Chapter 14: The Doomsday Lunch! When Izuku Solved the Problem Nobody Asked Him to Solve!

The restaurant was a few blocks from UA, the discreet spot they'd agreed on over the phone, a place with pale tablecloths and quiet music where a heroine could eat without half the country asking her for a photo. Izuku and Nemuri got there first and took a table by the window, still a little stunned by what had just gone down at Gamma Gym.

"I still can't wrap my head around it..." Nemuri stirred her latte calmly, not lifting her eyes from the surface. "I've spent years using my Quirk on pure instinct, letting the aroma spread and crossing my fingers that the wind would do its part. And then you show up... a kid with the face of a model student, and in one afternoon you get me controlling it better than I have in my whole career." She raised an eyebrow and shot him a smile. "Tell me, Midoriya-kun... what kind of brain are you hiding under those curls? Because that wasn't luck. How the hell did you do it?"

"Oh, honestly, Midnight-san, I don't have the faintest clue," Izuku said, raising his hands with a grin. "I don't know what I touched or how I touched it, and even less why it worked. Trust me, I'm the first one surprised, I wasn't expecting anything to come of it either. Wow! That's the only word I can come up with to describe it."

"Wow?" she repeated, arching a brow. "This kid walks in, flips my career upside down, and the only thing he can come up with is 'wow'? Well, well... But to be fair," she added, resting a finger on her chin in feigned reflection, "your real feat of the day was another one. Looking me dead in the eyes, dropping a 'the chest' without a single muscle twitching, and diving in to grab them without a second's hesitation. That, sweetheart, now that has merit."

"Hey, hey, hold on, don't put that one on me," he protested, pointing at her. "I, like any good citizen in service of our beloved heroes, made a monumental sacrifice to help you. If something pleasant came out of it along the way, that's not my fault; it's a small piece of collateral damage that I've learned to live with quite gracefully."

"Quite gracefully?" Nemuri let out a low, amused laugh. "You're the first one to brag with this much pride about putting his hands on me during a training session."

Amused, she gave her chest a light tap with one finger.

"And speaking of the consequences... you left me a little souvenir. At some point you got so distracted from my Quirk that you ended up altering this." She dropped her gaze for a second and looked back up at him with a mischievous smile. "My blouse is still tighter than it should be. So, Midoriya-kun, since you were the one responsible... you're also going to put it back to normal before the day is over."

"Um..." Izuku tilted his head, weighing the matter with a seriousness the situation didn't warrant. "You sure you don't wanna keep it? No offense, but it looks really good on you; it goes with your figure. Turning it back so soon would be almost a waste, honestly."

"Oh, really?" Nemuri arched an eyebrow, a wicked smile curving on her lips. "So my temporary assistant thinks he's a fashion critic too? What nerve, Midoriya-kun."

She crossed her arms with total ease and let out a little laugh.

"Just look at you. A little while ago you were barely holding a conversation with Principal Nezu, and now you're even weighing in on how my bust looks. I have to admit, you're progressing at a worrying pace." She tilted her head slightly, entertained by the situation. "Careful. If you keep answering me this calmly, you're going to have me enjoying having you as an assistant a little too much."

"Well, that'd be if Yu gives me permission," he replied. "Now then, we did confirm that your aroma also works through direct contact, because the moment I touched that drop I went out like a light. Slept like a baby, by the way. Thanks for not letting me hit the floor."

"Well," Nemuri propped her chin on her hand. "You passed out on top of me and stayed fast asleep, face buried in my cleavage, right in the middle of the gym. Can you imagine if someone from UA had walked in at that moment? They would've found the heroine Midnight sprawled on the floor with a boy snoring on top of her. My reputation would've been hanging by a thread... while you kept dreaming away without a care in the world. Doesn't that strike you as a pretty original way to get me in trouble, Midoriya-kun?"

"Well, it was worth it," he said without an ounce of regret. "If the job's going to come with these kinds of perks, I think I'm gonna really enjoy being under your supervision."

"Careful what you wish for, Midoriya-kun," she murmured. "Very few people grow on me, and you have. That never ends peacefully for the other one."

The conversation snuffed itself out when a shadow planted itself beside the table and blocked the light coming through the window. Izuku looked up.

Yu Takeyama was standing in front of them, no trace of the hero suit. She wore designer skinny jeans and a cream silk blouse, her blonde hair falling over her shoulders. From a distance she looked like a celebrity trying to go unnoticed, though the rigid back and the fists clenched at her sides gave her away. The smile she wore was a tight line that made it perfectly clear she wasn't happy.

"Izuku," she said, with a calm that fooled no one. "Kayama-san."

The first name was a mark of ownership, and Nemuri's formal surname landed cold as ice.

Izuku, oblivious to the war brewing over the table, smiled when he saw Yu arrive.

"Yu! Glad you made it, we were waiting for you. We did something amazing at the UA gym, I'll tell you all about it in a bit..."

"I bet you did," Yu cut him off, without turning to look at him, her eyes locked on Nemuri and sizing her up from head to toe.

Nemuri didn't flinch. She raised her cup in a gesture that resembled a toast, with a smile that was sweet and venomous all at once.

"Oh, don't get worked up, Takeyama, darling. I'm just following Principal Nezu's orders. Someone has to keep a close eye on your assistant so he doesn't get into trouble, and guess who got the honor. It's an exhausting job, I assure you. All very professional, of course."

A young waiter stepped up to the table, unaware of the war that had just broken out in front of him.

"May I take your order or would you like a few more minutes?"

"An americano, black," Yu said, in a voice so low and cutting the boy got a little scared.

Izuku, who was starting to notice how weird the atmosphere had gotten, tried to bring the tension down.

"Yu, sit down, you gotta try the cheesecake here, they say it's out of this world. Nemuri and I were gonna order a slice to share..."

"I said black," Yu repeated, and her voice dropped to a whisper.

The waiter nearly tripped over his own feet backing away.

"Right away!" he stammered, and practically fled toward the counter.

*

Yu finally dropped into the empty chair, defeated by the mere fact of having to sit at the same table as her rival. She settled in so straight she looked ready to snap in half, while Nemuri stayed reclined with one leg crossed over the other, enjoying the show with all the calm in the world.

The waiter came back, set down the americano with a shaky hand, and retreated to a distance he considered prudent. Yu waited for him to be out of earshot before speaking, and when she did, every word came out clenched with restrained fury.

"Izuku, explain this to me slowly," she leaned forward a touch. "How the hell did it happen that my personal assistant, the one I hired to help me with my agency, ended up working at UA... and on top of that, parading around everywhere with her? What did I miss while I was busy?"

"It's an incredible opportunity, Yu!" he answered, his enthusiasm intact despite the chill she was giving off. "Principal Nezu made me an offer I couldn't turn down. I get to train a candidate for the entrance exam all on my own, and if it works out, I stay on at UA. Do you get what that means for someone like me?"

"I'm not asking Principal Nezu," she cut him off, frowning as she folded her arms. "I'm asking you, Izuku. You made a deal with me. You said my training and my career came first. So tell me the truth... does that not matter anymore? Or did someone more interesting, more brilliant come along... and I got bumped to second place?"

The accusation, and the badly hidden hurt underneath the anger, finally landed on Izuku, and the smile faded from his face.

"Of course it matters, it matters more than anything, that's why I said yes. Don't you see? Everything I learn at UA I can use on you, every Quirk I study and every little thing I figure out becomes a tool to make you stronger. I'm not swapping you out for anyone, Yu; what I'm doing is getting you a whole workshop full of new toys."

"What your enthusiastic assistant is trying to say, Yu, darling..." Nemuri cut in, stirring her coffee with provocative calm, "is that a talent like his shouldn't stay stuck babysitting a heroine who still confuses experience with popularity. Call it professional growth."

"Uh... Midnight-san..."

"'Professional growth'?" Yu let out a dry laugh. "How elegant that sounds. Or is it that you can't stand someone half your age catching attention without having to show off so much skin to get it?" She held her gaze without backing down. "Because the spotlight isn't going to last forever for you either, Kayama."

Nemuri set her spoon on the saucer with a soft clink, and her smile turned more dangerous.

"How sweet," she replied with a low laugh before taking a sip of her coffee. "You still believe this is a competition with you. At your age I used to confuse catching attention with being good at what I do too. If Principal Nezu knows how to recognize talent when he sees it right in front of him, I'm not about to apologize for that. Some people just know how to seize an opportunity when it shows up."

"It wasn't just an opportunity!" Yu shot back, raising her voice without meaning to. "The situation was a disaster and I had to improvise! Don't act like it was pure luck!"

*

While the two of them were flinging darts at each other over the table, Izuku's head disconnected from the whole argument. The venom, the old rivalry, the jealousy, none of it registered. To him it was like listening to two bosses fight over who got to keep the best tool in the workshop, and without realizing it he set the emotions aside and locked in on the only thing that mattered to him.

He pulled his notebook and a pen out of his jacket pocket, and neither Yu nor Nemuri noticed, too busy measuring each other with their eyes.

The problem isn't whose I am; the problem is that Yu's on one side of the city and UA's on the other, and I can't split myself in half. Every stretch of time I spend stuck on a train is time I'm not training anyone, and that kills me. Yu wants to level up, UA opens the door to tons of Quirks for me to learn from, and the weird part is that both of them are completely right at the same time. The way out was never in picking one; the way out is in the two of them not being so far apart from each other anymore.

He glanced up for a second. The two heroines were still stuck at the same standoff.

"...and as his official supervisor assigned by UA, I'm the one with the final word on his training and on every method he uses," Nemuri was saying, in a tone that left no room for reply.

"He's my assistant! I'm the one paying his salary!" Yu shot back in a low, furious voice. "My name is the one signed on his contract!"

"A contract that surely includes a professional development clause that covers this and then some," Nemuri countered without losing her smile.

Izuku was mumbling to himself, the pen twirling between his fingers, oblivious to the two women fighting over him above his head.

"Distance... conflicting schedules... resources split in two... if only the point over here and the point over there were the same place..."

And then he saw it, so clearly it almost made him laugh. The answer had been sitting right there in front of him the whole time, waiting for someone to look at it: everything had to come together under one roof.

Izuku slapped his hand on the table.

"I've got it!"

The bang, amplified by the tension of the moment, made both women jump in their seats. They fell silent and turned to look at him with identical bewilderment.

Izuku beamed back at them with a huge, radiant smile, as if he'd just cracked one of the universe's problems.

"You two are looking at the problem backwards," he said, his voice lit up with an enthusiasm that clashed completely with the hostility at the table. "The problem isn't whose I am or who I spend my afternoons with. The problem is that I'm scattered across half the city and I'm burning entire hours on a train, and all that travel time is time I'm stealing from both of you."

He pointed to his open notebook.

"I need to be at UA to train my candidate and learn from the others, but I also need to keep training you, Yu, with access to the best facilities out there. Having to choose between one thing and the other is a huge waste."

His gaze jumped from one to the other, his enthusiasm growing with every word.

"What if we take the choosing part out of the equation? What if we bring both goals under one roof? What if the place where I do my long term training and the place where I do my evaluations were the same one?"

His eyes landed on Yu, shining with what he considered the greatest idea in the history of humankind.

"Yu... you should teach at UA!"

"..."

"..."

Yu was left open mouthed as her brain tried in vain to sort out the line of words that had just crashed down on her. Within seconds she cycled through at least five different versions of disbelief, until finally she found her voice, or something resembling a strangled, high pitched version of it.

"WHAT?!"

"Think about it, it's perfect!" Izuku went on, not catching the crack he'd just opened in reality, already half up from his chair and gesturing with his hands. "They hire you as a guest instructor in the practical combat department, and I come in as your teaching assistant. We train together, we work shoulder to shoulder with the candidate I choose using all your field experience, we line up our schedules, and we get access to top notch resources at the same time. All the wasted time is over. It's the perfect solution!"

Yu stared at him, her face slightly pale.

"What the hell are you talking about, Izuku?!" Yu stared at him like he was an idiot before pointing at her own chest with a finger. "Me, a UA teacher?! Are you serious?! I still feel like I'm learning on the fly!

"My debut was stealing another hero's spotlight in front of the entire country! There are still people who remember me more for that and for the gossip than for my work! And you think they're going to put me in front of a class? I don't have teaching experience, I don't have credentials, and the Commission is going to die laughing the second they hear my name!

"No, no, and no! It's insane! The most harebrained, stupid idea you've had since I've known you... and that is saying a whole lot!"

Midnight threw herself back in her chair, laughing so hard that people at the nearby tables turned to look, some alarmed and some curious.

"Oh, please!" she managed between fits of laughter, bringing a hand to her mouth without being able to stop. "Sorry... really, sorry... but... a teacher?!"

She shook her head with an amused smile before looking back at Izuku.

"No, no... this kid is unbelievable. I mean that completely seriously. He always finds a way to surprise me with something that would never have crossed my mind."

It took her a full minute to calm down, a minute in which Yu looked on the verge of a rage fit and Izuku watched her without understanding a thing. When she finally managed it, she took a deep breath and turned to look at Yu, her eyes shining with freshly minted mischief and the spark of a new, terrible idea.

"You know something, Takeyama...?" she said with an amused smile, finishing off the last of her laughter. "Now that I think about it... it's not the most harebrained idea I've ever heard either. Actually... it even has a certain charm."

Yu's head whipped toward her.

"Excuse me? Have you gone crazy too?"

"No, no, hear me out," Nemuri went on, leaning forward with a conspiratorial expression. "Not as a combat teacher; you're absolutely right about that, you'd be a joke. But look at it this way: there's another subject you were born for. You know better than anyone what it's like to survive a scandal debut and a press that wants to eat you alive. You could give a seminar for the first years: 'How to Keep Smiling When the Headlines Want to Bury You.' Or... 'Damage Control for Rookie Heroes.'"

Nemuri's smile widened with a malicious gleam.

"And, frankly, Yu... on that subject you'd be the top authority in the country. See? I did find a course where no one could compete with you after all."

Izuku nodded with an enthusiasm Yu found insulting, catching not a single drop of the venom beneath Nemuri's words.

"Exactly! Practical experience, which is the best way to teach! You could use your own debut as a case study, point out the mistakes, propose what could've been done differently. It would be incredibly valuable for the students!"

Yu let her gaze drift from her assistant's enthusiastic face to her lifelong rival's wicked smile. The battle she'd come to fight, the fight to hold on to her one advantage in the savage world of heroes, was lost. Even worse, it had been stolen from her and twisted into a completely different war, one she never would have imagined even in her worst nightmare.

She was trapped, completely trapped between Izuku's crushing, deranged logic and Nemuri's insatiable appetite for chaos. She had come to reassert her control and put her rival in her place, and instead she'd lost command of everything, not just of her assistant, but of the entire direction of her professional life.

I've lost, she thought, feeling an emptiness inside her as she looked at the two expectant faces in front of her. I don't even know what battle I was fighting, but I've lost it completely.

******

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