Chapter 17: Hang Out

Izuku and Ochaco had decided to hang out. Ochaco was of course the one to ask, as she thought Izuku could use some fun times with friends.

Izuku had come up with the idea of having some tea and sweets in their garden, which Ochaco was greatly enjoying. The wonderful clear sky and warm sun giving them more than enough comfort.

"Sorry if the incomplete garden doesn't look too good right now. I wanted to leave it to the kids but right now only Eri, Kioku, and Kei really enjoy gardening. And Yami recently tried to eat one of the plants. I think he got confused when we taught him food could grow out of the ground." Izuku explained with an embarrassed blush on his face.

"No, it's fine. I think it looks pretty just as it is." Ochaco reassured him with a bright smile, making his blush darken. "Also I noticed two more kids around. Did the O.P.C.C.C. give you two kids at once?"

"Well...no. They gave me Shiruku, which is the spider girl, but Yami...uh...kidnapped me." Izuku admitted

"What?! How do these things keep happening to you!? Are you sure you're not some kind of dangerous child magnet?" Ochaco asked, her serious expression betraying her silly question.

"I swear I'm not!" Izuku denied, his hands flying out in front of his face as he defended himself. "It's all just a coincidence!"

"Once a coincidence, twice is a weird coincidence, seven times means something weird is happening!" Ochaco half-jokes. "It's like fate or something."

"Yeah...fate." There was a noticeable bit of sadness in his voice when he said that, however, he quickly moved on. "So how was U.A?"

"It was…It was sure..." Ochaco hesitated. "Something."

Izuku gave both a surprised and befuddled look. That's, not what I was expecting. I thought she was going to say that it was wonderful or great or something.

Seeing his confusion, Ochaco decided to go into detail.

"So I walked into the classroom, homeroom teacher isn't even there yet, and the first thing I see is that I'm in the same class as that prick Bakugo!" Ochaco raged.

"Oh no." Izuku didn't see this going well. After Kioku told him everything she saw in All Might's memories, he learned about the investigation, the punishments given towards the school, and the students that had bullied him, as well as Bakugo in particular.

He wasn't a fan, but it's not like he could really do anything about it. All he could do was hope that this punishment would make Bakugo reflect and become a better person.

"Please tell me you didn't get into a fight with him." Izuku half begged.

"That was the first thing I did," Ochaco said without a hint of shame.

Izuku let out a long-suffering sigh. "Whyyyyyy?"

"Because he's a bully! So I let him know what I thought of him right to his face." Ochaco revealed much to Izuku's horror. "I told him, I don't know what U.A. is thinking letting a bullying, discriminating piece of trash like you in, but if you try any of that ever again, I will make your life a living hell!"

Izuku groaned and drank some of his tea to calm himself. "I'm guessing he didn't respond kindly."

"Oh, he was pissed!" Ochaco confirmed with a strange glee and smug smirk. "I don't think I've heard anyone scream so many curses in my life! I think he was ready to fight me right there. But! Then the homeroom teacher arrived and reminded him what thin ice he's on. He looked like he was going to explode! And I don't mean his quirk! It was hilarious!"

"I don't really think it's funny," Izuku said. "Kacchan is already being punished, you don't need to make it worse. He might actually get expelled if you keep antagonizing him."

"And good riddance!" Ochaco scowled. "Seriously Midoriya, why do you keep defending him! I've known him for a week and I can't find one redeeming factor about him!"

"Kacchan can be...violent...abrasive...over angry...and a lot of other less positive things, but he's very determined! He's smart and his quirk is super powerful!" Izuku explained. "He could do so much good if he just...fixed his personality a little."

"You know you could also say that about every A rank and above villain in existence. They're smart, determined, and powerful. If only they just fixed their personality a little." Ochaco said sarcastically.

"Kacchan's not that bad." Izuku rebutted.

"Bullies are only a few steps down from villains. And both can take lives." Ochaco argued.

That made Izuku fall silent, as he remembered the cruelest words Kacchan had ever said to him.

"Do a swan dive off the roof and hope you're born with a quirk in your next life."

I'm sure he didn't mean that. He thought. But still, the fact that he said it all, shook him slightly.

"I mean, would you really trust him around any of the kids?" Ochaco asked him.

Izuku thought about Bakugo being around the kids, before immediately cringing and throwing that thought away. Best keep them separated. If they meet it'll go poorly for everyone. Especially Kacchan!

"That's what I thought," Ochaco said taking Izuku's expression as an answer.

"Can we talk about something else?" Izuku asked.

"Fine." Ochaco agreed. "After that, we met our teacher, Aizawa sensei."

"Aizawa...I don't remember a pro hero with that name." Izuku was genuinely stumped, as an enormous hero fan, he thought he would have known any hero she would have mentioned. "What did he look like?"

"Well, he had long messy black hair, he looked super tired, his outfit was mostly black except for his weird grey scarf, and I think he may have had some goggles?" Ochaco described.

Izuku searched his memory for a moment, before remembering who exactly that was. "Oh! It's Eraserhead! No wonder I didn't know it was him! He's one of the biggest underground heroes around!"

"Underground heroes?" Ochaco had never heard that term before.

"Underground heroes are heroes who like to keep out of the limelight and away from public attention. They're basically secret heroes." Izuku explained.

"Oh. That does make sense." Ochaco agreed.

"Well, what happened next?" Izuku asked.

"Okay, so he told us we weren't going to orientation and instead just gave us this quirk test off the bat! And then he told us that whoever got last would be expelled!" Ochaco continued.

Izuku nearly choked on his tea. "What?! Expelled!? But it was only your first day!?"

"I know right! I tried telling him it was unfair, but he just said, ``Life's unfair. Get over,." Ochaco said in a mock gruff voice. "But it turns out he was lying anyway. He just wanted us to give it our all."

"Oh. That makes way more sense." Izuku calmed himself. "Still, that must have been really stressful."

"It was! I was sweating like a stuck pig the entire time! I thought I was gonna die from anxiety!" Ochaco whined.

"Well, I guess that's just preparing you for the future," Izuku said, trying to find a silver lining.

"Yeah, I guess you're right." Ochaco sighed, before stuffing her face with sweets. "I just thought that the stress would come after we graduated!"

After waiting a moment for Ochaco to finish her snacks, she continued.

"So the next day we had hero course lessons with All Might." Ochaco noticed the minute she said that Izuku perked up and pulled a notebook out of seemingly nowhere. "And that was a lot more fun."

"Really?" Izuku was on the edge of his seat.

"Yup! Because I got to beat the tar outta Bakugo!" Ochaco said with a devious smirk.

Izuku visibly deflated. "Uraraka."

"Yeah yeah, I get it. But I had to for the exercise!" Ochaco defended. "It was two on two. One team of heroes, one team of villains. The villain team had to defend a bomb for a certain amount of time or defeat the hero team to win. The hero team had to touch the bomb or defeat the villain team to win. Me and my friend Tsu were heroes and Bakugo and our classmate Iida were villains."

"I'm guessing Kacchan went straight for you?" Izuku asked. He already knew the answer to that, after publicly disrespecting him, Bakugo was sure to try and explode the crap out of her.

"Yup. And I went right for him!" Ochaco replied.

"So you did fight." Izuku looked at Ochaco, trying to see if there were any injuries he didn't see earlier.

"Yup! And we technically won!" Ochaco proclaimed proudly.

"Technically?" Izuku asked.

"Ok, so me and Bakugo did destroy most of the building, and I did break both my arms, but Tsu got past Iida due to all his footing being destroyed, and got the bomb!" Ochaco explained.

"You broke your arms!" Izuku immediately ignored everything else she just said in favor of being concerned over one of the details.

"Yes but I'm fine! See!" Ochaco moved her arms around to prove her point. "Recovery Girl healed me up with her quirk so I recovered a lot faster."

"Oh, Recovery girl! I almost forgot she worked at U.A." Izuku said. "Still though, to think Kacchan would go that far."

Ochaco laughed nervously. "Well you see...he didn't break my arm. I did."

Izuku stared at her blankly for a few moments, completely confused at what she just said. "What?"

"My body can't handle 100% of One for All yet so whenever I use it, I break every bone in the limb I use it in," Ochaco explained, cringing as she remembered the pain she felt whenever she used her new quirk. "I'd only used it once before, during the entrance exam. I said I wouldn't use it again until I figured out how to control it."

"So why'd you use it?!" Izuku seemed very stressed out about this.

"Well...you weren't wrong when you said Bakugo is strong. And I couldn't just lose to someone like that! So when things got bad, I pulled out One for All." Ochaco explained.

"You really broke both your arms just to beat Kacchan?" Izuku asked.

"Of course. No one hurts my friend and gets away with it!" Ochaco proclaimed.

Izuku blushed. Hearing someone proudly proclaim him as not only a friend, but someone worth getting upset about if they got hurt, both touched and embarrassed him to a measure he couldn't quite understand. "I'm really not worth breaking your arms over."

"That's right. You're worth breaking two arms over." Ochaco joked cheekily.

Izuku turned crimson. "Just please don't do that again. I-I...I wouldn't be able to take it if anything bad happened to you. If you don't count Kacchan...or All Might...then you're really the only friend I've ever had. Your...you're...important to me. So, d-don't keep hurting yourself!"

Izuku looked like steam was about to come out of his ears as he uttered every word of that sentence and he couldn't even look at Ochaco.

Ochaco herself blushed a bit, as she was a mix of touched by what Izuku said and amused at Izuku's reaction. "Thanks. I'll try not to. Hurting myself isn't exactly high on my to-do list."

Ochaco laughed and Izuku joined with a softer, more awkward laugh.

After that, there was a small moment of silence, as the two of them enjoyed some warm tea and pleasant winds.

As the silence went on, Izuku started to get nervous. Di-did I ruin the conversation? Did I make it weird? What do I say now? How do I tell if she's weirded out or not?

Before Izuku could try anything stupid, Ochaco asked him a question.

"Do you feel cheated?" Ochaco asked him.

Izuku was knocked out of his thoughts. "Huh?"

"Sorry. Too vague. I mean...do you feel cheated...that you didn't get One for All." Ochaco asked, a bit of guilt in her voice.

"No." Izuku answered almost instantly.

Ochaco was taken aback by how quickly and decisively he said that. "Wait really? Not even a little a bit?"

"Not at all. When I first learned about it I was a little disappointed that I wasn't picked, but it didn't last long." Izuku said.

"Really? You learned that you weren't chosen for All Might's quirk. After years of not having a quirk. And you were only a little disappointed." Ochaco replied skeptically.

Izuku's facade of "I'm ok" crumbled immediately, and Ochaco was just as quickly stabbed with the guilt of "I shouldn't have said that."

"I-I mean if you did then good for you, you know." Ochaco quickly tried to figure out how to fix this.

"No, you're right," Izuku admitted. "It actually did hurt to find that out. I couldn't stop myself from imagining a world where I did get chosen. Where I went to U.A. and became a hero. It hurt for a few days but it wasn't super hard to get over. I'd been having those kinds of fantasies my whole life. What if I was born with a quirk? I'd just learned how to get used to the fact that that's not the world I'm living in."

Ochaco frowned at her now thoroughly depressed friend. Good going Ochaco! You just had to say that!

"But I wasn't lying when I said I didn't feel cheated," Izuku explained. "I never felt like I deserved it in the first place."

"But you do!" Ochaco objected. "You're one of the nicest people I've ever met! And you took down the freakin Yakuza!"

"That was a complete accident." Izuku tried to discredit himself. "I'm lucky Overhaul was apparently a germaphobe and didn't want to look for Eri under some dirty laundry."

"I heard about how you did it. I think if I was in the same position as you I either would have died or only barely gotten away with Eri, without any proof that he entered my house." Ochaco argued. "You're smart, you're brave, and you have the heart of the hero! I think you could have been a hero even without a quirk."

That blew Izuku's mind.

"W-what did you say?" Izuku said with no short amount of disbelief in his voice and expression.

"I said you could have been a hero even without a quirk," Ochaco repeated firmly.

Izuku blinked, and then he blinked again.

And then the tears started to fall. But surprisingly, not that many of them. It was a slow, bittersweet cry.

This was a revelation for Izuku.

Sure people had said he could be a kind of hero, a hero to children. All Might had even said as much.

But Ochaco was the first person to say she believed in his dream.

Because at the end of the day, what he was doing now, was not his dream.

It's not that he thought that taking care of kids wasn't a good thing. These kids needed someone like him, or in Izuku's opinion someone better than him, to show them that the world didn't hate them. That they can be loved, and to give them that love.

And it wasn't that he didn't love his kids. He would gladly cut off his own arm if it meant making them happy and seeing the smiles on their little faces.

But it just wasn't his dream.

It wasn't what he had spent countless nights fantasizing about since he was a child. It wasn't what he spent every day looking at, it wasn't what he spent years writing in notebooks about.

As terrible as he felt about even thinking it. This wasn't what he wanted.

He'd spent years hearing people tell him his dreams were stupid and impossible for someone like him to achieve. Even All Might and his mother didn't believe he could do it. Even he had given up.

But what he just heard, was proof that someone, anyone, would have believed in him.

And he'd only met them after it was too late. And he'd signed away any hope of his dream coming true.

"Midoriya?" Ochaco's face was full of concern.

Izuku realized he had just been frozen for a while, crying the entire time, and quickly went to whip away his tears. "S-sorry it's just...that meant a lot to me. Thank you. Uraraka."

"Oh um...you're welcome," Ochaco said. "I think you zoned out a bit while I was talking, but I was saying that I think All Might should have chosen you. After all that business with the Yakuza, I think you proved yourself more than worthy of it."

"But, he already had you." Izuku pointed out.

"But I didn't need it," Ochaco said. "I could have passed without that quirk! I had a quirk and you didn't! And All Might could have fixed that! It's not fair!"

Izuku frowned at that comment. He took a long sip of his tea, and for the first time during this meetup, took a bite out of sweet.

"Your teacher was right. Life isn't fair." Izuku said somberly. "Just because I don't have a quirk doesn't mean All Might had to give me one. If anything it was smarter to give it to you. One for All can't be relied on in its current state, so it's good you have a quirk to fall back on. If it was me, I would have had no choice but to keep breaking my arms."

Ochaco was about to object, but Izuku spoke first.

"Uraraka. How many robots do you think I could have destroyed at the U.A. entrance exam if I had One for All?" Izuku asked her.

Ochaco thought about it. She tried to think of a way that he could have destroyed enough robots to pass, with only two uses of One for All. Without the situation being incredibly contrived.

After a few moments of silence, Izuku continued.

"I can't say I don't wish it was me who got One for All, I can at least be happy that the person who did get it, was you." Izuku smiled at her. "I can't say your first person to care about me. But out of the shortlist of people that do...you're different. Mom cares about me because she's my mom. All Might feels guilty about telling me to give up my dreams. And to the kids, I'm their only source of kindness in a world that's been nothing but cruel to them. But you didn't befriend me because of some outside circumstance. I mean, All Might probably asked you to get along with me, but that didn't mean you had to be as nice to me as you are. I...don't know if I'm being presumptuous, or maybe I'm too hopeful. But...I like to think that you just wanted to be my friend. For no other reason than, because you thought, I was...enjoyable to be around."

Izuku was blushing up a storm again, and his nervousness had returned.

"Well, your right," Ochaco confirmed. "You seemed like a nice person so I wanted to be friends with you. And I was right for thinking that. You're an amazing person Midoriya. Never forget that."

Izuku's blush intensified and he tried to drink more tea but found he was out.

He looked up and saw that the sun was setting. "Oh! When did it get this late?"

Ochaco looked up and noticed the same thing. "Your right! I better get going! Thank you for the sweets! Sorry I ate most of them."

"Let me show you out. And, don't worry about it." Izuku gave her his most genuine smile, despite his blush. "Thank you, for being my friend."

What Izuku and Ochaco didn't know was that the kids were watching them on Izuku's monitor using the cameras, all the way from his office.

"Yep. They're meant to be together." Shiruku said almost immediately.

"Ok, they have hung out, once," Fu said. "They're just good friends."

"I agree!" Kioku agreed a bit too quickly, her face betraying her anger. "And even if she did like daddy, we can't let her have him until we're a hundred percent sure she's not going to hurt daddy!"

"I think you're being a bit too paranoid sis," Kei said. "Did you see how happy he was! It's like one of my Japanese anime!"

"Why did you say it like that?" Fu asked.

"I know right! In the movies, the romance scenes are always like this early on. First, it's an awkward "not date". Then it's a first kiss. Then it's marriage! And then it's kids!"

"We're gonna have a mom!" Kei gasped in excitement. Meanwhile, Kioku was fuming.

"Real life and movies are very different. Even if they have feelings for each other, which I'm not saying they do, marriage and kids are a long ways away."

"I know that! But this is clearly the start of something wonderful and I say we ship it immediately!" Shiruku said.

"Why are we speculating how they feel when we have an emotion detector right here," Kiba said, looking at a now sleeping Yami. "Hey! Wake up!"

Kiba proceeded to violently shake Yami awake.

"Wha? Rah!" Yami in retaliation for being woken up bit Kiba's hand.

"Ah! He bit me!" Kiba said, dropping him to the ground and wiping the spit off her hand with her handkerchief.

"It didn't even hurt," Fu noted.

"Yeah but it's gross!" Kiba noted, putting away the handkerchief. "Anyway, Yami, did you see their emotions?"

"Can't see," Yami said curtly. "Won't work."

"What do you mean it won't work?" Kiba asked, frustration oozing from her voice.

"I think he means his quirk won't work when looking at people through screens." Fu theorized as he took out a notebook and wrote in it. "Interesting."

"Ugh!" Kiba groaned. "Well, no matter. We'll see where this goes. And if she does intend on becoming our mother, then she will have to go through harsh trails."

"I mean, Izuku didn't have to go through any trails." Fu pointed out.

"Oh yes, he did! He went through the trial of compassion. A trail failed by many in the past." Kiba argued.

"I mean, I want to say that's dumb. But you're not wrong." Fu sighed.

As most of the children argued amongst each other, and Yami went back to sleep, Eri silently hoped that whatever happened, Izuku was happy.