"…Well, this couldn't have happened at a worse time, huh?"

The clouds had opened up, and decided that right now was the perfect time to dump some of the heaviest rain that Japan had seen all year. Right on top of about forty Hero students who were just trying to do their bit to clean up the community. It was like mother nature had hear the calls, and decided to be as literal as she could, just to keep up the same level of misery.

Most people preferred the cold. The cold was something that could be countered; More and more layers could be added on, and heat could be provided to combat the effects of the cold. There were always measures that could be taken. The cold was something that one could combat. But the heat?

Heat was inescapable. The only options one had when presented with the scorching heat was to remove layers of clothing. And if one wasn't cool enough by the point public decency was being stretched, that was just too bad. One could combat the cold. There wasn't anything that one could take for the heat.

So, in the end, no one took anything. The less clothing that they had, the better, and the cooler, they would be. Though that relied on it remaining sunny and bright.

No one had been expecting a freak rainstorm to suddenly and swiftly occupy the sky.

Everyone ducked into the nearest shelter that they could manage to find, hoping to avoid the downpour, at least until it either passed, or their ride home arrived.

Izuku shook his hand through his damp hair, shaking away some of the droplets of rain that had landed in there. He and Mina Ashido, they had both been fortunate enough to be collecting garbage near a… Well, Izuku wasn't exactly sure what to call it.

It was a section of a nearby wall that seemed to have been cut out and made into a shelter, a bit like an underpass of a motorway. Except this underpass didn't have an exit at the other side, and cute about three meters into the wall. It certainly wasn't anything fancy, but it would do the job.

Rain hadn't been forecast for the next few days. According to the weather forecast, it was supposed to be sunny skies and twenty above weather for the rest of the week, with a downpour on the last day. Frankly, the exact opposite of rain had been predicted – When they left the school-grounds, it was one of the hottest days of the Summer, which was turning out to be one of the hottest Summers any of them had ever experienced. Around thirty-two centigrade at Midday, with no signs of letting up. Frankly, everyone had been vocally been praying for some clouds to shield them from the rays of heat.

The universe had decided to be a bit literal with that request though.

It hadn't been much of an outing, in all honesty. Nothing too important, so it wasn't as if something vital had to be called off because of the weather. It was just trash duty.

Neither Yuuei nor Heroism had exactly been in the greatest light over the last year or so, what with the League of Villains causing their havoc so frequently in the news, the loss of All Might, and everything else that the news seemed to blare out every other day. No end to bad news that damaged the fabrics of Hero society ever seemed to come. There was so much out there that it almost felt like a tidal wave over their heads.

Something as trivial as clearing out a park of garbage had seemed like a good idea. Nothing too noteworthy, and nothing especially exciting either. But it was just a nice idea that Iida and Kendou both presented to 1A and 1B. Just something small to show a bit of the spirit that came with Heroism, and no so much the glory of it. When the two of them had decided on it hadn't been clear – A conversation during a presidential meeting or something?

Either way, it was an idea Izuku had supported whole-heartedly. After all, he'd done something similar when he was training with All Might, before he had inherited the power of One For All. Back then, All Might had taught him about the less glamorous side of Heroism, but an equally important part of it nonetheless. It had taken a bit of persuading of the others, but eventually the rest seemed to agree with him and their class leaders when the benefits of such an act of charity would bring.

The worst part was, they had barely even arrived when the rain began to pour. Barely anything had been cleared, but here they were, in torrential rain, unable to do just about anything that they had set out to do here. And their transport had left, not due to return for a while. So they were stuck here, until their ride came back.

"Guess we should've double checked a weather report before we left, huh?" Mina asked, letting out a small sigh as she leaned against the wall of their shelter. She had a slight smile on her face, more bemused than anything else. Maybe there was some kind of irony to the situation that she saw that Izuku just couldn't seem to find.

Regardless of it, he was intensely focused on the rain.

"Is it just me, or was that change in the weather incredibly sudden?" Izuku asked, scratching at his chin. "It almost seemed… Unnatural."

A hot day, suddenly overcome by black clouds covering the sky like a rapidly-spreading fungus, replacing heat with cold, and sunshine with water, all in just a few moments of their arrival. Cloudbursts were known to happen when the temperature got too hot, to shower the surrounding areas as condensation occurred, but to Izuku, it just seemed a bit too… Quick.

Granted, he wasn't exactly a weather aficionado, but there was one thing that he did know, in this super-powered world that he found himself a member of.

"… Do you think it might be from someone's Quirk?"

"I kind of doubt it, Midoriya." Mina said, keeping her eyes on the falling raindrops, for lack of anything more interesting to watch. "We're pretty far away from the city. Not a lot of people out here."

Neither Mina nor Izuku were exactly known for being the closest of classmates. The pair of them got along well enough, and could even be considered as friends if one wanted to be liberal – Which Mina certainly had no objections to. It was just the kind of person she was – but they never really went out of one another's way to talk to one another.

Not that Mina hadn't made the effort. She had tried to speak to the green-haired boy on many occasions, although none of them seemed to click. Something was always going on with this the guy, something that was always taking priority, or weighed on his mind. The timing always just seemed to be off when she got around to talking to him.

Now, they weren't going anywhere. And it wasn't like they had anywhere else to go. Not if they didn't want to get battered by the storm outside.

A crack of thunder made the Acid Quirk user feel herself tense up. She'd never liked thunder – An irrational phobia that had stuck with her ever since she was born. It was something that she generally kept to herself, and tried to hide from the others. Being afraid of thunder – It made her feel kind of dumb. She could shoot a corrosive liquid out of her skin, and she was afraid of some rapid air expansion around lightning bolts?

"Honestly, I'm just glad that we got in out of the rain." She said, not exactly going anywhere in particular with this. When she found herself tense, if someone was nearby, she would just talk. It helped her to keep her mind off of things. "I uh, I guess we were just lucky that we were near here when it started, huh? You think that the others found – "

"If someone had a Quirk that let them control the weather… Well, there aren't a lot of ways to counter that."

Mina blinked, and looked over at Izuku. Was he even listening to her?

As it turned out – He wasn't. Maybe he had been moving while the thunder has her preoccupied, but Izuku had sat down and pulled out a notebook and a pencil since his classmate had looked at him since. Using his legs as something to lean on, her had flipped open to a new page, and already begun writing in details about this hypothetical Quirk which may or may not even exist. It wasn't even clear if he even knew that Mina had been talking to him – He now seemed enwrapped in his own little world of speculation and analysis.

"The best way that I could think of would be to render the user unconscious, but that means getting in range of the user, which would probably end up being difficult for contact and short-range type Quirk users. Long Range attacks could probably do some more damage, but that runs the risk of causing a lot of collateral. A Hero would need to be away from any buildings at all before using this kind of Quirk at full capacity. It'd be way too easy to damage someone's home, or cause serious property damage. Although, if the user can control to a certain degree that they can select where certain effects hit where, then it could limit the potential danger, but it could also cause a weaker vari…" He could probably talk like this for hours and not end up bored in the least. His pencil was moving as quickly as his mouth was, which was probably struggling to keep up with his brain as the electricity sparked throughout his cranium.

Frankly, it was an amazing sight to watch.

There wasn't even a confirmed Quirk to be working with, and yet here was Izuku, jotting down notes like he knew that somewhere out there, there really was a puppeteer behind the strings of the insane weather patterns that the day had been providing them with. Almost immediately, he was analysing and theorizing about the potential pros and cons of such a Quirk, like he was trying to figure out a way to defeat the elements themselves.

"You… You do know that we don't even know if there is someone out there with a weather-controlling Quirk, right?" Mina asked, blinking hard.

Her questioned seemed to pull him away from whatever sentence he was writing down as his head shot up, almost like he was surprised that she was still there. He blinked, and then glanced down at his work. Then outside, then back to her. "O-Oh, I know. It's just… Seems like it'd be better to think about this kind of thing in case I ever run into someone with a Quirk like that."

"…You're making an entry into your Quirk notebook… Thing, based on a Quirk that may not and probably doesn't exist on the off chance that you might run into someone with a Quirk similar to this hypothetical power?"

"…I-It doesn't hurt to be prepared."

There were a number of words that one could use to describe someone like Izuku. Obsessive. Hyper focused. Some people in the public had even taken to calling him insane. Given that he had a history of breaking every bone in his body just to prove a point, it wasn't difficult to see where such an assessment came from. And it wasn't like any of them were wrong, either.

Most of the stereotypical words that found themselves associated with Izuku were accurate, sure. But none of them were particularly applicable to what Mina felt right now.

"Incredible."

"H-Huh?"

"You. You're incredible." Mina smirked. "Seriously. You never cease to amaze me."

Confidence was something that Izuku had noticeably grown in over his time at Yuuei. When he first entered the school, he was prone to blushing and stammering and general awkwardness around just about every single person that he ever came across. No matter who he found himself talking to, or whatever the subject matter seemed to be, he was always nervous.

Conditioning throughout the Hero courses many trials, and the tribulations that came with being a student during this trying time had helped him develop his self-composure, his confidence, and his ability to get through sentences without stammering.

It all seemed to go out the window though when he was on the receiving end of a compliment. "H-H-Huh?!" Especially one that came out of nowhere like that.

It made Mina laugh at just how easily he could be thrown off by something so simple, after everything he'd faced. If she were in a more playful mood, she'd be tempted to tease him just to pass the time.

Only she wasn't in a playful mod. She was being completely serious.

"You're sat here, making notes on a Quirk you made up in your head, just in case. A storm rolls up, and instead of complaining about it, you're thinking of a strategy to actually fight it. You're literally trying to come up with a method to fight the freaking weather!" Just saying it out loud made her want to burst out laughing. "How many people do you even know who would try to fight the weather, for God's sake?!"

"W-When you put it like that, I guess it does sound a little dumb, huh?..."

"Are you messing with me dude? It's freakin' amazing! I don't know a single other person who would be willing to even try to come up with a strategy to fight a Quirk which might not even exist!"

No one else would be so insane as to try to fight the very elements themselves, and yet here Izuku was, doing it without even realizing it. How on earth did someone reach the point of being so dedicated that they would just casually think up ways to do something like that? Especially if one considered the fact that when he started attending Yuuei, he didn't even have control over his Quirk. And he was now leaping around the place like he'd never gone a day in his life without having mastered his power.

It was really just incredible.

Rain continued to fall outside – Honestly, in a way, it was kind of relaxing. There was something oddly therapeutic about watching the water hit the ground, and listening to the rhythmic pattern of it as it collided with the earth, and splattered everywhere. Were it not for the risk of thunder, Mina probably would have been able to sit down, and allow herself to doze off into a light sleep while she awaited the let-up.

"…Y'know, I didn't have great control over my Quirk at first either."

She wasn't exactly sure why she said it. It just sort of came out, all without her being aware of it until the words hung in the air, waiting to be addressed properly. When she realized what she said, she blinked. What had made her say that?

When she thought about it, it was just kind of a rude thing to say – She was effectively reminding him of how garbage his control over his Quirk was, like that was some kind of topic that he'd want to have brought up now. Was she seriously that desperate for a distraction from the storm? Or was this just something that she had said out of boredom?

"O-Oh?"

Izuku's head was tilted, and he was looking at her with a curious expression. He had evidently expected her to say something like that about as much as she had, but he wasn't weirded out by it at all, nor was he offended in any way. In fact, he almost seemed interested by what she had to say.

"Uh, well..." Mina sighed softly, and decided to sit down next to her classmate. "I wouldn't say that I didn't exactly lack control over it. It's more… It just wasn't all that impressive at first."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, at first, my Acid wasn't, well… Acid."

Izuku blinked harder.

"I mean… At first, my Quirk just let me make a slime-y kind of thing. It was pretty much the same as my Acid is now, only it didn't corrode anything. And that was kind of it as far as my Quirk went. It wasn't all that powerful."

"I-Isn't your skin a result of your Quirk?"

"Yeah. That was the same though. Hell, I've been pink my entire life. But It wasn't acidic until I was… About seven, I think? The worst it would do is irritate your skin. I didn't mind my Quirk being just that, but it wasn't a very… Heroic Quirk, y'know?"

"I… Yeah." He nodded, rather awkwardly. Honestly, growing up without a Quirk whatsoever, he couldn't exactly understand how it felt to have one that didn't feel strong enough to do what you wanted with it. At the lowest point in his life, he probably would have been content with the ability to make one rock a day – Just something.

But it wasn't logic that was difficult to understand. Especially to someone who wasn't even a decade old. Having a Quirk that one didn't think was good enough, would have to be… Frustrating, to say the least. To have something in your hands, that just wasn't good enough.

"So, for a while, I was stuck with a Quirk that just let me make slime. I was already pink, and my horns were growing by the time my Quirk activated. So, it kind of seemed like that was it. And it kind of… I mean, I shouldn't complain." The pink girl laughed softly. "I had a Quirk. So, I was pretty lucky, but it just didn't feel like it was enough, y'know? So…. I just practiced with it."

She looked out at the rain again.

"I practiced throwing it, and making as much of it as I could. I figured that if I could do something useful with it, that'd be all the proof I'd need to get into a Hero course. I tried learning how to throw my slime as far as I could, and be as accurate as I could. I tried making as much of it as I could. And I learned how to slide with it."

"…Which is why your Quirk is focused around your hands and feet.

"Yep! It just ended up being second nature to me. And after I started to develop actual Acid instead of slime, I was just kind of ready to go. Didn't seem like there was any stopping me after that." She turned and looked at Izuku. "That's why I think you're pretty damn impressive. You barely could even control your Quirk when you came to Yuuei, and in a few months, you use it like you've been a master your whole life. I don't think anyone's ever been able to master their Quirks like that."

"I-I wouldn't go that far…"

"I would."

Izuku finally turned and met Mina's gaze, and returned it with his own. He and she didn't talk all that much, and it was just fortune that had made them end up in this place together. This entire conversation was the result of them just happening to be close by one another at the right time to duck under the same shelter. And yet, Mina had said such things about him.

Things that she could have only really concluded by watching, and acknowledging the progress that he had been making since they were placed in the same class. Of course, everyone had made progress. He wasn't alone in his improvement. But he was the one she had been focusing on?

"Seriously. I'm not joking around." Mina said, giving him a kind smile. "You're incredible." She then blinked, and looked out at the rain once more. A hand reached out and scratched at the back of her neck as she let out a gentle laugh. "Sorry. That kinda came out of nowhere, huh?"

"I-It did catch me off guard." The boy admitted, even though his cheeks were now slightly red. If this was the beginning of his time at Yuuei, he would be bright crimson by now.

"Sorry. I just kinda have the habit of saying that sorta thing. Didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"No, no, I… I'm not. At all." A smile had made its way onto his lips. "…I think it's impressive that you developed your Quirk how you did."

"Really?"

"You were already so focused on being a Hero when you weren't sure that your Quirk was up for it. So you kept practicing, and developing the style you still have today… I…. Couldn't do anything like that."

"Because you would've knocked the house down?" A raised eyebrow from the Acid Quirk user was accompanied by a smirk.

"Y-Yeah… But… I don't know if it would have ever occurred to me even if I could."

Mina blinked. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I…. I've focused more on studying rather than physical stuff. Before I got into Yuuei, I didn't really have any kind of physical fitness, and even then, just about everyone else is better at endurance and that sort of thing than I am. I don't think I would have ever spent time training myself like you did."

"You would have."

"Maybe… But I didn't. And you did."

For some reason, neither one of them spoke much about the topic after that. There was this feeling of calmness between the two of them that hovered above, that didn't push them to do anything at all. They didn't need to talk anymore.

Everything that had needed to be said had been said.

They engaged in brief conversations, trying to fill in the time until the storm cleared up. None of them had much deeper meaning than the one they just had – Subjects like grades, their classmates, and other such inquiries that didn't hold as much meaning or impact. Small talk. They didn't need to talk all that much.

But they wanted to.

Thoughts entered their minds, but they weren't worth discussing. They were content for the time being.

Thunder eventually struck again, but it didn't bother Mina as much as it normally did. Instead, she just chose not to focus on it. To just relax, and enjoy making small talk with Izuku.

Something she was content to do until the storm outside subsided.

This one-shot was the result of a prompt made in the MinaDeku discord – Me and a bunch of others decided to make up a short story around the word "Storm" – This is what I came up with. This is more an experimental piece for me, but I think I explored their relationship here rather nicely. I don't think it's my best piece of writing by a longshot, but I'm happy enough to put it out there for you all to enjoy ^_^

If you enjoy what I do and want to support me, I have both a Pat Reon and a Ko – Fi account, both under the name of QuirkQuartz – Donations are highly appreciated, but not at all required. And if you want to follow me online to find out what I'm doing, I also have both a Tumblr and now a Twitter, both also under QuirkQuartz – Which is where I post my art, and reblog nearly everything Izumina that I can find, so they're pretty awesome places to be.

Either way, I hope you all managed to enjoy this little thing, and I'll see you next time - See ya!