ℙℝ𝕀𝕊𝕄𝔸𝕋𝕀ℂ
-
[a bnha fanfic. events will, for the most part, follow the path of the manga from the perspective of my oc, 𝔻𝕆𝕌𝕄𝔼𝕂𝕀 𝕂𝕀𝕂𝕆. spoilers for the series ahoy, as well as swearing and violence warnings - but nothing worse than what you'd expect from a pg-13 movie. also this is gonna be a mineta-free zone. sorry, not sorry.]
𝕋𝔸𝔹𝕃𝔼 𝕆𝔽 ℂ𝕆ℕ𝕋𝔼ℕ𝕋𝕊 𝕆ℕ𝔼.
in which midoriya izuku first meets doumeki kiko (and fails to figure out her quirk)
𝕋𝕎𝕆.
the league of villains launches a surprise attack against the students during their lessons. kiko reveals her true abilities.
𝕋ℍℝ𝔼𝔼.
the fight at usj continues. nano-prism comes in handy for the heroes.
𝔽𝕆𝕌ℝ.
as the sports festival nears, kiko receives some surprising news that changes her whole perspective on the event.
𝔽𝕀𝕍𝔼.
despite her best efforts, kiko makes it into the final rounds of the ua sports festival. there, she faces both an opponent who can copy her quirk, as well as her own past.Comments (4) -
𝕆ℕ𝔼.
The first time Midoriya Izuku meets Doumeki Kiko is during the UA entrance exams. In a crowd, she doesn’t stand out - particularly compared to those with more outwardly-visible Quirks. If Izuku was asked to remember everyone standing outside Battle Center B, he might’ve even forgotten the quiet girl with black hair and grey sweats.
Then the doors of the testing center open and Izuku forgets even his own name. He’s left behind in the crowd and running out of time. Around every corner is another pile of gears and parts, but no working robots.
That is, until he runs around the wrong corner and finds one charging right for him. All his earlier determination leaves him. What was he supposed to do in this situation? How was he supposed to activate One For All? Think, Izuku, think!
“Don’t just stand there, ya idiot!” Someone shouts. Izuku is amazed he has enough brainpower to realize they’re speaking with heavy Touhoku-ben, aho and all. He does not, however, have enough brainpower to move.
Out the corner of his eye, he spots her - the normal-looking girl with the black hair and grey sweats. She’s charging in his direction, hardly stopping to pick up a piece of rubble from the ground along the way. As the girl places herself between him and the oncoming robot, Izuku hears her mutter, “Hmm, I can work with asphalt-“ before bringing hands together.
And then the street is the center of a brilliant lightshow, like fireworks going off, but at a hundredth the volume. Izuku has to shield his eyes.
Seconds later and Izuku is blinking in shock at the state of the alleyway. The grey concrete of the streets and sidewalk are now covered in splotches of pink, yellow, and green. The black-haired girl looks like she spent the day spray painting a fantastic mural. And the robot is still standing.
Izuku jumps when the robot starts rolling in their direction again. He reminds himself why he’s here, only for another prospective student to steal the kill before he can even move into a defensive position. Dammit!
By contrast, the girl lets out a sigh of relief. For the first time, Izuku gets a good look at her eyes. Forget what he said about her not having any noticeably Quirk-related features. Her eyes are a literal rainbow. It’s…unsettling.
“I overdid it a lil’ there,” the girl sighs, dusting off her hands. The splotches of color remain on her skin. “But my perfect score’s still intact.” She nods before disappearing down a side street. Well, that was odd.
“Two minutes, thirty seconds!” Present Mic’s voice booms across the testing center and Izuku lets out a yelp as he resumes his search for the remaining robots.
This particular incident doesn’t stand out in his mind much, especially compared to the appearance of the massive Zero Point Villain robot immediately afterwards. All Izuku knows is that he doesn’t expect to see that girl at UA. Then again, he doesn’t expect to see himself there either.
But Izuku does get his acceptance. On the first day, he’s surprised to find a familiar girl with long, dark hair in his class. “That’s Doumeki Kiko,” his newly self-appointed best friend, Iida explains when Izuku asks about her. “She’s one of the recommended students.”
“Recommended? But she was in our entrance exam group,” Izuku replies, feeling more confused than ever.
“Are you sure?” Uraraka tilts her head to the side, eyeing the back of Doumeki’s head. “I don’t remember her from the exam.”
It’s at that moment that Doumeki deliberately pulls her long bangs over her unnerving eyes. Izuku can’t help but think maybe that was the point.
During their fitness test on the first day, there are students creating trails of ice to glide over and blowing away long jump records with their bellybutton lasers. Once again, Doumeki fades into the background. Every time she steps up to the plate, Izuku finds himself wondering if he can expect another lightshow. There are little shimmers, like summer festival sparklers, but nothing compared to the entrance exam.
Her performance on the first day reminds Izuku of some of the kids in his middle school gym class. The ones who put in just enough work to get a passing grade, just enough effort so that the teacher couldn’t yell at them. She uses her Quirk, yes, but Izuku knows she’s capable of more. He’s seen it. How did she make it in if she didn’t actually destroy any robots? Her exam scores must’ve been off the charts-
Oh, wait, Izuku remembers, She was recommended. He assumes that’s why she seems so content to coast.
Aizawa’s frown deepens whenever Doumeki’s up. Izuku figures that means they’re fighting for the bottom slot. He never learns out who was in last, though, since it’s all apparently a joke anyway.
One question keeps coming to the forefront of Izuku’s mind; what is Doumeki’s Quirk? He’d hoped to get a better look at the Quirks of all his classmates during their first hero class, but he spends the majority of that period in the infirmary. Thankfully, he manages to convince All Might to lend him tapes of the rest of the matches. He can’t miss any valuable data for his notebook.
The first match after his turns out to be Todoroki and Doumeki versus Ojiro and Hagakure. A chance to see two of the recommended students in action at once! Izuku watches, nose inches from his monitor, as the hero team enters the empty, abandoned warehouse. The first thing Doumeki does is begin scrounging along the floor. She picks up a piece of cement in one hand and some grey paint chips in the other.
“Hagakure prolly means ta sneak up on us with her invisibility,” Doumeki states and Todoroki gives an equally impassive nod.
Then, just like she had in they alley, she brings her hands together. There are subtle flashes, but this explosion is more of a poof than a BANG. A bubblegum-colored cloud fills the vast room in seconds. By the time the smoke clears enough for Izuku to make out the images in the video, pink dust has settled on every surface. Doumeki is no exception, sporting significant splashes on the stark white of her hero costume and in her hair.
“This’ll make trackin’ ‘em easy. ‘Cause, ya know static and…pink,” Doumeki explains, suddenly sounding bashful as she gestures to her work. She slides her palms together, like she’s trying to brush off the splotches. It goes nowhere. “Ah, lookit that.” She points to a pair of footprints in the dust. Her gaze follows the trail. “I’m willin’ ta bet they’re hidin’ in the construction zone back there.”
Todoroki nods again before turning back to his partner. “You may want to leave. This is going to get dangerous.”
This, as it turns out, is all the encouragement Doumeki needs to walk back out the door. Five seconds later and Izuku determines two things; that Todoroki is insanely overpowered and that he still has no idea what Doumeki’s Quirk is. The question comes up of its own accord the following week as they’re on the bus to USJ.
“Well, if we’re talking about who has the flashiest Quirk, that’s gotta be Doumeki,” Kirishima grins. He turns to her. “What’s yours called again? Nani…”
“Nano-Prism?” Doumeki finishes for him, looking very much like she wants to jump out the window behind her.
“Nano-Prism!” Kirishima parrots excitedly. “Man, light-based Quirks like yours are so cool!” Doumeki winces, opening her mouth like she wants to argue, only to decide against it and look away instead. “You’re not gonna have any trouble getting fans when you go Pro.”
If anything, Doumeki’s wince deepens. “I wouldn’t be too sure ‘bout that.”
Kirishima pretty quickly steers the conversation over to Bakugou - another student with a flashy Quirk, but one who’ll have trouble in the popularity rankings due to his personality. Their loud voices overlap, filling the bus with crosstalk that swallows up all other coversation. Only Izuku, who’s sitting right next to Doumeki, is close enough to hear the addendum she makes to her last sentence.
“I’m not gonna make any fans,” she mutters to herself. “‘Cause I don’t wanna be a Hero.”
-
𝕋𝕎𝕆.
Everything is on fire. This is not an under-exaggeration. The nearby cars, all the buildings lining the street, as well as the street itself - the entire landscape is covered in bright orange flames. Kiko can already feel herself sweating. It’s deeply unsettling, but not as unsettling as getting dragged through a wormhole and spat back out somewhere infinitely more hostile.
“Well,” Kiko sighs, placing her hands on her hips. “It could be worse.” Ojiro, who appears to be the only other classmate who made the jump with her, gives her a look that seems to imply she just said the most ridiculous thing imaginable. Kiko qualifies, “What if we got teleported to the Haunted Forest Zone?”
“I…think it's just the Forest Zone,” Ojiro says slowly.
“Oh, good,” Kiko sighs a second time, this one filled with relief. “I don’t think I could deal with ghosts.”
Again, Ojiro only looks at her. Figures city kids wouldn’t cultivate the same well-earned fear of darkened woods. He turns away, surveying their surroundings. “We have to find some way to get out of here and escape the villains,” Ojiro tells her.
“That way,” Kiko replies, pointing to a tall building with a water tower in the distance. “I remember that building from when Thirteen was explainin’ the zones earlier. I remember thinkin’ it looked like a UFO landed on it. Should be right by those stairs we were just on.”
For several, very long seconds, Ojiro just stares at her. Then, having finished processing, he nods. “Alright, we head that way, then.”
Kiko doesn’t need to be told twice. They start in the direction of the exit without another word. “At least none-a those villains came with us, huh?” She asks as they run.
Unfortunately, the universe is rife with irony. No sooner are the words out of her mouth than a terribly clichéd villainous laugh cut through the overwhelming crackle of the raging fire. Both students stop in place, Kiko staring up at the domed ceiling of USJ in an appeal to her father’s gods.
“D’you think it’s ‘cause I said it out loud?” She mutters.
Suddenly, Ojiro shouts, “Doumeki, watch out!” Kiko doesn’t have time to process the warning before he’s throwing her out of the way with his tail.
As she’s falling, Kiko catches sight of a dark green blur cutting through the space she had just occupied. A human-shaped blur holding a knife. She watches as Ojiro jumps, spinning in the air, his tail creating a wide arc around him. The man with the knife hits the ground a moment after she does.
“Ah, Doumeki! I’m so sorry!” Ojiro apologizes, a hand by his face. “I just saw the villain coming and I didn’t mean to push you so hard-”
“Don’t apologize for savin’ m’life,” Kiko cuts him off. She glances down at the unmoving body lying between them. “Bet this place is lousy with these guys, huh?”
Ojiro looks ready to nod in resigned agreement, but another voice answers for him. “Well, aren’t you strong for some twerps-in-training.” A figure emerges from the flickering, red shadows, followed by another. And another. Within seconds, they’re surrounded by no less than six new villains. “But I wouldn’t start getting cocky yet.”
Kiko’s beginning to wonder why she ever opens her mouth. If he father’s gods are listening, they sure have a terrible sense of humor. By her side, Ojiro assumes a fighting stance. Yeah, she should probably get on that. Her gaze lands on the man that spoke first. He seems like the type to open up the attack. Instinctively, Kiko tilts her body away from him, giving him less surface area to hit.
To her surprise, it’s actually someone behind them that breaks from the ring first. Ojiro engages before they even get close. It’s only when Kiko turns to check on her classmate that the ringleader goes for her. She manages to duck his first swing and dodge the kick that follows. On the third, she catches his wrist in her left hand and uses her right to grab the fabric of his jacket below his other arm. Kiko drops to her knees, pivoting to pull his captured wrist across his body. From there, all she has to do is push up on that hold as she sits up in order to throw him over her shoulder. The man grunts as he lands, but stays down.
In an embarrassingly predictable move, another one of the villains lets out a yell as he charges her. Still kneeling, Kiko picks up a small pebble of gravel. You’ve done this once before, she reminds herself. You know how to do this. Just aim small. Just aim small. She closes her eyes and brings her hands together.
There’s a loud pop. The man screams again, this time in shock. Kiko opens her eyes to purple hands and the man shielding his face like he just walked out of a darkened theatre. Before he can recover, Kiko drops him with a martello kick.
Kiko lets the momentum carry her around to face Ojiro, ready to offer him assistance. However, she finds him surrounded by more unconscious bodies. Oh. Alright, then.
“You okay?” Ojiro asks, sounding hardly winded for defeating twice as many villains. She just nods. “Good. We should keep running. More will probably show up soon.”
“Prob’ly,” Kiko echoes in agreement. With the way her luck is going today…
The pair take off in the direction of the water tower without another word. In any other situation, Kiko might’ve suggested using the buildings for cover. But right now, she has no idea where the next villain might be hiding and she doesn’t want to get split up from her classmate. Ojiro is clearly the stronger fighter of the two and she doesn’t want him out of sight or earshot. Also, everything is on fire.
They make it a few blocks before Ojiro speaks again. “That was a great kataguruma you used back there. Do you study jiu jitsu?”
“My father was the martial arts instructor in Namijima - umm, my village,” Kiko explains. Sweat drips down her brow. “You?”
“A little bit of everything, plus some modified training to make better use of my tail,” Ojiro replies. Kiko looks over and finds him bounding along at an even pace, tail slapping against the ground. He’s slowing down to keep pace with her. “I’ve studied jiu jitsu, aikido, karate…”
It’s the way he trails off and stops in place that first makes Kiko nervous. She follows the path of his gaze and spots them; a practical wall of villains one block away and closing. Kiko skids to a halt.
“This kinda thing doesn’t happen in Namijima,” Kiko mutters, then turns to Ojiro. “Well, look on the bright side.” Her classmate stares at her like she just grew another head. She gestures to the flames that surround them as she explains, “They don’t have any info on us. Otherwise, they woulda known not ta’ gimme so much ammo.”
The villains are fifty feet and closing. Ojiro prepares for another fight, looking slightly more confident now. “Oh, because the light from the fire and your light-based Quirk!”
“Sorta,” Kiko mumbles, following his lead. “Hey, who started this rumor ‘bout my Quirk bein’ light-based?”
Which is the exact moment the villains swarm them. Ojiro leaps in the air, then all over their surroundings. He swings around lamp posts and abandoned cars. Kiko finds herself dodging blows left and right, forcing her farther and farther towards the other end of the street. With so much space between them and the fuel from the fire, she could really open up-
Kiko catches sight of the purple stains still marking her hands. No! Her mind screams. Even though these villains are making a serious attempt on her life, it’s not like she wants the same for them. As she is right now, there’s no guarantee of anyone’s safety. So she grits her teeth and resolves to keep dodging.
“Clear the way, peasants!” A voice booms. “The great Sir Girder shall face this puny hero head-on!”
A figure emerges from the throng of villains. The man is large, and only made larger by the shoddily-constructed suit of metal he wears. It looks like a poor imitation of a western knight’s armor. Judging by the way the rest of the villains clear a path for him, this guy holds some type of authority among the villains. It really has been one of those days, huh?
Sir Girder notices this quickly, voice gleeful as he notes, “Cowardice is dishonorable, puny hero. All tremble before the name, Sir Girder-” To demonstrate, he slams his fist into a nearby car. It flies into the building behind it, leaving cracks in the wall. “And his legendary might!”
“Umm, sorry,” Kiko winces earnestly, and not just because of the five-fingered dent her opponent just left in a station wagon. “I don’t think I’ve heard’a ya before.”
“Never heard of Sir Girder?” The villain exclaims. “The man who can bend all steel to his will? The man who-”
A lightbulb flashes over Kiko’s head. “So yer armor’s made’a steel?”
“High-carbon steel,” Sir Girder gloats, pausing in his assault to flex. “Strongest alloy known to man.”
“Carbon, manganese, molybdenum, and iron,” Kiko mutters. All that’s missing is oxygen, but so long as she’s breathing and the fire’s are raging, that isn’t something she has to worry about. She nods to herself, one corner of her mouth just barely ticking upwards. “I can work with that.”
This time, Kiko does not dodge. She simply holds up a hand to intercept Sir Girder’s next punch. Just the armor, she pleads to herself. Only the armor. Nothing else. This is a simple equation. One plus one always equals two. And iron…well-
In the microsecond after Sir Girder’s metal-covered fist makes contact with Kiko’s palm, several things happen. Kinetic energy is converted to another form. The impact disperses in the opposite direction force vectors would predict. Sparks appear at the point of contact and then- BANG.
Bright, multicolored smoke engulfs them both. Kiko knows to close her eyes, but her opponent learns his lesson the hard way. The next thing she hears is Sir Girder’s startled cry, followed by a round of hacking coughs. When it’s safe to open her eyes, his face comes into focus through the fading smoke. She can see his eyes in the holes of his helmet, still squeezed shut tight.
Then, enough smoke clears to make out the rest of Sir Girder’s form. His armor, while not formerly pristine, is now covered in large, dark orange patches. What remains of it, that is.
Sir Girder recovers a moment later. He blinks once against the light of the fire, then a dozen more times when he sees the state of his suit. “W-what-” he stammers. “What is this?”
They have not moved from their position since the impact. For a long moment, Kiko worried it wasn’t just Sir Girder’s armor that had been affected. But then he starts and withdraws his arm. As he does, more of his armor cracks apart and splits off.
“Don’t worry. I’m done dodging,” Kiko tells him.
And that’s when she throws her first punch. Her fist connects with his right shoulder, splitting the epaulette. The entire arm falls to the ground, splintering against the pavement. Kiko even manages to get off another hit before Sir Girder recovers.
But, suddenly, fighting him isn’t so difficult. Under the armor, Sir Girder is just a man. A big man, sure, but one who clearly relies on his Quirk for defense. It’s also clear to Kiko that he’s never been trained to fight. He doesn’t know how to counter any of her attacks, even when she accidentally telegraphs her next move. While he does manage to get one hit in, it’s only a glancing blow to her shoulder.
Desperation flares in Sir Girder’s eyes. He reaches up a hand and Kiko sees the closest lamppost bending towards them. She knocks his wrist just as the post breaks from the cement. Instead of flying into his outstretched palm, the post smacks him squarely in the face, taking his helmet with it. He stumbles once, shaken, but not completely dazed.
“What did you do to Sir Girder’s armor?” The villain cries.
“Sorry,” Kiko sighs. “But I don’t have time to explain my Quirk right now.”
Kiko strikes once to his chest, knocking him back. Her next blow connects with his unprotected shoulder and puts him off balance. Finally, Kiko steps up and pushes off a nearby car to give herself enough height to drive her heel into Sir Girder’s face.
The massive man falls to the ground with a loud thud. The rest of his armor breaks apart on impact, kicking up a small cloud of amber dust. Sir Girder, however, stays down.
Before she can revel, Kiko checks her hands. The purple stains from before are still there, but nothing more. She…did it. She actually did it! She used her Quirk and got the exact result she had been hoping for with no collateral damage. This is a greater victory than her defeat of Sir Girder.
“Hey! Just because you took out the boss doesn’t mean we’re through with you!” One of the remaining villains shouts and Kiko is dropped right back into reality.
“Oh, well,” Kiko sighs as she puts up her fists and braces for the oncoming villains. “At least it’s not the Haunted Zone.”
-
𝕋ℍℝ𝔼𝔼.
After escaping the Fire Zone, Kiko had thought she would be out of danger. How naive. Given the way this day was going, she shoulda known better. But no amount of training could prepare her for the first thing she sees once she and Ojiro finally clear the burning asphalt.
“Aizawa-sensei,” Ojiro breathes.
Kiko, however, is beyond speech. She’s paralyzed to the point where she nearly forgets to breathe. Twenty feet away, their unconscious teacher is draped across the backs of their classmates. His right elbow has been eaten away, down to the muscle, and his face… Kiko’s stomach rolls.
Then, all sense returns to her in a single, overpowering wave. Her heartbeat shakes her eardrums and her vision swims as she tries to take in the whole scene at once.
By her side, Ojiro is still talking. “Tsuyu, what happened?”
“Aizawa-sensei was fighting all the villains on his own, but one of them snuck up on us - kero,” she replies, gulping at the memory. “He jumped in to protect us - kero - but then this giant villain appeared! Aizawa-sensei tried to erase his Quirk, but it didn’t work - kero.”
“Didn’t work?” Ojiro parroted and Tsuyu nods.
There are tears at the corners of her eyes as she croaks, “It’s his skin, I think - kero. One of the villains said it could absorb energy. And he’s just as strong as All Might! When he grabbed Aizawa-sensei, he - kero - h-he…”
“It’s alright now, Tsuyu. All Might’s here! You’re almost out of harm’s way and so is Aizawa-sensei,” Ojiro assures her. He moves around to her side, helping lift their teacher off the ground. “Now all we need to do is get the rest of the way to safety. Right, Doumeki?”
No answer. Ojiro and Tsuyu look around at the same time, but they have to crane their vision almost all the way around before they spot their classmate. She’s headed in the exact opposite direction, back down the steps.
“Doumeki!” Ojiro calls. He nearly thinks to race after her, but Tsuyu is counting on his support. “Doumeki, where are you going? The exit is this way!”
Fighting side-by-side over the last hour has taught Ojiro that his classmate is odd to say the least, but she at least seemed to have a good sense of direction. Has she somehow managed to get lost in the five minutes since they walked out of the Fire Zone?
But then she whirs around and Ojiro immediately knows that’s not the case. There’s a fire in her eyes that he’s never seen before. When she speaks, even her standard monotone carries a certain kind of heat.
“I’m gonna go help,” Kiko explains, unwavering. “I can’t just walk away after what they did to my- to our teacher.” Her gaze briefly turns to Aizawa and she suppresses a shudder. “I’m not condemnin’ ya, I’m jus’ sayin’ I can do somethin’, is all. And I intend ta do it.” Her gaze finally softens and she adds, “Make sure ya get him somewhere safe, okay?”
They say nothing, just nod back. She turns on her heel and takes off without another word. She doesn’t need to explain herself. For once, Kiko is glad her classmates are all hero-types.
This is the third-worst day of Kiko’s life. First place belongs to the day she found out she had to come here. Sandwiched between the two is one of her earliest memories. Even now, she can still remember it word-for-word. It plays in her mind now, as she approaches the scene of a horrific battle.
“Hey, you!” Kiko shouts at the large, skull-less figure straight ahead. “Are you the one that hurt our teacher?”
The villain does not respond. By contrast, all her classmates note her arrival with various surprised shouts of her name. Even All Might lets slip a started, “Young Doumeki?!”
“What are you doing here?” Todoroki asks. Like it isn’t already obvious.
“I’m helpin’ - same as you,” Kiko replies as she passes her classmate. “Think I might be uniquely suited ta this one.”
“But what is a light-based Quirk gonna do against-” Kirishima tries.
Kiko cuts him off with a look. “Well, for starters, it’s not light-based,” she starts, never once breaking stride in her advance. “It’s…alchemical.”
Once again, the memory of that second-worst day enters her mind; the day she had to have her Quirk officially registered. The words of the registrar play over and over in her head. “Quirk: Nano-Prism,” he’d announced in a strangely energetic tone. “Her skin acts as a catalyst, allowing her to manipulate the atomic bonds of anything she touches - but she’s not immune to the blowback of her own Quirk.”
Funny, that was the only drawback he listed, Kiko can’t help but think as she stares down her opponent. She can brainstorm a dozen in half as many seconds. The purple marks still staining her hands are evidence of blowback. Then there’s the matter of where the energy to create those reactions comes from - because it’s usually her. As for the reactions, they’re not just something she has innate knowledge of. They’re something she’s had to study. One misstep, a single bond in the wrong place, could lead to a cataclysmic chain reaction and…Well, there’s a reason meeting with the Quirk registrar only comes in second.
Not to mention the worst part of it all; having a Quirk in the first place.
All around Kiko, the battlefield has gone silent. Friend and foe alike watch her approach the villain with what she can only assume is a mixture of horror and curiosity. Her gaze is focused solely on the giant, monstrous form in front of her.
“Hey, ya never answered my question!” Kiko shouts when no one says anything. “Are you the one who hurt our teacher?”
Nothing. Silence. Somehow, that’s worse than an answer. Kiko’s sweating in her suit, but a different type of heat races through her now. It curls her hands into fists and burns away the doubt in her mind.
Using her Quirk, particularly in recent months, has been colored by a sense of overwhelming dread. Fear of chain reactions she can’t control, of having more power hiding under her skin than she knows what to do with. But in the face of overwhelming force, staring down an enemy she knows was engineered to take on the Symbol of Peace himself, Kiko is no longer concerned with limiting herself.
“Well?” Kiko shouts. She’s hardly an arm’s reach away now. Sparks crackle along her fingers and burn the skin of her palms. “Aren’t-cha gonna say anythin’?!”
The last thing Kiko sees before closing her eyes is the monster holding up a giant hand to intercept her swing. Not like that’ll help. Just so long as her blow connects-
And it does. Just like always, there’s a split-second pause after impact. In it, Kiko can feel the world slow down. There is nothing in this universe that isn’t composed of atoms joined together through different types of bonds. No human eye can see something so small, yet Kiko can feel the way they all touch, and combine, and interact.
This villain’s skin is obviously high in carbon content. It’s the backbone of nearly every organic molecule and a major element in some of the strongest materials known to man. The only difference between a diamond and graphite is crystalline structure. Given enough time, the former will eventually decompose to the latter. And Kiko is a living catalyst.
The air itself seems to explode. Even the screams of her classmates and teachers are swallowed up in the cacophony. Kiko can feel the atoms as they break apart and reattach into new shapes. Sparks radiate outwards at the point of contact, speeding up centuries of chemical breakdown into a single instant. Lights of every color dance behind Kiko’s eyelids. She winces against the brightness and the pain, a thousand hot cinders dancing along her skin. She’s miscalculated in her reactions, of course, but she only had the barest hypothesis as to what she was walking into. Just so long as this works at all.
When Kiko opens her eyes, there’s a thick cloud of multicoloreddust suspended in the air and her once-pristine white suit is now a Jackson Pollock painting.
She’s still standing, but so is the villain. For one terrifying moment, she looks into his eyes. There’s nothing there. She saw how fast he moved earlier. If he decides to return that punch, she’s screwed. Suddenly, Kiko is standing too close, but she can’t move to make her escape. The concerned calls of her allies are beginning to make sense.
“Young Doumeki!”
“Doumeki, are you alright?”
“What was that?”Meanwhile, the blue-haired villain just laughs. “Oh, my, my,” he shakes his head. There’s a hand covering his face, but Kiko swears she can hear him grinning. “What an impressive display! Too bad it didn’t do anything.”
Did it really? Kiko swears there’s something different to the lustre of the villain’s skin. She prays it’s not just a trick of the lighting.
“And now that we’ve cleared this annoying little cutscene,” he continues. “We need to get our warp gate back…Nomu?”
Everything happens in the time it takes Kiko to blink. One moment, she’s falling into the villain’s empty stare. Then she opens her eyes and she’s sitting on the ground next to an equally-stunned Bakugou. It takes her a long series of seconds to make sense of what just happened. All Might…he must’ve pushed the two of them out of the way and taken the hit for them. But, as it turns out, All Might isn’t the only one who was forced back from the site of the impact.
“Nomu’s impact absorption…” the other villain mutters to himself. “What happened to Nomu’s impact absorption?” His head flicks upwards, a pair of red eyes glaring at her through the hand over his face. “You!”
Suddenly, the villain isn’t the only one looking at her. “How did you do that, Doumeki?” Midoriya asks while the rest of her classmates only continue to stare.
Kiko, unused to being the focus of so much attention, finds herself sputtering. All the adrenaline has left her in the face of such a glaring difference in strength. “I-I jus’ changed the arrangement of carbon molecules in the big guy’s skin. It’s simple chemistry is all,” she mumbles. Gulping, Kiko tries to remember her earlier confidence. “He was modified, they said. They didn’t come here playin’ fair, so I aimed to level the field. I can’t do anythin’ about his strength or regeneration, but he won’t be absorbing energy anytime soon.”
Kiko finally unfurls her clenched fist, only to wince. She looks down at her hands and sucks in a breath. Underneath splotches of color are what look like burns. Blowback. Some pretty nasty drawbacks to her Quirk, huh? If they manage to make it out of here, she’s definitely gonna need to take a trip to Recovery Girl.
No, not if, but when. Even bloodied and beaten up, the Symbol of Peace is on their side. Kiko has never felt complete trust in someone like this before.
“Thank you, young Doumeki,” All Might says between ragged breaths. “But now, you must get out of here. All of you.”
Her classmates are a little harder to convince, but Kiko understands. Their opponents are a man who can disintegrate anything he touches and a living cloud of mist. Kiko might’ve managed to land a blow on the third villain, but that’s not a mistake they’ll allow a second time. What more can she do here?
But, Kiko thinks, staring down at her burned hands. At least I did something.
-
𝔽𝕆𝕌ℝ.
It begins with a warning the day before the Sports Festival.
“You’re in danger of flunking out.”
His voice is so calm when he says it, anyone else in her class might’ve thought it a joke at first. But Kiko knows her teacher well enough not to make that mistake. She can sense the fire in his gaze through the layers of bandages covering his face.
“Wha-what are ya talkin’ about, Sh- erm, Sensei?” Kiko stammers, blinking to clear her head. “I’ve gotten nothin’ lower than a 89 on all my quizzes and papers-”
“It’s your participation grade,” he cuts in. “This is the hero course. Participation is weighted higher than what you’re probably used to back home.” He pauses, allowing the dread to fully settle in before he lets the other shoe drop. “And you’re barely skating by in hero lessons.”
There’s no arguing with the truth, Kiko knows that. However, something isn’t adding up here. “But I talk in class plenty! I answer questions plenty. I read passages. I even volunteer to finish problems on the board. What d’you mean, not participatin’?”
If any of her classmates heard her speaking this way to their teacher, they probably would’ve keeled over. (And if there was anyone around to hear that she was failing academically, Kiko would’ve keeled over herself.) Thankfully, they’re alone in the classroom for the time being, everyone else having filtered out for lunch. When the teacher stopped her on her way from joining them, this wasn’t what she’d expected to hear.
“Oh, really?” He asks, tilting his head as far as his bandages will allow. “It’s up to the teacher to decide if your participation is sufficient. And you’re not putting in the kind of effort that is expected of someone in the hero course at this institution.”
“Fine, then,” Kiko shrugs. “Guess I’ll just be headin’ on home.” Maybe academic failure isn’t so bad if it gets her out of here.
“And then what?” Her teacher asks. “You’ll go back to your old school?”
The question hangs heavy in the silence. It’s rhetorical, of course. They both know that’s not an option anymore. Kiko bites her lip at the burning in her eyes and turns away, pretending they both don’t know what she’s trying to hide.
“Well, it’s not like I really belonged here in the first place,” Kiko says eventually. Her eyes are still on the door. “We both know that.”
“If you thought I felt that way, why do you think I pushed so hard to have you join as a recommended student - even after you purposefully failed the general entrance exam?” He asks.
Kiko rolls her eyes. She knows the answer to this too. “Because I can’t control my Quirk and it’s too dangerous. Because right after the general entrance exam, I-”
Her teacher cuts in again. “Because you show great potential as a hero,” he tells her. That admission shocks Kiko so much she finds herself whirring back to him. Her mouth drops open, but words elude her. “You still don’t believe me? I heard about what happened at USJ. The average person on the street wouldn’t do what you did.”
“I was just…uniquely qualified for the situation, is all,” Kiko mumbles. Something like embarrassment crawls up her spine whenever she thinks on that day. Not shame, not guilt, not regret - more like a combination of all three. What the hell made her go charging in there like that?
“And you’ll find that you’re ‘uniquely qualified’ for a lot more in the future. Why do you think all Pro Heros have titles?” He asks.
Again, she has no answer. Hero culture is nothing a country girl like her is accustomed to. In the wake of her silence, he speaks once more, voice muffled by all the bandages covering his face.
“Listen, Kiko,” he sighs. “I gave my recommendation because I believe in you - even if you seem determined to prove me wrong. So prove me wrong again. Show me you deserve to be here at the Sports Festival tomorrow by making it through the first round and I’ll reconsider those participation grades.”
The following morning, standing at the entrance gate for the first round of the Sports Festival, Kiko finds herself mirroring her teacher’s sigh. What happens if she tries and still doesn’t manage to make it through? Either way, she’s basically prospect-less. Might as well pick the option that gives her some kind of chance.
Kiko’s last thought before the whistle sounds is of her parents. She wonders if their TV back home has access to the channel that’ll be broadcasting this event. She prays it doesn’t.