Musutafu city. Still morning. The current scene of turmoil was a devastated intersection where a large villain composed of deeply condensed sediment was swatting away oncoming cars. He was feeding off a hole in the ground, accumulating the dirt and rock to make himself larger. A pile of wrecked cars lay beside it, and it was biding its time causing more distress.

Suddenly, a green blur shot past it. Long black tendrils shot out, wrapping up all the cars and pulling them away from the villain. A pink blur soon followed.

"There!"

Ochaco, having taken the opportunity to apprehend the villain while Izuku swiftly rescued the civilians still trapped in their vehicles, gave a large grin as she watched the villain float up, his large body flailing helplessly.

"Hey look, it's Uravity! She's here to save us!"

"Oh, then was that green blur—?"

"Yeah, it was definitely Deku! But hang on… What's that she's wearing?"

The civilian spectators looked on in curiosity as they observed that Ochaco was wearing a strange metallic apparatus around her torso. It served to accentuate her already prominent chest, making the men present stare.

"Eyes back in your skulls, boys!" Izuku had flown over after depositing the cars safely, feet planted firmly on the wall. He was preparing to kick off, wearing the same apparatus as Ochaco was. The men quickly looked away from Ochaco in embarrassment while the women looked up at Izuku with stars in their eyes.

"It's him, it's him!" They were close to squealing.

"Time for the finisher!" Ochaco shouted as the villain had now floated. "All yours, Deku!"

"Alright!"

FWOOSH!

Izuku blasted off from the wall, flying high in the sky until he was arcing above the rock villain. Like a well-rehearsed ballet, Izuku was bringing himself down for a kick.

"Manchesterrrrrr…"

As Izuku prepared to attack, the apparatus he was wearing suddenly sputtered. Powerful bursts of air shot out of the small jets on the right side, sending Izuku spinning away from his target.

"Was… that supposed to happen?" Somebody asked. Ochaco, meanwhile, groaned.

"You promised us there would be no hiccups, Hatsume!"

"Hiccups, schmiccups. Inventing is always about trial and error." Hatsume's chipper voice came in through the earpieces Izuku and Ochaco were wearing.

"There's no trial and error about fighting villains!" Izuku tried to wrestle the apparatus off, but Hatsume shrilly shouted in his ear.

"I can see you struggling Midoriya! No taking it off! This is important data!"

"Oh, come on!" Izuku twirled himself upright again and prepared to kick again, but the apparatus ended up accidentally blasting him away again.

Groaning again, Ochaco gave Izuku some advice. "Just take it off, Deku. It's not worth it."

"Hey, wait, I haven't gotten the proper data yet—"

"You can get it another way. Now finish this guy off, I wanna grab some lunch."

Grunting, Izuku righted himself. "No, actually. I'm not weak enough to get buffeted around by some scrap metal."

"I can hear you!"

"I know you can, Hatsume. Which is why I'm gonna make sure you get the data you need to improve your tech. I always value hard work, and I can't think of anybody more hard working than you."

Mei's invention was designed to grant the user extra speed in sync with their movements. It detected it automatically from the way the person's muscles move. Either the equipment was faulty (which knowing Mei, there was a good chance of that) or...

"I'm feeling rather impatient here, Number One! Get over here so I can clobber you!" The sediment villain swung its fists, although it was helpless drifting in the air without any weight. Seeing him made it all click into place for Izuku. So that was it!

Rather than brute force his way into the kick straight away like he normally did. Given his strength, he should instead allow the device to register his normal movements and then give him the right push forward. If his theory was correct, he was the one making the apparatus malfunction instead of it being any fault with the device itself.

Testing it out, Izuku floated over to the villain, wrapping him up in his Blackwhip tendrils and lazily floating past him, turning around without using his superstrength, the device naturally pushed him forward. Grinning widely as fear entered the eyes of the villain, he pulled his fist back.

"Detroiiiiiiit… SMAAAAAAAAASH!"

BOOM!

The villain was taken out in the blink of an eye. Punted down to earth by the force of Izuku's punch, the villain became embedded in the same hole it had created. Completely still. Izuku floated down and shrugged the apparatus off while the crowd cheered him on. Ochaco flounced over and gave him a peck on the cheek, inciting even more picture-taking from their audience. Moments like this made it truly worth it being a hero.

Half an hour later, Izuku, Ochaco and Mei were all gathered on a roof eating lunch. Mei was still giddy from the demonstration earlier. "Oh my Goooood, you did great! You didn't take off my babies either!"

"Well, it just wasn't fast enough for me," Izuku said as he bit into his bun. "Gotta work on that. Especially for power and speed types. That can trip them up."

"Well, it's more so intended to let the little guys keep up, but I'll keep it in mind." Mei kept chatting away. "But seriously, this gives me so much more inspiration to keep making babies! The ideas, the sheer power, the easy use you can make of all these different devices! It's more than one two-hundred plus IQ gal can take!"

"Glad to see you're not modest," Ochaco said sarcastically. "Hatsume, I get you've got a lot of work to do, but so do we. We can't afford to test-run your devices. What if something serious happened today?"

"Why do you think I came to you guys? There's nobody I'd rather trust with this."

"What about Kacchan or Todoroki?"

"Too angry. Too boring."

"Uhhh… Iida?" Ochaco offered.

"He refused, for some reason."

Izuku and Ochaco both refrained from saying they could understand why.

"Well, no matter how many other names you rattle off, it doesn't matter. Either they're not good enough or they refused. And you guys being you, I knew you'd be nice enough to let me do what I want."

"Is that so?" Ochaco said dryly before Izuku intervened.

"Well, I am glad that you got some results, Hatsume. I can't let Ocha get caught up in this but, if you want, I'm willing to keep testing out gadgets for you – in moderation, of course."

Izuku said that last part once he saw Mei open her mouth to begin babbling again. Pursing her lips into a tight smile, Mei blew air in and out of her nostrils at the prospect of more data.

"I guess that's fair. And… thank you, Midoriya. Anybody else would've taken that apparatus off immediately, but you stuck with it and made sure my research was a success. You're one-of-a-kind."

Izuku smiled softly in turn. "Like I said. Hard work deserves some payoff."

A small twinge in the back of Ochaco's neck flared up. After several months of harem building, she'd grown finely attuned to sensing when a new candidate had come across her and Izuku's path. Something was telling her that this new arrangement could be immensely dangerous to veering into that territory.

An alarm began ringing in her head at the prospect of Izuku and Mei spending more time together. She fully acknowledged she was being hypocritical in feeling averse to Mei somehow joining in, but still, she was the reason she'd agonized over her feelings for Izuku for so long. She couldn't just forgive her for that! Especially not when she was so shameless about running her hands over him for "measurements" and whatever excuses she came up with.

Conjuring a mental image of a snickering she-devil representing Mei in her mind, Ochaco continued to stew between Mei and Izuku on that rooftop as she bit into her own bun. Sometimes she'd randomly flash back to Mei falling on top of him the second time they'd met, her cleavage this close to being pressed into his face. The rage she'd felt then had rarely been surpassed since then.

But hang on… now that she thought about it, the same thing had happened to her just that morning. She had to admit, her plump, full breasts were actually quite nice—

"GO AWAY!" Ochaco shouted randomly, punching herself in the cheek, cuing Izuku to grow panicked with concern while Mei grew puzzled.

And so, the week went by. Izuku would spend his mornings testing out one of Mei's inventions, leaving a moody Ochaco behind every time to sift through their report backlog. Something she would note to him, every time, that she was not too fond of. But she would grumpily acquiesce and get cracking after seeing how swiftly Izuku managed to handle his end of the reports.

On one such morning, Izuku had finished testing out another of her gizmos early and they were in her shop where he had deposited it in the "pass" pile of equipment. A much larger "reject" pile was right next to it.

"Uh, don't you want to do a better job of organization, Hatsume? If your failed inventions didn't work, why not throw them out or disassemble them for their parts? And even putting the inventions that do work somewhere else instead of just in a pile."

"Oh, these piles are set up for me to mix and match whenever," Mei giggled manically. "Sure, the failed inventions might not work anymore, but I keep them around as is just in case I want to combine them together or even with the succeeded pile! See what works!"

"Seems like you're walking back your own successes," Izuku pointed out. Mei shrugged.

"These are just prototypes, in the end. So long as I've got the blueprints, I know how to make 'em. So might as well keep them around in case I've got another idea on the brain."

"I see… but I still think you should put them somewhere else."

"Well mister, if you want some say in how I organize my stuff, you're going to have to start dating me instead of Uraraka."

"W-wait, hang on—!"

Cackling, Mei sauntered off to an adjacent room with a flustered Izuku behind her. "Oh, don't sweat it. I'm just a little jealous, I admit. I've been wanting a guy to test my inventions on, but sadly, I don't really have the time for dating."

"I can understand that, I guess."

"And he couldn't just be any guy, either!" Mei observed a glove one of her assistants was inspecting with magnifying goggles on. She gave him a thumbs up to show her approval with his efforts.

"The guy would have to bow to my every whim and let me test out my babies on him whenever I want. Kind of a pushover, but resilient enough to keep testing the equipment whenever I wanted to."

Twirling around, Mei pointed her finger at her chin, her crosshair eyes taking on a more provocative glint. "A guy just like you, I guess. Somebody I can make babies with as long as I want."

Izuku's heart suddenly leaped up into his throat. For all the years he'd known her, he'd never seen her as much more than an eccentric girl. He'd never registered that she was capable of being this seductive.

Yet in the next few seconds, it was ruined. Mei's normal loopy look returned to her as she burst out laughing again. "You're too easy, Midoriya! Don't worry, I'm sure Uraraka's the only one capable of handling you."

Letting out the breath he was holding, Izuku relaxed again. She'd just been joking. Of course. He had to get himself out of the habit of looking for when girls would drop subtle hints after all the new women he'd started dating over the past few months. Not everybody was out to jump him, he had to remind himself. He couldn't be that arrogant.

Yet even so, Izuku observed that Mei was a lot more sociable than she normally was. She had been close to being a recluse with how much time she spent inside the workshop, so seeing her able to joke around like this was actually good.

Back at the office, Ochaco had hit a wall with her report. And so, she was doing what everybody needs to do once in a while: complain about absolutely nothing to a friend. And the patient recipient of her moaning was:

"Melissaaaaaaa! Why is she so irritating!"

"Hey, hey, I know…"

"She calls him out every morning! It's not that I'm jealous, it's just…"

"Kinda sounds like you're jealous, honey."

Ochaco winced before slumping in her chair, defeated. "Well… yeah. I was just hoping to vent to somebody who understands what it's like to deal with her. Because now she's cutting into our time together and I'm not too comfortable with it."

"Hey, we all love our friends even when they drive us crazy. Sometimes you need to let it out."

"I'm just hoping it's going to end any day now," Ochaco said. "A part of me wants Deku to just refuse one of these days and we can carry on like normal, but I know that's not fair to wish for."

"Why are you even worried, Ochaco? She's not gonna steal Midoriya away or anything. You should have more faith in him than that."

"No, no, I understand that. What I mean is… it's just that…" Ochaco struggled to find the words. It's not like she could come out and said she had some strange premonition of Mei joining the harem. "She just gets under my skin for… really lame reasons. And I don't want it to stay that way."

"Well, now that I think about it, Mei has mentioned that you seemed especially agitated whenever you'd talk. She doesn't really pay much mind to people so for her to notice—"

"That bad, huh?" Ochaco leaned back in her chair. "Okay then. I guess I just have to spend more time with her myself to fix that."

"That's the spirit!"

An hour later, Ochaco met up with Izuku out in the city, easily flying over using her quirk and cables. Given they had finished with another pair of equipment earlier in the day, he was testing an improved model of a pair of Mei's hover boots; the same gadget they had used during the cavalry battle of the Sports Festival all those years back. He was lazily flying across the ground without using Float.

"Oh, Ocha! You're even earlier than you said you'd be. Something come up?"

"Not really, but… where's Hatsume?"

The sound of a jet engine sounded as Mei flew over from a nearby rooftop using her jetpack. "Need me for something, Uraraka?"

Ochaco took a deep breath. "Look, Hatsume. I know things have always been a little awkward between us, but—"

KABOOM!

Interrupted by a large explosion nearby, the trio grew befuddled as they saw a gang of villains walk past a parked car one of them had ignited with their quirk. Wearing either trench coats or long red capes over their naked torsos, the group of five made their way up to the three with full confidence.

In front was a woman with shaggy white hair, an assortment of disembodied hands placed over her body, with two hands gripping the sides of her head from the side. Her unsettling grin stretched up to her manic pink eyes.

"Hello, Izuku Midoriya. Care to hear a few words of wisdom from our master?"

"W-who the hell are these guys!?" Mei shouted in surprise, jettisoning herself into the air again.

"Shigaraki groupies," Izuku explained, expression apprehensive. "You know how serial killers get big followings? Looks like the king of villains got the same."

"We're the Neo-Paranormal Liberation Front, thank you very much," the woman explained. Her pink irises continued to bore holes into Izuku. "Our master has deemed that you are taking far too long, and wishes to give you more of a… guiding hand."

"Master? That has to mean Shigaraki?" Ochaco assumed a defensive position.

"If the actual PLF couldn't win, I don't see how some knockoffs are gonna pose a threat," Izuku said, rolling his shoulders. He was still hovering with the boots. "Be prepared to walk into your prison cells sore."

The woman's grin grew wider until she was cackling again. Her laughs left her body shaking as her fellow cronies began transforming. Izuku and the girls grew stunned as they saw the villains begin breathing toxic fumes, growing far larger, with spikes jutting out of their bodies. Their hands and feet would grow elastic, eyes becoming reptilian slits until they were standing in front of a bona fide villain group. A far cry from the mere groupies from just a few seconds before.

"They've each got way more than a single quirk!" Ochaco shouted.

"Body enhancement," Izuku whispered. The traumatic events in Jaku flashed through his mind, where he'd first encountered Shigaraki in his newly powered up state. Really, all the terrible things that had happened since were because of that. The image of Gran Torino getting impaled, and then what Shigaraki had ended up doing to All Might.

Snarling, Izuku busted out Blackwhip, tendrils whipping around him in an angry hive as he stared down the group. Mei and Ochaco were directly behind him, on either side. "Do your worst. I'll show you how powerless you scum are when I'm around."

The woman grinned wide, shaggy hair falling in front of her eyes in a way that made her look not too dissimilar to Shigaraki. She was the only one who hadn't transformed yet. She clenched her fist to stop it from twitching. She was itching to play…

Harem List:

Ochaco Uraraka

Momo Yaoyorozu

Itsuka Kendo

Kyoka Jiro

Rumi Usagiyama

Mina Ashido

Toru Hagakure

Lent an Ear List:

Melissa Shield

Oh boy, plot again! It had been a little bit, so I needed to keep things moving. This is gonna help push the Mei arc as well as another subplot I'd built up along over the next couple chapters. Expect Mei to be coming in clutch with her support items. She can't fight villains directly, but she's got a few things on hand that can trip them up.

Harem order: Ochaco, Momo, Itsuka, Kyoka, Rumi (Mirko), Mina, Toru, Mei, Tomoko, Tsuyu, Nejire, Nemuri (Midnight), Ibara, Ryuko (Pixie-bob), Kaoruko (Bubble Girl), Melissa, Yui, Camie, Shino (Mandalay), Setsuna, Moe (Burnin'), Ryuko (Ryukyuu), Pony, Yuyu, Reiko, Kinoko, Himiko. Thank you all so much for reading and I hope you're staying safe. Don't forget to fav/follow if you enjoyed this and if you want to stay more up to date on my work, be sure to follow me on Twitter at MilHypotheses. Until next time!