Chapter Text
I
Ochako Uraraka transferred into Katsuki’s fourth grade class halfway into the school year, when friend groups had long since been established and the phrase “new student” was met partly with blanks looks of disinterest and partly sympathy. She was here on scholarship , which meant she was extra special and a wonderful addition to the class, their teacher explained, and she was completely new to the sector so Be Nice, Or Else.
Even at age eleven, Katsuki knew that their teacher had unwittingly alienated the new girl as soon as she had explained that a scholarship meant that the academy was paying for the girl’s tuition. She’d meant to impress her class—show them that another high-achieving student would be joining their ranks—but the students who attended Aldera Academy were just as, if not more, high-achieving. The only difference between them and the new student was that their parents were able to afford the staggering tuition Aldera demanded and more.
The Aldera Academy was ranked among the top ten primary to secondary education schools on the Musutafa Space Station, accepting students only via lottery or those who scored perfectly on three different entrance exams. It sent the top ten percent of their graduating class each year to one of the most prestigious space academies in the Solar System: the Yuuei Space Academy.
Graduating students from Yuuei joined some of the System’s top white collar professions; Yuuei alumnae were frequently celebrated in the news for their various accomplishments as lawyers, entrepreneurs, doctors, scientists, and the like.
But perhaps what stood it apart from most of the other academic giants was that Yuuei was one of the handful of academies in the solar quadrant to offer aspiring students courses to join the Solar Guard, whose tagline of Be a Hero for the System! sparked fires in the hearts and minds of children far and wide. The media unabashedly stoked and added fuel to the flames, publicizing the actions and heroics of those in the Guard, sensationalizing and romanticizing the life of a “Hero.” Journalism conglomerates latched on to the stories and milked them dry, even inciting the Guard to release their annual officer rankings; these rankings were based on the officer’s accomplishments and their popularity with the common people for that year.
The Solar Guard had been established for hundreds of years already, but as a result of poor mismanagement and low application numbers, had been the subject of heavy censure and discontentment. It was only in the last half-century that it had finally rebranded and produced some of the most successful and legendary officers the solar quadrant had ever seen.
Now, Katsuki sat in class and listened to his teacher introduce the new girl, Ochako Uraraka, amid blank stares and disinterested shuffling from his classmates. To her credit, she didn’t seem fazed at all.
“Mornin’!” she chirped, blinking wide doe eyes and clutching a pink backpack in front of her. “I’m Ochako Uraraka, I’m ten, I’m from Terra, and, um…” She glanced at their teacher, wondering if she had said enough.
Terra. Katsuki’s eyes widened. She was from planetside, which explained the worn out clothing and accent. She didn’t even live on the space station. Everyone else in his class realized at the same time as he did, if the hushed tittering around him was anything to go by. He wondered what her Quirk was, if she even had one.
“It’s nice to meet everyone! I hope we can be friends,” she finished, beaming.
“Thank you, Ochako,” their teacher said warmly. “You may sit in the empty seat in front of Katsuki. Katsuki?”
He raised his hand from where he was slouched in his chair, returning Ochako’s smile and greeting with a deep frown when she approached her assigned seat. She faltered and silently tucked her backpack beneath her desk. He appraised her uniform more openly now that she was facing away from him. He suspected that only the shiny pink backpack was brand new. Her shirt, while neat and properly tucked, was blatantly yellowed compared to the sea of crisp white around her. Even her dark skirt was faded gray, and her shoes seemed almost too big for her feet.
The students around her were eyeing her with new interest, the ones in the front row blatantly craning their necks to peer at the new student with the planetside accent, secondhand uniform, and parents who weren’t paying for her tuition.
Ochako either didn’t notice their stares or was ignoring them, instead clasping her fingers together and swinging her legs insouciantly back and forth on her chair.
Katsuki couldn’t care less about how she was able to attend, much less the fact that she was going to be the subject of intense scrutiny and question for a long time. He wanted to be the top ranking Solar Guard officer when he was older, and the only people he cared about were those who’d proved their worth to him. So far, she’d only showed him that she was a bubbly spacehead who was a little too cheerful, given that their peers’ curiosity would soon turn competitive and hostile—she was the black sheep of their class and stuck out like a sore thumb. If she didn’t show how’d she gotten into Aldera Academy in the first place, she’d be picked apart in an instant.
He almost felt sorry for her, and wondered if she’d be able to make any friends by the end of the term. He didn’t have a group of friends so much as a legion of followers who hung on his every word, but he preferred it that way. Katsuki was already at the top of their class—he’d scored the highest on all of their tests so far, and no one else’s Quirk was as well-developed as his, a fact that he bragged about and showed off almost constantly to his friends.
Katsuki couldn’t wait until recess; he’d discovered the night before that if he concentrated hard enough, he could angle his palms toward the ground and release big enough explosions that would propel him several feet into the air. He was so antsy that as soon as they were dismissed, he leaped out of his desk without bothering to push his chair in.
“Wait!” a voice cried, and he felt a hand clutch at his forearm. It wasn’t enough to completely stop him, and he stumbled forward...into the air.
“What the—” he was about to shout the filthiest curse word he’d heard his mom utter, but a horrified squeak sounded behind him and he hurtled into the floor, catching himself painfully on his hands and knees.
He was up in a second, rounding on Ochako so fast that she tripped over her feet and landed heavily on her behind. They were in the hallway outside of the classroom. Thankfully, no one had witnessed one of the most embarrassing moments of Katsuki’s life. He hadn’t been the only one practically running to recess.
Katsuki towered over Ochako, savagely relishing the guilt and fear flashing across her face.
“You better say sorry right now,” he snarled down at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said weakly, hobbling to her feet. “I just wanted to—”
“What did you do? Did you push me on purpose?” he demanded.
Her short eyebrows furrowed at him. “I just wanted to talk. I didn’t push you.”
“Then what was that?”
Her expression cleared. She waggled her fingers at him. Katsuki could see flashes of pink pads at her fingertips. “It’s my Quirk! I can touch things and erase their gravity.”
She no longer looked as sorry or as scared as she did earlier, which grated on Katsuki’s nerves. A second ago he thought that she would cry, but now she was grinning at him and acting as if nothing had happened. He didn’t like that.
“That’s a lame Quirk,” he said, trying to make her leave.
She puffed out her cheeks at him. “Is not ! I can make myself float too!”
“So can I,” he replied loftily, crossing his arms.
Her eyes widened. “Really?” She leaned in too close and he took a step back, uncomfortable.
“Of course I can. I can do a lot more than that too, unlike you .” He didn’t know why he was still talking to her—the longer he stayed inside with her, the less time he would have for recess, and then he couldn’t show off his newfound abilities to the rest of the class.
Instead of running off in tears like he expected her to, she mirrored his pose and glared right back at him, cheeks turning pinker than they already were. “Why d’you have to be so rude? I just wanted to talk to you!”
“We’re talking right now. And you’re wasting my time.” He silently congratulated himself on the witty comeback.
“I just wanna be friends . No one wants to talk to me.” Her gaze dropped at the end, and she sounded a little sad.
“Duh. You think I wanna be talking to you right now? You’re annoying.”
Her eyes snapped immediately up to meet his. “How am I annoying? You’re the one who’s annoying!”
“You just are ,” Katsuki shot back.
“Why?”
“Because,” he said, “you annoy me.”
“That’s not a real reason—”
“Because is because! ” he shouted. “Piss off!” He thrust his palm out and let sparks dance out in front of her face. She was stunned into silence, and before she could recover he turned around and sprinted down the hallway.
He was so agitated that he didn’t even want to show off his Quirk at recess, and he sulked on the grassy field where he and his friends were sitting.
“D’you think she’s from from Terra or from Terra?”
“Have you heard her accent? She’s obviously from from there.”
“Ew, I heard planetside people don’t even shower.”
“Does she even have a Quirk? How did she get in to Luna?”
“I’m so glad I’m not sitting near her, I don’t want her cooties.”
“So does she have a Quirk? What do you think, Katsuki?”
Katsuki grunted in response, uninterested in participating in the conversation. He was still fuming at his encounter with the subject of their prattling, and he’d just noticed that she was sitting on the swing set by herself, feet barely brushing the ground below her. She was far away enough from them that he didn’t have to worry about her catching him staring at her creepily.
His worries were unfounded anyway—she was looking at the ground, head bowed. Her long brown hair had fallen in front of her shoulders and obscured her face. The artificial breeze generated in the dome-ceilinged play area rustled through the stray strands at the top of her head and fluttered at her skirt around her knees.
Katsuki found himself enraptured with this scene. Today, the sky was programmed to a clear, cloudless day. The indigo to pale blue gradient surrounding them seemed to swallow everything in its presence—the school, the trees, the children playing—they were tiny brush strokes painted thoughtlessly at the bottom of the canvas of space. Sunlight shone through the sky from an unknown source. He liked the way it haloed around her. She was very pretty.
Before he had time to dwell on that thought, two of their classmates—faceless extras in his eyes—approached her. They didn’t look happy.
The girl-extra stomped up to Ochako and leaned over her, hands on hips. She said something to Ochako, who looked up at her with a frown and said something back. They exchanged a few more words before the girl seemed to realize that Ochako wasn’t going to back down from her. The boy-extra realized this too, quickly coming to the girl’s side and also blocking out Katsuki’s view of Ochako.
By now, everyone else in the play area and noticed what was happening. Some were even inching closer to the swingset for a better view. Katsuki’s friends were nudging each other and speculating what was going on.
“Should we do something? I can’t see what’s going on!”
“Are you stupid? Then they’ll start hating us !”
“She’s just some spacebrained dirt-headed nobody. Let her deal with it on her own.”
One of them clambered up from where he was sitting to stand on his tippy-toes. “It doesn’t look like anything’s happening—”
The girl had grabbed Ochako by the arm and yanked her off the swing. Ochako stumbled to the ground. The boy spat at her feet and kicked at the sand, sending a spray of it on to her clothes. They sneered at her and seemed to hurl more insults before turning back so the girl was sitting on the swing and the boy was pushing her from behind, as if nothing had happened.
Katsuki braced himself to finally see her cry, but Ochako just stood up and walked away from them, in the direction of where he was sitting. Everyone around him gaped up at her when she approached, but she barely spared them a glance and continued to walk past them. Katsuki craned his neck to see where she was going. His eyes widened. She was talking to their teacher, pointing at the two in the swings. Their teacher frowned and nodded, bending down to talk to Ochako. Ochako shook her head and smiled up at her. Satisfied with her response, their teacher strode purposefully to the swingset.
“She’s a dirt-head and a snitch?”
“What else did you think she was gonna do?” Katsuki replied, irritation coloring his voice. He kept his gaze on Ochako as she skipped in a different direction of the play area, heading to a different patch of grass than the one Katsuki and his friends were currently occupying.
“They’re not gonna let her get away with it,” one boy observed.
“Nope,” Katsuki said, averting his eyes to watch the two children sulk back to the classroom, shooting glares at Ochako. He narrowed his eyes as the doors slid open to let the two of them in, then close quietly behind them.
He stood up. “See you guys in class.”
Scattered “Bye”s and “See ya!”s sounded around him as they were already growing bored of the new girl and the bullies. Their attentions quickly caught on something else, and he let their chatter fade away as he followed the two students into the building.
It wasn’t hard to decipher what they were up to. They hadn’t gotten away with their plan; not only had the new girl stood up to them, she’d tattled on them to their teacher and gotten them in trouble. Their prides were damaged, and in their minds the only way to properly serve revenge was to subtly undermine her instead.
He wasn’t even sure why he was following them. There was something in the calm way that she had stood up to the bullies that had sparked a dormant sense of justice in him.
They were rifling through her backpack when Katsuki entered the classroom. Stealth had already been thrown into space—they were debating, very loudly, what exactly they wanted to do to Ochako’s things.
Katsuki rolled his eyes. “Oi. What’re you doing?”
The boy visibly startled and snatched his hands towards his chest defensively. The girl flinched but glared defiantly back at him.
Katsuki squared his shoulders and kept his hands in his pockets to keep them sweaty. He could already feel the faint pops along his palms and fingers as he tensed for this showdown.
“Why do you care?” the girl demanded. “Trash like her needs to know where they belong.” Her voice wavered at the end, when Katsuki lifted a hand out from his pocket and relaxed his control over his Quirk. It was like he’d just lit up firecrackers on his hand—loud, angry crackles and snaps danced from his palms and over his fingertips. He could feel beads of sweat trickling between his fingers.
“I don’t care,” he said, giving them the hardest glare he could muster. “But you’re pissing me off. So get out.”
“You can’t—” the girl started.
Katsuki had both hands out now and was baring his teeth in a savage grin. He made to step closer to them and the girl shrieked, dropping the backpack and grabbing her friend so the two of them could scamper past him. Whirling around to track their escape, Katsuki kept the flurry of sparks going until he was sure they were long gone.
He released his Quirk to shake out the tingling in his hands and stooped down to pick up the fallen backpack. It was stiff in his hands, not even used enough to have a single scuff mark on it. He set it back down next to her desk and looked up to see the owner standing in the doorway and looking at him with wide eyes.
“What the—” He took two steps back, arms raised defensively.
She fully entered the classroom and started to approach him. “Did you just—”
“It’s not what it looks like,” he snapped.
Her eyes grew impossibly larger. “But I just—”
He started feeling stupid in his crouched fighting stance and folded his arms instead. “You didn’t see anything.”
She had finally crossed the room and was standing too close for comfort. Out of sheer stubbornness he didn’t budge a single inch.
“Did too,” she said at length, a smile creeping onto her face.
“Did not.”
“Did too.” Her grin was so wide her cheeks were straining pink with effort.
Why was he arguing with her? “Did not,” he shot back, competitiveness flaring.
“Did too, and anyway ,” she said hurriedly, “thank you. For what you—didn’t do?”
For a moment he considered just ignoring her and telling her to piss off. He must’ve hesitated for too long because she closed the meager distance between them and wrapped her arms around him in a short, tight hug.
“Thank you,” she insisted when she released him. “I mean it.”
He flushed and looked away. Her eyes were so big and brown and earnest. “It’s what Captain Yagi would’ve done,” he muttered. His heart was beating fast, the back of his neck was heating up.
Ochako gasped and clapped her hands together. “You like Captain Yagi?”
Katsuki’s feelings extended beyond just mere liking but she didn’t need to know that. Instead he scoffed, “Who doesn’t?”
Captain Yagi was one of the most prolific Solar Guard captains in history; his legacy had been spread throughout and beyond the Solar System. He’d been captaining the All Might with a top-tier crew for as long as Katsuki could remember, catapulting to fame when he became the youngest person in the solar quadrant to captain a ship, and even spearheaded the campaign to single-handedly defeat the most notorious villain in the star systems. It was no surprise that he and his crew also held the record for the most number of standard years at the top of the Solar Guard rankings.
The Solar Guard rankings were released to the public every year. Each active ship was given a ranking based on categories that included popularity with the public and number of crimes solved. For the past ten years, the All Might had stayed steadfastly at the top, with no signs of losing steam any time soon. If in the mood, Katsuki could spout statistics and analyses of the crew’s Quirk compatibilities and Captain Yagi’s general charisma and uncanny ability to lead them to certain victory. He’d watched all of the publically released footage of the All Might ’s exploits as well as their interviews and collected as much memorabilia as his parents would allow.
Captain Yagi was the reason that almost every child dreamed of joining the Solar Guard to protect the system and fight those that threatened the galaxy—his unfailing smile and signature “ I am here! ” had been ingrained in Katsuki’s retinas ever since he’d first seen him in the news. He was the reason Katsuki’s life goal was to attend Yuuei, captain the number one ship in the star system and surpass All Might .
Ochako was shaking her head and crossing her hands from side to side. “Captain Yagi is great!” She leaned in conspiratorially. “But I think Sir Nighteye is even cooler.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So you’re a Nighteye-head,” he drawled.
She puffed out her cheeks. “What’s wrong with that? Captain Yagi would’nt’ve survived against All For One without Nighteye!”
“Are you kidding? Nighteye was the reason that they almost lost All For One for good! If they hadn’t made up from their fight—”
“They never proved the fight actually happened,” Ochako interjected. “And you know that Nighteye’s Quirk helped them solve so many of their cases!”
“You’re wrong,” Katsuki said stubbornly.
They kept arguing until the rest of the class filed back in for their next lesson of the day. When Ochako declared that their argument wasn’t over, Katsuki allowed himself to return a small smile when she cheerily said, “We’ll settle this at lunch!”
After they returned to their desks, Katsuki watched the way her hair slid over her shoulder when she hunched over to take notes and found, for a brief and horrifying second, that he didn’t really care whether he won the argument or not.
II
Katsuki’s had only ever known life on the Musutafa Space Station. He was born and raised on Musutafa, not unlike the other fifty-seven percent of the population who resided there. Musutafa was the oldest space station in the Solar System, and welcomed immigrants, tourists, and traders alike from the far reaches of the galaxy, including the other various star systems in the Orion Arm. With four major trading ports, Musutafa had established itself as the intergalactic hub of the Solar System, and had contributed in large part to thrusting its home system onto the radars of the other economic giants of the galaxy. The first merchant ships to establish trade were from the Alpha Centauri star system, the closest neighbor to the Solar System, and from there the Solar Government had been quick to forge an alliance and delineate trade routes.
As a result, a majority of the population who lived on Musutafa weren’t just the generations of humans who’d first emigrated there from Earth and its terraformed colonies, but people from all over the universe seeking opportunities or new lives. Katsuki had grown used to seeing people of various shapes, sizes, colors, and abilities. Overall, Katsuki’s experience with growing up on such a diverse space station had told him that everyone was welcoming and inclusive, and children in schools were taught from a young age that xenophobia was frowned upon.
Ironically, it was also this kind of upbringing that didn’t make him think twice about the most pervasive prejudice that most people didn’t realize they carried, and that was the prejudice against those who weren’t born on a space station—those who were born planetside, like Ochako.
Most families who lived planetside had been there for generations, with some families living there since the time of the first Earthen terraforming missions. When Terra, the first terraformed Earth colony, had been first open to the general populace, not everyone could afford to move. Over time, as space travel became more and more affordable, when most people had moved from Terra, to other terraformed colonies, to space stations, so did the most current technology move with them. As a result, families who lived on terraformed colonies worked blue-collar jobs, with many factions arising due to beliefs against living in space, and some preferring to stick to their ancestral roots.
Relations between colony governments and the system governments were tense, facilitating the rise of discrimination and prejudice that officials made no attempts at quashing. Planetside people were viewed as lazy, backwards, and unintelligent.
While Ochako was by no means the first person from Terra that Katsuki had met, she’d been the first one with whom he had interacted the most. In Katsuki’s mind, it didn’t matter where anyone was from. He’d met plenty of people from spaceside who were complete idiots. Ochako was an idiot in a different way—in that she would ignore all blatant social cues that Katsuki would throw at her to stop trying to befriend him. Knowing her as he did now, he wasn’t surprised that that plan had failed spectacularly.
It didn’t take long after their first of many arguments of Captain Yagi versus Sir Nighteye for Ochako to worm herself into Katsuki’s life at school and outside of it. Even when he half-heartedly kept trying to push her away she clung to him like a barnacle. Katsuki chasing away her first day of school bullies had flipped some sort of switch in her.
No matter what he did—whether it was taunting her for her status in the classroom, giving her the silent treatment, yelling at her to stop following him around, or even just straight up running away from her—she would always shake her head and give him a mischievous grin.
It didn’t help that after Katsuki had intimidated the bullies on the first day, and the fact they were still children, most of the class had forgotten their initial biases and largely gave her a wide berth.
Most of the time she chattered away while they were outside at recess, or react appropriately with wide eyes and ooh’s and ah’s when he showed off to his classmates. Occasionally she would bring up current news about Captain Yagi’s feats and he surprised himself by interjecting with his own opinions and argue with her when she didn’t agree. There were times when snapped at her a little too harshly, and she would give him space and play by herself. Most of the time he calmed immediately after and fought off the urge to call her back. After a few months of this pattern, he found himself begrudgingly looking forward to her company. Several months after this realization, he admitted to himself that she was probably one of his closest friends.
She’d even begun to make other friends in the class, which always led to swirl of emotions in Katsuki’s chest, like someone’s hand was clenched around his windpipe. That feeling was especially strong whenever he would see her laughing at something other boys would say. He could never decide what this feeling was and pushed it aside in his mind, which always led to him glowering fiercely in their direction.
Class had just ended, and it had become habit for Katsuki to walk Ochako to the Gea Space Port so she could take the shuttle back to Terra. She’d told him that both her parents worked long hours on her home planet and couldn’t afford to pick her up directly from the space station, so she would walk by herself after school at 1600 everyday, wait for the 1630 train, arrive back on Terra at 1800, then walk—again—by herself back home, cook dinner, finish her homework by 2130, eat dinner with her parents, then take the 0500 shuttle from Terra to the space station so she could arrive at school by 0700.
“You do this everyday ?” Katsuki had been shocked. He couldn’t even imagine walking that far for anything. If he needed to go anywhere—whether it was to go to his extracurriculars or even the toy store five minutes from his house—his parents would drive him there with no questions.
She’d giggled at his outburst. “Duh, what else am I gonna do?”
Katsuki’s mind had been whirling at this information. “Can’t you sleep in the dorms?”
Ochako looked down and kicked at the ground with the toe of her worn sandals. She squinted through her lashes. “Mom says we can’t afford it,” she mumbled. She brightened. “It’s not so bad! If I get tired I practice using my Quirk to get there faster! I can show ya if ya want.”
Katsuki glared at her. Would Captain Yagi have let his friend walk twenty minutes in a foreign area by themselves when he was their age? “I’m walking you there,” he declared. “Knowing you, I’m not surprised you haven’t been kidnapped already.”
“What?” she squeaked, flustered. “It’s okay, I’ll be fine!”
“No, I’m walking you home,” he said. “That’s final.”
Her cheeks had pinked. “What about your parents?”
He shrugged. “They’ll just pick me up from Gea. It’s closer to home, anyway.”
The way she had looked at him when he said that made him feel uncomfortable and sweatier than usual. Scrambling at something to say in the silence that followed, he’d cleared his throat and said, “We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” she said softly, beaming at him. “We are.”
And now it seemed that she was taking his declaration of friendship too lightly. She would not stop talking to a tall, skinny brown-haired idiot. What was so funny about him, anyway? What did even have to talk about for so long? If she wanted help with her homework he’d gladly help her. She didn’t have to ask some loser who was obviously not even close to the top of the class like he was. He kept glancing over at Katsuki with a pinched look on his face. Katsuki stared him down until he turned his attention back to Ochako.
When they were finally done talking, Ochako gathered her books into her backpack and flounced past Katsuki. She waited for him at the doorway before matching her pace with his with the light bounce in her footsteps that signalled she was in a good mood.
“Kento told me to tell you to stop giving him the stink eye whenever you see him,” she told him.
Katsuki grunted in response. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ochako looking at him.
He sighed irritably. “What?”
“Nothin’!” she chirped. “If it makes you feel better, he was just askin’ me about Mei.”
He could finally swallow the lump in his throat. “Whatever,” he said, feigning nonchalance. “And who said I was angry.”
She didn’t respond, humming something upbeat and offkey.
They didn’t speak much the rest of the way to the shuttle station. Katsuki was fine with that. They often would walk in comfortable silence, with Ochako occasionally filling the gaps with random chatter or narrating her stream of consciousness. He liked to listen to her talk at him and sometimes to herself as she marveled at the sights and sounds around her. The hustle and bustle of Musutafa never failed to awe her, and during the rare times they were let out of class early, Katsuki would take her to his favorite sweets shops and they would share a slice of cake or an icy dessert.
Her lack of knowledge of some of the most basic technologies that Katsuki had grown to take for granted also never failed to astound him. When he’d first taken out his handheld video recorder to show her something he’d captured the day before, she’d gawped at the device and wouldn’t stop asking him questions about it.
“It’s not like you’ve never seen a video before,” he’d snapped after her umpteenth, “But how?”
She’d also gotten used to his default emotion of anger and said tartly, “Well, yeah , but I’ve never seen one in person! Is this the newest model? Can I use it?”
Before he could even reply she’d snatched it out of his hands and pointed it at him. He shielded his face with his hands and let out a threatening crackle of his Quirk.
“Don’t just stand there,” she complained. “Do something! You’re gonna waste all the good technology.”
“You’re gonna miss your shuttle,” he groused, foregoing his camera shyness to halfheartedly make an attempt of grabbing his device back.
“More arm movements! That’s more like it!” she exclaimed, propelling herself backwards from the ground with her Quirk. She landed lightly on her feet several yards away from him, cheekily sticking out her tongue.
He scowled, and unwilling to be shown up by her, raced towards her with his nearly-perfected trick of using his Quirk as rocket boosters to catch up with her within seconds.
She yelped when he feinted left and grabbed the device out of her hands. “No fair!”
“You got a long way to go if you wanna beat me, Pink Cheeks,” he said smugly, stopping the recording. He made to put it away.
“Wait, we gotta watch it!” She was practically bouncing up and down with excitement.
The projected video was shaky and out of focus, and Katsuki thought he looked like an idiot. But then the sound of Ochako’s exhilarated laughter in the background of the video and the starstruck eyes of the real one beside him kept him quiet as they watched it through.
“There,” he grunted, when the video was over. “Happy?”
“Yup!”
They’d ended up narrowly missing her shuttle, which Katsuki did not let her hear the end of until the next one arrived. He said goodbye to her with a smile stretched over his face, and he didn’t even yell at his mom—much—when she came to pick him up and asked him slyly how his girlfriend was doing.
III
“Why do you want to be a Solar Guard Hero, Katsuki?”
The two of them were waiting for Ochako’s shuttle back to Terra. Today had been a school holiday, and they had been let out of class early.
Katsuki had taken Ochako to a nearby open market and followed her around as she ooh’d and ah’d over the variety of wares that the merchants were selling. She had become particularly starry-eyed over a little keychain of a crescent moon and was lamenting at the price when Katsuki had reached into his backpack for his emergency TransCard and paid for it with his monthly allowance. She’d been so excited that she’d almost tackled him to the ground with her hug when he gave it to her.
She was still admiring it when she asked him that question, holding it up to the light and marveling at the way it sparkled.
“To win.”
“Solar Guarding isn’t a game to be won,” she admonished, finally tearing her eyes away from her keychain to look at him in a scandalized manner.
“Doesn’t matter. Captain Yagi and the All Might crew always win when they fight crimes and arrest bad guys. They always come out on top, no matter what happens.”
She made a thoughtful noise and carefully tucked the keychain away into her backpack.
“So.”
“So?”
He rolled his eyes. He hated it when she played dumb.
“Why do you wanna be Solar Guard?”
She laughed sheepishly. “I dunno if it’s selfish, but I just want to be able to help out my parents. So they don’t have to work as hard—I just want them to be happy, I guess.”
“So it’s the money.”
“Well, when you say it like that it sounds so bad!”
“How else would you say it?” He raised an eyebrow at her.
She pouted at him. “You can call me selfish.” She sighed. “You won’t hurt my feelings.”
He shrugged. “Everyone has their own reasons. Doesn’t mean they can’t be selfish.”
She pulled her feet up onto the bench and hugged her knees into her chest. “Yeah,” she said softly.
Katsuki rolled his eyes and pushed her not too gently enough so that she lost her balance and squawked so loudly a station worker turned over to them in concern.
“You’re not being selfish, dummy. Stop moping.”
“I wasn’t moping!”
“Looked like moping to me.”
“Whatever! You’re mean! I’ll have the number one crew in the galaxy before you can even find enough people for one!”
“Like hell!” He bristled and raised his arms in a fighting stance. “You take that back!”
Her answering laugh only served to rile him up even more, but when she mirrored his stance and yelled, “Bring it!” he was glad that she didn’t look so sad anymore.
IV
Summer could not have gone by any slower. He’d finished all his summer homework within the first few weeks of their two month break, and outside of his cram classes and Quirk training, Katsuki had nothing to do and he was bored .
He’d tried to convince himself that it didn’t have anything to do with the fact that he hadn’t seen Ochako throughout the entirety of the break, but by the end of the first month he’d given up and resigned himself to the fact that she’d been his only real friend from the academy and spent his free time training and wishing that time would go by faster.
There was no way that they would be able to see each other, Ochako had sadly informed him on the last day of the school year. She usually spent all her time during summers to help her parents with their work and manage things at home. Summer was a busy time for them, and her parents usually took on extra hours at their construction company to compensate for this. They couldn’t afford any time or money to accompany Ochako to visit Musutafa when all hands were needed back on Terra.
The worst part of it was that Ochako didn’t have a personal communicator. The one that she carried with her to school everyday was for emergencies only, so there was no easy way for them to talk to each other—not that Katsuki even knew what they would talk about, anyway.
All of this combined into one of the worst summers of Katsuki’s life. He was even more grouchy and irritable than normal, and he’d ended up in so many screaming matches with his mom that his dad had finally intervened and signed him up for sparring lessons.
When the first day of the new school year finally crawled into the present day, Katsuki found himself staring at the tall, Centaurium-enforced double doors of Aldera and wondering if things would still be the same.
He quietly breathed a sigh of relief when he heard her familiar cry of, “Good morning, Katsuki!”
He turned around to greet her with a gruff, “Morning” but paused when he saw her coming up the steps. Something was off. Her smile was forced, her eyes were too wide and glassy. When she reached him at the front of the entrance she couldn’t meet his eyes.
“What’re you standin’ there for? We’re gonna be late to class!” She laughed, looking down towards his chin.
His frown deepened, but he made no response and followed her into the classroom.
By mid-morning he was half-convinced that she’d been abducted by aliens and had been given a personality transplant. She was fidgety in class, maybe in part to the holes he was burning into the back of her skull with his eyes, but she barely took notes during lecture and was spacing out all day. It had even gotten to the point where their teacher had asked her directly in class if she was all right.
She avoided him during recess, telling him that she had to talk to their teacher instead. She clutched a white envelope between her fingers as she told him this, and Katsuki had shrugged and said, seething a little, “Whatever.”
“We’re still good for after school, right?” She looked miserable as she asked this, and Katsuki felt his anger deflate a little.
“Obviously. Can’t let you get kidnapped.”
“I wouldn’t!” She’d retorted this so much like the way he was used to that he’d felt his insides twist a little.
He found himself in a state of déjà vu when all he could do in class was stare at the clock and impatiently wish that he could control time. He wondered what Ochako could possibly talk to their teacher about, and what had been in the envelope that she was holding.
She was silent as they walked to Gea, and if Katsuki hadn’t been angry before he was on the verge of a hurtful outburst. He’d given her plenty of chances to talk first, and they were almost at the shuttle station now. Variations of things he could say to her rolled around in his head, and he tried to pick out things he could say to her in a way that didn’t make him sound pissed off.
“Katsuki,” she said, interrupting his angry turmoil. “Do you...would we—will we still be friends in five years?”
It was as if he’d been punched in the gut. All the air left his body with a whoosh. He couldn’t think of anything to say. At length, he asked, “What the hell kind of question is that?”
She winced at his tone, which came out a little more harshly that he’d intended. But the worry and fear and rage that he’d been suppressing for most of the day was churning in his belly, heating at his insides and slowly rising into his throat.
“Will we?” she pressed.
“Why would you even have to ask that?” he burst out. “D’you want me to spell it out for you? Are you stupid?”
It was her turn to frown. “You don’t have to be mean about it.”
“Yes. Yes! ” he repeated, loudly, when he saw that she was still frowning.
“Even if we don’t see or talk to each other?”
“What the hell? I’m not answering that.” His whole body was burning now, his insides were tangled knots, and he desperately wanted to punch something. He squeezed his fists in his pants pockets, like the harder he squeezed the more he could wring out the explanations and reasons to why she was acting so weirdly.
They were early to the station, or the shuttle was late. They sat down on a bench, Ochako hunched over and fiddling with the pads on her fingers in her lap while Katsuki hunched over to sulk and also to look at her from the corner of his eye. He gave up when it appeared she wasn’t going to say anything more, and he leaned back with a sigh and let his head drop on the back of the bench. A few people milled around the station, but it was otherwise quiet. Travel to and from Terra was uncommon; it was likely that they were tourists who’d lost their way from the main area of the space port. Katsuki watched a couple approach the interactive map hologram in the middle of the station.
The sniffling sounds didn’t register immediately in his mind. It wasn’t until he saw her raising her hands to her face did he realize she was crying.
He jerked away from her, stunned. He’d never seen her cry before, not even when she’d forgotten to release her Quirk properly and had fallen twenty feet from the air and dislocated her shoulder. His body refused to move; it was as if his veins had turned to ice. He felt sick, like something was lodged in his throat and he couldn’t get it out.
“M-m-my dad got r-really hu-hu-hurt at work l-last week,” she stuttered out between gasps, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I c-can’t be in school anymore.”
Katsuki felt his insides thaw and refreeze again so fast he thought he was getting some kind of thermal whiplash. “What?” he croaked out.
“M-my mom is taking extra shifts and w-w-work, b-but it’s not enough to pay the ho-hospital bills,” she sobbed into her hands. “They need my help.”
“They told you to drop out?” Katsuki was outraged. He found the strength to stand up. “They can’t just do that! You’re—”
Ochako shook her head so hard her hair whipped out around her. “Th-they didn’t! It was me. My idea.”
“Wha—but you—you’re not—you can’t! I won’t let you!”
“I already told Ms. Sensi,” she hiccupped. She finally lifted her face from her hands to look at Katsuki, red-eyed and red-cheeked and sadder than anyone Katsuki had ever seen.
“But what about the Solar Guard? What about Yuuei?” he asked desperately, his brain scrambling to comprehend her words.
“Like I’m just gonna give up,” she sniffled, smiling weakly. Her tears had slowed but were still leaking out from her eyes. She scrubbed them away with both palms.
“I’ll come back to school once Dad’s better,” she said. “Then I’ll apply to Yuuei, and I’ll be so good that I’ll skip directly to your grade.”
Katsuki snorted, torn between wanting to scream out his frustration and laughing hysterically. “Fat chance.” His voice shook. “Your grades suck.”
“Not when I’m at Yuuei.” Her face was still blotchy from crying, but her voice had evened out, her demeanor calm. The exact opposite of what he was feeling. How could she be okay with this?
There were a lot of things he wanted to say, to yell. He forced himself to smirk at her. “You better be there.”
“Promise.” She cocked her head to the side and returned his smirk. “I’m gonna lead the number one crew in the galaxy.”
“That’s my line.” He could no longer fight back his own tears. He turned away to rub his eyes dry. “We’re not friends until you’re in Yuuei with me,” he said once he could face her again.
She looked at him with a sad smile. “Deal.”
He watched her board the shuttle when it arrived, and his last memory of that day was of her pressing both hands to the glass of the window pane and mouthing, “See you at Yuuei.”
He didn’t know that he wouldn’t see her for over ten years after that. It hadn’t been for lack of trying. He’d thrown himself into his studies, let his pain turn into anger. He’d intimidated his peers, scared his teachers, even bullied a new transfer student in his class.
As soon as he turned eighteen and was granted admission into Yuuei he started looking for her. Nothing turned up, and he hated himself for not looking earlier. As he kept studying at Yuuei he started wondering if she was even looking for him . Attending Yuuei had also meant a lot of unwelcome publicity, and his face had been plastered in the news nonstop, especially after the embarrassing encounter with a villain in the middle of the day, before he’d gotten into Yuuei.
He realized bitterly that she’d probably forgotten about him, forgotten about her promise. He pushed her from his mind and didn’t think about her for another five years.