It was a slow Sunday afternoon. The kind that only exists when there aren't villains destroying the city center.
Yu Takeyama occupied the entire three-seater sofa. Her legs were up on the backrest, her head hung off the edge of the seat, and a thick layer of green clay covered her face.
"Izuku," she called out without opening her eyes. Her voice sounded muffled by the dry mask. "Pass me the remote? It's ten feet away. Too far."
From the kitchen came the rhythmic sound of a knife hitting a cutting board.
"It's under your butt, Yu," Izuku replied. His tone wasn't annoyed, just resigned. "You sat on it twenty minutes ago."
Yu fumbled under her glutes with a lazy hand.
"Ah. Right. Good eye, green boy."
She pulled out the remote and turned on the TV. News. Weather. No villains. She changed the channel. A comedian was trying to eat spicy noodles on a variety show.
"Are you cooking something fattening?" she asked, turning up the volume. "Because if it's salad, I'm ordering pizza. My metabolism needs calories. I burned like three thousand just posing for that magazine yesterday."
Izuku came out of the kitchen. He was drying his hands with a rag and wearing an old gray t-shirt that was too big for him along with sweatpants.
"It's Katsudon. But low sodium," he said, leaning against the doorframe. "And you don't need pizza. Last time you ate two slices and left the rest in the box until it developed a life of its own."
"It was a biological experiment," she defended herself, stretching an arm toward the ceiling. "I was cultivating homemade penicillin. I'm a scientist, Izuku."
"You're a health hazard."
Yu's phone started ringing from the rug, lost among fashion magazines and wrappers.
Yu opened one eye. The green crust on her eyelid cracked a little.
"Shit," she whispered. "The Agent."
"Sunday afternoon?" Izuku frowned. "Villain emergency?"
"Worse. A 'Yu, you did something stupid and I have to clean it up' emergency."
She groaned from the effort as she stretched and fished the phone off the floor. She swiped her finger, put it on speaker, and left the device on her chest.
"If this is for the detergent promo, the answer is still no," Yu said immediately, putting on her diva voice. "My image is glamour and power, not getting grease stains out. Find a water-themed heroine."
Silence on the other end of the line. A silence loaded with static.
"Yu," her agent's voice sounded too calm. "Are you sitting down?"
"I'm horizontal. What's up? Did I get the Vogue Hero cover?"
"Koya Oogami."
Yu froze. The mask cracked around her mouth as she clenched her jaw.
"The journalist?" she asked. Her voice lost an octave of arrogance. "What does he have to do with me?"
Izuku straightened up upon hearing the name. He walked silently toward the sofa. His alert instincts activated.
"He just sent me an email," the agent said. Paper could be heard crumpling. "A questionnaire. Thirty questions. He's giving me twenty-four hours to respond before publishing an article on 'Systemic Irregularities in Mt. Lady's Management'."
Yu sat up abruptly. Pieces of dry clay fell onto her tank top.
"Irregularities? What are you talking about? I'm a model heroine. I rescue cats. I smile at children. I paid my taxes!"
"Oogami says your operating expenses are, and I quote: 'A front for money laundering or the work of criminal incompetence'."
Izuku grimaced.
"He's asking about the 'Urban Repair Expenses' that exceed your income. He's asking about clothing receipts classified as medical equipment. And most importantly..."
The agent paused.
"He's asking about the 'Unregistered Support Personnel' living at your residence. He has photos of a green-haired boy coming and going with grocery bags."
The phone slipped off Yu's chest and fell between the cushions.
She stared into the void. Her skin looked pale beneath the remains of the mask.
"Izuku," she whispered.
"I'm here," he replied, stepping closer.
"Tax fraud," she let out like a hiss. "And child labor exploitation. They're going to charge me with both."
She turned slowly toward him. Her eyes were wide, full of a terror Izuku had never seen in her when facing a giant villain.
"Prison," Yu said. "I'm going to prison, Izuku. A federal prison. Gray food and communal showers."
"Yu, calm down. No one is going to..."
"They'll put me in an orange uniform!" she shouted, jumping up. "Orange is my worst color! I look sick! And I won't be able to wear heels! My calves will atrophy!"
She started walking in circles. She was tearing chunks of the mask off her face with desperation.
"I have to go. Flee. Where is my passport? Did I renew it? I think I used it as a coaster."
She ran toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms.
"Mexico!" she shouted from the back. "I've always liked Lucha Libre! I'll start from zero! I'll be 'La Giganta'! I'll wear a sequined mask! No one will know it's me!"
Izuku sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He closed his eyes for a second, visualized the chaos, and entered combat mode.
He ran after her.
Yu was in her room. She was pulling clothes out of the closet and throwing them onto the bed.
"Yu! Stop!"
Izuku grabbed her by the shoulders. She was trembling. She held a leopard print bikini in one hand and a boot in the other.
"Let go of me! I'm packing the essentials! Do you think they sell my brand of conditioner in Mexico? I have to bring liters!"
"Listen to me," Izuku said. He shook her a little so her eyes would focus. "You are not going to Mexico. You are not going to be 'La Giganta'. And you are not going to prison for not knowing how to use Excel."
"Oogami never misses! He's a shark! He'll eat me alive and sell my bones to the press!"
"Oogami is a journalist, not a god," Izuku stated. He took the bikini and the boot from her hands and threw them on the bed. "Sit down."
"But..."
"To the sofa! Now!"
Yu blinked, surprised by the tone. She lowered her head and walked back to the living room, dragging her feet.
Izuku went to his room. He returned ten seconds later with his laptop under his arm, a notebook, and three pens clipped to the collar of his t-shirt.
He sat on the coffee table, facing Yu. He opened the laptop.
"Passwords," he demanded.
Yu was removing the last remains of the mask with a wet wipe. She sniffled.
"What?"
"Bank accounts, agency portal, and your billing cloud. Give them to me."
"What for? Are you going to delete everything?" Her eyes lit up with criminal hope. "Do you know how to hack the government? I knew you had the face of a cyber-criminal."
"I'm not deleting anything. That would make things worse," Izuku said, typing furiously as Yu dictated the keys. "I'm going to audit you. If Oogami wants a story, we'll give him one. But it will be the one we write."
"Consultant Mode?" she asked, timidly.
"Crisis Consultant Level 5."
Izuku entered the system. His eyes moved at breakneck speed, scanning lines of transactions, messy spreadsheets, and folders with names like "Random Stuff" and "Idk what this is lol".
The silence became heavy. Only Izuku's aggressive typing and Yu's breathing could be heard.
"Good lord..." Izuku murmured after two minutes.
Yu shrank into the sofa and hugged a cushion.
"Is it very bad?"
Izuku turned the laptop toward her. He pointed to a red line.
"Yu," he said with a tone of paternal disappointment. "Why is there an eighty-thousand-yen invoice from 'Victoria's Secret' under the category 'Tactical Protection Equipment'?"
Yu straightened up, indignant.
"It's work clothes! It's essential! It boosts morale! Besides, my hero suit is tight. I need high-tech underwear that doesn't show lines and offers support in high gravity. Technically, it is support gear!"
"It's lace lingerie, Yu. Not Kevlar," he corrected. He turned the laptop back and deleted the category. "It is illegal to deduct that. If Oogami sees this, the headline will be: 'Mt. Lady uses taxpayer money to buy designer thongs'."
Yu covered her face with her hands and groaned.
"It sounds so bad when you say it like that!"
"Moving on," Izuku said, implacable. He scrolled down. "Here. Transfer of two hundred thousand yen to the city council. Concept: 'Representation Expenses'."
"Yes, that was marketing," she nodded quickly. "I went to city hall, waved, they saw me. Representation."
Izuku opened the attached file.
"Yu, this is a fine. It's the bill for repairing three streetlamps and a park bench you crushed when you tripped chasing that thief."
"But people laughed! It went viral! It improved my popularity rating!" she protested, waving her hands. "If it improves my popularity, it's marketing! Destruction is part of my brand!"
Izuku made the gesture of adjusting glasses he wasn't wearing and rubbed his eyes.
"You cannot deduct fines for destruction of public property as marketing, Yu. That's like a drunk driver trying to deduct his bail as 'transportation expenses'."
"You're very strict," she complained with a pout. "My previous accountant didn't complain so much."
"Your previous accountant is under house arrest for fraud, Yu. Remember?"
"Details."
Izuku sighed and went back to typing. His mind was working a mile a minute: restructuring, moving, redefining.
"You are a walking financial disaster," he muttered, his fingers flying. "You have receipts for sushi mixed with suit repairs. You have donations to charity that are actually lottery tickets."
"I know! I'm terrible with money!" Yu let herself fall back, staring at the ceiling. "That's why I need you! Save me, Izuku! I'll do anything! I'll clean the bathroom for a month! No, three months! I'll stop using your toothbrush to comb my eyebrows!"
Izuku stopped dead. He turned his head slowly toward her.
"You do what?"
"Uh... nothing. It was a metaphor." Yu laughed nervously. "Forget that. Save me!"
Izuku shook his head and returned to the screen.
"You don't need to clean the bathroom. You need me to restructure the narrative before Oogami receives the report. We have forty minutes before his 'courtesy window' ends."
"What will you do? Bribe him?"
"No. Oogami is looking for dirt. He's looking for chaos and incompetence. We're going to give him the only thing that kills a sensationalist story: Extreme bureaucracy."
Izuku started speaking out loud while he wrote.
"First, the 'green boy' problem. We reclassify my presence. I am not 'unregistered personnel' nor your 'illegal roommate'."
He opened a new document and drafted a contract with a retroactive date.
"I am a 'High Performance External Consultant under NDA for intellectual property development and Quirk analysis'. That justifies the irregular payments, the grocery bags as office supplies, and the secrecy. Standard in the tech industry. If Oogami asks, we are developing a gigantification technique that requires 24/7 monitoring."
Yu blinked.
"That sounds... boring. And very professional."
"Exactly. Boring is safe. Nobody wants to read about external consultants. They want to read about secret lovers."
"Hey, you could be my secret lover," she said with a cheeky smile, trying to lighten the tension.
"Focus, Yu. Prison," Izuku replied without looking up.
"Right. Prison. Go on."
"Second, collateral damage. The streetlamps and the bench." Izuku opened another tab. "They aren't fines. They are 'Direct Investment in Urban Infrastructure and Material Testing in Real Environment under Quirk Stress'."
"Material testing?"
"Yes. By breaking the bench, you 'demonstrated' that the material wasn't safe for combat situations. Technically, you did the city a favor by exposing a structural flaw. If the city accepted your payment, they accepted your collaboration in pavement renovation."
Izuku typed with a predatory smile. He was enjoying this. He was disarming a bomb using tax laws.
"I'm creating footnotes so dense and full of legal jargon they would make a lawyer cry. Cross-references to the Hero Regulation Act, subsection 4, paragraph B."
"And the lingerie?" Yu asked with a small voice. "Do I have to return it? I already took the tags off."
Izuku hesitated. He looked at the invoice. He looked at Yu. He sighed.
"We'll pass it off as 'Public Image Wardrobe and Corporate Branding'. Technically... if it's to maintain your brand image and self-confidence... it is deductible. At fifty percent. But you will write a two-page report justifying how each piece contributes to your 'emotional stability in combat'."
Yu looked at him as if he had turned water into wine. Her eyes shone.
"Can you do that? Is it legal?"
"It is... aggressively creative," Izuku said. "It's a gray area so dark it's almost black, but it holds up if no one looks too closely. And no one will want to look closely after reading the first fifty pages of this report."
He hit the 'Enter' key with force.
"Done. I sent a preliminary dossier of three hundred and twelve pages to your agent to forward to Oogami. It is full of performance charts and amortization tables."
He closed the laptop. He turned toward her. He was sweating a little.
"If Oogami tries to read that, he'll fall asleep before page ten. There is no scandal, Yu. Just obsessively detailed administration."
The room went silent. The clock on the wall ticked the seconds away.
Yu stared at her phone on the coffee table as if it were a grenade.
"And now?" she whispered.
"Now we wait."
Two minutes passed. Yu was biting a nail.
"He'll say it's a lie," she said, vibrating with anxiety. "He'll know you made it up. He'll come here with the police."
"Trust me," Izuku said.
The phone rang. Text message.
Yu jumped. She grabbed the phone with shaking hands. She read the message. Her eyes moved fast. She opened her mouth and closed it. She looked at Izuku.
"Read it," he ordered.
Yu cleared her throat.
"It's from my agent. He says: 'Who the hell wrote this? It's brilliant. And terrifying. Oogami just replied. He says his sources must have been confused regarding the nature of your management. He says the data is too exhaustive to be a front. He's withdrawing. There will be no article'."
Yu dropped the phone.
She launched herself at him.
It was a tackle worthy of a pro. Yu's body impacted against his and they both fell onto the sofa.
Izuku let the air out all at once.
Yu was on top, hugging him with a strength capable of breaking ribs. She buried her face in his chest.
"I love you," she said, her voice muffled in his t-shirt.
Izuku went rigid. His hands hesitated before patting her back awkwardly.
"Yu... uh..."
"I love you more than my career," she continued, squeezing tighter. "More than money. More than my shoes. You saved me from wearing orange. You saved me from social death."
She lifted her head. Her face was clean and her violet eyes shone. They were very close.
"You are the most useful, smart, and sexy man to walk this planet."
Izuku cleared his throat. He felt like his heart would explode.
"It was... it was just accounting, Yu. And technical writing."
"It was magic!" She gave him a loud kiss on the cheek, near the corner of his lips. "Nerd magic! My favorite!"
She pulled back a little and sat straddling his legs, ignoring Izuku's discomfort.
"Ask me for whatever you want," she said solemnly. "Anything. A raise. A car. For me to wear that bunny suit you said was 'impractical' but stared at for five seconds too long."
Yu smiled. A radiant smile in the dark room.
"I'll buy you that limited edition figure set," she promised in a conspiratorial whisper. "The Silver Age All Might one. The one that comes with the signed box and the certificate you've been looking at for three months."
Izuku stopped breathing. His eyes went wide.
"The... the 1985 set? With the real cloth cape?"
"That's the one. Express shipping."
Izuku smiled. A wide, childish smile that erased the serious consultant.
"Deal."
Yu laughed and let herself fall back onto his chest, relaxed.
"You're cheap, Midoriya. But you're mine."
"I'm your consultant," he corrected, though he made no attempt to push her away.
"Whatever you say, brainiac. Whatever you say, I love you."
******
Author's Note:
Hey everyone! Thank you so much for reading.
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