"MY HERO SECRET"

A My Hero Academia fanfic by Nozomi888

Disclaimer: My Hero Academia is owned by Kōhei Horikoshi. I am a mere fangirl who isn't getting enough FemDeku/Kacchan, FemDeku/Todoroki stories, and so I've written my own. This is a FemDeku/Kacchan fic and is set before the Training Camp arc.

[A/N: If you started reading this fic BEFORE August 18, please re-read Chapters 1-5 again. I posted an Author's Note on August 18, as I found major inconsistencies and missing plot details that I needed for my storyline. Also, I started writing this fic before I finished Season 1. I have finished Season 1 to 3 already so will now try to stay close to the canon universe. Anyway, as of this chapter, all old chapters have been replaced with the new/corrected ones.]

—o—o—o—o—o—

CHAPTER 6

As she straightened herself to stand up, she noticed that something felt different. Did her clothes feel a bit tight all of a sudden?

She looked down at her body.

Oh!

She was a boy again! She ran to her room and looked at the full-length mirror. She thought about being a girl again.

Yes! Her Quirk was back!

She tested out switching back between a girl and a boy. It seemed to work fine.

She let out a sigh of relief. She would be able to go to school on Monday, at last.

"Okaa-san! Okaa-san, look!" she ran to her mother as Izuku.

A few hours later, after dinner, Izuki went back to her room and sat down on the bed.

She frowned a bit in thought. Originally, she had planned to stay in her male form forever. But now that her Quirk had shown its first infallibility, she now needed to include her true female form into the equation. Additionally, there was no foolproof explanation yet as to why she could suddenly use her Quirk. It obviously had something to do with her frame of mind, but what exactly? An accidental kiss with Kacchan itself had not caused the switch, but rather it seemed that thinking about the kiss triggered the instability?

Izuki looked into the mirror and for the first time since the incident, willfully recalled the events of that day to mind. Nothing happened. She was still in her male form.

She tried thinking about kissing her other male classmates- Iida, Todoroki, Kirishima, Tokoyami (How would you accomplish this kiss?, she thought musingly), Kaminari, Mineta- she visibly blanched at herself in the mirror at Mineta's name, Sero- nothing.

Well, scratch that theory.

So it wasn't the kiss itself, then?

She switched to thinking about being a girl again and watched as her features and body changed from Izuku back to Izuki.

Was she back in control of her Quirk?

Maybe she would try the opposite. After all, she didn't know how she changed back into a guy either.

The only thing that came to mind was Kacchan's parting words, which she knew were meant precisely for her: "You better be in top shape when you come to school on Monday."

And her disbelief in that supportive statement had motivated her to work harder to try turning back to Izuku.

She gasped, looking at the mirror, her features warping from Izuki back to Izuku.

Izuki thought really hard now. If it wasn't the thought or the act itself that triggered the instability, was it HOW she felt or thought, of the thought or the act in itself?

She was Izuku right now, so she concentrated really hard on staying MALE, and thought again of the kiss. But this time, she thought of how she felt. She thought of how warm and firm Kacchan's lips had felt against hers, tried to remember the feel of his strong and lithe body under hers. She could feel the now-familiar heated flush crawled up from her neck to her ears, and watched in dismay at her reflection- at her FEMALE form's pink cheeks and slightly downcast eyes, looking sheepish and embarrassed.

Aw, heck.

It was her FEELINGS.

Her feelings about how Kacchan felt against her, how much more she wanted to discover about his body, that was triggering the instability.

Was she attracted to Kacchan?

The simple thought sent her to her knees. She crawled to her bed and flopped face down, covering her face with her hands. Really? After all those years of bullying, of being treated like nothing, of being ignored and silently accepting of his ill-treatment of her, she still liked and admired him enough to find him attractive, and that one stupid accidental fall ON TOP of him seemed to have unearthed some deeply buried, underlying feelings she apparently had for him. She didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. She must have been some kind of extreme masochist in her past life, for her to develop this kind of attraction to her lifelong tormentor.

Now that she had figured out what was going on, she was going to have to put a stop to it. She harbored no illusion that Kacchan would even be the slightest bit attracted to her, he made that evidently clear all those years he had known her as Deku- he didn't even remember her as a girl anymore! It was already a hopeless case. There was nothing to be gained by entertaining fantasies about wanting to feel those lips against hers again.

Wait, DID she want to feel him again?

Oh Kami-sama, yes she did.

—o—o—o—o—o—

Izuki put on her cap and made a final check in the mirror. After an exhausting evening of thinking, she had decided to put an end to these feelings she was developing before they got out of hand. Whether it was Kacchan or some other person, she couldn't allow distractions to get in the way of her dream of becoming a hero, and the instability of her Quirk brought about by her unchecked feelings could hinder that dream before she could turn them into reality. She couldn't allow herself to be distracted by foolish notions of boys, crushes and all these teenage, growing up nonsense.

On the other hand, what she originally thought was a perfect (but useless) Quirk, was now actually pretty flawed if it could become unstable by a simple FEELING. It was a good thing that she found out about this flaw now rather than later.

It also occurred to her that she now had to think about training her female form. It would not bode well if she changed in the middle of hero work and broke all her bones simply because her female body couldn't handle the same physical changes that her male body had already adapted to. She needed to train her female body to be physically fit enough to handle One for All, and she needed to train her mind to re-adjust how she let One for All flow through her female body. She had to be adept in switching between both forms should it ever become necessary.

Today, she was going to do just that. She was going to get some physical training done at the beach in her female form. She adjusted her mask and tugged on her new, fingerless gloves- something to help her hide the tell-tale scars on her right hand. But before heading there, she wanted to visit the little boy and his mother at the hospital to check on them.

—o—o—o—o—o—

Izuki sighed satisfactorily as she closed the door behind her. She had just finished visiting with the little boy and his mother, who was on her way to a full recovery. It had taken her some time to visit them, since she had not known their names, only the hospital where they had been taken to be treated, and it took a long time to explain to the nurses at the station that she was looking for a lady and a little boy who had been brought in from yesterday's incident. The little boy had jumped up and started crying when she had entered the room, running over to her and thanking her over and over. She had soothed him down and they sat together talking about never doing such a foolish thing again, to which the boy simply proclaimed that he was going to be a hero someday too, just like HER.

She spent more time at the hospital than she originally intended, but it was fine all the same, and she came out of that little visit feeling much better, remembering that this was the reason why she wanted to be a hero too.

Well, she still had a long way to go, so she had better get started!

She had just turned the corner when she ran into someone coming from the other end.

"Oof!"

"Oh sorry, I wasn't looking-" she stopped. Her eyes widened. "Todoroki-kun, what are you doing here?"

Todoroki brushed down his shirt, looking at her curiously. "I'm sorry, have we met?"

Oh, crap!

Izuki almost clapped her hand to her face in alarm, but stopped herself. Her heart was beating wildly in panic. "Uhm, no, uh, sorry about that. I—I remember you from the UA Sports Festival that was televised awhile back. Yes, that's right!" she rubbed her back of her neck sheepishly. She didn't think that she'd run into someone she knew at the hospital and had been completely taken off guard.

She bowed to him. "I'm sorry if I was being too familiar by calling you by name, Todoroki-san, it was rude of me."

"Ah no- forget about it," Todoroki answered, turning in order to go about on his way.

"I had been visiting a boy and his mother from yesterday's incident, and remembering our talk led me to not paying attention to where I was going…" Izuki rambled, still a bit panicked about being seen by a classmate, but also kicking herself mentally for mentioning things that were irrelevant to Todoroki.

Todoroki stopped. "How kind of you," he answered, a bit perplexed. Did this strange girl tend to make light conversation with random strangers? He wasn't sure how to handle the situation.

"Oh, not at all!" Izuki exclaimed. "I just wanted to see for myself that they were alright."

The way she phrased the statement made Todoroki pause, then he asked "Were you there when the incident happened?" He had seen the incident in the news himself, but a bystander or a home viewer would not normally go out of their way to check on the victims or the injured, would they?

"Uhmm, yeah." She sounded embarrassed now. "I helped a little bit to pull the boy to safety, then tried to help his mother who was trapped under some rubble before the emergency rescue teams arrived?" she sounded unsure. "So I guess I just wanted to check on them and make sure they were recovering all right."

Izuki hung her head. She sounded lame. Could the floor please swallow her up?

Todoroki was unsure what to respond at this point. In the past, he would have just given her a grunt in acknowledgement when she first ran into him, then walked off. But ever since the UA Sports Festival, and the myriad of realizations he had come to accept and acknowledge after Midoriya's outburst to him, he felt that he had changed a little. He was now more interested in the things and happenings around him, like current events and people.

This girl certainly seemed interesting to him right now.

"Are you a studying to be a hero, too?" he asked tentatively.

Her head still down, he watched her enthusiastically nod her head at him. He waited for her to continue speaking, but this time, there was a stretched silence between them. They both fidgeted in awkward silence until he remembered something.

"I was visiting my mother."

"What?" her head shot up and he watched her looking at him tentatively, curiosity in her eyes.

"You asked me earlier what I was doing here," he clarified. "I was visiting my mother."

"Oh! Uhmmm, I see, uhmm…" Izuki trailed off. She was curious about Todoroki's situation, as she knew very little, and now she had an opportunity to find out something more about him. "Has she been here long? How is she doing?"

"I would say she's doing alright."

"I- I see," she smiled at him, knowing that this was a big improvement over how Todoroki usually answered and reacted when it came to talking about his family. She wouldn't pry any further.

"That's good to hear. Well, I guess I won't keep you any longer, Todoroki-san. Take care, and I hope your mother gets better real soon! Your presence will surely help her recover faster!"

Todoroki could hear the smile in her gentle voice, even though he couldn't see it behind the mask she wore. Then she raised her eyes at him and he looked into twinkling, emerald eyes that seemed to wish him all the happiness in the world. Just as he was starting to feel captivated by her gaze, she bowed to him again and continued on her way.

He found himself watching her retreating figure till she turned the next corner and finally disappeared from his sight.