🌸Before you Read🌸

🌸I think this is self explanatory; however, writing this part, I've found myself tripping over who calls who who. So, quick summary:
🌱Kita calls Akiba by his first name, Hikaru, because they're dating in this fic, but Raiden and Tami call him by his last name.
🌱Only Tami calls Raiden by his first name because you have to be very close to him to do so, meaning Kita and Akiba call him Yamamoto.
🌱Lastly, Akiba and Tami can call Kita by her first name, but Raiden wouldn't be comfortable doing so, meaning he'd call her Yukimura.

🌸If that isn't confusing, I don't know what is.

🌸The Dinner Fiasco 🌸

Kaito Oba

Hey I'm sorry I can't make it. Some guy from 1-G wanted to improve my Hero Costume for a project. Hope you and the others have fun!

I rolled my eyes as I saw another person cancel at the last minute. First, it was Misaki Handa and Hiroto Mori, who realized they had a project in homeroom they needed to get done. Then, it was Sakura, who had completely forgotten about the math assignment that was due tomorrow. There was no hope for someone getting that much homework done in a night, but knowing Sakura, she'd figure some way to get it done.

That left Kita Yukimura, Hikaru Akiba, and Tami who would be able to come. If I didn't know better, I'd say our friends were trying to set us up on a blind double date. That would explain the horrible excuses that people were giving. I knew they were excuses too because there was no way that many people would cancel the day this happened.

They weren't canceling to set us up on a double date. They were all cancelling because I had to be the one to pick out where we'd eat which was the only Mexican restaurant in town. No one disagreed with it at first, but I should've known it was going to be a long shot for them to all get on board with it, especially Kaito as he wasn't a huge fan of it. He could still eat the stuff there, but it wasn't like going to the noodle restaurant down the street.

"Who cancelled this time?"

I looked over, noticing Tami sitting on the bench. She came here shortly after I did, so we were just waiting on the others at this point. It surprised me to see that Tami got dressed up for this though. We've been to this place a handful of times before, and never had she ever worn something other than a t-shirt and sweatpants. Sometimes she'd wear jeans, but that really all depended on whether or not we were training that day for self defense.

Today, she wore her green U.A. skirt, but that was the only part of the uniform she wore as she had a black shirt, with a round neckline, tucked into the skirt and a cardigan sweater over it. The shirt honestly looked a bit tight on her as she tugged the collar of it a bit, but I wasn't going to ask. She should've known she could have worn whatever she wanted as we were all going to eat as friends.

Then again, I did let Kaito talk me into wearing a button-down as he thought it'd be funny if the both of us dressed up since no one would expect it, I thought to myself. Guess I really had no room to really talk about that.

"Kaito," I told her. "Look, we can just take a rain check on this and try again next time."

Tami tilted her head, causing some of her blonde hair to fall to the side. It wasn't long, but it was starting to grow past her shoulders. Seeing her with longer hair was going to take some time getting used to, but I wasn't going to ask. For all I knew, she could have been trying to grow it out for some time and finally figured a way to do so. Not that I really should care about that. It wasn't my problem.

"But what about Kita and Akiba? Didn't they say they'd come?" Tami asked.

I shrugged. "It's only a matter of time that they cancel too. If not, it'll just be weird," I told her.

"What'll be weird?"

Speak of the devil.

Tami and I turned our heads to see both Akiba and Yukimura standing there. It was no secret that those two were dating, but I just found it weird. Where Yukimura was pretty outgoing, Akiba was abnormally quiet. He kept his distance from everyone, except when he was around Yukimura. Then again, I guess that was impossible as she wrapped her arms around his right arm, pulling in as close as she could to the guy. Unlike when Tami dated Kaito, Akiba didn't look uncomfortable at Yukimura's touch. For once, the guy didn't seem so uptight and relaxed a bit as they stood there. His piercing, steel-colored eyes were slowly trailing from Tami to me and back, almost as if he was waiting for one of us to say something. They were the opposite of Yukimura's golden ones that would glisten with excitement.

It was too late to back out now, I realized. If I could, I would've just because of how awkward this was going to be. We hadn't even sat down, but I could just guess the million different ways this could go wrong.

Hopefully this thing wouldn't end in a disaster.

"Nothing," I answered, realizing the awkward pause that was happening as Tami looked unsure as to what to say. "Let's just get inside already."

🌸🌸🌸

Things weren't as awkward at first between the four of us. I think part of the reason that was was because I had to explain to both Yukimura and Akiba what was all on the menu, explaining the more safe choices and the more adventurous ones. It wasn't long that the waiter came, taking each of our orders. It was going smoothly, until he got to Tami.

When he looked down at her, I held my breath, preparing myself for what was going to come. Despite the amount of times Tami and I came here, she'd always get mistaken for a child, a literal child. It didn't help that she was about a head shorter than the rest of us when we all sat, but it got worse when she opened her mouth to order.

Tami always ordered the same thing: chicken fingers and—

"I'll have the, uh," Tami's head turned to look at her menu before she pointed at something. Her eyes concentrated really hard on her next few words. "Enchiladas verdes."

My eyes widened at what she had ordered. I had to have misheard that. There was no way she was getting something different than her usual that was found on the kids menu. She was crazy if she thought she could handle that.

It wasn't the fact that Tami was a picky eater. She would eat anything my mamá would cook back at my house, even if it was a tad spicy. The spicier the food was, the harder it was for her to swallow, so I always made sure Má wouldn't cook something extremely spicy.

Like enchiladas verdes.

Before I could say something, the waiter left, scratching the back of his head before he looked back at the small table we all sat at. He looked confused, probably wondering why someone so small would order the spiciest thing on the menu.

There was no way I could have heard that right.

"Did you just order the enchiladas verdes?" I asked, looking over at Tami.

The blonde shifted in her seat before she turned her head to look at me. "Y-yeah. We've had them at your house before, haven't we?"

A sigh escaped my lips. "Enchiladas, not enchiladas verdes. Those are spicy!"

There was a small chuckle. I quickly tore my gaze away from Tami, realizing we weren't alone. For a split second, I had forgotten about Yukimura and Akiba sitting across from us as they were just watching us, not saying a word.

I shook my head inside my hand.

"Don't worry, I can handle it," Tami whispered with a bit of determination.

"So, have you guys made enchiladas together before?" Akiba asked.

I looked up at the dark haired guy sitting across from me. It was probably one of the first times he had spoken up this entire time. He seemed pretty relaxed as he sat back, showing off more of the black t-shirt he wore. Akiba was probably the only one out of the four of us who wore comfortable clothes as I remembered Yukimura—like Tami—wore a skirt but with high heeled boots.

"Not really," I told him.

"But we've made tamales before," Tami chimed in. "It was a lot of fun...as long as you remember to take off the corn husk before eating them. I—uh—I may have made that mistake before."

Before? That was a lie. Tami made that mistake twice. I would have thought she would've learned the first time she had them, but then again, I guess that was kind of impossible to remember something like that when she was under a lot of stress. Whenever Tami became overly-anxious about things, she'd never think straight or remember things correctly. Her mind would just be fixed on the one thing that was worrying her.

The second time she had tamales, she tried eating the husk again. The only thing that made that worse was that I wasn't the only one to witness it. Some of my siblings and my mamá were there to see it happen.

I wasn't going to say that out loud now, not when I probably embarrassed her a bit already.

Yukimura's ears seemed to perk up upon hearing the Mexican dish. When I say her ears perked up, I didn't mean it in a metaphorical way. She had animal-like ears that would twitch every time she heard something interesting, whether it was said right in front of her or something in the distance. The only reason why I knew it was about what we were talking about was because her golden eyes snapped over to me.

There was a smile on her lips as she did.

"That's really cool. Hikaru and I made oyakodon once," Yukimura decided to share. Before she could say the next part of her story, I could see Akiba's face starting to grow a bit pink from embarrassment.

I turned my head to look at him, a bit curious to figure out what it was that happened.

"That sounds like a lot of fun," Tami said.

Hearing Tami's comment seemed to make it worse for Akiba as he looked down at the table. His face was getting even redder than before. His dark black hair flopped over, almost as an attempt to try to hide the color growing on his face.

Okay, something had to have happened when they made oyakodon. There was no way around it.

"It was," Yukimura said, before looking at Akiba. "Especially since Hikaru could use his Quirk to help out." She gave a short laugh before finishing her thought. "Though, it's probably best not to distract him in any way when cooking. All the ingredients we were using ended up on the floor in the matter of seconds!"

Oh.

Somehow, I could only imagine all the ways Yukimura could've distracted Akiba, but seeing how she placed her hand on his shoulder, only one seemed more logical. It wouldn't have surprised me if she somehow kissed him for no apparent reason. Granted, if anyone would've done that, it would've been enough to stop anyone from doing anything, especially when it came to Akiba's Quirk.

Akiba's Quirk was a unique one to say the least, but definitely very useful for anything and everything. Back at the Sports Festival, he used his Quirk to keep people away from him by making others float in the air or stopping them. I wouldn't have been surprised if he accidentally dropped some of the ingredients if she had kissed him.

"Awe, that's cute," Tami commented, taking me a bit off guard. I glanced over at her, seeing her smile as she listened to Yukimura's tale.

There was nothing really cute about it. That was something couples did, and I felt awkward being in the middle of it all.

Honestly, I would rather be talking about anything else other than that.

As if he had heard my thoughts, the waiter came back with our food. It was a bit faster than usual, but I wasn't going to question it. Instead, the moment the waiter left the table, I grabbed the knife and fork and started digging into the enchiladas. There was a green sauce that was poured on top while there were cheese and onion sprinkled on top.

After swallowing a few bites of my enchiladas verdes, I looked over at Tami, who was cutting hers up into small pieces. When she caught me eyeing her, she tried scraping off the green sauce on it, before plopping it in her mouth.

Tami's eyes widened the moment it touched her tongue. I could tell she forced herself to swallow it, giving me a fake smile as she did.

"It's not that spicy," she choked out as there were small tears forming in the corner of her eyes.

I rolled my eyes at her comment, looking back down at my own food and stuck my fork into it. Guess one of the perks of growing up with my mamá's cooking was being used to spicy foods like this. Sure, it was probably way too much for Tami as she wasn't used to it, but it didn't bother me. The more kick a food had to it, the better.

"So, Yamamoto," I heard Akiba say, as I swallowed another bite of my enchiladas. "I heard you had your first internship at the Hercu—"

"Don't," I warned him. Without lifting my head, I looked up at him.

Akiba shrugged. "Guess that answers my question then."

"What question?"

"I was going to ask if you were ever thinking of working with him when you become a Pro," Akiba said. "But by the looks of things, that's probably the last place you'd work at."

I shook my head. Akiba was right about that. The last thing I wanted to do was talk about that. It wasn't that I learned nothing from him, but every moment of my internship was torture.

Instead of explaining myself, I looked up at Yukimura, remembering what Tami had told me when they had both interned at the same agency, Umbra's Agency. It was odd that things seemed to have spiraled out of control the moment they got there. After what happened back in May, no one dared to lay a finger on Tami. In that week, she encountered not one, but two villains.

Out of all people, Tami didn't deserve that. Seeing that she was too distracted on scraping off as much of the green sauce off her enchiladas, this was the perfect time to ask.

"Yukimura," I said, grabbing her attention. She lowered her drink as she heard her name. "You were one of the few students awake when the Infernal Order attacked the dorms, weren't you?"

Her eyes widened in shock. While they did, Tami snapped her head over towards me, clearly not as distracted as I thought she was with her food. It was too late to go back. After everything that had happened, I needed to know everything I could about the Infernal Order.

"Yes," Yukimura answered. "Why—"

"Do you remember a guy named Hibiki and what he was like?" I quickly asked.

Yukimura sat back in her chair as she thought about it for a moment. If anyone would have known anything about him, whether it was his fighting style or what he was like, it'd be her. It was no secret that she was one of the few students in 1-A that had faced most—if not all—of the Infernal Order members who broke into the dorms that night.

But, she could've very well told Akiba about it since they were dating. Thinking about it, I glanced over at him, hoping he'd have some sort of answer. Instead, he just looked over at his girlfriend.

"He was arrogant," Yukimura recalled, "but he was really good with his bow, and his Quirk coupled with that made that fight even harder. He was also a creep."

A creep. That was a new one. When Tami first brought up Hibiki, she never mentioned anything like that. All she claimed was that he wanted to bring her in and force her to become a member of the Infernal Order.

I just hoped he didn't try and do anything to her. If that was the case, then it'd explain why she was so abnormally quiet and scared whenever the topic was brought up. I just wish there was some way I knew what it was that he did.

"Did he happen to say something about your short hair, Tami?" Akiba asked, grabbing Tami's attention. "That he liked girls with—"

His words were cut off by a fork clattering down on a plate.

We all snapped our attention to Tami, whose face paled much more than usual.

"Tami," Yukimura quickly asked. "Are you okay?"

Her head snapped up, quickly eyeing every one of us in fear. I knew that look. It was the same one she had back when my older sister found her that night after she was kidnapped by a group of villains. Back then, she had been gone for days, so her look was probably reliving all the horror that happened.

Looking at her now, I had no idea what was going on inside her mind. Whatever it was, it couldn't have been good.

"Tami," her name came out much softer than I intended it to as I started to reach out for her. My only thoughts were to get her to calm down, but she didn't let my hand touch her arm as she quickly jumped out of her chair.

"I-I need some fresh air," she claimed. Her body shook as she did, and her eyes were avoiding everyones. "I-I'll be back. I just—I just need to be alone for a moment."

She zipped out of the restaurant, causing people to stare at whatever was happening. Out of habit, I pushed myself out of my chair, knowing I needed to get to her now. The longer she would be alone with her own thoughts, the worse she'd get.

There was no way I could let her go through that alone, especially since it had been a while since she had an anxiety attack.

That had to be what she was going through, I thought. She couldn't be alone right now. It'd just make things worse for her.

"I'll be back," I declared.

When I looked back at Akiba and Yukimura, I was surprised that Akiba was standing up as well. His hand rested on Kita's shoulder for a moment, giving it a gentle squeeze. While he was close to her, his eyes were locked on the front door to the restaurant for a moment before looking over at me.

"You should probably stay here," Akiba suggested. "If you want to talk about the Infernal Order, you probably should ask when Tami's not around. I'll make sure she's doing okay. I promise."

No.

Every part of me wanted to tell him why he was wrong with that. Akiba wasn't her friend. I was. At least, I knew her longer than he did. Yet, while I wanted to go after her, all I did was stand there and watch as he quickly maneuvered himself around the restaurant and out the door.

It was then that it hit me as to why I couldn't quite move. As much as I didn't want to admit it at that moment, Akiba was just as much as her friend as I was. It wasn't like we were dating or anything that I would have any valid value excuse to go after her. Tami and I were just friends.

I just hated that she didn't tell me something was bothering her. Maybe because it made me realize friends was all we could ever be. She wouldn't want to be with a guy like me, not when her first boyfriend was Kaito, who was the opposite of me. Even if by some miracle she did like me, she didn't seem ready for a relationship, not with all the shit she has been through in the past few months.

A few moments had passed, making me realize I was still standing there, causing a bit of a scene. I tried regaining my composure by shaking my head and sliding back down into the chair I was sitting in.

My eyes glanced over towards Tami's plate of what looked like untouched enchiladas verdes.

"Hey, it's okay to be worried," Yukimura said, "but Akiba's got this. He's got a knack for dealing with this kind of stuff."

I shook my head. "It's not that," I told Yukimura. "I just can't believe she didn't tell me about it. She used to always tell me whenever she was bothered by something."

"Tami was going through a hard time when that happened," Yukimura reminded me.

That's what's making this so difficult for me to wrap my head around, I thought. Tami had always came to me when she had a problem before. If she felt weak, she would ask for more self defense lessons. If she came in distracted, I'd listen to whatever was bothering her that day. If she seemed to be in some sort of trouble, and I asked about it, she would tell me everything.

So why was it that this thing with Hibiki was different? Did he say more to her than just make the comment about her short hair?

I tried shoving those thoughts away as I tried not to overthink it. It was probably just a lucky guess that Akiba could tell that was what bothered her, especially when I looked up at Yukimura. That creep probably said the same thing to her, and being that Tami and Yukimura both had short hair, Akiba probably just assumed that was what was said.

Short hair was the only thing Yukimura and Tami had in common. While Tami was short and petite and usually wore clothes that were comfortable, Yukimura didn't. She wasn't big, but she was tall and a bit muscular. Not in the same sense that my dad, Hatsuko, and I were muscular, but it was evident that she worked out. Despite that, she still dressed up whenever we went out. Today, she just so happened to wear a sweater, covering up some of the muscles on her arms.

That was probably the only reason why they knew. Besides, I shouldn't overthink this. Tami and I were just friends. It was best that way if we just stayed that way, for her sake.

"Okay," I said. "Then tell me everything you know about the Infernal Order."

Yukimura's eyes widened as I had said that. Realizing she wasn't ready herself, I took in a deep breath.

"Please," I asked. "I need to know what we're up against in case they try to take Tami away again." Realizing I was just talking about her, I quickly added, "or any of my friends for that matter. If you fought them before, then you probably know better than anyone what they are after. I need to prepare myself, so I can protect them."

The pink haired girl nodded her head. As she explained to me everything she knew about them, I couldn't help but to think about Tami.

I just hope she was doing okay.

🌸End of part 2🌸

🌸Chapter Question🌸
What's your favorite type of food to eat?

🌸Character Spotlight: Kita Yukimura🌸
Book: Kita's Legacy
Likes: Reading

🌸Character Spotlight: Raiden Yamamoto🌸
Book: I'm No Hero Series
Likes: Tamales

No song for this chapter...cuz I was lazy. Sorry.