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25. Baby's First Weapons Bust

Rule 5: Blood ties are everything.

Training was gruelling, they spent four hours everyday working on Otsuka's self-defence skills (which were still imperfect to say the least despite the help Aizawa gave her leading up to the sports festival) as well as her quirk. She was slowly getting the hang of using small shields for emergencies and it felt exhilarating to be improving so much so quickly.

The worst part of everyday though was the two hours she spent working with the support group, which ended up only ever being the Doctors Ogawa. They kept trying to bring up their non-existent parenthood, but Otsuka found a way to shoot the conversation down deader than a sixty-year-old possum every single time. When they questioned her about the life they'd chosen to miss out on, possum. When they attempted small talk. Possum. When they asked her anything besides a required question about the internship— you guessed it!— possum. Po-ssum.

Next, Otsuka patrolled with Edgeshot or one of his sidekicks. With her position as a level one controlee, she was technically allowed to use her quirk if necessary, but every hero she worked with discouraged it so she made things work without. Not that anything really happened. The patrols weren't really meant to be all that adventurous, she was still a student after all.

After that, she'd spend some time helping downstairs with the paperwork, whether that was organising folders or being gopher to the coffee-starved office workers. She always did exactly what was asked of her and the workers were happy to answer any questions she had. She'd learnt a lot in what felt like years but was really a very short time. It was pretty incredible.

Otsuka had definitely noticed some strange influences being here had had on her. For one, her ears were constantly pricked, Edgeshot had this minor tendency to launch utterly random sneak attacks throughout the day to keep her on her toes and it left Otsuka mildly paranoid every second of every day. And for two, she was getting good at being quiet, creepily good, as much as Edgeshot enjoyed his sneak attacks, he also encouraged Otsuka to try her hand at them. The first seven times he'd caught her by hearing her footsteps, she'd started learning to be quieter after that and now even doing normal things, her footsteps were a whole lot closer to silent than they'd been before. She loved it.

Her hero suit, which was totally awesome— Otsuka had a whole lot to say to Hatsume when she got back— was so great. She'd been wearing it for training and patrols and it was almost completely perfect. It was light-weight but durable, it moved perfectly with her body in a way Otsuka had to get used to, sometimes she even forgot she was wearing it. The suit was one piece that ran from her neck all the way down to stirrups over her heels, then a pair of shock-absorbing shoes that reminded Otsuka of ankle-cut wetsuit boots went over them— those had been helping a lot with her silent step attempts. One arm was fully covered in the shimmering red, the material hooking all the way up around her middle finger while leaving her palm uncovered. The other arm was covered in a nude mesh while twisting strings of the same red wrapped around in opposing directions. Otsuka had been hoping not to have that mesh but she understood why Hatsume had made it that way.

"Ready, my young padawan?"

Otsuka had learned early on that her work studies teacher had an obsession with a series of movies called Star Wars and apparently that was the reason behind him calling her a 'padawan'. Otsuka had, understandably, never heard of the series. When Edgeshot had discovered her lack of true pop culture education, he'd promised to sit her through every movie, or at least donate his copies so she could watch it in her own time. It was very kind of him.

"Have you got the cuff?"

Judging by the blank look in the eye not hiding behind his hair, he had most certainly forgotten again. Otsuka gave him the cuff at the end of the first day and had taken to reminding him about it before every patrol since she realised he hadn't brought it only the day after. For a ninja, the guy had a bit of a sieve for a brain. Not that Otsuka would ever say that aloud.