Chapter Text
“Ugggghhhh…” The body slouches on the desk, face towards the office window and rosy cheek squished delectably on the little piece of uncluttered wood. Uraraka Ochako feels a vertebrae pop and the cute, delirious giggle escapes into the otherwise empty room only to wrap itself like the warmest embrace around her. The dream was an old one, one that didn’t visit unwarranted often anymore, not for years and years, and the tired hero can’t help but ask “Why?” The only response she can come up with fills her face with a wide, reminiscent smile.
Unfortunatly, falling asleep at one’s desk is not a good use of a day, at least when at work, and Ochako was raised by hard workers—the hardest, she wishes they would slow down, for even a moment, she’s providing for them, they don’t need to anymore, but they still work and work and work, she’s beginning to think she got this incurable itch from somewhere—so back to the grindstone it was, these documents wouldn’t read themselves (yet).
Quirk Law had changed following the final battle with the League—was still changing eight years later, still circling closer towards a world Himiko could smile freely in, would still be for years more if she had anything to say about it—and Ochako’s tireless work with Quirk Counseling reform was a significant part of it. Long gone were the days where someone could tell meek, bubbly Uravity “no”, not when she had fangs to bear and the hunger to see them used for the kind of Justice she would see into inevitability. The old system was officially dead and while much of her job still consisted of hunting down the old remnants, it was slowly, slowly becoming more about ensuring the new generation had the resources to keep their promises; these days, Ochako saw herself more in the classroom as a teacher than as an observer, crisis worker, or spectre of retribution in the night—which was good, she kept reminding herself, even if that dark, deep, tangled part of her yearned to keephunting.
The chirp of her alarm effectively broke Ochako from the brief reverie, body nudging thoughts to return to the task at hand: touring an elementary school with Lemillion, Nejire-chan, and Suneater. The pro hero rolled the crick out of her neck as she considered the task before her: while the three were wonderful heroes, and wonderful people in their own rights, each was a handful on their own and together… Ochako girded herself for a long, long day. But, as she picked up her bag and slipped open the door she couldn’t help but smile, because despite the workload, despite the mountain before her—one that would stretch on for years and years and years of her life—she couldn’t help but smile her favorite, most earnest smile, because she wasn’t alone, not anymore.