Summary:
transit: (n.) When Mercury or Venus crosses the disk of the Sun, making the planet visible as a black dot in silhouette, or when a moon passes across the face of its parent planet. Transit also refers to the instant when a celestial object crosses the meridian and thus is highest in the sky.
Shouto has a mildly confusing two weeks between the USJ Incident and the U.A. Sports Festival.
Notes:
For the folks in the United States, and for the folks who are following the election: we live in hope.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
I'm hit with a nauseating realization when we're released from questioning and I arrive home: Father is proud.
Of course he is. I had incapacitated the villains that had been sent to the landslide biome, participated in All Might's fight against the monster, succeeded in pinning down both Fog Guy and Handsy for crucial moments. He's not completely pleased – he wouldn't have been even if I had been the one to facilitate their arrest, I don't think – but he's not upset.
He's not upset. That fact shouldn't comfort me as much as it does. But the mantra of Father isn't upset calms my racing heart, lets me eat dinner with steady hands while Father sits across from me at the dinner table, the both of us working our way through Cook's offering.
"I heard you utilized your ice side during the attack," he says into the silence when dinner is almost over. There's a gleam in his eye. He hasn't doused the flames on his own face yet. Maybe he's trying to make a point.
What does it matter? I nod and carefully put down my chopsticks, flex my toes in my house slippers until they're digging into the hardwood floor.
"Come," Father says, and pushes himself away from the table with a screech of his chair. I don't flinch. "Give me a demonstration of what you did."
School is cancelled tomorrow due to the villain attack. When I check my phone, there's chatter about that: news agencies, social media feeds, the group chat that Invisible Girl had almost forcibly added me to.
(Her contact in my phone brings the list up to six. She'd taken my phone and cheerily named herself Hagakure Tooru and taken a picture of herself then and there to put as her profile pic, my jacket over her shoulders and her gloves disembodied next to her face, putting index and middle finger up while the others are folded.
It's a peace sign, she'd explained when I'd asked, and she hadn't been mean about it.)
I flick through the group chat, sparse and short as it is, trying to distract myself from the heavy weight on my ribcage when I try to breathe in. It's going to bruise, I can tell without looking, but at least I've been changing in the bathroom stalls since the beginning of the year.
Repetition makes for pattern, and patterns are predictable and become expected. None of the others will make a fuss about it, even if they talk about it behind my back. As long as none of them ask me directly, it's fine. Everything will be fine.
Call me when you can, my sister texts me, the notification popping up over a line from Ashido Mina about how she's back home and eating snacks. I ignore her notification so that I don't leave her on read.
She keeps texting throughout the night. Shouto, come on, talk to me.
Natsuo-nii sends just one, after midnight: Don't forget the forest for the trees, little brother.
I don't need them reminding me of something that I already know. We've talked about it, my escape from beneath Father's roof. We've planned around it. But now that I'm here and attending U.A. and waiting for an opening, I'm becoming less and less sure that one will exist.
All the students are wannabe heroes. They'll throw themselves into fights the first chance that they get, with or without training. I'd expected their desire to graduate and do their best, but I hadn't actually understood it until I'd been confronted with the sight of Spiky and Red, of Invisible Girl, of Green Hair, all of them down to the last standing firm against something that would make a regular civilian flee.
That's what you're giving up, Father's voice hisses in my head. And he's never said it before, true, but he's right. I'll be giving up heroics, that bone-deep desire to dig in your heels and fight the problem with both fists, for something else.
And leaving them to it.
For some reason, it doesn't make me feel better.
(I don't sleep well that night.)
School starts out well enough, considering the circumstances. Everyone is in their seats, uncertain and antsy. Which they should be. Five days in and we've already lost the homeroom teacher –
Then Aizawa walks into class, the stubborn fool, as if there's nothing wrong. Or, well, he limps in, but he might as well stride in with full confidence and a spotlight on him for how much surprise – and reverence, in Loud Guy's voice – the class is full of.
Okay. So maybe there is a hero who lives up to the name.
The unrest over his injuries disappears when he makes his announcement. The Sports Festival, he says, and the rest of the class erupts into noise and chaos. It's not an unwarranted reaction; the Sports Festival can make or break a wannabe hero's career. But what they don't understand is that such fame puts a target on your back.
The media will expect me to do well, as Todoroki Shouto. Father will be expecting that I do well. I already know what Fuyumi-nee and Natsuo-nii are going to say, so I turn my phone on silent and put my noise-cancelling headphones on instead.
In the steadying silence, I watch one of the girls – Gravity Girl – be more spirited than what I would have expected from her. From the group around her, they notice the discrepancy, too.
Homeroom Teacher calls for silence and order again – thank god – and I take my headphones off after his bandaged head stares in my direction. "You have two weeks to prepare," he says, and into the quiet building that I can practically feel the energy of he adds, "but for now you still have school."
The morning classes crawl by. All of the others are still practically vibrating in their seats, drawing reluctant smiles from the teachers. They seem to be hesitant, though. Perhaps deep in thought. Like how Fuyumi-nee looks like when she has something she wants to talk about but isn't sure how to bring it up.
Or maybe I'm just imagining it. I shift in my seat and grit my teeth against the flare of pain of my ribs, and refocus on English instead.
Lunch rolls around soon after. Everyone breaks into their pre-established social groups almost immediately, jumping over desks and skidding into others as they chatter on and on about – oh, the Sports Festival. Really? Again? I drag my headphones back on from where they're rested around my neck and try to drown out the noise that's aggravating the tension headache I can already feel pressing against my skull.
While I'm distracted a headless, bodiless school uniform makes its way over to me. Invisible Girl says something, pauses, and then gestures wildly with her gloves. She keeps making a movement over where her head would be if we could see it, kind of a scooping motion –
Oh. I sigh through my nose and prop my headphones off my ears, just a little bit, and wince at the sudden increase in class volume while Invisible Girl plops herself down at my desk as though she'd been invited. Behind her, Red glances over at Spiky before making his way over, too, Four Arms at his heels. "Todoroki-kun, are you excited? It's the Sports Festival!"
"Yes," I mutter, already thinking about how soon I can put my headphones on again without Invisible Girl trying to steal them from me. She'd hung onto my jacket until Four Arms had commented on it yesterday, I wouldn't put it past her.
Invisible Girl makes conversation and so does Red. Four Arms is quiet, thank goodness, and is the only one to make logical sense by bringing up lunch.
I'd been intending on taking my tray and moving to a corner again, the heavy gaze of other students who I can't pinpoint prickling the back of my neck, when Invisible Girl follows me around. I stare at her as she sticks to my side like Natsuo-nii with me in public. She practically sits down at my elbow even though I pick the furthest table from the lunch hero.
On her heels is Four Arms with four cups, the last two arms holding up his tray. Red follows a little after, distracted and waylaid by a couple of other tables full of other 1-A students on the way here.
Before I can ask why they're here, Invisible Girl starts chattering about – something. She's talking a little too fast for me to follow the conversation, and the words start to blur in my brain. Four Arms distracts me as he puts down a glass of water in front of each of us – what? – while Red starts picking at his food and nods along to whatever Invisible Girl is saying.
"Wait, really, Todoroki-kun?"
I don't choke on my food, because dinner with Father has taught me how to swallow before I do. I look up at Invisible Girl who's – I can't read her eyes because I can't see them but, yes, there are her shoulders and her gloved hands, she's not winding up for a throw or a strike or reaching for her knife –
She's silent. The other two are looking at me. I blink and ask them, "What?"
"He did!" Red says immediately, as though trying to defend something. "Right on the napkins, too!"
"Hagakure-san asked," Four Arms tells me almost kindly, "if you were really solving physics problems on the back of napkins."
Well, I hadn't had paper at the time, where else was I supposed to write out the math? I blink again, feeling caught thoroughly flat-footed, and the realization puts my heart in my throat.
I have to bite down the automatic I'm sorry, I'll pay better attention and actually parse through the sentence. A moment, then two, and then I can pull myself back enough to reply, "Yes. I did."
"See?" Red jabs his finger at me and I hold stock-still, it's always worse when you try to dodge, but he doesn't actually hit. It doesn't even come close. And then I realize of course it didn't, the shoulder hadn't telegraphed the movement enough, but, habit, brains, repetition and – "I told you! And you doubted me?"
"I didn't really take you for the math type, Todoroki-kun," Invisible Girl says. She sounds thoughtful.
It's only been five days. Ectoplasm has only started on polynomials and rationals. I'd covered that when trying to figure out the rate at which I was growing tired versus the amount of ice I could create.
I hum, in lieu of anything else to say, and take a sip from my glass. For some reason, Four Arms seems pretty pleased about that.
A conversation in a group chat:
invisigirl: i think that went pretty well!
Shouji_M: He didn't run off, which was a miracle.
rockruff: bro i thought for sure he was gonna walk away or not talk to us
Shouji_M: Todoroki-kun is surprisingly thoughtful.
invisigirl: yea
invisigirl: do this again tmrw?
rockruff: oh, absolutely
Shouji_M: Yes.
Shouji_M: When do you think we can get him to talk on the all-class group chat?
invisigirl: oh im working on that do not worry ;)
The practical class in the afternoon is riddled with tension. Maybe half the class are in their hero costumes. Invisible Girl is in a PE uniform, and so is Green Hair. Which makes sense. Their, and my, uniforms are still with the Support Department after the fight at USJ: my and Green Hair's for modifications, Invisible Girl's for actual production.
But there are others I hadn't expected, too, like Tail.
"You showed me that I still have work to do," he smiles. There's an emotion there I can't pin down. "Originally I wanted my boots to be thin, so that I could have more dexterity, but you showed me that I should have insulation and more protection there, too."
Oh. Well. I blink at him and turn away, and ignore Invisible Girl's whispered conversation with Tail afterwards, Four Arms looking on with his expression as unreadable as ever under that mask.
Today's practical exercise is with Cementoss, instead of All Might or Homeroom Teacher. Which makes sense. Homeroom Teacher might have shown up today but rumor has put him back in the infirmary. The other instructors hadn't seemed too surprised, but even with healing Quirks bodily damage as extensive as Homeroom Teacher's don't go away overnight.
In the wake of the recent villain attack, the practical isn't anything much. Just a few light spars, a few short practice fights.
He pairs me up with Spiky, though, and that's where things get interesting.
Cementoss tries to pry us apart a few times. Why he's trying to, I don't understand. I'm mostly dodging Spiky's attacks as he gets more and more fired up, which is – refreshing to see, to be honest.
When Father is frustrated, he becomes stricter, harsher. His flames grow higher and start targeting vulnerable, critical points instead of sticking to arms and legs.
When Spiky is frustrated, his swings and explosions become livelier. His eyes are sharp, and he grins widely like Natsuo-nii when I've gotten a question of his right.
He's not going for serious injury, either. Incapacitation, maybe, but not the single critical injury that would end a life or a career. And Father always aims for the latter rather than the former during midnight training.
He stays in the mid- to long-range, which is the smart decision, except my Quirk allows me to work in all ranges. I let him tire himself out, and then when he hesitates – stumbles a little bit, knee buckling – I lunge in, place my right hand on his arms and freeze them.
Spiky freezes, something caught between his teeth. "Half-n-half."
"You're not actually handling fire," I murmur to him, in the ringing silence where Cementoss is practically on the edge of the field trying to tell if he should interfere or let things play out. "You don't produce any smoke. Just explosions."
"Yeah," Spiky snarls, "'cause it's fucking nitroglycerin."
I'm not familiar with the chemical, and the hesitation costs me. Spiky breaks out of my grip and goes for an uppercut to the chin. I rear back, but we're too close. The strike hits, glancing, and the ice that I'd frosted over his knuckles opens a bloody scratch on my chin.
"That's enough," Cementoss rumbles, and Spiky stops his retaliatory lunge mid-stride. He skids a little as he does so, as though he's expecting me to guard or go after him anyway.
I don't flinch, because Father never appreciates it when I flinch after spars. Habits, patterns, repetition.
"Good fight," I tell Spiky, and his eyes widen – his mouth opens – but I'm already walking off the field.
At the end of the day there are a bunch of students standing outside the classroom, practically blocking the exit.
They kind of remind me of reporters now that I think about it. Except reporters would be overflowing with questions, thrusting microphones into faces, and these students are just… standing there. Staring.
Invisible Girl comes over to my desk; Four Arms leans on the wall next to me. I look over to Loud Guy, now Class Representative, expecting him to be shouting about fire alarm protocol and how crowding the hallway is dangerous – except he's not. He's staring at the crowd, too.
Spiky is quiet – dangerously quiet – as he trudges up to the front of the room. Some guy in the hallway crowd shoves his way over to face him. The crowd doesn't part for either of them, which is interesting. Even this class of 1-A moves for Green Hair, who'd broken bones in his arms and legs during the villain attack two days ago.
They talk. Spiky makes enemies. I sigh and shove away from my seat, stand still for a moment so that Invisible Girl can lean in and brush shoulders and whisper to me and Four Arms about how "Bakugou is gonna make the whole school hate us, damn."
"It certainly is an ill-advised move," Four Arm replies.
I shake my head and swing my bag onto my shoulder. Spiky is still talking with the guy from the hallway – purple hair, dark bags under his eyes, and the crowd behind him look surprised that Spiky is even talking back to him. He's not respected among them though, since they're still crowding behind him.
As I draw nearer, Invisible Girl and Four Arms on my heels, the crowd's attention turns to me. Spiky scowls; I can see it out of the corner of my eye. Purple Hair raises his eyebrows and drawls, "Todoroki Shouto. How kind of you to join us."
Of course they know who I am. The hair is distinctive, and I've heard enough of Fuyumi-nee's heated discussions with Natsuo-nii about minors and their legally protected privacy and the way Endeavor's fans and critics have ignored them when they'd thought I wasn't listening.
"You want to join the hero course?" I ask Purple Hair.
He blinks. Maybe he's surprised. Take my spot, I almost tell him, but this soon, when I can feel the bruised rib from Father's latest training session every time I breathe, I can't.
I tell him as sincerely as I can, "Good luck in the Sports Festival."
Purple Hair's eyes narrow. His drawling smile turns downward into a scowl, then something that's almost a snarl. But before anyone can start throwing punches Spiky walks away – walks into the hallway – and the crowd parts.
Invisible Girl links my right arm with hers, Four Arms slots himself in at my left shoulder, and together we leave too.
"You think he might join us?" Four Arms asks when we're out in the school yard and heading for the gates. He sounds thoughtful.
"He has the drive," I reply, because I've seen that look in Purple Hair's eye before in the mirror and in the eyes of the 1-A students. When all you have is your drive and the place you want – need – to reach, then people can either become very capable or very desperate.
And I think Purple Hair is more capable than desperate.
We split up at the train station. Invisible Girl goes one way, Four Arms goes another. Some of the other 1-A students go with them in either direction.
I walk home, headphones over ears, head ducked, and dodge the reporters as best as I can.
On my way I do some research in nitroglycerin. It's primarily a medical compound that's highly sensitive to heat, shock, and flame. It's also a compound in dynamite and doesn't produce smoke. Well, no wonder Spiky had panicked when I'd first put my hand on his arm. If I had chosen to use fire instead of ice, that could have gone very badly.
For him, at least. Burns don't really phase me anymore after Father's training.
Or would it have ended badly for Spiky? He seems pretty immune to his own explosions, if the lack of laceration or burn scars on his arms from when I'd gotten close enough to see him is any indication.
I'll be learning soon enough, I suppose. We have a practical class in heroics every afternoon, and with the Sports Festival coming up none of them are going to be cancelled.
I hear about Purple Hair a lot during lunch.
Invisible Girl comes back in the next two days with gossip about him, somehow, and Four Arms debates with her in true calm Four Arms fashion. Red pitches in every so often, grinning with sharp teeth and worry in his eyes, eating lunch with us half the time and the other half trying to pester Spiky; Tail comes by for the quiet. At least there's one other person who also picks at their food and just listens.
But what Invisible Girl comes back with is fairly interesting. None of the students in school really know what he's doing, but they have a good description from gossip and from their own practical class. They're not being taught how to fight but rather how to control their Quirks so that they're not breaking the public usage laws, which is fair.
But apparently Purple Hair can make people do things with just his voice, which is cool. Probably an emitter-class Quirk.
I think about it while Red redirects the conversation to our earlier Mathematics class. How does it work – is Purple Hair co-opting nerve endings? The firing of neurons in the brain? Is it an offshoot of hypnosis? Could he plant subliminal messaging? Is it only physical movements or can he do more complicated instructions? Could he potentially rewrite memories?
Forget about heroism. This guy could be the next big thing in neurology, or psychiatry, or therapy or investigation or a million different fields that all help people. Even if he could only make people follow physical movement-orders, he could be helping with things like the neurological research on brainwave-controlled prosthetics. So why is he here?
And then someone whispers as they pass by our table, "You're talking about the brainwashing guy. Don't answer his questions, that's how he gets you," and ah. That makes sense.
Father has always been certain that I will be a hero who will follow in his steps and surpass All Might to become Number One. Purple Hair must have always been told that he will never be a hero.
There's a certain kinship in being the people who are told You can't do that, and then doing it anyway.
Every Friday there is a sit-down assessment during the afternoons for where students stand on their Quirk training.
Sometimes it's run by All Might; others by Cementoss; but all of them have Homeroom Teacher sitting in on them, silent and still mummified. He should still be on bedrest, the rumors go. The teachers all cast him concerned glances when they think neither he nor the students are looking, but the amount of care they take around him is obvious.
It affects how the students treat him, too. Spiky still shouts, but less loudly. Loud Guy takes his role as Class Representative seriously and tries to keep 1-A in line. Invisible Girl keeps sneaking him hot mugs of tea or coffee or something, I'm not sure what, but it steams and sometimes Homeroom Teacher wraps bandaged fingers around them.
Maybe he's cold all the time. It would make sense; it's common for thermoregulation issues to occur because of general anesthesia. Homeroom Teacher really should be bundled up in blankets.
I mention it off handedly in the Vice Class Representative's range of hearing, and not even fifteen minutes later she's handing off a blanket to Invisible Girl to sneak it onto Homeroom Teacher's shoulders. It would be funnier if Homeroom Teacher weren't tracking their movement from across the room.
He isn't saying anything though, which I don't quite understand. If we had ever tried this with Father – in an alternate universe maybe, gods – then we would have been laughed out of the house. Or he would have burnt the blanket. Or –
Four Arms shifts a little in his seat next to me on the heroics field, and I refocus.
"For some of you," Cementoss says, glancing around, "your hero costumes will be returned shortly. The support department has been working hard to improve them before the Sports Festival, so be sure to thank them when you get a chance!"
Invisible Girl and Four Arms and Red, with a straggling Tail coming behind, huddles together once Cementoss dismisses after class.
"Power Loader took it himself," Invisible Girl whispers to them. There's more than a little awe in her tone, the kind that people usually reserve for Father.
Tail shakes his head. "I heard that he reamed out the support company over the phone over it. Do you think he's using your advice, Todoroki-san?"
What? I squint over Tail's head and try to remember if I'd given any advice or not. I think not… I laid out a few theories on how Invisible Girl's Quirk works, immediately after USJ, to distract her from the way her gloves – and her hands underneath – were shaking after delivering Homeroom Teacher to the paramedics. Apparently Power Loader had been close by, then, or someone had overheard and mentioned it to him.
"It all comes down to material in the end," Invisible Girl says. "At my Quirk Identification appointment they couldn't figure out how I'm doing what I'm doing, but Aizawa-sensei thinks that I'll be able to control it eventually. Which is pretty exciting!"
"Could be very useful," Four Arms quietly supplies. "The Number Three Hero Hawks's Quirk is a mutant-class, but he can manipulate it."
"Do you think he's working on the entire class's?"
"I wouldn't be surprised," Tail says. "They'll have to be unsettled, too, after the villain attack. And even if people's costumes weren't damaged…" He shrugs. "We've tried them out outside of class, now. There will be modifications to make them better fits for us."
"Like you, Todoroki-kun!" Invisible Girl whirls around so that she's walking backwards, leaning in, the shoulders of her PE uniform tilted back like she has her hands folded behind it too. "Is your costume fire-proof?"
I don't misstep. I ask, carefully, "What?"
"See," Invisible Girl says, "I can't tell because you don't ever use your fire in class."
"Because it doesn't have a lot of practical uses," I tell her. "Fire needs fuel to burn. It consumes oxygen, which is not what you want in most rescue situations; it spreads easily; it intimidates. It has great offensive potential, but it's not flexible. Ice, on the other hand, is."
Which is all true. But the thing I don't tell her is, the other classes are watching us, and if they knew I'm as comfortable with fire as I am with ice – if they knew I could control exothermic processes as well as endothermic – they wouldn't underestimate me as much.
Also, everyone expects fire from me as the son of Endeavor, and like hell I'm going to let him have this too.
Invisible Girl doesn't seem convinced, and neither do Four Arms or Tail. "So your costume is ice-proof, but not fire-proof?"
"It has a high melting point," I allow, because that had been something that the support company had insisted on without me specifying. Father's reputation precedes him. "And an arc rating of 60. It's better than recommended for hazard rating 4."
"So, no, it's fire-proof," Red translates. He looks thoughtful. "Hey, hey, think we should be having the same protective measures too?"
"Or you could simply evacuate the premises before your clothing melts," Four Arms points out very reasonably, and it's that kind of conversation that follows us back inside.
"I expect you to win," Father says after night training one week.
I resist the urge to spit the blood in my mouth onto the dojo floor and bow my head instead.
Afterwards, I text my sister: I'm fine. Don't worry about me. I'll call you this weekend.
And then, to my brother: Of course not.
Golden Week comes and goes remarkably fast. U.A. has some of those holidays off, but heroes don't take holidays and neither does Father's training schedule.
Invisible Girl texts in the group chat she'd made that first week with Red and Tail and Four Arms. People also keep texting on the class group chat, though that one is 'strictly for academic purposes only,' according to Loud Guy.
But it's the internet, and it's the internet with high schoolers. Of course chaos happens immediately.
Group Chat: U.A. Class 1-A
Today at 12:12pm
rockruff: wait so who's everyone??
rockruff: and what are all these nicknames??
yeet me into space: I think it's pretty descriptive!
Not Emo: says the person named rockruff
Not Emo: we have some true finely aged memes in this chat tho
Iida_Tenya: This is to be used for academic purposes only!! Please do not text unless it is related to class!!
invisigirl: lmao chill iida this is class related
Iida_Tenya: How?
invisigirl: it's team building ;)
It's a nice distraction from the research I'm doing on the 1-B and General Education students. By no means are they not capable; even for General Education, the name of U.A. carries weight. Eyes will be on 1-A as the class that survived a villain attack in the first week of school, but it only takes a moment of hesitation or distraction to lose a spar.
At least we won't be competing between years. 2-A and 2-B will have a year's worth of experience on 1-A, and the 3-A class includes the Big Three.
"Wait, so is that why he's so good at math? Cause he got a head start?"
"Not just math," someone hisses. "English, too. He's ahead of us in reading and writing, even though, thank god, he's just as bad as us in speaking it."
"I guess even being a genius has limits." They sound… happy about that, though. There's a nuance there I don't understand. "But that's the thing with all these legacy kids, isn't it? They get all the unfair advantages."
"D'you think they go to cram school afterwards like normal people? Or do they have tutors instead?"
I tune them out. The rest of that conversation won't have been anything I haven't heard before. But Invisible Girl, who until now has been happily tapping away at her phone and chatting away in the group chat, shoves her phone at Tail and stands.
It's crowded in the cafeteria, and noisy – it always is – but she marches off to the other table. For some reason, Four Arms goes with her, and the height difference from behind is still pretty comical.
Tail glances down at Invisible Girl's phone, skims whatever's on there, locks it and sets it down. "So? Todoroki-kun?" he says. "How did you spend Golden Week?"
It's obvious he's trying to make small talk; I don't need Fuyumi-nee or the internet to tell met that. "I stayed home," I tell him. What is Invisible Girl saying? Four Arms is leaning over her shoulder, but that's fair, the cafeteria is pretty crowded and the tables are full. But neither of them are sitting down, and I don't recognize the people at the table, so how do they know them –
"Oh," Tail says, "did you get a lot of rest, then?"
I think about Father, night training, dojo mats and first aid kits under the bed. "I got enough." And then, because Fuyumi-nee had taught me that this is polite: "How was your Golden Week?"
Tail goes on to tell a story. Something about cafes and walking the streets. I'm almost surprised when he doesn't mention anything about dodging reporters or wearing masks to hide a face even if it doesn't hide hair or, in his case, his Quirk.
It's interesting, though – I've seen pictures of cat cafes but I've never been to one – so I let him tell me about his weekend with them and show me pictures.
Invisible Girl and Four Arms comes back somewhere between the second and third cat picture. She's bouncing, practically skipping; even Four Arms looks pleased under his mask. I wonder if they got some good news from that table of students they were talking to.
Four Arms sits down before I can look, though, obscuring my view of that part of the cafeteria. "What are we looking at?"
"Ooh, cat pictures!" Invisible Girl is excited and leans over Tail to take a closer look. She doesn't immediately go for her phone, which Tail has put by her lunch tray. "Wait, wait, you're telling me you went this weekend and you didn't send these pics in the class group chat? Mashirao-kun!"
"I can put them up now," Tail says with a smile, and he does. My phone immediately floods with notifications from people reacting, commentating, sending emoticons.
"Todoroki-kun!" Invisible Girl nudges me in the arm with her elbow. At least she hadn't gone for the rib. "Come on, you gotta react in the chat, too! Help me make my case to Class Rep Iida!"
I blink, confused, but even Four Arms is nodding. Tail smiles sheepishly, scratching a little at his ear, but neither does he contradict Invisible Girl.
She nudges me in the arm again, a little higher toward the shoulder, but training this week has been the standard spar, no throws. Shoulder is fine.
I reluctantly open up the group chat and send a thumbs-up.
Group Chat: U.A. Class 1-A
Today at 12:41pm
TodoShou: :thumbsup:
yeet me into space: Todoroki-kun??
invisigirl: cats get the todoroki thumbs up of approval!! yes!!
Iida_Tenya: I still maintain that this group chat should be used for academic purposes, and cats do not fall in that category!
alien_queen: aw come on iida
alien_queen: this is morale building
alien_queen: still academic
"Is this going to become a pattern?" Four Arms asks, but he sounds amused.
"Oh god, I hope so."
Tail scratches at his head again. "Isn't this technically bullying?"
"Do you," and here Invisible Girl sweeps out her hand, indicated by her phone seemingly being telekinetically swung in a half-circle out into the cafeteria, "see Iida being upset? No? It's not bullying if we're gently and insistently convincing him onto our side!"
Class Rep Loud Guy seems to be holding his head in his hands while Green Hair flutters, trying to reassure him. Gravity Girl is laughing. They don't… look upset.
But to be fair, the cats are cute.