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97. Grant Me This

Rule 66: Life matters. A life matters.

Otsuka breathed in and immediately regretted it, devolving instantly into coughs that only sent more clouds of white dust through the air, smouldering with red from her glowing skin. The same white dust had painted whole sections of Otsuka's braid and most likely infected her scalp too. Otsuka didn't know if flour could stain things, but considering how her clothes were covered in the stuff, she hoped not.

Aki, their hand on the dial of the oven in 1-C's kitchen, apparently found the sight of Otsuka wildly amusing. It was truly only fitting that they found themself choking on flour-infested air too.

This whole idea had been Aki's. Originally, Aki had wanted to take Otsuka for bubble tea. Otsuka had, by some great travesty according to Aki, never tried it before. Aki was merely correcting a universe-level mistake, and the fact that it would make a good date had nothing to do with it.

Unfortunately though, Aizawa and Yamada weren't quite so willing to let Otsuka leave school grounds as they had been when Aki (and their mum) had scored a visit to the aquarium. Something, something, Shigaraki, something, something, the control school trying to kidnap Eri had been kind of terrifying, something, something, Otsuka was still kind of grounded for the whole thing with TT. She got the picture.

Otsuka had tried not to be too disappointed.

"It won't be for much longer," Yamada had assured her. "We think we've found Shigaraki, we're just working on a way to bring him in without putting too many people in danger."

"I could help," Otsuka offered. If she was there, she knew she could keep things from getting violent. They could bring Shigaraki in alive. Nobody would have to get hurt.

"No," Aizawa shot down.

Otsuka blinked. "But-"

"Your priorities aren't trusted when it comes to Shigaraki." In other words, she cared if a 'villain' lived or died.

Shigaraki would assume any hero who found him was there to kill him. Except Otsuka. They were going to get him killed all because they didn't trust her.

After that, Otsuka had tried to focus back on the potential of her date with Aki. She'd figured it would have to wait a little while longer until she was allowed to get out of UA again. Instead, Aki came up with an alternative.

So here they were. The air was warm, thick with flour and the smell of sugar as their treats baked. They'd started off with a relatively simple idea, except they somehow had no scales in the 1-C kitchen and Otsuka didn't want to steal the set from 1-A. What they did have was a ridiculous number of different food colourings and nobody to stop them.

As two proudly queer people, it really just wouldn't have been proper for them not to colour their baked goods like a rainbow. And then Aki decided they could do more. So they did.

They'd had to look up the asexual flag for Otsuka (and then mix a few food colourings together because despite the array of shades available, there was no grey), but they'd ended up with four cakes of various colours. The first was a straight up rainbow, of course. But then there was pansexual and genderfluid for Aki, and asexual for Otsuka. They'd ended up making a second cake in the same colours as the pansexual flag but only so they could ice it with a grey heart later to make it panromantic instead. Baking a cake with a grey heart as part of the cake itself was a little beyond their skills.

Cakes in the oven, Aki had decided the only fitting thing to do with the flour they had left was throw the bag at Otsuka so she could put it away in the cupboards. This was, seemingly, a perfectly good idea. It meant the next person who wanted to bake would have some leftover flour to use and avoided wasting it.