Chapter 18: The Rabbit Doesn't Ring the Bell!

The pot landed in the center of the table with a soft thud, and the red steam from the curry rose up to the ceiling while Izuku piled a mountain onto Yu's rice, with so much spice on top that anyone with a shred of common sense would've taken two steps back.

"Extra spicy, just how you ordered it," Izuku said, setting the plate down in front of her. "Though I still say one of these days you're gonna melt your stomach and then blame me for the tragedy."

Yu sat up on the couch with all the laziness in the world, stretched her arms above her head, and snatched the plate away with a triumphant smile.

"Come on, you should feel grateful. Not everyone gets the honor of cooking for a beauty like me," she said with a proud grin as she dug her spoon into the plate. "Besides, my stomach can handle anything. This is barely a warm up."

"That explains a lot about your pain tolerance." Izuku sat down across from her with his own plate, much more modest in the spice department. "Normal people consider suffering to be a bad thing, and you order it as a side dish."

They ate for a while, chatting between bites, with the TV playing in the background on some show neither of them was watching. When Yu finished, she set the plate aside, poured herself a cup of piping hot coffee, and sank back into the cushions with her legs crossed, finally enjoying a moment of calm after a whole morning of manicures and various embarrassments.

It was right when she brought the cup to her lips that the world decided she'd had enough peace.

*

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

A thunderous, insistent rhythm boomed from the front door and rattled the cups on the sideboard. Yu jumped and coffee spilled all over her hand.

"Ow! What the hell...?" she yelped, shaking off her wet fingers.

"You expecting someone?" Izuku asked, already on his feet.

"Nobody who'd try to break my door down on a Sunday morning!" she hissed, setting down the cup and stomping toward the entrance.

She peered through the peephole, and a groan of deep irritation escaped her throat before she opened the door just a crack, enough to poke her head out.

"What do you want, Mirko? Some of us are trying to pretend we have a life outside of being heroes, you know?"

On the other side, Rumi flashed her a grin bursting with energy from every angle. She was wearing a black athletic shirt and gray leggings that hugged every muscle in her legs, and her ears twitched on their own, incapable of staying still for even three seconds.

"Morning!" she announced, her voice echoing down the whole hallway. "I just came straight from the gym and I'm half dying of thirst! You wouldn't leave your favorite training buddy dehydrated, would ya, rookie?"

Without waiting for an invitation, she shoved the door with her hand and swung it wide open, forcing Yu to stumble back a couple of steps.

"Plus I know for a fact there's food in there, so don't play hard to get with me," Rumi continued, walking in without anyone letting her, sweeping her gaze across the living room until it landed on Izuku, who was watching her from the kitchen. "Hey, broccoli!" she greeted him with a cocky smile and a slight nod. "You look a little less pathetic than last time. Don't get too excited though, you can barely tell."

She crossed the kitchen in two strides, walked right past Izuku without slowing down, opened Yu's fridge with all the confidence in the world, and grabbed a cold bottle of water. She took a long swig, leaned against the counter, and looked at both of them with a chaotic energy that had already shattered the morning's calm.

"So," she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, "I ran into Nemuri at the gym a few days ago, and she was acting super weird."

Yu closed the door and rolled her eyes as she went back to the living room.

"Define 'weird,' because for Nemuri that basically covers everything she does from the moment she wakes up until she goes to bed."

"She was... glowing," Rumi went on, completely ignoring her, her eyes locked on Izuku. "She wouldn't stop talking about her Quirk, about how she could do new things now, about how she finally felt like it was hers or some sappy nonsense like that, and she sounded just like you when you go into nerd mode. Come on, brat, spill it. What'd you do to her?"

Izuku, who had been following the whole invasion with his eyes, lit up completely at the question, set his half finished plate on the table, and stepped over to them.

"It worked, Mirko-san, it worked amazingly!" he exclaimed, his eyes shining. "I swear even I wasn't expecting it, because Midnight-san's Quirk always seemed incredible to me, but it was stuck in a single form. I just wanted to see if I could help her out with that... She started pulling out a thin thread of her gas and moving it through the air wherever she wanted, and then she squeezed it down into droplets she could store and throw whenever she felt like it. It was spectacular! A thousand doors opened up for her all at once, and the best part is I don't even really know what I did to pull it off."

"Uh huh, science, poetry, whatever." Rumi made an impatient gesture with the bottle. "Get to the point. What exactly did you do to her?"

"That's the problem, I don't have the slightest clue how I did it!" Izuku laughed, moving his hands as he spoke. "The fun part is reshaping a power so it can do things it never even dreamed of before."

Rumi's mind, always spinning around combat, snapped the information into place instantly.

"Hold on a second... Are you serious? So you don't just make someone's Quirk stronger, you can flip it around so it works differently too? That's insane."

"Exactly, that's the whole idea!" Izuku nodded, thrilled she'd caught on so fast.

Rumi pushed off the counter and took a step toward him, her presence filling the entire kitchen as she closed the distance between them.

"Do it to me."

"What? Didn't last time do it for you? You almost shot off into orbit from one single jump. Did you forget already, or do you just enjoy learning the hard way?" Yu huffed from the living room.

"Now that was speed, rookie! Ha, it was awesome!" Rumi didn't even turn to look at her. Her eyes were locked on Izuku. "But I've already got speed. Now I want something else."

The question set Izuku's brain on fire. He got lost in thought for a moment, gaze drifting off, a smile growing wider and wider as he pictured the scene.

"Oh, that would be incredible to see..." he murmured. "Uhm... Honestly, I have no idea if it'll work, because I don't really have this under control yet, but after what happened with Midnight-san, I feel like maybe I can. If I managed to reshape the way her Quirk works, then maybe I can do something with yours too, but we'd have to test it first."

"That's the answer I wanted to hear." Rumi smiled, thrilled that Izuku was on board.

And it was right at that point, while his head was filling up with possibilities, that Izuku's eyes started wandering on their own, drifting off Rumi to cross the living room and land on Yu, who had sat back down on the couch with her arms crossed and an annoyed expression.

Only this time Izuku's look was different, and Yu recognized it instantly. It was the look she'd learned to fear over the past few weeks, the one belonging to the crazed pervert who had just found the perfect toy for his next deranged experiment.

That face again, Yu thought as an uncomfortable heat crawled up her neck. Great, exactly what I needed to send my perfect Sunday straight to hell.

She shifted on the couch and lightly covered her chest.

"Izuku..." she said, with a warning tone that was crystal clear.

He didn't hear her. He was still lost in thought, head slightly tilted, mind running at a thousand miles an hour.

"What do you think you're looking at?" she pressed.

Rumi, intrigued by the boy's sudden silence, followed the direction of his eyes, and a slow, devilish smile spread across her face as she leaned back against the kitchen doorframe, crossed her arms, and settled in to enjoy the disaster about to unfold.

"You planning on putting down roots there or what?" Rumi teased with a grin. "If you keep staring like that your eyes are gonna dry up. What the hell's on that couch, did it hide the secret of the universe or did you just short circuit?"

Rumi's voice finally pulled Izuku out of his trance, and he blinked a couple of times looking at the two women, without a drop of shame on his face.

"I'm reconsidering my initial conclusions," he said, with all the seriousness in the world.

Yu covered her face with one hand.

"Oh no, here we go again..."

"See, Mirko-san, my first experiment was with Yu," Izuku continued, gesturing vaguely toward her without the slightest bit of modesty. "It was a success, but a simple, boring kind of success that did its job and taught me nothing new."

He gestured toward the door, pointing to the spot where Nemuri had been.

"What happened with Midnight-san was completely different. And now that I know it's possible..." He turned his head back to Yu, with a new and terrifying curiosity shining in his eyes. "I'm wondering what else I could change on this beautiful giant hero."

Yu's face went from pink to red in an instant.

"Huh?! Izuku, don't you dare run experiments on me! You hear me? Don't you dare!"

He wasn't listening to her anymore, lost and happy in his own world.

"So, the first time was an accident, I wasn't even trying to do it," he murmured, bringing a hand to his chin. "But... what if I made it bounce this time? If any impact shot off in the opposite direction, she could jump twice as high without spending any extra effort... No, wait, I could do the exact opposite too, make her so stable and heavy, with such absurd balance that not even All Might could move her from her spot. It'd be practically impossible to knock her down!"

"IZUKU!" Yu shrieked.

"Or even better," he went on, eyes lit up, "what if I get her to stick to surfaces? You could climb up walls like it's nothing, boss, get into any building from wherever you wanted, the possibilities are endless, seriously, this could completely change the way you work... And all of this just by squeezing your butt."

"CAN YOU LEAVE MY BUTT ALONE ALREADY?!" Yu exploded, springing to her feet. "It's not an experiment for you to figure out what else you can do to it!"

Izuku let out a sigh of professional frustration, hurt that she didn't understand the importance of his research, and went right back to his own thing without paying her the slightest bit of attention.

"The real problem," he said, hand still on his chin, "is that my first contact with... with the area in question was an accident, and it didn't do me any good. From that time I only have one clear memory, just one, and it was that it turned out to be..."

He paused, searching for the exact word.

"...too comfortable."

He stopped, furrowed his brow, and crossed his arms, visibly annoyed with himself over such a failure in his procedure.

"It was so incredibly comfortable that my mind went blank and I couldn't focus on anything else. I can't remember a single useful detail, not one, because I was too busy feeling comfortable."

The sentence, delivered with all the seriousness in the world, hung in the air of the living room.

Yu was left with her mouth open, her protests stuck in her throat. Had he just described her butt as the reason an experiment got ruined on him? Was being too comfortable a manufacturing defect?

Rumi, on the other hand, doubled over laughing, letting out an uncontrolled howl that rattled the windowpanes, and slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, clutching her stomach while her whole body shook.

"Aaagh...! I can't... breathe!" she gasped, tears streaming down her cheeks as she pounded the floor with her fist. "Too... comfortable! Holy hell, you're gonna kill me right here, brat!"

It took her a full minute to regain some control, though tremors of laughter still slipped out. She pushed herself up, wiped her eyes with her hand, and looked at Izuku, who was watching her with mild confusion, not understanding what part of his explanation she'd found so hilarious.

"You know what, rookie?" Rumi blurted out between fits of laughter, still shaking. "Broccoli boy's right. If you're gonna draw conclusions, do it with real evidence, because half baked data just makes you look ridiculous."

She turned to Yu, who was still on the couch in a state of shock, torn between wanting to strangle Izuku and wanting to disappear off the face of the earth.

"You getting it, Yu?" Rumi let out a laugh. "That test was only half done. We gotta run it again properly. No holding back, we log everything, and we see how far it goes. It's for hero science!... Well, and because it sounds fun as hell."

She stepped closer to Izuku, and all her laughter transformed into frantic enthusiasm.

"I got it!" Rumi snapped her fingers with a fierce grin. "To the training grounds, right now! I wanna try what you did to Nemuri firsthand. And you, rookie..." She jerked her thumb at Yu, still grinning. "You desperately need the brat to touch your butt properly. We can't let a sloppy job ruin such a great discovery for us!"

Yu looked, horrified, at the two people camped out in her apartment, the hyperactive rabbit and the pervert with weird obsessions, standing side by side and planning with terrifying enthusiasm a brand new session of humiliation disguised as training.

"Huh? No way. It's Sunday, I'm off duty, and I'm not letting you two use my butt for your little experiments again. Go find yourselves another guinea pig!"

Rumi didn't even look at her. She'd already crossed the living room, crouched next to Izuku, and, with total ease, slung him over her shoulder. The boy, too busy imagining the results of his next experiment, didn't put up the slightest resistance.

"Come on, brat, grab your notebook! We've gotta document this properly! We could be making history!" Rumi exclaimed, already heading toward the door with Izuku dangling from her shoulder like a trophy.

"My notebook's on the table, next to the plate," Izuku answered from his position, with absurd calm. "And if we're gonna go all in, boss, you'd better bring some comfortable clothes, because this could take a while."

"I SAID I'M NOT GOING ANYWHERE!" Yu jumped to her feet, pointing at the floor with one finger. "This is my apartment, it's my Sunday, and it's my... my...!" She got stuck for a second, completely red. "My sanctuary! So nobody's moving me from here!"

She didn't get to finish the sentence. Rumi had already opened the door and was walking down the hallway with Izuku on her shoulder, humming, with zero intention of putting him down or listening to a single one of her protests.

And just like that, Yu Takeyama's peaceful Sunday morning was shattered when they dragged her, amid shouts and threats of firing that nobody took seriously, to some field out in the middle of nowhere, to serve as a test subject in the strangest and most embarrassing experiment of her entire career.

"I hate both of you," she muttered, taking the last sip of her coffee before running out after them.

From Rumi's shoulder, cheerful and without an ounce of guilt, came Izuku's reply.

"I love her a lot too, boss."

********

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