Chapter Text
Midoriya was mumbling again. An upperclassman with a ring of 24 eyes circling her skull had squeezed past, and Uraraka and Iida had taken to shoving him through the morning rush at the UA gate to keep him moving through his cool-quirk fugue.
Tsuyu had found it creepy at first, but after fighting alongside him at the USJ, he’d earned a lot of slack.
A lot of slack from her, at any rate. Others were less forgiving. “Move, nerd!” shouted Bakugo, palms crackling. “Your freaky stalker bullshit is going to make me late!”
Iida turned and gesticulated as widely as the cramped crowd of students would allow. “Bakugo, your words are unbecoming of a hero, and you’re wrong besides! We have 12 minutes and 30 seconds to make it to class, and it’s precisely four and a half minutes to walk from the front entrance to our classroom, so he cannot possibly–”
“Grahh! Shut up, idiot, that’s not the point!” Bakugo’s hands spasmed between fists and explosive palms at his side. “The point is this useless idiot thinks he’s so much better than us that he can dissect our quirks in his useless notebooks and figure out what makes us tick. He’s being an arrogant twit who needs to be put in his place!”
Midoriya had snapped out of his dream-like state, but was paralyzed between fight or flight. Uraraka was gripping his arm, and Iida was sputtering with shock. It was at that point that Tsuyu decided to intervene.
“Ribbit,” she croaked from behind Bakugo. He leapt in place and spun, ready to launch an attack. Tsuyu didn’t flinch. “The muttering probably saved my life a few days ago. Didn’t seem useless to me. Or freaky.” Any more, she added mentally.
“...Yeah, figures the weird green girl and the weird green guy would see eye to eye,” Bakugo grumbled. He looked back and forth between Asui and Iida; for all his arrogance and attitude, he could recognize when he was outnumbered and surrounded. “Just keep me out of your goddamn fantasy notebooks, Deku, or I’ll blow them up again. I’m out of here. Hey! Out of my way!” With that, he started shoving through the throng, pretending like he wasn’t running with his tail between his legs.
“Notebooks?” Uraraka asked.
That wasn’t exactly the most important thing that got said there, Tsuyu thought.
“I… used to take lots of notes on cool quirks in my hero notebooks,” Midoriya explained, staring at his shoes. “I tried to figure out how they could be used better than what heroes were currently doing, their strengths and weaknesses. It was kind of a silly hobby I guess, a substitute for real hero training.” He looked up with an unconvincing smile. “But I’m here now, learning from real heroes directly! So… no need for you guys to worry about that!”
“Actually,” said Tsuyu, a finger on her chin. “That sounds really useful.”
“It… it does?”
“Yeah. I haven’t seen a quirk counselor for years, and I’ve never had a real quirk coach like some of the recommendation students. If you wanted to do one for me, I’d appreciate it.”
The shift in Midoriya’s face was understated. But this smile, Tsuyu believed in. “Okay. If… if you don’t think it’s creepy.”
Tsu ribbited. “You know I’m blunt and say what’s on my mind, right?”
Midoriya nodded.
“The only creepy part is the part where it’s a physical notebook,” Tsuyu said.
Uraraka blinked. “Notebooks are creepy?”
“They are when they’re sitting in a backpack in a class filled with perverts like Mineta and jerks like Bakugo. Midoriya, if you’re going to do an analysis of me, keep it somewhere password protected, please.”
Midoriya’s eyes shot open and, adorably, he started mumbling again. “...could potentially let a villain in on secrets, or a competitive hero not playing fair, or…” Tsu croaked loudly. “Ack! Sorry! I’ll stop by the Support department! You’re right, Asui—”
“Tsu.”
“—Tsu, if I’m doing this I need to make sure it has hero-level security! Thank you! I’ll do my best with my analysis!”
They’d been moving slowly as the conversation progressed, with other students grumbling past them as they dragged their heels. The group had finally found their way through the front gates. Tsuyu checked her watch. Six minutes to class, plenty of time.
“Uraraka, Iida, I’d be happy to help you out too… if it’s not too weird…”
“I must reject your kind offer!” Iida announced with excessive solemnity. “My quirk is hereditary! While it is inevitable that my classmates will learn many of its superficial features, I cannot allow anyone to delve deeply into the inner workings of the Iida Engine without the approval and supervision of my parents and elder brother!”
Uraraka scratched the back of her head, one pinkie raised. “That does sound kinda useful… but also maybe a little weird? Not that you’re weird or your hobbies are weird! It’s just that, analysis seems so clinical and the opposite of casual friendship. But I do trust you, Deku, and I know you’re a smart guy, so…maybe I’ll see how it goes for Asui—”
“Tsu.”
“—Tsu, and she can tell me about it and then I’ll decide?”
Midorya’s smile was fake again. “Sure! Whatever you say, Uraraka. As— Tsu, I’ll use my lunch break to check in with the support department and let you know what they say.”
“Sounds good, ribbit, but right now we need to get to class.”
“Right!” With that, the four of them hurried through the halls, making it just in time for an extremely injured Aizawa to reintroduce himself to his students.
——
Tsuyu’s parents had rushed back home in the wake of the USJ incident and weren’t scheduled to leave again until Monday. It was a rare chance to not cook for her younger siblings, so when Midoriya had run breathless up to her in the last five minutes of lunch and asked her to stay late to work at a U.A. gym, Tsu quickly agreed.
So now, the pair walked up the halls against the flow of students, while Midoriya prepared to take notes in…
“A notebook? Ribbit.”
“Don’t worry, Tsu!” He said.
“Tsu.”
“...I said Tsu, didn’t I?”
“...Whoops?”
Midoriya laughed nervously. “Anyway, I’m using this notebook because it’s faster and more natural for me to write in, but it’ll all be digitized before we go home. Power Loader was incredibly helpful! He’s the one who showed me how to reserve gym time, too. Our space is on the opposite end of the building. Can I ask you a few random questions while we’re on the way? You can tell me to shut up if it gets too personal.”
“Go ahead, ribbit.”
“Okay, this one isn’t really part of the analysis, but I’m curious. Does your quirk affect your diet?”
Tsu croaked quietly to herself several times. “That’s personal, actually. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It is?” Midoriya asked. Tsu croaked again. “I mean of course it is! I’m sorry for prying! Let me ask something totally different, then. Have you had any anatomy scans done of your chest and throat? You said your tongue can extend 20 meters…where do you keep it?”
Tsu sighed. “I also don’t want to talk about that.”
“I’m sorry I’m sorry I keep asking personal questions—”
Sensing impending disaster, Tsu pulled her classmate aside, next to a bank of steel lockers and out of the flow of traffic. “It’s not personal. But there’s a specific reason I don’t want to talk about it, ribbit. You’re a smart guy, Midoriya. What’s your best guess on where it goes?”
Midoriya put his pen to his lips and nibbled. “Really?” Tsu gestured encouragingly. “Well, you might have some sort of ultra-compressible organic tissue letting you bundle it up real small. Or you might have an extra body cavity in your throat or chest. But if I had to make a guess with no other data to go on… I’d say you likely have a partial transformation quirk on top of your heteromorphism! I think your body is actually making your tongue every time you need it!”
Tsuyu nodded. “And what do you know about how public quirk use laws apply to heteromorphic quirks?”
Midoriya’s rambling answer was halfway between his normal voice and a mutter. “People with mutations get a lot more slack than any other quirk type. It’s unfeasible to ask someone with extra limbs to keep them tied up or pinned to their side or anything, it’s just part of their body. You can’t tell a heteromorph to stop being a heteromorph! Whereas if they’re growing a new limb via transformation quirk they’d be expected to keep it turned off… and… hidden…”
Tsuyu stared at him, long tongue poking past her lips.
“Forget I said anything!” Midoriya blurted, waving his hands in wild denial. “I’m just an idiot with a notebook, what do I know? If you think your tongue is a heteromorphic feature then you’re probably definitely right, no reason at all for anyone to treat it like a transformation!”
“Glad we’re on the same page, ribbit.” She pointed left. “At lunch, you said our gym was in wing C? We’re almost there. You can ask more questions if you want.”
“If you’re sure?” Midoriya asked. Tsu didn’t dignify it with a response, and headed off. Hurrying after her, he explained, “I couldn’t get a spot at any of the training grounds with water, so I’m going to extrapolate based on what you tell me and what I saw at the USJ for your underwater capabilities. What’s your top swimming speed? And how long can you hold your breath?”
Finally, questions she could answer. “I don’t have a number for my top speed, but in middle school I could do four laps in the pool before the fastest non-quirk swimmers could do two. As for my breath, I can hold it for 15 minutes, but I can also absorb oxygenated water through my skin, so I can stay underwater for hours.”
“You can?” Midoriya’s pen scratched furiously on paper. “I knew frogs could do that but I assumed you couldn’t because of your costume. There’s no skin for you to breathe with! I thought Hagakure’s costume was bad, but aren’t you at risk for suffocation? That’s terrible!”
“Thanks for watching out for me, Midoriya, but it’s fine. The wetsuit from my costume is a custom-made polymer designed for my quirk. It’s not just breathable; it works as a filtration device.” She pinched the skin of her wrist. “In a real water disaster, who knows what contaminants I could accidentally absorb with bare arms and legs?”
Wide-eyed, Izuku asked, “Is that a real danger for your quirk?”
Tsu sighed at an old, muted memory. “The first time my parents took me swimming at a public pool, it hospitalized me for three days, ribbit. I take pills before every swim lesson now, so I don’t get chlorine poisoning again.”
“Amazing,” Midoriya muttered. Then, “And awful, I’m sorry you got sick! But it’s such an incredible quirk and such an amazing support device to let you use it to the fullest!”
“Not like Hagakure’s.”
Midoriya laughed anxiously. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything. It seems to me like it makes her visible while providing zero protection, so the worst of both worlds. But it’s her quirk and her costume and she hasn’t raised an issue? So I guess it works for her?”
Tsu put a thoughtful finger on her chin and croaked. “Or maybe she’s worried about being seen as a complainer and a whiner, because no one has told her she’s right to complain and they’ll have her back if she does.”
“Oh,” Midoriya said quietly. Then louder. “Oh! Then we should definitely let her know that. I’ll tell her tomorrow. You should too, Tsu!”
“Maybe. I think we’re here?”
‘Here’ was a door labeled ‘Acrobatics Gym Gamma.’ It unlocked with a swipe of Midoriya’s UA ID card, swinging open to expose a long and steep set of downward stairs. Following the steps down put the two heroes-in-training in a cavernous underground room several stories tall. Rings, poles, ropes, and towers swung haphazardly in all directions under bright artificial lighting. Both of them gaped for a moment, but then Midoriya sat down and opened his backpack.
“Okay, here we go, one ultra-secure biometric tablet, courtesy support teacher and rescue hero Power Loader!” He pressed his palm against the sleek black device, then held it over his pages of messy scrawl and doodles in his notebook. “And, scanned! Now, for phase two. One ultra compact shredcinerator, courtesy… I didn’t catch her name? A first year support student with this really cool eye quirk. She seemed like she knew what she was doing, though, and she promised Mr. Majima would approve, so it’s probably alright?” The next device was not sleek, a long boxy thing held together with rivets and featuring two long rollers with jagged bronze teeth. Midoriya tore the used pages out of his notebook and gingerly inserted them into the metal maw.
It leapt to life, ripping the paper from his hand with violent gusto, bouncing itself up and down as it chewed and spat out a cloud of flaming ash behind it.
The two stared.
“And no chance of recovery of the hardcopy…as promised?” Izuku stammered.
Tsu shook her head and tutted.
“...right. Anyway, analysis! I have a bunch of exercises I’d like to see you do. Measurements and tests. However, that’s all from my guesses on what your quirk can do. You know it better than I do, and I’d like to see you using it naturally. So…” Midoriya gestured grandly at the obstacle course. “...have fun?”
His words hit Tsuyu harder than they had any right to.
Heteromorphic or not, she still had to be careful of showing off anywhere she went. Leap too far, swim too fast, and she’d get a lecture about public quirk laws. Although she could cut loose at UA, it was always under pressure of academic expectation–Aizawa had destroyed any dreams of goofing off with his day-one mind games. When was the last time Tsuyu had had fun pushing her quirk to its limits?
Had she ever?
“Have fun,” she croaked, steady voice hiding her inner thoughts. “Okay. I can do that.”
Then she leapt.
She spun in the air into a tight backflip and made a neat four-point landing on a wide vertical pole. Clinging in easy defiance of gravity, she eyed a set of swinging rings hanging from the ceiling. A quick shot of her tongue caught one and hauled her up to them. She went hand over hand for four rings, all under her own strength—her quirk barely affected her arm muscles—then released into a backspin, tumbling once, twice, three times and landing her sticky feet on an inches-wide ribbon stretched taut from wall to wall.
Numerous ten-centimeter foam bullseye targets were strung above the tightwire. Tsuyu was up to the challenge. She spat gobs of stinging mucus dead center on two, and nailed another pair with her tongue. Next, she sprinted forward along the line and kicked one roundhouse-style, then another two with a flashy flipping double kick. She stood on her hands for the next three, spinning her legs in a wide helicopter motion.
She couldn't pull it off.
“Tsuyu!” Midoriya shouted when she fell, but he was panicking over nothing. Her tongue came to the rescue, lashing onto a frame of monkey bars that strained but held under her weight and momentum. Tsu swung under, up, hopped up from bar to bar, and used her speed along with the full force of her frog legs to catapult herself back across the room, settling down on the same post by the entrance.
Tsu caught her breath, then crawled head-first down to Midoriya’s level. “Was that enough fun for you?” she ribbited.
Apparently it was. Midoriya’s pen dangled loosely from slack fingers, and he stared at Tsuyu with awe that pinkened her cheeks. “...Incredible.”
Intertwining her too-large hands in front of her, Tsuyu said, “It’s just my quirk.”
“It’s an incredible quirk, Tsu!” Gushed Midoriya. “And you use it incredibly well! You’re perfectly in tune with your own body–you must have trained constantly preparing for the entrance exam!”
“Dance, martial arts, calisthenics, swimming. Ordinary classes for kids. Same as probably every other kid who got into the hero course.”
Midoriya’s enthusiasm dimmed. “...not me. I had to do a lot of physical conditioning to prepare my body for my quirk, and it’s still out of control. I was working so hard on weights and aerobics that I didn’t have time for anything else.”
That… explains a lot, actually. “I say what I think, even when it’s blunt and possibly rude. I have to ask: when you break your arm punching things, is it really your quirk, or are you just throwing a really bad punch?”
Midoriya froze for a moment, then dove into his notebook. “...technique, learning proper ways…can’t be pure technique, wouldn’t break fingers… channeling through the body…”
Tsu cleared her throat.
Midoriya’s eyes snapped back to her. “Ah, sorry! Thank you thank you thank you, I know you were just speaking your mind but that was super helpful! I have a bunch of ideas to try now with my quirk when we’re done here! But you’re right, we have things to do. Okay. Can you start by jumping between this pole and the wooden climbing wall behind it? Try to get some height with each leap, I want to see how many jumps you need to hit the top.”
The next half hour was a strenuous but satisfying workout. At Midoriya’s request, Tsuyu jumped everywhere–up, down, forwards, backwards, testing her limits in all directions. She lifted heavy blocks with her arms, with her legs, and with her tongue. She hocked a gob of poison directly into Midoriya’s face (she asked him three times if he really, really wanted it; his eyes were red and watery for the rest of their time together, but he kept up the work with only a brief break to flush his eyeballs with water). She did an acrobatic routine, then performed it again holding her breath for as long as she could. When time was up, she was covered in a sheen of exertion and filled with the exultation of a job well done.
“I think I have what I need, Tsu,” Midoriya shouted over the grinding of the shredcinerator. “This was fascinating. I’m glad I could see your quirk without the threat of death hanging over our heads. I’ll finish shredding here, but you don’t have to wait for me. I’ll have a report for you in a day or two.”
“Okay, ribbit. I’ll see you,” Tsu said, then headed for the stairs.
She was three steps up when he interrupted. “Actually wait! One more thing. Not related to this, but it’s important. Hold on…let me… there we go!” He jammed the edge of his entire notebook into the grinder, which began consuming the notebook inch by inch and turning it into a cloud of dark smoke.
Tsu went back down the stairs, and Midoriya met her, uncomfortable but determined. “What’s up?”
Midoriya tried to talk, couldn’t find the words, closed his mouth, then started again. “That thing you said about Hagakure. About not wanting to be seen as a complainer? About someone needing to hear that they have a right to complain, that someone will have their back?”
“What about it?”
Midoriya hesitated again, but pressed on, voice rising higher against the groaning machinery. “Even though I didn’t see everything that happened at the USJ, I could tell that afterwards things got weird between you and Mineta. I didn’t say anything at the time because I didn’t think it was my business. But I wanted you to know that I’d never think you’re just a complainer, and if you feel like there’s something you need to say or report, I’ll have your back. I promise.”
Tsuyu had mostly ignored the little grape’s opportunistic groping. It hadn’t seemed like a big deal, and her nightmares were too full of another grasping hand, pale and inches from her face, to have any room for the annoying little horndog. Nevertheless, the memory of his fingers on her chest wasn’t a pleasant one and still made her skin crawl. “Thanks, Midoriya. I appreciate—”
“Get down!”
Izuku was on top of her then, shielding her with his body against the padded floor of the gymnasium. The shredcinerator shrieked, rattled, and burst–pathetic next to Bakugo’s booms, if Tsu was honest, but still loud and threatening enough that she wouldn’t want to stand next to it.
A thin dusting of ashen paper wafted down on top of them.
“Are you okay, Asui?”
He’d reverted, but under the circumstances it wasn’t worth correcting. “I’m fine,” she said. “Good reflexes.”
He laughed darkly. “I’ve developed a knack for dodging explosions, I guess.”
“...you can get off me, now,” Tsu said, trying not to blush at the close contact.
His eyes shot open and he shoved himself backwards so fast that Tsu thought he might have used his quirk. “Ahahahah! Danger’s past, everything’s okay now, right? Don’t worry about the cleanup, I must have had the settings wrong. A support department device would just explode on its own, right?”
Tsu croaked skeptically.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” He said, kneeling down to try to sweep up the paper dust with his sleeves.
A semi-intact blank piece of paper fluttered in the wind. Tsu grabbed it, then found Midoriya’s pen. A quick scrawl later, she waved it in front of his face.
“That’s…”
“My number. Text if you have any more questions. I want to see what your analysis says.”
“Your… number? I have… a girl’s number?” Midoriya said in a panic.
“You have a friend’s number.”
That seemed to do the trick, and he calmed himself down. “Right. A friend’s number. I’ll stay in touch. See you tomorrow, Tsu!”
He got my name right. Good. With a last fond glance at Midorya’s poor attempts at cleaning, she darted up the stairs, making speed to catch the late train.