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Hanta is used to being in the background.
He's not overly loud, or out there, or uniquely different to any other teenager. He has a funky smile, and shoots tape from his elbows. Some people might remember him because of that, but not many.
It’s not something that Hanta shares with people, really, but he's scared that once their class graduates, he'll just... slip away. No one will be watching out for him, the office supply hero, because everyone’s eyes will be on Deku, or Dynamight, or Shouto. Powerhouses, each with their own charm, high in the leaderboards as Hanta falls lower and lower.
So Hanta just needs to catch up.
Kaminari isn’t super happy with getting dragged out of bed, but Hanta knows that at least he won’t try to talk him out of it. Bakugou is part of Hanta’s problem; Mina already has plans for the day; Kirishima would be great, but he sleeps like a rock when it’s a rest day, so no dice.
Together, Hanta and Kaminari make their way over to Ground Gamma. With Kaminari still half-asleep and Hanta lost in his head, there isn’t much conversation.
The gates swing open as they tap their IDs against the scanner, both of their energy levels rising sharply as the twisted labyrinth of pipes comes into view. With a grin, Kaminari drops his bag by the wall and starts poking around the nearest structure for something.
“You’re gonna be fine down here while I’m flinging myself around?” Sero calls out, dumping his own bag next to Kaminari's and looking for somewhere to wind his tape around. “You know how to call me down if you need me?”
“Yep!” Kaminari exclaims, throwing a double thumbs up behind him, only turning enough to show his grin. “Don’t knock yourself out, dude!”
“Same to you, man,” Hanta scoffs, “If you go stupid, I’m just going to leave you until I’m done!”
Without waiting to hear a response, Hanta swings his arm in a wide arc, tape whizzing out and crossing the distance in no time at all. Just before it pulls taut, Hanta reels it back just enough that when it catches, it yanks his feet off the ground and he goes flying.
It’s not particularly graceful, but Hanta can only just make out Kaminari laughing at him over the sound of the wind rushing past his ears, so he doesn’t care. Unhindered by gravity, he starts the cycle of swinging and latching and pulling, dragging himself through the air until the resistance is overpowered by sheer force.
Just wearing his workout clothes, Hanta lacks his helmet to keep the wind out of his face. It stings as it hits his squinted eyes, and his breath comes shorter since he's trying not to dry out his throat from opening it too wide. Overall, not entirely pleasant, but Hanta is content to lose himself in the moment anyway. Shorter breaths mean that he just needs to make them more efficient, squinted eyes mean he just needs to plan ahead more. There’s nothing to stop him up here, but equally, nothing to distract him from his thoughts.
Being here in Ground Gamma makes it easy to remember just after their internships, when Midoriya nearly won their race. If he weren’t so unused to aerial movement, he surely would’ve beaten Hanta without issue. Hanta was complacent then, only pushing himself when Midoriya swooping by made him realise it.
He isn’t the only one in class with a focus on movement. He isn’t the only one in class with a focus on the sky. He isn’t the best at it. Not after Midoriya’s loss, when he started pushing himself further to ‘catch up’, nor when Bakugou figured out how to use his explosions to rocket wherever he wanted. Hell, even Todoroki knows how to make an ice ramp to chuck himself off of.
Hanta is falling behind in the one skill he thought he was good at.
Shoving those thoughts away, Hanta yanks harder than he needs to, propelling himself up so fast that he has to close his eyes entirely. It’s only once he starts to free-fall that he opens them again.
Early morning sun glints against the maze of metal. Birds are hushed. Hanta can only hear his heaving breath as time seems to pause.
The scenery moves, picking up speed and warning Hanta that he needs to latch back onto something and divert momentum, but Hanta waits a few more moments to just appreciate the quiet. With a sigh that he can barely hear, Hanta attaches to a tube a fair bit below him.
Tape pulls, and Hanta is jerked down faster, momentum arrested and redirected to a gentler angle than straight down into the floor. Time speeds up, even as Hanta slows down. On his wrist, Hanta’s watch goes off, telling him to start making his way back to where he left Kaminari. With a grumble, he twists around and starts back towards the gates.
Kaminari is spread out like a starfish on the ground when Hanta touches down next to him, but he only gets to be amused for a second before alarm crosses Kaminari's face, and he scrambles to his feet.
Moving into Hanta’s personal space, he takes his face in both hands and talks at him in a vaguely upset tone. Hanta blinks the moisture back into his eyes, opening his mouth to tell him to slow down when he tastes the metallic tang of blood in his throat.
Perplexed, Hanta smacks Kaminari’s hands away, putting his own up to his nose. The fingers are coated red when he pulls them back, and suddenly, Hanta is aware of the way that blood drips down his chin and stains the collar of his shirt.
“Dude!” Kaminari gets over his outrage of being pushed away, pulling out a pack of tissues from a pocket. “How do you not realise you have a nosebleed! You don’t even have my excuse of getting them so often!”
“I... uh, actually have no idea?”
Hanta resigns himself to Kaminari’s less-than-gentle care as he runs them through how to deal with a nosebleed properly. He pinches the bridge of his nose in the spot he tells him to, and tilts his head forward even when it feels like he should tilt back and stop the blood from dripping. It feels incredibly gross to breathe through his mouth, especially when he isn’t allowed to close it or try to string together a full sentence.
“Seriously,” Kaminari’s voice abruptly drops its incredulous tone as he plops to the ground in front of Hanta and leans to stare into his face. Hanta has no idea when he ended up on the ground, but he's rolling with it. “You know you can’t push yourself stupid hard without your gear, I know you know that.”
Hanta shrugs, smiles despite the way he can tell his teeth are coated in red. Kaminari looks unimpressed, sticking his tongue out in a manner Hanta thinks is very rude and uncalled for.
“I know I’m not great at these conversations. It’s Mina’s speciality to pester people about their feelings, not mine, but even I can tell something is up.” Kaminari lifts Hanta’s fingers away from his nose, watching for a few moments to make sure the blood flow has stopped. “So, what’s up?”
Doing a weird nose-wiggle thing to make it less uncomfortable, Hanta picks at his nail beds as he figures out what to say.
“I guess I’m just, tired? Of falling behind everyone,” he starts, not looking at Kaminari’s weirdly intense stare as he puts it into words. “Like, my Quirk is pretty weak compared to most peoples’. I can use it well, but even that is less than what some people can do. Midoriya is better than me at moving in the air, dude, and he was breaking his bones every time he punched at the beginning of the year!”
“Yeah, he’s kinda mad, huh?”
“Exactly! And then Bakugou can explode, and Todoroki has his ice ramps, and Iida can run faster than I can fly, Uraraka can just remove her gravity and kick off a wall... It just feels like I’m never catching up to them. They’re all so much stronger and just, better, than me.”
“Okay,” Kaminari stops staring, leaning back on his hands. After a few beats of muttering to himself, he shrugs. “And?”
“Uh-”
“Them being able to do all that doesn’t mean you can’t do the same. Sure, some of their Quirks are stronger, but I doubt nearly any of them can fly as good as you can. Midoriya excluded, maybe, but that guy is like, All Might levels of batshit insane power-wise, so I don’t think he should count.”
“He’s surprisingly scary,” Hanta snorts, then regrets it as pulls on the drying blood under his nose.
“Yeah!” Kaminari wets a new tissue with his water bottle, passing it over so Hanta can wipe his face. “Seriously, my Quirk is pretty strong, and I know I was miserable once he started getting better control than I had. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna go maiming-” — “It’s just a nosebleed-” — “Maiming myself, just so that I can catch up to someone like him.”
“So what do I do, then?” Hanta throws his hands up in the air, because what does he do when he'll always come in behind someone else? “Just give up?”
“Nah, just do it at your own pace.” It can’t be that simple. “It’s really that simple. You’ll find your niche, trust me.”