Spacetime Anomaly: MHA Fanfic

Chapter 12.2: Hagakure's Internal Battle

Thursday's training session came and went as it did practically all the others. For Hagakure at least, she left as she always did; just barely able to walk her way home. Over the past couple of days however, she had found a strange comfort in the fact that Izuku spent most of his time sparring with her of all people.

It seemed her impulsive confession after the USJ incident hadn't caused him to reject her and he was at the very least trying to keep their relationship positive. Though a small part of her felt like he was only focusing on her because she was the least combat-ready peer in their group, she hoped he was trying to spend time with her not just for the training, but also to see if they could make something more out of their budding relationship.

Eventually, as the sun just about set and dusk fell into night, Hagakure reached her home. Despite her body crying out in protest, atop all the school work and physical training she did, she wasn't even close to calling it a day as she set her things out in her apartment's living room. Like many of U.A.'s students, she lived by herself and originally hailed from far away prefectures, so for all intents and purposes she lived like an a.d.u.l.t; completely independent and responsible for practically all aspects of her life.

She didn't have her parents around to tell her to complete her homework or eat healthily. But she did so anyway as was expected of her should she want to make it through three years of studying at U.A. Though even after cooking and eating dinner, completing her homework, and even getting a bit of studying out of the way, Hagakure still had it in her to push herself if only for an extra hour of training while she watched late-night TV before going to bed.

She wasn't like Izuku who both completed physical exercises in his room as well as mental drills to improve his esper powers. Instead, she chose this time to get her Light-Warping powers under control by reading over the notes and the advice Izuku had passed her while letting the background noise of the TV entertain her.

On this particular night, as Hagakure was laughing along with the audience of a sitcom she was watching, she nearly cried out in shock as she caught a glimpse of her hand manifesting out of her invisibility. As soon as she saw her hand, though, it almost instantly returned to being invisible and though it pained Hagakure to stop watching the precious few minutes of entertainment her schedule allowed her, she resolved to more seriously concentrate on unraveling her Invisibility.

A couple minutes later Hagakure stood by her bathroom mirror staring at herself in disbelief. Touching her face for the first time not out of muscle memory or instinctive feeling, but by sight, she almost felt uncomfortable as it was ingrained in her from a very early age being able to see the wall behind her.

For a split moment, as she broke concentration, her innate state of invisibility returned and to get her physical form to manifest she needed a couple seconds of focus. Yet, this was a massive breakthrough in her abilities.

"Holy shit!" Hagakure ran out of the bathroom to get her phone. She took a photo of herself looking awfully excited and was about to send the photo to Izuku, happy as can be to tell inform him that his advice was paying off when she noticed that it was almost 10:00 PM. Then, her body's d.e.s.i.r.e to sleep started consuming her excitement and she realized, 'Oh… He's the first person I thought to share my breakthrough with and not my family?'

Growing red in the face, Hagakure put her phone away and returned to her room before turning everything off and going to sleep. As much as her actions seemed calm, internally she was panicking as the very real possibility that her attraction to him was steadily growing.

'Stupid!' She berated herself as she smothered herself with her pillow, 'Why share this news with him of all people?! He can already see you!'

With her thoughts dividing into an emotional anima as well as a logical one, the cognizant part of herself retorted, 'Well, it only makes sense that we would want him to be the first person to know. He is after all the person that guided us and we do like him after all...'

'Yeah? Well, what about mom and dad? To only consider them an afterthought...'

'It's far too late for them to even be up anyway. Or have you forgotten, they're busy with their own lives?'

'...' Logic won in the end as Hagakure's emotionally impulsive conscience didn't put it past Izuku to be available for discussion at all hours of the day. Everyone already knew about his sleepless routine.

Though, just because this debate was over, it didn't mean she was through with her split consciences as her emotional anima thought, 'Welp, guess I'll just have to surprise everyone at school tomorrow~'

'Uh, that's gonna be a hard no from me,' a different part of her conscience stated.

'Huh? Why the f.u.c.k not?' It only stood to reason that the manifestation of someone's emotions carried a bit of exaggeration, Hagakure subconsciously reasoned.

'For one, I think it would only help us if we keep this ability to ourselves. Telling and showing Izuku is one thing, but we should keep as many of our cards hidden before the Sports Festival. Moreover, let's not forget where we stand in all this.' The oddly dark tone this abstract representation of her conscience took caused Hagakure to display a grim expression externally.

'We've been the invisible girl since we can remember. Even if coming out of our invisibility is now possible, even if we really are as pretty as Izuku called us… We can't just forget about the past. The ridicule we faced for being seen as useless, how we were seen as a prop, a one-trick pony...'

The scars of the past were silently relived as Hagakure recalled her time in primary and junior high school. To have grown up her whole life as invisible, especially in a Quirked society where the hierarchy of social standing was commanded by how flashy or powerful one's Quirk was, she was put just slightly higher than the Quirkless.

True, her Invisibility was eye-catching, but until she met Izuku that was all she could do, and she couldn't even control it. Over time, the novelty of having a floating uniform as a classmate would wear off and she would be ostracised. Now, she was getting control of her Quirk, only able to hold back her innate light-warping to reveal herself under intense concentration, but in the future, she might be able to do so effortlessly.

She had grown up mostly being looked at oddly until she was ignored entirely, so to suddenly have access to what a regular girl lived like, she almost d.e.s.i.r.ed to keep her appearance to herself. 'Would they treat me differently just because I can reveal myself now? Will I have to deal with perverts like Mineta and Kaminari if I came out to the class? What if I stayed invisible? Would the Class eventually forget about me like my time in primary and middle school?'

Sleep would eventually take her from over-worrying, but for the foreseeable future, she would keep her newfound ability to unravel the light that instinctively warped around her body to herself. With the excuse that she would think about revealing herself to the class when she got more practice done and could more easily transition out of her invisibility, the days would pass and eventually, Monday arrived. Class 1-A and 1-B would be having their collaborative training.

…

Saturday came and almost instantly, Uraraka became overwhelmed. This was her first time joining the "after school" training camp and the sight of so many of her classmates already gathered caused her to think if only for a second that this was a part of school activities. Moreover, she wasn't even the last person to arrive as there were only six members around out and about, warming up on Dagobah beach's pearly white sand.

Izuku, noticing her arrive, stopped his stretching to fill her in on the details of today's training menu. When he was finished, he noticed her look of trepidation and calmly assured her, "Don't worry Uraraka-san, naturally I don't expect you to be able to match our most physically advanced goals. Just try your best and follow along."

Pointing at Todoroki, Izuku said, "Only the most physically apt like Todoroki-san and Bakugo are able to follow me to the very end. However," he then brought her attention to Mina and Kirishima who were talking as they stretched, and continued, "If you stick with the program, doing your best everyday, you'll improve like them. You know, before they came they too could barely complete half the goals I set up, but now, they're stronger."

"I-I'll try..." Uraraka said before finding herself a spot to settle her things. After a couple of minutes passed everyone that would have come, arrived, so without much delay, Izuku started the day off with bicycle kicks to "warm-up" everyone's cores. Of course, with his standard, this warm-up was asked to be held for nearly half an hour and by half that time, most people were fighting the urge to stop.

The name of the game this Saturday gathering was endurance, so immediately after the bicycle kicks, upper body conditioning began with burpee to suspended pull-up intervals. As the beach only had five pull up bars set up, while those were occupied, the rest of the group did sets of ten burpees before the people at the pull up bars would switch out, repeating this process until everyone did a hundred pull-ups.

Unfortunately, while most of the newcomers progressed through the exercises efficiently, Izuku could tell that Uraraka was struggling. Not because she couldn't complete the exercises, but because she seemed distracted by her own thoughts. Everyone in Class 1-A was fit and though their levels of fitness weren't unanimously the same, Izuku knew Uraraka could do much better so he moved over to her side and asked, "Is something the matter?"