Chapter 22: The Catastrophic Awakening! I Discovered My Pillow Was My Boss... and She Was Naked!

"No... Mrs. Tanaka, I swear... they had Quirks... the dogs went flying and got lost somewhere over the horizon..."

Izuku's voice was a sleepy mumble, the memory of a recurring nightmare tangled up with the comfort of a deep sleep. He felt a pleasant warmth and a soft weight on his leg that kept him in a state he didn't want to leave. He shifted a little, searching for an even better position, and his hand brushed against something warm.

"Mmm, what a comfy pillow," he whispered to himself, eyes closed. "I always sleep better on Yu's couch..."

A flash of clarity cut through the fog of sleep.

"Hold on a second," he said, his voice sharpening a bit. "Yu's couch?"

He opened his eyes slowly, blinking at the light streaming through the windows. The static movie menu was glowing on the TV screen, an empty popcorn bowl sat on the floor next to two glasses, and he remembered starting the movie but not finishing it.

"I fell asleep," he muttered, turning his head to stretch his neck.

And that's where his brain came to a complete stop.

Next to him, curled up against his side, there was no pillow. It was Yu. And she wasn't the keychain-sized figure who had dozed off on his thigh; at some point during the night she'd gone back to her normal size. Her blonde hair spilled over Izuku's shoulder, her breathing was a quiet whisper, and all of her looked completely at peace.

"It worked..."

Mmm... I think it must work under its own logic. The scare tightens her up and shrinks her, and once she relaxes she goes back to normal.

That's when he noticed the missing doll clothes they'd bought her. A couple of scraps of red and blue fabric lay tangled in the folds of the blanket, way too small to cover her. Yu was completely naked, one leg bent over Izuku's thigh and her whole body pressed against his, a source of warmth impossible to ignore.

"Oh... The clothes tore. We're gonna have to get her something that shrinks with her, or next time we'll end up the same way."

She sleeps like a log, nothing like Mrs. Tanaka's dogs, who snored with incredible force. I wonder if they've found them yet, though I doubt it. I've been dodging her calls for days and at some point she's gonna catch up with me, but hey, one problem at a time.

He looked at the sleeping woman beside him again. He thought of her as his responsibility, a project that was finally starting to pay off, and with a nonchalance that would've given anyone else a heart attack, he raised his hand and gave her a gentle pat on her bare butt, completely proud of Yu.

Satisfied, and considering the first part of the problem resolved, he closed his eyes again. The warmth beside him felt way too comfortable to ruin, and there was no reason to get up. He was going to fall right back asleep, no problem.

A few minutes later, the warmth beside him shifted.

Yu woke up slowly, wrapped in a sense of safety she couldn't remember feeling in years. She was too comfortable. She opened her eyes lazily, and the first thing she saw was the fabric of a shirt just inches from her nose.

Izuku... why am I so close to Izuku?

Her brain, still half asleep, started fitting the pieces together with exasperating slowness. She was curled up against her assistant, and it felt nice. Her leg was resting over his; in fact, if she moved just a little, she realized she was practically straddling his thigh, which was weird and yet still comfortable. She felt a cool breeze on her back, and she didn't remember leaving any window open.

Reality hit her without mercy.

She lowered her gaze slowly, like in a horror movie. First her own bare hand on Izuku's chest, then her hip pressed against his side, and finally, with a horror that froze her to the bone, her naked crotch resting directly on her young assistant's thigh.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

The scream jolted Izuku out of his stupor. He shot upright, heart pounding, completely disoriented.

"AHHHHH!!! Mrs. Tanaka, I swear a guy with a mutant Quirk swallowed your dogs! It wasn't my fault!" he yelled at the air, eyes darting around for a threat that didn't exist.

That's when he figured out where the noise was coming from. Yu was right next to him, though "next to him" wasn't quite accurate: she seemed to be trying to fuse with the other end of the couch, stumbling backward with the blanket tangled between her legs, in a futile attempt to cover a dignity already long gone. Her face was so red it looked ready to burst into flames.

"Um, Yu? What's going on? You okay?" he asked, not understanding a thing.

You're back to your normal size, isn't this cause for celebration? Why are you screaming like that?

"Don't look at me! Turn around! Get away! What... what happened?"

"You're back to your normal size," he explained with all the calm in the world. "I'm not really sure how, but it happened while you were sleeping. Just relax and..."

"I don't give a damn how it happened!" she snapped, gripped by panic. In her clumsy attempt to get free from him and the blanket at the same time, she moved without thinking. Her hand shot out looking for something to hold onto and landed right on Izuku's, which he'd raised in a placating gesture.

A spark of green energy, subtle and unmistakable, jumped between them. A barely audible hum vibrated in the air for a fraction of a second. That whole mess of emotions was the perfect trigger, and Izuku's Quirk went off.

Yu felt a violent tug shaking her from the deepest part of her body. It was different from the controlled growth she used at work, and she didn't reach the full twenty meters; she grew in a clumsy, uneven way, her arms and legs stretching out of proportion while the rest of her body expanded. She went from her normal size to a lanky height of about two and a half meters in the blink of an eye.

"No, no, not again, please!" she whimpered, feeling like the whole apartment was coming down on her.

The couch, a quality piece of furniture but built for normal-sized people, groaned, announcing its end. It was already off-balance from both their weight concentrated on one end, and Yu's sudden growth finished it off.

"Wait, the couch...!" Izuku managed to say, his brain working right up to the last instant.

The front legs lifted off the floor. Izuku, still sitting, could only watch wide-eyed as physics did its thing. Yu, halfway to standing, let out another strangled cry as she fell with him, in an identical repeat of their first disastrous encounter, with a giant butt heading once again straight for his face. The only terrifying difference was that this time there was no spandex in the way.

CRACK.

The couch tipped backward onto the floor with a splinter of wood that sent the cushions, the blanket, and what little was left of Yu's composure flying.

For Izuku, everything went dark, a soft and alarmingly warm darkness.

He found himself trapped in an identical repeat, though a thousand times more intimate, of the incident that had kicked off this whole mess. She, now two and a half meters tall and completely naked, had landed sitting right on his face, and her weight, multiplied by her size, pinned him against the back of the overturned couch.

Instead of panicking about the suffocation or the humiliation, Izuku's brain did the one thing it knew how to do in a moment like this, which was to say out loud the first thing that crossed his mind.

"Hey, this is surprisingly comfortable," he mumbled, voice muffled and without the slightest trace of embarrassment. "Soft and warm... Yu, you never mentioned you don't have any hair down here. Is it part of your Quirk or were you born like that? It's an important data point for the team, we should write it down."

If Yu's brain had gone into shock before, in that instant it just shut down completely, flattened by embarrassment. The shameless comment, said from right down there, was too much. An involuntary spasm ran through her body, a small tremor as her mind tried to reboot, and that movement caused friction against the most sensitive part of her body and against his face.

"Ngh!"

It was a moan, a treacherous mix of pleasure and humiliation that horrified her completely. The sound vibrated through her entire body and, given how close they were, resonated straight into Izuku's head.

That's when she understood the true scale of the disaster. She was trapped in the worst dilemma of her life. If she stayed still, her most intimate parts were literally pressed against her assistant's face, and every calm breath he took was a caress she hadn't asked for. If she tried to get up, not only would she cause more of that horrible, confusing friction, she'd also be completely exposed to his gaze the moment she stood. Completely naked and gigantic, without any shield to hide behind.

The panic and shame, combined with that new, treacherous jolt, left her paralyzed. She couldn't move or speak, and breathing was hard enough as it was, so all that was left was to exist, a prisoner of her own Quirk and the unfathomable weirdness of the boy underneath her.

Eternal seconds went by, one after another, and each one tasted like a century of suffering to Yu. She could feel Izuku's calm, steady breathing against her. He was totally relaxed! How the hell could he be so calm? Wasn't he suffocating? Couldn't he feel the weight? He gave the impression of someone taking mental notes.

Rage, in the end, gave her back the strength that paralysis had stolen. She needed to regain control, any shred of control she could rescue from this personal hell.

"Izuku?! No, no, no...! Close your eyes! NOW!" she yelled, completely flushed and on the verge of collapse. "Don't you dare open them until I say so! Do you hear me?! Not one peek!"

A muffled murmur answered her from below.

"And how are you gonna know I closed them if you can't see me? Your request has a pretty serious logical flaw, we should agree on some kind of signal we can..."

"JUST DO IT, DAMN IT!!"

Gathering every last ounce of willpower, ignoring the protest of every fiber of her being, Yu planted her hands on the back of the couch and pushed herself up. The movement was clumsy, accompanied by a wet, embarrassing sound that made her want to disintegrate on the spot. She ended up kneeling on the overturned couch, her back to him, panting, heart racing.

She turned her head slowly, terror freezing her blood, to check if he'd listened.

Izuku was leaning back against the cushions, head tilted slightly, wearing an expression of concentration. His green eyes, huge and bright, were wide open; he was watching her with the same look of fascination he wore in front of an All Might figure fresh out of the box. It was a look of total wonder, and in that moment it felt a thousand times more invasive than any lecherous glance.

"What... what are you looking at?" she whispered, trembling, trying to cover herself with her hands and getting nowhere.

"It's just that you look beautiful, Yu. The light... The way the morning sun comes through the window behind you, WOW, this is... It's incredible, I've never seen you like this."

One last cry, high-pitched and full of shame, escaped her lips.

Izuku didn't even flinch. He took in the strength of her shoulders and the way her waist flared out to her hips, the power stored in legs that could lift buildings, and at the same time the human fragility of her face and the desperation with which she was trying to cover herself.

It's the perfect combination. Power and beauty in the same person. What an... irresistible girl!

It was the first time he admitted it, even alone inside his own head: his interest in Yu went far beyond professional curiosity. She wasn't just the hero he was training or the insufferable boss who bossed him around all day. She was a woman, and without a doubt, the most incredible and beautiful woman he'd ever seen in his entire life.

They stayed like that, frozen. Him on the floor, looking at her with a new and dangerous understanding. Her kneeling on the wrecked couch, naked and giant, trapped under the weight of his gaze. Silence filled the apartment again, though this time it had a different flavor.

How were they going to get back to anything close to normal after this?

In the end, it was Yu who broke the silence, in a voice barely louder than a sigh.

"Say something."

Izuku blinked, as if snapping out of a trance. His gaze left her for a second, sweeping over the wrecked piece of furniture she was kneeling on, and then returned to her eyes.

"The couch..."

"What about the couch?!"

"I hope Mrs. Tanaka doesn't sell furniture."

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Author's Note

Time for today's poll!

Who deserves the title of "Biggest Victim"?

Izuku

Yu

The couch

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