"Have you got everything?" My dad asks me as I'm rushing around the next morning, getting last minute things ready for camp. "You're going to be late, Irisa." I pause to look at his mildly amused expression as I'm trying to simultaneously brush my teeth, put on socks, and comb my hair all at the same time. It's not really working too well for me.
"Mm rery." I mumble out through my toothbrush as I rush to the sink in my personal bathroom to spit. "I'm ready!" I repeat more coherently.
"Yes, I can see that." He adds, leaning unhelpfully in my door frame and blocking me from leaving my room as I tried to run past him and leave. "Tell me, when did the dress code change at UA?" He looks pointedly at me as I try to get past him with my bag. I stop and look down at myself to see what he's talking about, and I blush red in the face. I was still wearing my pajamas, but I had put my school blazer and tie on over them.
"Um... today?" I sheepishly say as I shove him out of the room as he chuckles.
"I swear I don't know how you're always late, I heard you wake up and start getting ready an hour ago." He calls from the other side of the door as I get dressed properly into my school uniform, slipping my shorts on under my skirt as I throw the door open once again.
"It's really one of the great wonders of the world." I smirk at him, enjoying this playful side of him that I haven't seen in so long. "Ok, now I'm really actually ready. And I need to go now so love you, bye!!!"
"Irisa." He calls out, using his wind to stop me in my movements. "I'm heading that way, I'll take you."
"Wait, really?!" I ask with excitement. "Yeah!!" He so rarely ever flies me or Inasa anywhere, this is a total treat. Sure, we can fly ourselves, but we're unlicensed and not allowed to. Plus it's way more fun to watch the views when someone else is in charge of the actual flying part.
"Iri-ne, have a bunch of fun and go full Plus Ultra on your camping trip!" Inasa yells from the front door, making me cringe at his volume since I'm only about 12 inches away from him by now. "I'm super jealous! You are going to learn so much!" He pulls me into a bone crushing hug, of which I return to him with as much force as I can.
"Thanks, Ina-nii! I'll tell you all about it when I get back." I grin at him, but then give a sad tilt of my head. "I won't have cell reception, most likely. It'll be weird not to talk to you for a week. Don't go and get smart while I'm gone, ok?" He smacks my head in retaliation for my mean remark, but both of us grin at each other proudly.
"Ms. Irisa, do enjoy your trip. I packed extra tea in your bag so you and your lovely female classmates can enjoy it together." Makoto says lightly with a fond smile, putting extra emphasis on the 'female' comment. He's still unhappy about my 'unchaperoned visits with those heathen boys' as he keeps putting it.
"Thanks, Makoto-san. I'm sure Momo at least will drink it with me." I grin at him and pull him into a hug. "Try not to miss me too much!"
"Come on now." Dad leads the way out of the door, both of us slipping on our shoes as we leave. "Hold tight, just because you can fly doesn't mean you get to be reckless." He instructs sternly but with a smile, so I jump into his outstretched arms and hold tightly around his neck and shoulder, angling myself to be able to see better as we flew. With him flying, it only took ten minutes to make to UA.
"It's Gale Storm!" Several of my classmates and the class 1-B students below us point up to my dad as we slowly land near them.
"Thanks for the lift, Dad!" I thank the giant of a man with a grin while he set me down. "Have a safe week, save a bunch of lives!"
"Have a good time as well, and as always, be safe." He says warmly before he turns to my classmates. "Have a good week, future heroes, learn well and get strong." I wave bye to him as he takes off on a tornado, off to do patrol for the day.
"So that's the secret to getting you on time, make a Pro Hero take you to school." Sero teases as he approaches me first.
"I guess so! He'll have to retire early and become my full time chauffeur." I tease right back, then we all start chatting as we wait for everyone else to arrive. "Never mind, it feels weird not being the last one here." I say after having been there waiting for five whole minutes.
We filed onto the bus after a bit longer and I ended up next to Mashirao with Kirishima and Kaminari in the seat behind us chatting with us. Aizawa tried to mumble something about us being orderly, and Iida kind of looked like he was going to have a stroke getting everyone to settle down and pay attention to him. I was quickly drifting off back to sleep, but I was still mildly listening to my friends talk for the first chunk of the ride.
"Dude, your tail is so soft, it's crazy calming to pet." Kaminari comments to Mashirao at one point, and I peak over at my friend to see his reaction. He looks oddly calm with the electric blond casually stroking it, and I frown with a pout. "Irisa, how come you never told us his tail was so soft?!"
A shiver ran through my spine as both Mashirao and I jumped to sit bolt upright. I refused to turn my head to my best friend at this moment, and couldn't meet the eyes of my other friends. Instead, I stared at the back of Bakugo's head in front of me before answering.
"I am not allowed to touch Mashirao Ojiro's tail. At no point and time am I allowed to touch it, and I'm certainly not allowed to stroke and or pet it." I answer stiffly, my shoulders shaking as memories of my best friend being extremely angry at me flash through my mind.
"Um... Are you two ok?" Kirishima puts his head between both of us from over the seats. I can only assume Mashirao's face is also bright red right now, because I know mine is.
"We do not discuss it." Mashirao says shortly.
"Oh my god, does this have to do with when you two first met?" Sero, who is seated next to Bakugo, turns around and asks with a giant grin on his face.
"Yea-" I start to confirm, but Mashirao's hand slams over my mouth.
"We do not speak of it!" Mashirao says loudly in embarrassment.
"Seriously, what the hell happened between you two?!" Sero asks louder, drawing more attention.
"I too must admit I'm curious." Shoji adds in from the seat across the aisle from us.
"Lover, you too?" I sigh out, then chance a glance at my best friend. "Come on Mashi, we were eight years old. We could just tell them, rip the band aid off and get it over with. It is kind of a funny story."
"Funny for you." Mashirao grumbles in annoyance before finally sighing, turning a final glare to me, and then pointedly looking out the window and pretending I don't exist. That's his way of letting me know I can tell the story.
"Ok, so I met Mashi at the dojo when we were almost eight." I turn to the eagerly listening crowd of students, waking up a little more and relaxing my posture once again. "I have, as you all already know, like zero filter when I meet new people. This was a lot worse back then because I was also a little kid and excited at finally being allowed to do something new. Poor Mashirao got chosen to be my sparring partner for the day, I think because he was the only kid there nice enough to not walk away from me."
"Lesson learned." Mashirao grumbles bitterly from my side, but everyone still heard him.
"Yeah... lesson learned." I agree with a sheepish chuckle. "Anyway, I had never met a kid with a tail before... and well... I got curious, but I also didn't really talk all that much back then. I more... spoke by my actions."
"I don't get where this is going to go bad yet." Kaminari says in confusion.
"Just wait." Mashirao sighs.
"So, I saw Mashi, this nice boy with a tail that looked cool, and well... I was curious how the tail worked." I continue on, my cheeks freshly turning red in embarrassment. "I sort of just walked straight up to him and grabbed his tail in my hands. Then uh... I was curious how it connected to him, so I sort of pulled down his pants right there in the dojo and followed his tail up to where it connected."
"You did not!!!" Several people yelled out at me in either shame, disappointment, or horror. Meanwhile, Mashirao just stuck his face in hands and groaned loudly.
"That's not even the worst part." Mashirao cuts through the students all berated me for my insensitive actions.
"What more could she have done?" Sero asks incredulously, and this time I place my face in my own hands.
"I may have then stepped to the front of Mashirao's then pant-less body and..." I gulped before continuing quickly. "Grabbed his penis and asked him why his second tail was so much smaller than his other one and then asked if it could also be used for fighting too."
Silence.
No one said anything after my confession. Not one word.
"The perverted goddess touched your dick and you never told us?!?!?" Mineta was the first to cut the silence, crawling over seats to grab Mashirao by his collar and shake him, creepy tears coming out of his eyes. Kirishima picked the boy up and tossed him back to his seat once again, his own face as red as his hair.
"I yanked him so hard he started to cry." I blurt out, unable to stop myself. Mashirao once again slammed his hand over my mouth to shut me up. He did that at the same time that Sero, Kaminari, and Bakugo all turned and hit me to shut me up. "I'm sorry that's the end of the story I'm done now." I say as I tug Mashirao's hand down.
"Ojiro, you must be a real life saint to still be friends with her after that, man." Kaminari stoically patted a hand on the red faced blonde's shoulder. "Irisa... babe... not cool."
"Yeah... um I'm actually kind of curious how you two ended up becoming friends after that." Kirishima awkwardly threw in after that comment. I just look to Mashirao and give him a small but genuine smile, one he reluctantly but eventually returned.
"It took a bit of time, and she had to apologize to me a lot." Mashirao finally told the group. "And you've seen how she apologizes, she kept that up every training session for months before I finally hit her on her head to make her stop. It wasn't actually until I saw her being confronted by other kids in our dojo one day after class that I finally became friends with her though. At first they were making fun of just her, but then they started to make fun of me because of what she did, and she immediately stood up for me. I stepped in, and well..."
"We totally got our butts kicked together." I grin at my friend, remembering getting beat up that day. "From that day on, we were best friends."
"You got beat up together?!" Several people shout.
"Oh yeah, those kids way outnumbered and outclassed us." I sheepishly wave my hand in front of ourselves. "We had only been at the dojo a few months, Mashi only started a couple weeks before me, neither of us were particularly good at fighting yet. Those kids were older and had been there for years."
"We got em back where it counted though." Mashirao adds in confidently.
"Yeah we did!" I high five him, happy to see him hyped up again. "We beat those bullies during the tournament, where all their friends and family could watch them lose to a cripple and her friend with a tiny dic- and her friend." I correct myself quickly. Mashirao earned a not so great nickname due to me pantsing him.
"So you're just always a fucking embarrassment." Bakugo points out with a smirk.
"Yeah pretty much." I shrug and then grin at him. "An embarrassment you had to go all out against and that you train with weekly. An embarrassment you call a friend!" I tease him as his smirk drops to a scowl.
"Shut the hell up, Airhead!" He crackles his hands threateningly with little explosions.
The best thing about Bakugo's temper is that the topic quickly changed away from Mashirao's disastrous first meeting with me over to more talk about Bakugo's temper. I wonder if the ash blonde knew that would happen and that's why he directed the conversation away from Mashirao's embarrassing meeting with me. If so, then he's actually a nice guy underneath it all since it was still clear on my best friend's face that he was embarrassed.
I know I was still embarrassed, it was one of my worst greetings to a new person and I still feel horrible about it. I made him become a target of bullying with my actions, something I'll never quite forgive myself for. The good thing is that all of the bullies in our dojo are now all gone and have been for a few years, and there's barely anyone left even remembers the incident.
We pulled to a rest stop after an hour of riding in the bus, and we all filed out of the vehicle to stretch our legs. We were overlooking a vast forest that stretched out for miles. We weren't alone at our rest stop for long though as a car pulled up to us after a few minutes. Out of the car came two women heroes dressed like cats, and a cranky looking little boy.
The more that Aizawa let the two women talk to us, the more we were starting to put the pieces together that this was a trap for us students. This wasn't a rest stop, this was the end of the line. When one of the women, Pixie-Bob, put her hands onto the ground and it started to crumble away, I quickly flew up into the air, lifting the students closest to me with my wind so we hovered while the rest all slid down to the forest floor.
"Yoarashi, you get an extra rule." Aizawa says coldly up to me as I hover with five other students. "You don't get to fly ahead of the class to the resort. You have to travel with them." He says, and then he activates his quirk and my wind shuts off abruptly.
"No fair!" I scream as we all start to fall to join our classmates. Thankfully he gave me back my quirk before I hit the ground and I managed to catch the others as well, but we still landed hard on the dirt.
"This entire property is owned by us, so feel free to use your quirks as much as you want!" Mandalay calls down to us with a wave. "Have fun making your way through the Beast's Forest!"
"That doesn't sound promising." I grimace to myself as I take in the surroundings.
Nearby there was a giant dirt creature who's attacking Mineta, but Midoriya, Bakugo, Iida and Todoroki jumped in to take it down together since those boys were already on the ground before my little flight group. I saw more of the monsters approaching in the distance, and took off to meet one head on. It was too dense for my wind attacks to take it down without exhausting myself, and if we had to fight these things the entire way, I needed a new strategy. I finished the one I attacked, but retreated back to who I thought could help me.
"Hey Momo, think you could make something for me?" I ask the tall girl as she's still shaken from the fall and looking in fear at the creatures. She snaps out of it and focuses on me for a moment before nodding confidently.
"Yes, what do you need?" Momo asks as more creatures form.
"Can you make me a large scythe?" I ask with a wicked grin. "If you can't, a bo staff is fine, but I think these creature need to meet the reaper."
"A scythe?" She thinks out loud to herself. "Yes, I can make that easily." She then hikes up her skirt and forms a long huge scythe out of her leg. "It isn't the highest quality, but for these monsters, it should be fine."
"This will work perfectly." I cackle manically as I twirl the new weapon a few times, testing the wind around it. "Oh yeah, this is happening." I take off then to the nearest creature and slice straight through it with my wind enhanced blade, twirling happily to a stop against a tree as I brace myself to kick off of it, then catapult onto the next creature I see. This is a much more effective way to defeat these creatures.
"There are several approaching from the sky!" Shoji calls out from his central point within our class about an hour into the forest. Him and Jirou have been focusing on sending out orders on where the monsters are located at and strategizing on where it's best to fight from.
"On it!" I call out, seeing Kirishima near me as well. "Hey Riot, ready to go for a round two as a battering ram?"
"You got it!" Kirishima says confidently, hardening his body as I lift us both into the wind. I launch him first into one flying monsters before I twirl my scythe in the air and rotate straight through another one. I then reach out and grab Kirishima with the wind before he loses altitude and swing him in a huge arc, then fling him to the next monster while I take out the last flying one. I catch the red head after he destroys his, and we land on the ground together.
"Better this time?" I ask my friend as I pant from the effort. We're all covered in dirt, bruises, and scrapes right now, but at least Kirishima and I are still grinning, even if we're the only ones in the class who are. Well, Bakugo is grinning too, but his is a scary grin.
"Not even in the slightest!" He pants out tiredly, slightly shaking from the flight. "I think I'm going to leave the skies to you. I like the ground, the ground is nice."
"Aww, is someone scared of heights?" I tease him as I put my weapon back into fighting stance again, spotting the incoming monsters.
"Heights are fine, what you do is crazy!" He says, mirroring me and getting ready to fight now.
I worked with a different assortment of students the whole way to the resort lodge. I was primarily in charge of the flying monsters, and I took those down a lot with Tokoyami and Sero, both of them are lot more comfortable maneuvering in the air than my sturdy friend is.
It takes us way longer than the three hours that the Pussycat's told us it would to reach the lodge. It was nearly sundown by the time we all limped our way into the clearing. I was being half help up by Mashirao by this point, too tired to even try and walk on my own. I was using the now-broken pole end of my scythe to keep me going as well. Once we made it to the clearing, several of us, myself included, collapsed tiredly onto the ground.
My lungs hurt a bunch from overuse, and thankfully Aizawa at least took a tiny amount of pity on me and tossed me one of my inhalers as soon as we arrived. I thankfully wasn't coughing up blood, but it felt like I was close to that. I took a big breath in on my inhaler and felt the tension relax after a moment. My relaxation on the ground was interrupted when Pixie-Bob yanked me up and stuffed me between Bakugo and Todoroki, hugging us all tightly along with Midoriya and Iida.
"Especially these five!" Pixie-Bob says excitedly as she smooshes us all together. I was uncomfortably close to Todoroki's face, so I pulled away a bit, but it only put me just as close to Bakugo's face. I have no idea the context about why the five of us were being targeted right now, I wasn't paying attention before I was yanked off the ground.
"Uh, speaking of peoples ages." Midoriya, who was actually paying attention, started to say as we were being fawned over uncomfortably by the nearly middle aged woman.
"Watch your next wording very carefully." Pixie-Bob says darkly, her clawed hand grasping over his whole face.
"I was just wondering about the kid over there?" He says in fear. Mandalay goes on to introduce the kid as Kota, her nephew, and Midoriya goes and tries to make friends with him. In return, he gets punched in the balls.
"Ha!" I laugh out and grab my best friend. "At least I didn't do that! That's way worse, right?!"
"It's not that much worse." Mashirao says with a sigh. "You were pretty rough." I pout at that and go off and sulk with Bakugo and Todoroki.
"Heh, the kids got spunk." Bakugo says downright fondly as he watches the kid walk away from Midoriya, who looks like he wants to die.
"He's like a little you." Todoroki points out.
"Wow TNT, you have a soft spot for little cranky kids, who knew." I say idly right after the icy boy makes his comment.
"What the hell did you two say?!" Bakugo turns and threatens us. "I'll blast you both to hell!"
"Yeah... sure." Todoroki says calmly, silently calling Bakugo out on his threats.
"Take your bags off the bus and get to your rooms." Aizawa calls out and we all grumble but do it anyway. None of us really want to move around anymore.
The girl's bunk room is fairly small. There were only three bunk beds and seven of us, so one of us had to sleep on the futon that was provided on the floor. Mina offered to take it since she wanted to be able to chat with everyone easily, so she set the futon up right between our bunks. I took the top bunk above Momo but was too tired to do more than put my bag on my bed before following my nose blindly to where I smelled food.
An amazing array of food was prepared for us all. I hunkered down in the first seat I saw, which ended up being next to Todoroki. I still wouldn't say he and I are friends, but we've calmed to being acquaintances over the last few months. Aizawa often partners us for quirk sparring together since we can work together or against each other easily with his two quirks, so we do work together fairly well these days. For right now though, I'm just glad for the quiet eating companion so I can stuff my face with food.
"Ahh... this is wonderful." I sigh out in happiness once I'm seated in the hot springs with the other girls.
"Mmhmm..." Hagakure says from somewhere on my left, though when I turn to look, I completely can't see her since she isn't even wearing a towel. The only way I know she's there is because the water is moving around her. It's always been a funny and strange thing with her and I, I can 'see' her better from my left side, so she always makes a habit of hanging out on my left since she likes to feel noticed.
"Today was brutal." Mina complains as she sticks her feet in the water. "What do you think Mr. Aizawa is going to make us do tomorrow? He's gotta take it easy on us after today, right?"
"Aizawa is a sadist who doesn't know restraint." I answer hauntingly, shivers of fear shaking through my spine as I remember being his practice dummy every time he demonstrated a new move for Shinso. "He will probably work us all twice as hard tomorrow and call today a warm up."
"I would ask how you know that, but I can imagine you being completely right." Jirou sighs out in preemptive defeat and exhaustion. I'm glad she doesn't ask, Shinso and Aizawa both want to keep their training secret for some grand reveal later. I'm all for a good dramatic prank, so I never told anyone in class either. Well, Mashirao knows, but he won't tell anyone else.
I spaced out for a bit, enjoying the warm water, and didn't realize the topic had changed to boys until I heard Uraraka squeak and cover her face from her spot on my right side. I turn and give a curious look at her until Mina mouths the word 'Midoriya' to me to catch me up, and then I give my gravity friend an obnoxious nudge and a wicked smirk.
"Oh yes, little Midoriya certainly has been making you blush a lot lately, hasn't he?" I tease her good naturedly and she squeaks more.
"Ribbit, I don't think you're one to talk much, Irisa-chan." Tsu cuts in next, her head tilted and a finger on her mouth. "And I'm not just talking about when you're being your usual self, but you've been getting awfully close to a couple of the boys in class."
"What do you mean, my usual self?" I ask disgruntledly.
"When you're being a total dork and spouted perverted stuff as word vomit. You know, your usual self." Hagakure teases me and pokes my arm. I bat her invisible hand away and turn away with a pout.
"Yeah yeah, I'm a social disaster, what's your point?" I pout but know they're just teasing so I end up giggling with them.
"But seriously, you and Kirishima have certainly gotten close lately." Mina brings the subject back to her original point.
"You've also gotten close to Bakugo." Uraraka points out with a grin.
"And even just today, you're a lot more relaxed around Todoroki. You used to barely be able to be in the same room as him without glaring at him." Momo points out. "Plus you two partner together so often in class."
"That's because our quirks work well together." I mutter out.
"Plus are you really only friends with Ojiro? You two are so super close." Hagakure teasingly asks, but Mina cuts her off before I can answer.
"But seriously, which boy do you like?!" Mina squeals out super loudly, and I shush her quickly, absolutely sure that the boys all heard that on the other side of the wall.
"Mina, shhh!" I clamp a hand over her shit-eating grin. "I'm focused on being a hero... Besides, I don't think he sees be as more than a friend."
"He?!" Several of the girls whisper-yell in response, and I realize the error of my statement. "So you do like one of them!" They say louder, and again I'm sure the boys heard that. I splashed the hot water at all of them to shush them some more.
"New topic please." I whine out, my cheeks red in embarrassment.
"Ribbit, that's fine." Tsu says calmly and I give her a watery look of thanks. "Your dad dropped you off today, it seems it's going better with him accepting you as a hero then?"
"Yeah, I think it is." I say happily, sitting back down in my spot and relaxing again. "He hasn't outright said he accepts it yet, but he did start training me. It's been really fun at home again, it's like he's not always on edge waiting for me to get hurt or something."
"You will stop this at once, it is despicable behavior!" We all hear Iida suddenly yelling from the other side of the wall.
I'm so used to Iida yelling at me for being late or saying inappropriate things randomly that I immediately thought it was me he was yelling at, but then I relaxed when I realized I didn't do anything wrong. Then I thought of who he could be yelling at over there, and started to hear the sound of Mineta's balls popping off his head and something thunking up the boy's side of the wall. My mind put two and two together and I was preparing to use the wind to knock the creep down to the ground again, but I felt another person in between my wind and the purple boy.
"How about before you try to be a hero, you learn to be a better human being." Kota says as he smacks Mineta back down the ground himself.
"Thanks, Kota babe!" Mina calls out cheerily from her perched spot outside of the bath. Poor Kota looked down at her and then all the blood rushed to his head, and he started to fall backwards.
I still had my controlled wind right there and I caught the boy gently and lowered him down to the boy's side of the hot springs, not letting go until I felt someone take hold of him.
"I've got him from here, Yoarashi-san!" Midoriya called from the other side of the wall. "Thanks for catching him!"
"Go take him to his aunt please!" I call back to him. "Ugh, I think I'm done." I say to the girls as I stand back up.
I head to our shared room before them since they wanted to stay a while longer. I checked to see if I had cell reception so I could try and text my brother, but there were no bars when I opened my phone. I still sent him a text anyway giving him a summary of my day, worst case is that he'll get a bunch of texts when I get back. He won't care when he gets it, he'll still have fun reading it. I crawled up to my bed and was asleep before the other girls came in.