Chapter Text
The truth is, Ochako doesn’t care enough to complete the pretense. Sure, she’s nice to Izuku (see how she didn’t call him Deku there?) and to Bakugo, and to Todoroki, but it’s a fake kind of nice. The socially polite kind of nice.
In the beginning there was some small amount of adoration for Deku. You don’t see a person break all their limbs to rescue you and not feel some butterflies somewhere, unless your name is Bakugo.
Really, it wasn’t her fault that Izuku was so unfamiliar with normal social interaction that he assumed by social niceties that she was his friend. And THEN she found out that he and most of his friends were crazy, batshit insane, and definitely not people to piss off. So she kept being “nice”.
At this point, she was positive that if she stopped sitting next to Izuku at lunch, his best frenemy/ boy-friend-nemesis/ frequent-bully Bakugo would set her on fire for making Izuku cry. Ochako didn’t even want to know what was up with their weird dynamic, only that she didn’t want to deal with it. And the same with Mr IcyHot, who acted like a monotone robot most of the time, except for when he found the singular emotion he was capable of, that was apparently vengeance??? At first, Ochako thought that playing nice with these terrors would have them go easier on her in class. Well, that was a total letdown because they ‘respected’ her enough to not hold back. Look, she understood that they were training themselves up to be (or beat up) the next All-Might, but their Terrifying Natural Disaster powersets didn’t really stand on the same stage as her Make Things Float powers.
Ochako kicked herself for not making integrating herself with the saner bunch of classmates in the beginning few weeks, while she had the chance. Ojiro seems nice and normal, and Jirou and Mina seem blessedly sane as well. Sadly, Ojiro was now besties with Dark Shadowy Monologue, and Jirou and Mina were now firmly in the Bakusquad, and there was absolutely no way she was getting near that pyromaniac. Whatever group hung with Mineta had to be avoided for obvious reasons, and her fake personality clashed too badly against Koji and Satou’s clique.
She was only there to pick up the quirk license to help her family, alright? Her dreams, unlike most of these psychopaths did not include beating people up. So when, like now, her classmates spoke up about-
“Did you hear how awesome Endeavor was when he took down” (read: beat up or permanently disfigured) “those pickpocketers” (read: desperate, unemployed citizens) “the other day?”
“Yea! He was super manly bro”
Ochako smiled wide with an empty expression, and pitched her voice up. “Oh! I hope we’ll get to learn to be great heroes too!” Some days, she couldn’t believe no one called her out on it yet. Her acting skills were terrible, and her dialogue was stilted, repetitive bullcrap. For pete’s sake, every line out of her mouth was positive, bouncy, and excitedly bland. It was almost like it was written by a balding fifty year old shut-in who still somehow didn’t know that girls also had vivid internal lives.
Momo sighed quietly “It would be nice to imagine us one day taking up the mantle ... If we succeed, that is ”.
Most days, Ochako envied Momo for sticking to her script. This was probably why no one ever called Ochako out on her bullshit - then they’d have to call Momo out on whatever thing she was running, and no one had the guts. Ochako was familiar with imposter syndrome and low self-esteem (especially compared to these classmates). But fitting that into EVERY SINGLE dialogue sentence? Momo’s acting was impeccable. Ochako wanted to shake Momo’s hand and get some tips on how to stay in character. Villain in the making for sure, that one.