Since the first time they met back at the Sports Festival, she instantly got a liking to him. He drew a lot of attention so he was perfect to show off her babies, plus, he had much interest in discussing about pro heroes, so she quickly found on Midoriya a partner to share her thoughts about their support items and the ideas and projects she was working on. Yep, Hatsume Mei definitely liked being around him. And as the time passed and they spent more time together, she discovered that he was really fun to tease. She was aware, at least to some extent, that she could be very impulsive, normally invading other's personal space, but Midoriya always took the cherry of the cake.

Now that she thought about it, when he came to the Development Studio for the first time, they met via test blow up, one of the many unstable stages across her projects. She landed on top of him and didn't remember his name at the time, but she surely knew him. That panicked expression was unique and impossible to forget. She laughed internally whenever the image came around her mind. To think he got shocked at such a level just because her chest was touching his. Not only that, when she took some insight on his physical conditions, he shook on his place while she squeezed his muscles.

By now, making Midoriya jump around and squeal was part of the her daily routines. She particularly liked to squeeze her hands on his sides when she was pretending to take measures. He still didn't get why she more than occasionally touched and measured his muscles, and his face while he was holding still like a statue was priceless. Approaching him from behind and talk really close to his ears was one of the most effective ways to activate 'jumpy mode', but her best shot was that time when she landed on top of him 'by accident', blaming a bolt on the floor. She made sure that his body had as much contact with hers as the position they were allowed, and after seven seconds getting more and more red, his brain apparently froze.

"He seems on the edge all the time, hehe"

Right now Hatsume was working on a support item for him. By now she accepted that whenever she worked on something related to him, her mind would wander to those more trivial things. That must be because they were friends.

"Friends, huh..."

Yes, friends indeed. Not that she didn't like or get well with her classmates at 1-H, but the thing between her and Midoriya was... different. In no time she found absolutely endearing and impressive when he started to mumble at inhuman speeds, something she believed only she did until then. Such was their liking for heroes that at some point they developed some sort of mind link that allowed them to understand each other when both entered on rambling mode.

Also, the guy was a genius, not like her, but a genius nonetheless. His skills in analysing other heroes Quirks and the situations surrounding him, with the level of detail and precision he had, was something she described as a rare talent. But Hatsume knew for a fact that it was the fruit of years of studies and research. He shared with her many of the annotations he had been recording so neatly on the notebooks he had. One could work wonders with that incredible amount of high quality information. She found out later that this was his main activity during his childhood. She could totally relate.

When she was a kid, Hatsume already had an inclination to build things, rather breaking them and putting them back together. When the other kids on the kindergarten wanted to watch their TV shows, the small pink haired girl wanted to crack the TV open and see how a box could show so many different images and make sounds. On primary school, girls and boys ran around the playgrounds and parks while she spent her afternoons at the junkyard, trying to bring an old lawnmower motor back to life. It was at that time that she realised that taking showers consumed a lot of precious time, much to her father's dismay.

But that aside, her parents always supported her dreams and objectives. She remembered clearly of her 12nd birthday party, when their parents gave her a tool kit she was saving money to buy. She would take forever to buy it on her own, given the low quality of her lemonade. She put the blame on the lemons since her experimental mixes couldn't be bad. And with that she only improved her skills, taking on challenges bigger and bigger. She was absolutely passionate for the heroes that used lots of complex, cool looking gear, and she decided what would be her future: a famous, no, the most famous and great inventor of support items. She would be known world wide and every single hero would use her equipments. This way, she would be helping to save the world, right?

That burning passion, she also found on Midoriya, looking at his eyes whenever he talked about his goal to turn into a hero. She admired and respected it. Loved even. Why not? What was wrong with loving such a wonderful trait of someone? For Hatsume, if someone on class 1-A could turn into a hero, and she meant a famous one, that one was Midoriya. She would bet all her money on him without thinking twice. And she wanted to be part of this.

"Just imagine... Breaking news! The hero Deku rises to the top 10! On interview he states: I could not make it without the help of Hatsume Mei's support items. Kyaaah, I can already see the magazines covers: Great inventor Hatsume Mei releases her own line of equipments. The biggest company of support items! The secret to success: an interview with Hatsume Mei!"

Hatsume laughed as she entertained her mind with her goals. Goals, not just dreams. But jokes apart, she really wanted to make part of his success as a hero. She wanted to see him win, go there and become the cool hero he wanted so much to be.

She never voiced it to Midoriya but she always worried about his physical conditions. During the Sports Festival, after she lost on purpose to Iida, she watched in awe and then in horror as she saw his fight with Todoroki. Hatsume admired his persistence and his will to go so far because his opponent was holding back, but seeing him harm himself so much caused a pain on her chest.

Many pro heroes ended in irreversible states due to fights and accidents, and she couldn't help but think that it could be avoided if they had the proper equipment at the time, which was why she secretly wanted so much to help the green haired teen that she didn't remember the name at the time.

It only got worse with the time as class 1-A kept being attacked, and every time Midoriya had to be involved. It was like he was a problem magnet, a very strong one. So she was more than willing to develop equipments for him when he came asking for upgrades on his hero suit. First, the iron soles and reinforced arms, and now the special gloves to help his middle ranged attacks. What had he called the move? Doesn't matter, anyway.

She was surprised when he appeared after the Cultural Festival with the gloves all dirty and worn out. Apparently she underestimated the power he held on his fingers.

"Oh well, back to the sketch board then!"

She said as she got up from her working bench. She managed to get the gloves back at functional shape, so now Hatsume would work on redesigning it to sustain more damage and, if she was inspired enough, increase its power. As she walked around the studio, looking around for some ideas, Power Loader, the responsible teacher, from his place called her. Normally he would lecture her about the trail of mess she always left behind or scold her for yet another dangerous experiment with her 'babies', but this time it was different. She looked different lately.

"Oi, Hatsume. Working on the gloves for the kid from 1-A again?"

She didn't bother to look at him as she searched on one of her piles of 'working-in-progress' babies.

"Oh, Power Loader-sensei. Yeah, he took it for a test run and it returned with some scratches. Nothing serious, but I want to make them more resistant anyway. Do we still have some of that light alloy compound?"

"You'll have some if you find something to recycle in that pile of your..." Sensei clearly sounded annoyed. She constantly asked him material because of her poor organization habits. "Anyway, what do you want it for?"

"Well, that compound is very resistant and lightweight so I can replace some parts of the gloves without putting much strain on his arms muscles. That way I can also reinforce the joints and give the air blasts a boost" She said nonchalantly, as if anyone with some common sense could have thought of it.

"Hmmm"

"What? Bad idea?"

"Now, this is new. Not only I see you asking my opinion, but you seem extra careful with this project. Coming to think about it, it was the same when you designed those iron soles..."

Power Loader got up from his seat and calmly walked by Hatsume, a hand on his chin as he looked at her. She suddenly felt slightly nervous. Her teacher never talked like this with her. She was used to lectures and all, but this was way out of her standard of normal.

"What with it? I can have some help sometimes, right...?"

"Sure you can. In fact, it would spare us a lot of accidents and machines exploding. What I mean is that you usually don't do things this way, and as much as it gives me a headache, it's your own style of inventing things. So I ask myself, when did you changed that, and why?"

He opened a metal locker, searched a bit inside it, and came back to Hatsume, handing her two plates of a metallic material.

"Here you go. Be sure to make a good use of this alloy. It weighs a lot on budget. Also, there are some heavy duty metals around my working bench. Don't sleep on the Studio again, you have your own room at the dorms, okay?"

"O... kay..."

The teacher left on his usual calm manner, and before he crossed the door, Hatsume called him.

"S-sensei. Why all this of a sudden?"

"Hmmm. Let's say, you are much more bearable when you are working on something for this Midoriya boy. Less things blowing up and tool tossing. I'd like to enjoy this peaceful state a little bit more"

And with that he left, leaving behind a confused and wordless Hatsume, as hard as it is to believe. She kept staring at the doorway for a minute, processing what he said. Had she really changed that much? Sure, having Midoriya around gave her someone to talk about what she liked. Actually talk, not a one sided rambling or a monologue. But she didn't think she changed her habits at all. To be honest, she felt much happier lately.

"Happy, huh?"

She walked back to her working bench and stared at the blueprints of the gloves she made. She stared at it, looked around, looked at the white lines on the blue sheet, found the ceiling interesting for a moment, looked at her table again. Hatsume brought her hands to her head, brushing her pink asymmetric locks while releasing a frustrated sigh.

"Waaah, I can't focus! Why did Power Loader had to say all that...? I just want to help Midoriya. We are friends, after all"

She leaned her elbow on the table and rested the chin on her hand. She didn't get it. What was so different with her, that her teacher noticed, and how did she not? Her yellow eyes trailed to the windows outside the Development Studio. Power Loader let the door open, so the orange tones of the ending afternoon flowed to her second home, sometimes the first.

-/-

"...me ...tsume ...alright? ... Oi... feeling sick... Hatsume-san!"

"What?! Where?! The fire extinguisher!"

She jolted up from her place, looking around frantically. Midoriya, also surprised with her reaction, tried to calmed her down.

"Hatsume-san, calm down. We are not on the Development Studio"

"Heh? So where's the fire?"

"Lucky enough, nothing's on fire right now" he sweatdropped as Midoriya understood she was used to have something on fire around her. He looked at her with a concerned face, which told her something was off for him.

"What's up Midoriya? There's... there's some food on my face?"

She pointed at herself with a silly smile, but somewhere inside her she was kinda worried. Hopefully it would not surface and be noticed by the green haired teen. She didn't have such luck. He waved his head but remained with those concerned eyes directed at her. Her smile waved a bit to a nervous one.

"No, it's just that you spaced out back there, like, way out. Are you feeling sick?"

"M-me, sick? No, no, I think I got lost in thought, just that"

"Are you sure? You seemed to be worried about something really important"

"No, not at all. I guess the low amount of sleep hours is affecting me, hehehe..."

"Hatsume-san, you should not skip your sleep hours. It's not healthy" Midoriya knew it for a fact, since All Might scheduled even his sleep hours during his training to inherit One for All.

"I can't help it, I have been pretty busy lately" she scratched the back of her head.

While this was true, she didn't say was that the reason for it. Hatsume had been taking project after project, in an attempt to keep her mind busy. Whenever she wasn't working on something her thoughts made its way back to what her teacher said the other day and, consequently, the greenette himself. She didn't even manage to work much further on her designs for the support gloves version 2.0, and it was slowly driving her crazy. It didn't help either that she became more aware of her surroundings lately.

With less focus on her work, she started to notice things around her. Namely, she got to know about some rumors running on the vast gossiping net of the school. She never was into those things, but when she heard, or at least thought she heard the name Midoriya, she stopped a bit to try and hear more about it. In the end her poor sense of personal space betrayed her as she practically poked her head on the small circle of girls chatting about who knows what.

"Excuse me, umm, Hatsume-san, wasn't it? Do you need something?"

"Oh, me?" She realized her position right now. "A-ah, no, not at all, it's just that I thought I heard a familiar name. Sorry to cut your chat like that!" She waved her hands in front of her, much like Midoriya would do, and was about to leave when one of the girls called her back.

"Wait, Hatsume-san. You were at the Sports Festival finals, right?"

"Oh, yeah" she looked back at the group. Something was up.

"Then-" the girl, who had a pale skin like snow, looked to the sides and signaled for her to come closer. "Maybe you got to know that buy from class 1-A, Midoriya"

"Midoriya? Sure, I-"

"Shhh, not so loud"

Hatsume quirked an eyebrow at the girls as they looked around anxiously and pulled her closer.

"So you were near him, right?"

"Near? We were in the same team on the chivalry battle, and he comes a lot to the Development Studio"

"So, what's he like?"

"What's he like...? I don't know, he's nice, I guess"

"Nice?"

"Yeah. He's very kind and sometimes he worries too much about the others, even more than with him..."

"I see..."

She didn't get it. Why did she got the feeling these girls were somehow disappointed with her answer? Did they expect something different?

"Well, umm, you were talking about him, right? Does it have something to do with his last equipments, because if so then I-"

"Huh? No, nothing silly like that. Didn't you know?"

"Know... what?" Hatsume held back the words that crossed her mind as the girl called her babies 'silly'. Another look around and the snow like girl spoke again, putting her hand next to her mouth.

"There's this story running around... that this Midoriya guy is a real beast"

"A real... beast?"

"Yeah, I heard he's dating both the pink skinned girl and the frog one" said another girl with curly black horns that resembled a sheep.

The one, with butterfly wings, added up to the fire pit. "Really? I heard the he doesn't date any of them, but he gets to make out with them whenever he wants"

"No shit"

"I mean it"

"Okay, stop"

The small group looked at Hatsume. She had a quite annoyed look on her face. She definitely didn't like gossiping.

"Look, I'll jump the part where I say it isn't nice to talk behind the others. Midoriya it's not that type of guy. He can barely walk around with me without stuttering or getting all flustered. There's no way he would do something like that, plus he cares for his friends and no one from 1-A would do something so low like that"

"If you say so" said butterfly girl.

"Aren't you saying that because you are one of his friends?" Snow white crossed her arms with a doubtful eyebrow raised.

"Or could it be that you like him?~" finished the horned girl.

At the last sentence, Hatsume lost all her seriousness.

"L-like him? S-sure, I like him, but only as a friend! In fact, I totally plan to use him as the promoter of my support items, you know..." she lied, but about what, exactly?

"Mmhmm, have it your way then" snow white said again as the group walked away.

That simple supposition almost threw her over the edge. But there was no way she liked him in that way. Yeah, she just liked to tease him and talk with him about heroes, and make support items for him. Wait, where did that last part came from? And about him going around with his girl classmates? Nonsense! Hatsume was almost sure Midoriya was incapable of handling social interaction with the opposite sex like a normal person. Still, she felt strange, in a way. For a moment, she felt worried, even afraid. The seed of this idea had been planted on her mind and she couldn't get it out. It kept hidden in a dark corner, poking her brain every time she thought she forgot about it. Which was why she had been so lost in thought lately.

Back to her and Midoriya, he was saying something about All Might having used some kind of support item, but she zoned out as soon as he started to speak. She thought he would be hurt by her involuntarily move, but he ended being worried about her.

"So, you were talking about All Might, right?"

She did her best to subdue her inner feelings and resume her talk with Midoriya. Maybe talking with him would help her clear her mind. And turns out it worked out. As the cinnamon roll of sunshine talked about his theories and researches about his idol, Hatsume felt more and more at ease. There was no way this bright child of sunlight would do something so dark like what these dumb girls were implying. Plus, what if she liked him? He was nice to hang around, and she knew he liked to be with her too. Forget about those complicated things involving relationships and dates, they were good friends and that was enough for her.

Hatsume leaned her elbow on the table they were and rested her chin on her hand. All the noise in the cafeteria subdued as she heard the voice of her green haired friend, her friend. She even unconsciously started to pick some of his potato chips as she listened to him, her eyes focused on his figure and a warm smile crossing her lips.

And unknown to her and Midoriya, from another table at the other side of the giant place, brown eyes burned with anger as a padded hand crushed the strawberry milk box she was holding. Lips curled up sucked the drink by the straw. The burning stare didn't pass unnoticed by the companions of the fuming brunette. All five of them, thought in a much lower and bland level, had the same feeling of possessive jealousness.

From a nearby table, watching the group of girls glaring not only daggers but axes and swords too, Sero, Kaminari, Sato, Shoji, Aoyama and Tokoyami wondered who could be the poor souls that were the targets of those intense eyes. The dense aura emanating from that table made something clear to Tokoyami and his sentient Quirk, who also poked out to see it.

"Is this what I think it is?"

"Yes, Dark Shadow... Revelry in the dark"