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Izuku gulped, walking towards 1-B's classroom door jittery and full of nerves. The lunch bell had just finished ringing, signaling the start of lunch. The door slid open with a clack, releasing a steady stream of Heroics students chatting and laughing with each other. His target wasn't among them, but he forged forward anyway, managing to get through the crowd with minimal shoving and maximum apologies. At least Monoma was out sick today. He couldn't imagine the tongue-lashing that guy would have given him for this. Passing through the classroom's door, he came to a halt in front of his target's desk.
His target was sitting there alone in the empty classroom, wearing a thick cat mask: the top half being heavily tinted black glass and the bottom being white porcelain. The kitty face on the mask was completely inscrutable. A heart-stoppingly adorable cat-themed bento laid on their desk, clearly having just been opened.
Slowly, as if out of a horror movie, the person turned their head to look Izuku directly. The slow drawl of a voice that came out had a strange, almost liquid quality to it. "Can I help you, Midoriya?"
Izuku panicked and started flailing about in order to explain himself. "Uh! Nekomata-san! I was h-hoping.....to ask you about your quirk? I mean, no one in the school knows what it does, and I've only seen bits of it during combat training with 1-B but you don't seem to use it too much unless you really have to and you've never gone to see Recovery Girl even though I saw Bakugou land a bad hit on you yesterday and now you seem completely okay and I just—"
Nekomata laughed incredulously, adjusting their mask as they did so, almost as an afterthought. "Calm down, Midoriya."
Izuku flushed bright red, snapping his mouth shut. "Um...sorry, Nekomata-san. Are you okay, though? Those burns you got were pretty bad..." He tried to sneak a furtive glance at said burns, which was rather difficult as they had been on Nekomata's back, now covered by their uniform.
"I'm fine. Some pain relief patches and burn cream dealt with the worst of it," Nekomata answered, getting out of their seat to talk properly. The kitty bento sat on their desk, neglected. "I get you're some kind of bleeding-heart sop of a quirk savant, Midoriya, but don't pretend to worry about me when you're just here to ask about my quirk while no one's around to stop you. My quirk that I keep information about under wraps for a reason. Something that you do too, don't you...?" Nekomata grinned to themselves behind their mask, pleased with how Midoriya's face kept going paler.
He flinched violently, stammering out, "T-that's–!"
Nekomata's hand came up in front of his face, cutting him off. "Save it. I've got no issue with you, but you're starting to piss me off. Shoo. Don't make me call Monoma on his sick day." Their free hand toyed with their phone, already open to Monoma's contact page. Monoma was saved in Nekomata's phone as "knockoff 1412", Midoriya noticed distantly.
"Nekomata-san, I'm really not here to p-pressure you for information, or whatever you think's happening—" Izuku was cut off by Nekomata pressing the call button on Monoma's contact and holding the phone up.
The two stood in tense silence as Nekomata's phone buzzed with ringing. A click.
"Nekomata? What's this about, you KNOW I'm sick today! (Achoo!)" Monoma's waspish voice crackled out of the receiver. Nekomata quickly pressed the video call option, pointing the phone's screen towards Izuku's face threateningly.
"Monoma. Class 1-A kid came over to harass me about my quirk. Make him go away," Nekomata murmured into their phone, toneless. If he didn't know better, Izuku might have said that they looked almost excited.
Monoma took the bait like a champ. His own red, blotchy face popped up on the phone's screen, already sneering even though he was surrounded by crumpled tissues and half-done assignments. "Midoriya! How dare you accost Nekomata on their lunch break, you two-bit All Might knockoff! (Achoo!!) Harass your own weak classmates about their quirks!"
Izuku watched Monoma cough and wheeze his way through another insult-filled tirade. It was really rather impressive how he always went to bat for his classmates, honestly. "Listen," he began, getting a little frustrated, "I just—"
"Just what?! Wanted to get a leg up on our class by learning Nekomata's weaknesses? (Achoo!)" Monoma took a break from yelling to sip from a frankly huge mug of warm water that billowed steam into his face. It was maybe twice the size of his own head and patterned with black and white cats. During this blessed silence, Nekomata cut in.
"It's suspicious of you to corner me in the classroom if you just wanted to chat, Midoriya. You must have known that I would be eating lunch alone here." They dramatically waved away his incredulous spluttering. "Don't look so shocked. You're good at investigating and analysis, aren't you? The business course has been inconsolable over not having you in their classes."
Izuku perked up a little at that, looking rather pleased. The expression quickly wiped itself off of his face at Nekomata's next words.
"Regardless. I want to ask you to leave. If you were really made for heroism like All Might loves to gush about, then you would have left when I first asked you to. It's rude to keep hounding me."
From their phone, Monoma laughed, hoarse though it was. "That's right! Get out of our classroom, Midoriya, unless you want be more of a disgrace than you already are!"
He flushed angrily, hands balling up into fists at his side. "That's..!"
Nekomata stared blankly at him, their cat mask revealing nothing. Behind the tinted glass, he caught a hint of something shifting quickly and restlessly, like a tiger circling their enclosure. "Midoriya. Leave."
Chastised, Izuku grimaced at his failure, turning on his heel to leave as requested. "Have a good lunch, Nekomata-san," he muttered quietly, trying to keep his disappointment out of his voice. Judging from the tinny laughter he heard from Monoma behind his back, he didn't do a very good job.
The memory of Monoma's cackling followed him all the way to the cafeteria.
Back in the classroom, Nekomata sat back down in their seat, letting out a huge breath. They set down their phone on the desk. "Thanks for helping, Monoma. I don't really know what I would have done if he kept pressing, that guy's really persistent."
Monoma sniffed derisively, going back to his assignments. "What kind of a classmate would I be if I let that 1-A kid step all over you?"
They chuckled lightly, picking up their chopsticks to start digging into their bento. "A bad one, probably. Get some rest. I'm looking forward to sparring with you again in training."
"You too, Nekomata." Monoma hung up, leaving them to eat their lunch peacefully. Classes passed in a blur after that, afternoon passing into evening passing into night swaddled in sleep-woven dreams, shared by a mind and their body.
Outside the window, far from UA, a cloud of freshly fallen sakura petals drifted on the wind, carried to distant lands unknown.