how do you know that?” Magne said, and Izumi regarded the older woman kindly.
“I have ears everywhere,” she replied somewhat cryptically, though still with a smile.
“Hey, you… Deku? What the fuck?” That was Katsuki. Izumi snapped her gaze back to him and her eyes became hard and cold and distant, irritated that, even now, he couldn't bother to dignify her with her proper name. Ochako was next to him but she looked like she hit her head and wasn’t quite all there yet. There was a bit of blood on her and what looked like some small stab wounds; as Izumi scanned the room, she saw that Toga specifically looked very guilty. “Don’t fuckin’ ignore me, you--”
Katsuki didn’t get to finish that statement, as a Rivet Stab tendril stopped just short of his face, between his eyes.
“Silence,” Izumi said in a low, menacing voice. It took all of her force of will to not simply finish him on the spot. Then Magne stepped forward and helpfully bopped Katsuki hard in the back, which sent him toppling over to the ground. Ochako gasped, waking up properly in the face of that, and Magne went to bop her, too. “Hold on, it’s fine,” Izumi interjected, holding up a flat palm. Magne looked rather confused but she stepped back and did not question the order.
Toga deftly stepped forward and cuffed the two Heroes-in-training with quirk suppressors. Then Izumi led Ochako, while Tomura led Katsuki, to the recording room, as the other League members began scrambling to pack up to run to the designated safe zone outside of Musutafu.
Ochako was very out of it and, if Izumi was being honest, emotionally hurt, based on her expression. Izumi said nothing, trying to be gentle as she guided Ochako along. This was already going to be hard enough as it was.
The recording area was a little soundproofed room Izumi had set up in the back of the bar in her free time, just for this occasion. It had taken some prodding to convince Tomura that capturing Katsuki was a good idea and even more still to subtly convince him it had been his idea all along. Tomura loved taking credit for things, though, and Izumi was quietly grateful for that in this case, if nothing else.
“Tomura,” Izumi said as they got the two Heroes-in-training into the room and set them into two chairs, facing each other. They set them up so their arms were cuffed behind the backs of the chairs, which were heavy metal things that weren’t going to fall over. “You should go to Father and assist him in fighting the pros.”
“What?! But the plan was to convince this runt to join our team! How am I supposed to do NPC recruitment if I’m defending the party leader?” Ah, Tomura and his stupid, inane video game metaphors. Izumi might have been a nerd who was obsessed with quirks but at least she was obsessed with something useful.
“I will handle it, Tomura,” Izumi said with an air of finality. She turned and regarded Tomura with blazing fire in her green eyes, so he didn’t look like he really wanted to challenge her. “You won’t be able to brag to Father about your victory if he’s dead,” she added in a monotone, and that got him shuffling back out the door, closing it behind him as he went.
“What is going on, Izumi?” Ochako asked quietly once it was just the three of them. Izumi snapped her gaze back around and realized that Ochako was crying.
Oh no. Oh no no, this wasn’t how this was supposed to go at all.
“Well, I’m going to be having a chat with Katsuki here and it’s going to be broadcasted live. You… You weren’t supposed to be here but I guess I just didn’t account for how brave you are, did I?”
Ochako made a sound that wasn’t quite a sob and wasn’t quite a chuckle, so Izumi walked around and patted her gently on the shoulder. Ochako’s summer clothes were ripped in places and she was oozing a little blood from a stab wound on her leg, so Izumi used one of All for One’s stored healing quirks to fix that.
Izumi next pulled her gloves off and stuffed them in her pockets. Then she walked over and grabbed a half-finished water bottle she’d left in the room the last time she’d come in to check the sound equipment. She unscrewed the top, turned the recording equipment on, then moved back so she could dump it right on Katsuki’s stupid blonde hair.
“Wh-what?! I’m awake, what the fuck?” He exclaimed as he shook his face in confusion, so Izumi snorted at him.
“You’ll wish you weren’t,” she said darkly, and he got appropriately pale again when he could see her properly.
“What the fuck is this about, Deku? Since when the fuck are you a villain?” He spat the words out, but his voice had an undertone of fear. Ochako watched the two with wide eyes but Izumi slowly tuned her presence out and focused on the task at hand.
“Oh, but aren’t you impressed, Katsuki? After all, you’re the one who told me I’d never amount to anything without a quirk. You told me I could never be a Hero: that I was worthless, wasn’t that your exact word for me? ‘Deku?’” She dragged her hand along his bare shoulder - he had a black tank top on - with menacing false familiarity as she paced and he visibly shuddered.
“Yeah, well, you got a quirk now. What the hell happened to you?”
Izumi paused and pursed her lips.
“Well, isn’t that a good question? Let’s see: do you think it was all the times you and your friends beat me up in the schoolyard? Or was it when you used your little quirk to burn me and the teachers looked the other way?” She walked around and stopped, so she was standing between Katsuki and Ochako on the side, her body turned towards him. “Or - I know! It might’ve been when you told me to kill myself - and I certainly did try, didn’t I?”
“I went to your funeral!” Katsuki said urgently. He was crying now and Izumi reveled in it.
“Did you? Did you feel sorrow or shame? Or just fear that somebody at UA would find out about the real you, Katsuki Bakugou?” She started walking around in a wide circle again, behind Ochako but never taking her gaze off of the explosive Hero-in-training. A boy who she once wanted to be her friend, more than anything in the world. A boy who had broken and beaten her until there was nothing left but 'Deku.' He would regret it, now. “Tell me, have you ever wondered what it might be like to be quirkless? Did you ever even wonder what my life was like?”
He looked dumbfounded and afraid through tears as Izumi sent out a Rivet Stab tendril to idly drift directly in front of his face.
“I could end you with a thought, Katsuki. But I won’t because that would be a waste.” She continued walking around again, so that she was getting close to him, and he visibly leaned away as the Rivet Stab tendril retracted. “My quirk? It’s called All for One and I could take your quirk away with a touch.”
She set her hand on his bare shoulder again and he yelped.
“Get the fuck away from me!”
“Why? Is the idea of being quirkless so horrifying? Is the idea of being like I was so scary to you? I should think so, given how you treated me!” Her voice was low and full of malice and Katsuki sobbed. “Tell me, Katsuki: are you afraid?”
She leaned forward and close to his ear.
“Because you should be.”
“Stop!”
Izumi jumped away like she’d been burned once again by Katsuki’s quirk and turned her eyes towards Ochako. She had screamed, she was panting and crying, and, for a single moment, Izumi’s resolve wavered.
“Just… stop. Please. I… I understand that he treated you terribly, Izumi, but… what does this accomplish? You hurt me! You hurt my friends!”
Izumi hesitated and felt herself shiver involuntarily. No, that wasn’t what she wanted. She gave them explicit orders not to--
“Well, they did!” Ochako cut her off, and Izumi realized she’d been mumbling the words. “My friends are going to be in the hospital because of what you did! They could have died! They still could die! And now you want to make it worse? Just… just let us go, please!”
Izumi brought her right hand up to Katsuki’s shoulder and dug her nails into his skin. He shivered at the contact and the pain but Izumi only had eyes for Ochako.
“I… Alright. Alright, Uraraka. I’m sorry.” Izumi looked down at Katsuki then and still felt absolute fury at him. “I’ll let you go. But you tell her the truth, when I leave. You tell her what you did to me.” She leaned down again to his ear. “I’ll know if you did because the recording is still running. Don’t test me, Katsuki Bakugou.”
Then she removed her hand from his shoulder and left the two of them in the room, putting her gloves back on as she walked. An hour later, an assault squad of pro Heroes burst into the bar that was the League of Villains’ hideout only to find it empty, save the two students. Katsuki and Ochako were in tears and the recording of Izumi, Katsuki, and Ochako speaking was live streamed onto the internet, going viral.
Izumi went on that night to covertly sabotage All for One in his battle with All Might at Kamino, as she had the original version of her father’s quirk and he had the copy. Tomura was never the wiser as she pulled him out of the immediate blast zone and escaped with him.
But All for One died with Izumi’s Rivet Stab tendril in the back of his skull and through his brain, which was how she always envisioned it ending.
The fifth time Izumi Midoriya saw Ochako Uraraka, it was amidst the battle to raid the Shie Hassaikai base by the Hero Commission and police tactical units.
Allying with the Shie Hassaikai was one of Izumi’s least favorite plans by Tomura. He had gone off on his own when she and Kurogiri had stepped away only for a short time to try and locate Gigantomachia. In the time it took Izumi and Kurogiri to do that - and also to determine that Gigantomachia was planning on being a huge pain in the ass, even if Izumi was the rightful successor of All for One - Tomura managed to get Magne killed and lose Mr. Compress an arm.
Izumi almost had half a mind to reduce Kai Chisaki to ribbons for that, layer by fucking layer, but she held her tongue. Tomura’s basic idea - that they could piggyback off the rising success of the Shie Hassaikai to reestablish themselves - wasn’t really bad, though Izumi was doing well enough on her own making backroom deals and manipulating the stock market to keep the League funded.
It was just that Overhaul was a disgusting little rat and Izumi was loath to work with vermin like him. She was already evil enough on her own, thank you, and she didn’t need the help of germophobic sociopaths.
Izumi took the time they spent ingratiating themselves with the Yakuza to modify her costume. She extended her bracing gloves up to her forearms, though they were dark black with green highlights past the wrist. She also made new black armored boots to partially cover her favorite red shoes and redesigned David Shield’s little amplification device to fit into her mouth guard. Her bodysuit was appropriately set up to pad her body for light impact, as much as a bodysuit could, though at least Himiko let her know that it appropriately flattered her form.
Using the Hero costume she'd drawn as a girl as a base for her villain costume had always been a pure act of defiance against Father. She hoped he was spinning in his grave yet.
Izumi also decided to cut her hair shorter again. She was kind of tired of wearing it in a ponytail if she suspected she would have to fight. She was always a bit of a tomboy, anyway - the dress she wore at I-Island was the girliest thing she’d worn in a year - so she figured it would suit her. It wasn’t like her curly hair could be properly tamed, anyway.
Sending Himiko and Twice in to serve as League spies in the Yakuza was an… unpleasant choice to have to make. Izumi found she was rather fond of Himiko now, even if Himiko was a bit too stabby for conventional relationships. Izumi wasn’t sure what they were - they were friends, maybe, and maybe they could be more; Izumi felt something for Himiko she’d only ever even similarly felt for Ochako otherwise - but Izumi still wasn't entirely sure where they stood and the two didn't openly speak of it often.
She regretted that, later on. But she regretted a lot of things.
She found that she was fond of most of the League now, in a familial sense. Kurogiri was still a better father than her actual father had ever been, Mr. Compress spent hours teaching her magic tricks, and Twice had the funniest stories and jokes. Spinner was a nervous ball of energy but he was surprisingly well-read and loved to talk about movie adaptations of his favorite books and the video games he played with Tomura.
Even Tomura kind of grew on Izumi, though he continued to remain a dumbass. Still, he was like her dumbass older brother or cousin and she recognized that he was just doing his best with the hand that Father had dealt him. More than anything, she could certainly relate to that and she hoped to push him towards being more constructive yet.
Only Touya was the one Izumi put no faith or trust in, since she knew he would betray them the moment he thought he could get back at dear old dad. She could relate to that, too. Hell, she could sympathize. But she wasn’t reckless or stupid like he could be, nor was she gung-ho about killing civilians for fun like he was.
But then Izumi learned about Eri and what Chisaki had been doing to her. She saw herself in Eri. Chisaki, the scum that he was, fashioned himself to be another Father and that just wouldn’t do at all. That was when Izumi resolved that she was going to bury Chisaki, and she was going to do it with his own quirk, too.
Izumi sat through that meeting with Chisaki and Tomura, the latter of which was very sour and unprofessional throughout. She might have chided him for it, if she wasn’t one wrong word from Chisaki away from turning the Yakuza boss who would be king into ash. She played Shogi with Chisaki - and promptly destroyed him in the game, too, much to his obvious chagrin - as he had the audacity to demand that Himiko and Twice become his temporary employees and ‘envoys’ to the Yakuza from the League of Villains.
Izumi had relented on that, eventually. When Chisaki asked for her to come along as well, she almost killed him on the spot and he must have realized because he didn’t ask again, after her refusal.
Still, it felt good to outsmart Chisaki. He thought he was such a little genius, with his quirk destroying bullets and ambitions of control of all of Japan via the end of superhuman society and quirks. He was too stupid to realize that Himiko and Twice provided Izumi with a detailed map of his entire hideout within days and, from there, it was trivial to push Sir Nighteye’s investigation in the right direction from behind the scenes.
Mirio Togata was the Ninth Bearer of One for All, Izumi had learned, and he was working for Sir Nighteye on the search for Eri, too. She had poor Ragdoll’s quirk for a while to track the Ninth Bearer but, eventually, she decided that wasn’t necessary.
Sneaking into the midst of the Wild, Wild Pussycats’ shared duplex to give Ragdoll’s quirk back in the middle of the night had been tense and risky, and Ragdoll had woken up to find a figure wearing mostly black in her bedroom at one in the morning. But she was so, so happy to have her quirk back, to the point that she didn’t even care who Izumi was, and Izumi took a small solace in that.
Taking her quirk hadn’t been part of the plan but Father never missed a chance to ruin someone’s life for his own trivial gain. Izumi didn’t know who most of the quirks of All for One came from but, at least, she gave back the one she did know the origin of to somebody who deserved it, to make that little part of the world right once more.
The day the raid came, Chisaki had the gall to call Izumi directly using the phone number she’d given him for emergencies and beg her to show up and save the day. Little did he know that she was already in his facility, effortlessly tailing him around as she hid in the shadows using All for One. She neutralized the obnoxious man who hid in the walls while she was at it, as he kept getting in the way. That made the job of the raid team much easier, too.
Izumi hadn’t planned to interfere directly. Getting Himiko and Twice out was priority number one, which she achieved when she took out the wall man. But Chisaki, the bastard that he was, managed to get to Eri just before Lemillion did. That was when Izumi decided she was going to end him.
She watched Lemillion fight at first, though, and it was magnificent. He had taken such a simple, innocuous utility quirk and turned it into the most finely maintained tool Izumi had ever seen. Add on the raw power of One for All, held by a master of refining quirk usage, and Lemillion was probably the single most powerful user of the sword borrowed across generations bar none, even without accounting for how it stockpiled power.
But then Izumi saw him try to take that bullet for Eri. She saw the end of One for All and, honestly, she cared little. But Lemillion was far, far too Heroic to just watch it be wasted.
So she cut the bullet in half mid-flight with a Rivet Stab tendril from the shadows, then she killed Shin Nemoto with another tendril through his skull for daring to interfere. Izumi stepped out of the dark after that and the look of dull surprise on Lemillion’s face was almost worth it, except that she had to push him out of the way of a swipe from Overhaul because he was so stunned.
“How dare you?!” Overhaul cried out, launching a vicious assault against Izumi, sending cascade after cascade of concrete spines at her.
She dodged up and above them effortlessly with Rivet Stab and replied with her own Air Cannon attacks from her palms, shattering the concrete, but the two were relatively evenly matched at range and she was willing to give him credit for that. It was hard enough to position herself so his attacks weren’t hitting anything important behind her, which worked in his favor, too.
It was when Sir Nighteye came into the room that Izumi decided playtime was over. She landed with a thud on two feet and caught her breath, while Overhaul looked furious and like he was ready to just try and obliterate the entire room with himself in it. He hesitated though, taking the chance to heal himself, so she turned.
“Lemillion,” Izumi said shortly as she sensed the Hero creeping up from behind her on the left.
“You’re… you’re All for One now, aren’t you?” He whispered reverently, and Izumi just turned and nodded. His costume was a bit torn and he was also breathing pretty hard but he was largely physically fine. He had even moved Eri to a safer corner of the room, which was helpful.
“This isn’t about me. This is about Eri. Can you help me fight him?” She said, and he looked like he genuinely couldn’t decide what to do. “Mirio, he used Overhaul on Eri. Again and again. I will kill him whether or not you help me; it’s up to you if you want to help make things right.”
That snapped him out of it, so Izumi turned away again to see that Overhaul had absorbed the corpse of Shin Nemoto and become much larger, now with four arms. He looked very pleased with himself or, at least, as much as he could with his monstrous new face.
Sir Nighteye moved quickly along the side to scoop Eri up. Izumi saw Sir Nighteye out of the corner of her eye, then turned to only see it for a split-second: one moment, there was nothing but destroyed floor. The next, Lemillion shot out of the ground in a blaze of yellow lightning and knocked Overhaul clean through the ceiling in an explosion of concrete and light.
“Power!” He yelled as he punched with One for All, and Izumi couldn’t help but smile at his enthusiasm as she used air bursts from her palms to launch herself up into the air and through the newly created hole in the roof to follow Overhaul. Mirio seemed nice; it was a shame they'd never be friends.
When Izumi landed gently on the main road above, she looked up and felt her blood run cold. Uravity, Froppy, Nejire-Chan, and Ryukyu were fighting the giant vitality-stealing Shie Hassaikai bruiser, Rikiya Katsukame, until he was abruptly snatched away by Overhaul and reconfigured into a massive, monstrous new form. Froppy, Nejire-Chan, and Ryukyu hit the ground, temporarily out of the fight from their battle with Katsukame. But Uravity landed on her feet with shaky legs and, to Izumi’s horror, it looked like she planned to stand up to Overhaul and defend her friends, even hurt as she was.
Uravity locked eyes with Izumi and time slowed down for the successor of All for One. Izumi realized that Uravity would never abandon her friends and Izumi saw a true Hero.
Maybe, she even fell in love with her a little bit, too.
Overhaul raised his right hand, meaning to crush Uravity.
Then Izumi impaled him with forty Rivet Stab tendrils like a fan of blades - in his arms, in his body, and in his new, monstrous face - and whipped him across the city with the raw power of All for One in a furious crackle of crimson lightning. He hit a nearby skyscraper in a shattering explosion of glass and steel, then Izumi reconfigured her arms, using strength-enhancing quirks stored by All for One, to fire massive air bursts at Overhaul. There was more flying glass as he was hit by two lances of air moving at three times the speed of sound, then Izumi made contact with him with her boots from a leap.
She landed deftly in his ‘mouth’ and immediately moved to subdue him. She reached up to where his human form was. He tried to reach out and grab her with his normal hands, only for her to pin both his forearms with Rivet Stab so that his arms were raised away, breaking his wrists in the process without concern.
“You’ll regret using your quirk on Eri, Chisaki,” Izumi said flatly as she placed her palm over his face. Overhaul screamed as there was a transfer of red and green energy from him to Izumi.
And then, Kai Chisaki was quirkless.
He only had to be quirkless for about three seconds, though, as Izumi promptly used Overhaul to reduce him and his monstrous form to nothing but a splash of crimson against the ruined skyscraper and the ground. She landed deftly on two feet as he atomized beneath her with a sizzle.
He should have counted himself lucky that she gave him a quick death. The fact that the ground was now slick with the blood of her foe mattered little as her boots splashed on impact. Izumi was going to turn and leave the scene when a voice called out to her from behind.
“Izumi!"
Izumi stopped and slowly turned; there was Uravity. She was a bit bloodied, her costume was torn, and she was favoring her left leg but… she was alright and that was what mattered. Izumi calmly regarded her for a moment and Uravity looked more conflicted than Izumi had ever seen her before.
“Stay safe, Uravity,” Izumi said, just loud enough for the Hero to hear. She used two fingers pressed together to blow a kiss to Uravity, in a fit of confidence. Then she bounded off, using the increased strength and speed afforded to her by All for One to go much faster between the buildings and over rooftops than Uravity could hope to follow on foot while injured.
Izumi never got to see Eri in person again after that day. But she thought often of the little silver-haired girl and she even managed to steal one crayon drawing Eri made of Izumi from memory from Aizawa’s office.
The sixth time Ochako Uraraka saw Izumi Midoriya, it was on Nabu Island.
Their trip to the island had been so quiet and uneventful and they spent the bulk of their special program through UA solving really minor stuff for the citizens there. Ochako especially enjoyed spending time with little Katsuma and Mahoro Shimano. They were so precocious, even if they were a little wary of the young Heroes-in-training. Mahoro was still a bit skeptical but Katsuma hung on every word Ochako said after their first meeting and she introduced him to the rest of the girls of the class, who all adored him.
Still, the air was… melancholy for Class 1-A during their time on the island. Bakugou hadn’t been expelled after the incident with the summer camp but he had been fairly severely disciplined. Principal Nezu’s policy was that, given his admission of a history of bullying, he would have to take on a lot of extra course work related to anti-bullying campaigns and quirk discrimination, he would have to wear an ankle bracelet and see both a therapist and a specialist in anger management, and it was left to Mr. Aizawa’s discretion whether or not he was improving adequately or if he would need to leave the Hero course for General Education.
Aizawa had publicly announced to the class what the conditions were and how thin the ice Bakugou was on, much to his humiliation. But the real consequences had been social: most of the class began to avoid him outright. Even recent addition Hitoshi Shinsou wanted nothing to do with Bakugou; his only friend remaining was Kirishima.
Ochako felt really bad for Kirishima now. He and Bakugou had… an interesting relationship and she kind of suspected they might be secretly dating, though she didn’t consider that to be her place to comment on either way. She respected that Kirishima wouldn’t abandon his friend, even if it was clear he looked at Bakugou differently after that night at the hideout.
Ochako was still shaken after the incident. Her parents had nearly pulled her out of UA after she was kidnapped and she’d been the brief topic of a degree of public fascination for her role in protecting Bakugou from Izumi. Part of her felt a great deal of pride in that, like she’d done something genuinely Heroic. But part of her - a dark, private part she didn’t discuss with anyone except her new therapist UA had set up for her - almost wished she hadn’t stepped in.
The way Bakugou described his torment of Izumi, how it went on for years and how no one had bothered to step in and stop it… Part of her wished she’d just stayed silent. She could understand Izumi’s fury now.
But she had also seen other sides of the new archvillain of Japan. She’d seen her kind and gentle side: the person who she used to be, before Bakugou and their superhuman society had crushed her spirit. She’d also seen her Heroic side: the person who had righteously obliterated Overhaul for what he did to Eri, protecting Ochako and her friends in the process.
Ochako just wished she knew how to reach Izumi. Maybe she was a villain now but Ochako wanted to believe in second chances. Something felt fundamentally wrong about a society that would give Bakugou a free pass but throw Izumi away, even in spite of it all.
She had learned a little more about Izumi now, too. Her full name was Izumi Midoriya and her father had secretly been All for One, the covert archnemesis of All Might. All Might retired after his final battle with All for One at Kamino but Ochako understood that Izumi was now All for One, as the quirk could somehow be passed on.
She also had learned that officially, Izumi died when she was twelve in what was deemed a suicide by jumping. Bakugou admitted on live recording that he had suicide-baited his childhood friend for her desire to be a Hero, though it was now known in reality that she had survived her fall and been healed in some manner by her father.
Ochako often thought about the scars Izumi had and the mental images made her blood boil. She also thought about Izumi every time she used the new, fancy grapple lines in her gauntlets or the cool rocket boosters Hatsume had added for her with her new boot designs. The support gear was a standing reminder of her unusual, unclarified relationship with the girl who would be queen, something to dwell on.
Ochako was daydreaming, though. That day was unbearably slow and the most eventful thing that had happened for her was that she got a cat out of a tree for a nice old lady in the morning. The old lady gave her some cookies, though, so it was absolutely worth it for Ochako to trek halfway across the island to do.
Bakugou, ever the asshole, wasn’t taking rescue calls. Then again, his admissions of guilt were viral on the web and even out there in the middle of nowhere, people recognized him - in a bad way. She kind of couldn’t blame him for not wanting to go out there; the first time he did in costume, people looked like they were gonna throw fruit at him.
But there was something incongruous about it: they were mad at him because they blamed him for the rise of the new All for One, not because they thought how he treated Izumi for being quirkless was wrong. The misaimed ire frustrated Ochako, though she said nothing.
She jumped when the phone rang, then she picked it up before Bakugou could come over and be a jerk about it.
“Hello, UA Hero Agency! This is Uravity speaking!”
“Uh, uh, Miss Uravity? This is Katsuma, there’s… there’s villains! They’re attacking!”
Ochako stood abruptly with the phone still in her hand and sensed Bakugou walking over to her right.
“Okay, calm down, honey. Where are they attacking?”
“They blew up ships in the port! And they’re attacking people at the mall! Please, you all need to help--” The line abruptly went dead and Ochako’s blood ran cold in the silence. There wasn’t even a dial-tone.
“Oi, is that those two snot-nosed brats? That half-and-half bastard and I caught the two of ‘em making a fake villain with the girl’s quirk the other day,” Bakugou grumbled. Ochako turned to glare at him.
“Don’t you ever learn anything? How many times have we been attacked by the League? What will it take for you to stop being such a jerk?” She snapped. He looked appropriately stunned, so Ochako rushed to find as many of the others as she could to defend the island without waiting for him to respond.
It wasn’t long before Iida had gathered the Heroes-in-training together and he and Momo had formulated a plan. But Ochako realized that they weren’t accounting for the two young kids and, when the group split up, she made a snap decision to go looking for the Shimano children alone. She realized no one else would if she didn’t and they couldn’t spare more people from defending the civilians.
Ochako ran as fast as her legs would carry her, then she took a running leap into the air, trying to survey the area for a wide radius using Zero Gravity to keep herself afloat. That was when she saw the balloon - or, at least, it looked like a balloon from far away - and it was shaped like her. She dropped quickly as she released her quirk and took off running in that direction, taking long, rocket-powered leaps to go faster as she went.
Her heedless sprint took her right into the forest, where she found Mahoro and Katsuma being menaced by an unusual man in an unusual outfit. He looked distinctly like the original All for One, with his weird neck-mask thing and off-kilter business suit. Ochako had seen pictures and video of the archvillain once she had gotten home, so she had a frame of reference now.
“A pity, one of the young Heroes came looking for you,” the man said in a low monotone to Mahoro and Katsuma. “They try so hard, don’t they?”
“Leave us alone!” Mahoro cried out, but the two kids were rooted to the spot in fear, with Mahoro trying desperately to shield her brother. Ochako reached out and tapped a tree to make it weightless, then she attached her grapple lines to it.
“Mahoro, Katsuma, duck!”
Ochako took advantage of the tree’s lack of mass to rip it right out of the ground, then she used her grapple lines to heave it at the strange man, releasing her quirk as it flew. He lazily reached up and blocked it with some kind of yellow energy shield, so the tree shattered into splinters on impact. Then Ochako yelped and dropped to the ground as a boiling cascade of reddish-purple lasers grazed where her upper body had been previously.
“A gravity quirk? Uninteresting. Not worth stealing,” the man said in a musing tone, more so to himself than to Ochako. She got herself up on her hands and looked around for Katsuma and Mahoro, only to feel absolute terror at the realization that they weren’t there anymore. The man realized that at the same time, then he abruptly dashed towards Ochako, intent on grabbing her.
Then something black and red and green and fast hit him like a missile and launched him right out of the forest. Ochako blinked twice in confusion as the wind ripped through her hair, then scrambled to her feet, intending to run towards where the man had been launched.
She ran out onto the hill and took stock of several things: Katsuma and Mahoro were there, off to the side. Between them and the man, Bakugou and Todoroki had shown up and Todoroki was launching fire and ice in sequence towards the man to keep him at bay. The man in turn blocked the attacks with his yellow energy shield… things but his attention was divided.
Because on the other side, Izumi was there in full gear and she did not look pleased. Ochako was rather awed - and, perhaps, enamored - with her vibrant fury and raw power then.
“Ah, so you are the pretender to All for One’s throne,” the man deadpanned at Izumi. Izumi scoffed in response.
“Says the man with a knock-off of All for One. You should mind your manners in the face of your betters, Nine,” Izumi retorted as her red and black energy tendrils began to unfurl from all ten of her fingers like claws, crackling with crimson lightning as they did. She rose from the ground on more of her energy tendrils from her back and the air itself began to sizzle with more lightning as her eyes glowed an ethereal green and red.
On the other side, Bakugou looked distinctly unhappy to see Izumi but even he recognized that, first and foremost, came the duty to protect the children. The man - Nine - made a sudden motion towards the kids, so Bakugou raised his right arm and pulled the pin on his grenade gauntlet, letting loose a gigantic pillar of brimstone. At the same time, Todoroki let out his favorite attack: a smothering, overwhelming lance of ice, then both forces of nature crashed into the strange man at once, generating a deafening explosion.
Ochako was already in motion and she landed just in time - using her rockets in her boots - to shield Mahoro and Katsuma with her back from any debris.
“Guys, the kids are still here!” She yelled at the two boys, but they were too focused to pay proper attention.
“Uraraka,” Todoroki said flatly, “there are two of All for One here as well. This is going to get ugly. Take the kids and run.”
“And then what, leave you here to die like an idiot?” Ochako shot back. Todoroki gave her a sidelong glance but didn’t respond verbally. At least he respected her, unlike Bakugou. Ochako turned back to Mahoro. “Hey, sweetie?” Mahoro was dazed, so Ochako took her firmly by her cheeks, keeping her pinkies raised. “I need you to run away - as fast and far as you can get - and hide with your brother, okay? Can you do that for me?”
Ochako’s touch grounded Mahoro, so she reached down, grabbed her stunned brother’s hand, then took off in a sprint without saying a word. Ochako saw a shadow pass over her and looked up to see Nine trying to leap over the three Heroes-in-training for the two kids.
“Get the fuck back here!” Ochako yelled, and she reached up and grabbed him by the legs with her grapple lines from both wrists, before tugging him roughly back to Earth and away from the kids.
Nine hit the hill off to the side, face-first, and Ochako distantly noted that his clothes were ruined and blackened; at least the boys’ attack had been successful. Then she launched herself forward in the air, trying to grapple Nine and get his arms behind his back before he could get back up.
That was when she saw the blue dragon coming for her and her life flashed before her eyes.
She screamed in surprise and tried to cover her face with her arms to brace for the coming attack but it hit her with agonizing force. She flew into the air, feeling like she was being crushed by the spectral dragon’s jaws as it carried her, only for Izumi to come shooting up, slice through the quirk apparition with her tendrils, and catch her before she could fall.
Izumi came to a skidding stop a few dozen meters away and quickly set her down, where she collapsed halfway to her knees. Ochako was in immense pain after that and not quite all there; part of her - if she were being honest - kind of just wanted Izumi to carry her back to the agency building. Her costume was ripped and she felt blood running down her arms and sides from where the dragon had connected.
Izumi gently reached out and gripped Ochako’s shoulder to try and keep her from falling all the way over but Izumi looked over at the boys as she did so. Ochako felt some of her wounds close as Izumi spoke but she was woozy and disoriented. She shivered as her skin crawled from the sensation of being healed by All for One, the quirk, but it was a distant thing.
“This is a heavyweight fight, you three. Katsuki,” she began, and Ochako looked over in her daze to see Bakugou visibly flinch at the sound of his name, “I’m trusting you to get Todoroki and Uraraka out of here safely. Can you manage that, at least?” Izumi’s tone was unkind but it wasn’t the icy death it had been at the League of Villain’s hideout. Bakugou looked so utterly stunned that he couldn’t form words and Ochako dimly saw Izumi roll her eyes before taking off to challenge Nine directly.
Ochako was only barely keeping it together; she only kind of registered Todoroki scooping her up into a bridal carry and dashing off, Bakugou in tow to defend the rear. The last thing she remembered seeing as she watched behind the fleeing Heroes-in-training was Nine shooting his lasers at Izumi. She dodged around with her black and red energy tendrils as he screamed something about how he was the rightful successor, not Izumi.
“Tomura should’ve flushed your tank the day that Father died,” Izumi replied in a loud, cold tone as she exploded the ground itself with Overhaul in a massive area, now free to be utterly destructive, since her audience had departed. The two were obscured by the devastation and rising shrapnel but Ochako saw Izumi take a laser to the chest.
Then they were over the hill and Ochako didn’t hear any more of the conversation, as she passed out.
The seventh time Ochako Uraraka saw Izumi Midoriya, it felt like they were going through the end of the world in Jaku City.
Ochako wasn’t entirely sure why Class 1-A and 1-B were here on this absurdly high-stakes, large-scale mission that the Hero Public Safety Commission had dreamed up. Supposedly, the League of Villains had been mostly wiped out in some kind of inter-villain altercation with another group but Izumi Midoriya, the successor to All for One, had commandeered the other villain organization, called the Meta Liberation Army. They were there to attack some kind of secret base under a hospital, where they were manufacturing new types of Nomus.
The Meta Liberation Army had been led by a villain named Re-Destro but, through briefings, Ochako learned that Izumi and Shigaraki’s battle with Re-Destro had obliterated an entire mountain town called Deika City. Himiko Toga, Twice, Spinner, and Stain had been killed in the fighting, as had most of Re-Destro’s lieutenants. In the end, even Shigaraki himself had been killed, much to Ochako’s shock.
They’d been shown footage of Izumi using Overhaul to kill and revive Re-Destro several dozen times, until he surrendered control of his organization to the teenage girl. She had obtained Shigaraki’s quirk, Decay, before he died and was now officially deemed the most wanted terrorist and villain in the Eastern Hemisphere. The footage had been leaked deliberately and the Hero Commission was all but sending an army of pro Heroes into what was most certainly a trap, in the vain hope they could capture or kill Izumi Midoriya and end All for One, once and for all.
Ochako and the rest of her class, theoretically, were meant to be hanging back and providing logistical support, while Endeavor led the charge with the battle-hardened pros into an army of Nomus. The only upside was that Jaku City had been partially evacuated before the fighting really started, though that only blunted the casualty numbers. The reality of death and destruction hit Ochako hard as she tried to help the civilians file to safety.
Then the broadcast had started and Dabi revealed he was really Touya Todoroki on live television, while Endeavor was in the middle of a battle. The prerecorded message continued to play along with photographic evidence of Endeavor’s crimes; that was when Ochako realized that Izumi might mean to deal a deathblow to Hero society right then and there as she watched on her phone and huddled with her fellow students.
In spite of herself, Ochako kind of admired Izumi for it. She empathized with Izumi’s feeling of having been tossed aside by society and she thought about how hard her parents had worked but never got ahead. It also hadn’t been lost on Ochako that Izumi was probably the one mysteriously keeping her parents financially afloat for the past several months, though she felt some words were better left unspoken.
Part of Ochako… Part of her wanted to believe that Izumi really could change the world, even if Ochako was a little afraid of the changes Izumi might want.
Unfortunately, Ochako was in a class with Endeavor’s foolhardy youngest son and Katsuki Bakugou, a boy who wouldn’t know what ‘don’t rush into things without being sure of your ability to survive’ was if it punched him in his stupid face. So when the two boys took off running, giving some excuse about ‘trying to assist with front line civilian evacuation’ even if they’d specifically been ordered not to do that as students, Ochako sighed and followed along. No one else was gonna pull the dumb bastards out if she didn’t.
She knew what they were really after. Bakugou had done his winter internships with Endeavor and he was aware of - and empathized with - the family troubles the Todorokis had. He had been invited at the behest of Endeavor himself because Todoroki sure as hell didn’t want to intern with him. Still, the two had come back, if not friends, then at least with some kind of understanding. And Ochako knew that both of them cared a great deal about Endeavor and his safety, even if they expressed that care in ways she didn’t pretend made sense.
She bounded from building face to building face with rocket-assisted jumps, mindful of the Meta Liberation Army’s various drones and low-level soldiers as they took potshots at her. She didn’t have time to stop and fight, as she tried to keep the tell-tale fire trails of the two hotheads of Class 1-A in her line of sight. Their fire trails disappeared abruptly when they reached the destroyed part of the city and Ochako stopped at the nearest intact rooftop to take stock of the situation.
There was a massive crater in the center of the city, where Izumi had used some combination of Overhaul and Decay to wipe out the forward forces of the Hero army. Ochako had only heard scattered details over the radio but the results in person were… grim.
She saw, on the other side of the crater, two figures who appeared to be fighting with fire - one beautiful blue, the other one bright orange - as they danced around in the air like flaming angels. The orange was too bright to be Todoroki, so she assumed that was Endeavor and Touya duking it out.
There was an abrupt, monumental column of blue fire and the orange figure tried to respond with a corresponding orange pillar. The flames washed over each other like ocean waves and that was when Ochako gave up trying to track what had happened and returned to surveying the area.
Ochako gasped when she saw Ryukyu, partially pinned under rubble and wounded, struggling desperately to maintain her dragon form. Ochako shot out like a rocket towards her mentor and, when she reached her, she immediately began working to remove the wreckage.
“Uravity… You’re not supposed to… be here!” Ryukyu said between gasps as Ochako got the largest piece of concrete out of the way.
“Sorry, ma’am. My idiot classmates decided to come help Endeavor, so I came to keep them out of trouble.” She explained as she cleared debris, and soon she had things fixed enough that Ryukyu could safely transform back into her human form and Ochako could help prop her up. “Let’s get out of here--”
Ochako went silent when a high-end Nomu dropped in front of her. Its twisted face and general disposition radiated absolute malice as it immediately ran at them with sharpened talons visible, intent on slicing them to ribbons. Ochako screamed reflexively, knowing there was no way she could reasonably fight the Nomu and also protect Ryukyu. She threw herself over Ryukyu and accepted death.
It reached its right arm out and got within half a meter of Ochako’s face. She went cross-eyed for a moment as she followed the motion of the blades. Then it stopped abruptly and leaned back, muttering to itself.
“What do you mean, Master?” It said in a guttural, low voice. Ochako began to try and inch away quickly as it had its bizarre, one-sided conversation. “Escort? But we must protect you!” It sounded thoroughly confused or, at least, as much as Ochako imagined a monster might sound.
She got Ryukyu over the edge of the sub-crater she’d been in and finally got into a good position to take her gravity away. Then she scooped up the older Hero in a proper carry and took off running.
The Nomu wasn't inclined to follow, so Ochako ran far, far out towards the nearest detachment of pro Heroes she could see. They started to scold her when they saw her but stopped when they saw the state Ryukyu was in.
“Take her and find a medic, now!” Ochako yelled, then she took off back towards the crater before the pros could stop her. She needed to find Izumi. She suspected Izumi was communicating with the Nomus using a quirk and, if she could convince Izumi to stop fighting somehow, she could avoid further bloodshed if the League retreated.
Ochako skirted the edge of the crater, trying to figure out where the hell anyone she knew went. She had no idea where Bakugou and Todoroki were and the two people dueling with fire were gone--
As she appraised the situation, a figure was launched just in front of her to the side and they hit the ground with a heavy impact and a crash, coming to a stop at a ruined wall. Ochako ran to them and gasped when she saw that it was Endeavor.
It was Endeavor and his flames were gone.
She turned towards the direction he’d come from just in time to see Izumi land gracefully next to her. Her costume was singed and burnt and she had some blood running down her face from her hairline but she didn’t look majorly injured, upon a cursory glance.
“Uravity, you’re not supposed to be this close to the fighting.” Izumi spoke as if it was a totally normal conversation and not that they were in a war zone of their own making, like she was just lightly scolding Ochako for walking in the rain without an umbrella.
“Izumi,” Ochako hissed, “you need to call the Nomus off and go, before more people die! We’ve already got tents full of people who are hurt or dead!”
Izumi frowned and looked genuinely dejected.
“I know, I’m sorry, I… I didn’t want to involve Gigantomachia and the Nomus but there were too many pros to fight off with just the MLA. I thought they'd be more subtle than this…”
“What the hell are you even trying to accomplish? Are you fucking nuts?” Ochako replied, interrupting. Izumi, to her surprise, just held up her right, gloved hand and a little orange flame appeared from her raised index finger, like it was a candle.
“I exposed the number one Hero as a fraud and took his flames, so he can never hurt anybody else again,” Izumi replied simply, again as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Ochako blinked slowly, stunned.
“Wait, was that you fighting Endeavor? I saw the blue fire and I… I thought it was Touya.” Ochako wasn’t sure what to make of the situation now. Izumi grinned a bit, though it wasn’t the happiest expression in the world, more so satisfied.
“Touya Todoroki decided to try his luck betraying me when the League was weak. So after I had him record that video, I took his fire. He never used it for anything worthwhile anyway.” She held up her middle finger next to her index finger in a kind of peace sign and a blue flame appeared over it, to accompany the orange flame.
“God, Izumi… You know I can’t fight you and… I don’t want to fight you, anyway, but please! Just stop this! Before more people die for no good reason!” Ochako decided to just try begging, suspecting that Izumi wouldn’t be able to resist that if she were earnest enough. Not if Izumi cared as much about Ochako as Ochako had grown to care about Izumi, anyway. Sure enough, Izumi deflated a bit.
“I’m… I’m sorry. It wasn’t for no good reason, I promise. But I’m planning to leave now, as soon as--” She was cut off in a guttural sound of pain as something hit her and she lurched forward, and Ochako was horrified to see a spear of ice sticking out of her left shoulder. Ochako looked up and saw Todoroki and Bakugou coming; both were bloodied and their costumes were half-destroyed but they looked intent on fighting to the death this time.
“Give it back to him!” Todoroki screamed as he landed, and he tried to send his own orange fire at Izumi in a devastating lance, larger than Ochako had ever seen from him before. Ochako yelped and moved to shield the unconscious Endeavor. Izumi just blocked the attack with some kind of quirk that bent metal up into a wall from nearby wreckage with a deafening shriek. Even then, the metal turned bright orange from the raw heat of the impact.
“For what, Shouto Todoroki?” Izumi called out in challenge as she used her new fire to melt the ice spear out of her body, then the wound closed with some other kind of quirk. “So he can burn you with it in training? So he can drive your mom insane and send her into a mental hospital? Or so he can discard his children one-by-one, until only you remain?”
Ochako felt horrified at Izumi’s words but she wasn’t sure what was worse: the words themselves or the fact that, when Todoroki landed to the side of the metal shield Izumi had raised, he didn’t even try to deny them. He saw that Ochako was there with his dad and he changed stances, now understanding that collateral damage was a factor.
Bakugou, however, had no such view past the wall, so he came crashing right through the metal shield with an explosion - only for Izumi to catch him in a choke-hold effortlessly and deflect his punch with her free hand.
“You and your right hook, Katsuki,” she said dismissively as he gagged. Then she launched him off to the left side, where he hit the collapsed wall of a building with a painful sounding crash of debris falling onto him.
Todoroki came rushing, trying to use fire in one hand and ice in the other to create an explosion right in Izumi’s face. She was fast, though, and she knocked Todoroki back effortlessly with an air blast.
“I don’t want to fight you, Shouto, but I will if you make me!” She said with an air of finality, and Todoroki didn’t really look like he was in much shape to properly challenge her at this point, anyway.
“Izumi… Please, just… don’t do this. It’s not right…” Ochako pleaded. Izumi snapped her gaze back to Ochako and, for a moment, she felt Izumi’s fury turn towards her for the first time. It was frightening.
“What’s not right? That good people who want to help others are born without power and stomped on or that bad people who think they’re untouchable are given the strongest powers? I should’ve taken Katsuki’s quirk that night, Uravity, and I should’ve killed Endeavor, too, after what he did!”
Her eyes were glowing and there was a red lightning behind their natural green that unsettled Ochako.
“I could have killed him over and over, Shouto,” Izumi continued, turning back to Ochako’s friend. “I could’ve used Overhaul to make him dance for you, yet you don’t want your revenge? I can’t decide if I pity you or envy you, honestly.”
“I don’t care,” Todoroki replied flatly, then he launched another column of ice towards Izumi. She reached out and boiled the ice away with Touya’s flames before it could reach her, grinning like a madwoman as she did so, bathed in sapphire light like the angel of death.
“That’s a shame. You would’ve been a good Hero, I’m sure.”
Ochako stood up abruptly at that and did the only thing she could think of to stop one of her friends from killing the other: she ran to Izumi and tackled her in a hug. She was far too strong for Ochako to knock over but she went noticeably rigid as Ochako wrapped her in her arms.
“Just… stop. Stop hurting my friends. Stop hurting people, please. I… I don’t want to see you like this, it scares me… You’re my friend, too, just stop!” She felt Izumi’s breathing hitch and slow as she held on and she only could desperately hope that Todoroki wouldn’t try to attack them while Ochako was like this. After a few moments, Izumi’s breathing completely slowed to normal.
“Alright… Alright, Uravity, I’m… I’ll give it back. Just… keep Shouto calm, please?” Ochako stepped back and saw that Izumi was crying. Ochako was crying, too, she realized, and she looked over and found Todoroki in tears as well. Todoroki nodded once and made no motion to attack as Izumi moved. She slowly walked over to Endeavor and raised a hand to his face. “You don’t deserve this power,” Izumi declared with a voice of absolute conviction, “but the next generation of Heroes is better than you and don’t you ever forget it.”
There was a swirling green and red energy, then Endeavor’s flames came back and he sputtered as he woke up properly from his exhausted daze. Izumi stepped away and half-turned from her position to look at Todoroki.
“Make him earn it,” Izumi said gravely. Ochako watched Todoroki, afraid he would keep trying to fight… but he just nodded, looking very sad. Maybe he understood better than Ochako first realized.
They were interrupted by the ground quaking and shaking, then a giant man-like creature stepped over into view from the wreckage.
“Master! Do you need me to crush these bugs for you?” The creature boomed, and both Ochako and Todoroki stiffened in fear. Izumi, however, just strode forward towards the thing.
“No, Gigantomachia, I do not. If you touch them, I will break you down to your base molecules again and feed the smoking remnants to the Nomus.” She walked over as the monster - Gigantomachia - lowered his left hand and Izumi deftly stepped into the hand. Gigantomachia showed no reaction to the threat and looked simply pleased that he was near Izumi again. “Get us the hell out of here. The Nomus are unimportant.” She reached her hand up to where she had an earpiece and she raised her face out of her mouth guard to speak clearly. “Mr. Compress, get your ass to Gigantomachia in the next thirty seconds or you’re gonna be enjoying a cell in Tartarus.”
There were a few moments of tense waiting for Ochako, then Mr. Compress himself came flying off the nearest rooftop and landed on Gigantomachia’s hand, next to Izumi.
“Ta-ta, young Heroes!” He called out cheekily as he waved his top hat to Ochako and Todoroki. Then a giant portal from Kurogiri appeared and the three villains stepped into it and disappeared.
That was when Ochako sank to her knees as her own grief and horror at the situation finally caught up with her. She wasn’t sure what prospect was worse: the idea that Izumi was doing these things and still wished she could stop or that she had simply decided they were acceptable things to do in the first place. All this death and destruction to bring change but Ochako wasn't convinced it was the way Izumi wanted things to be. It hurt her soul and she didn't know what to do at all.
She just wanted her friend to be happy.