Work Text:
It was just a normal Monday when it started. At first Ochako thought it was just the usual hunger pangs after a good night's rest, but as she ate breakfast the hunger did not go away. Now, Ochako was no stranger to hunger, having grown up in a poor neighbourhood, her parents tried their best to provide for her, but she still sometimes had to skip meals because they did not have enough money for food.
At school, the hunger only got worse. At lunch, she ate her usual meal, but she was still hungry. So, she grabbed an extra apple when heading back to class. That didn’t fill her up though. At home, she made an extra large dinner, using more food than she had budgeted out for herself, she might have to skip breakfast tomorrow. As she ate dinner, the ache in her stomach lessened, but only slightly. She really wanted this feeling gone, so she ate all the snacks in her pantry, leaving her feeling very guilty, but still hungry!
So, she reluctantly started eating everything in the fridge, then the cabinets, even the chocolate she kept in a dusty drawer for emergencies. By the end of it, the hunger had lessened to a mostly ignorable level, and she went to sleep. The next few days at school, she got larger and larger lunches, though it hurt her wallet a bit. This was both to compensate for the lack of food at home due to her eating binge, and the fact that the hunger had still not gone away.
In fact, it only seemed to worsen as the days went by. Soon she found herself hungry and distracted during a training exercise with her class. She was trying to ignore the yawning emptiness of her stomach as it gurgled its displeasure, but could not put it out of her mind. This led to her getting socked across the face by an especially heavy punch from Bakugou.
She flew back, tumbling to the ground, getting a bit of gravel in her mouth. Instead of spitting it out though, she swallowed it. Then, instead of gagging and trying to cough the rocks up, she noticed how the gravel tasted similar to popcorn and went down as easily as if it were food.
She kept an eye on her stomach throughout the day to see if the rock eating thing would cause her trouble, but nothing happened. So, being naturally curious, she decided to experiment after school. She went to an old abandoned, mostly gravel, lot near her apartment. Once there, she stared at the dusty rocks debating if she was actually going to do this.
Eventually the ache in her stomach convinced her to try it again to see if it was just a fluke. She leant down and scooped up a handful of gravel, staring it down as she convinced herself once more to do this. Eventually she gathered the courage to close her eyes, open her mouth, and dump the gravel down her throat.
For anyone watching, she probably looked insane, but as she chewed the gravel and swallowed it with no problem, she noted her earlier observations had been correct. The gravel really did taste like popcorn! (Although this gravel had a slightly different flavour to the one she tasted at the training ground) She also noted that her body seemed to treat the rocks as food, and, either the gravel was incredibly soft, or her bite force was increased, because she was easily able to chew literal rocks.
When she realised that, yes, she had just eaten rocks, and no, she did not feel sick, she took a moment to think over this newfound power of hers. It was only a moment though, before she started shovelling gravel into her mouth to try and quell the demands of her gut. She thought she must look fairly crazy, but she couldn't care much because she was finally getting enough ‘food’ in her stomach.
It had been a few hours since she gorged herself on gravel, and she had since returned home, thinking about her new situation. On one hand, eating gravel was incredibly weird, although maybe not so outlandish compared to the world of superheroes she lived in. On the other, she wasn’t going to turn down a great food source, especially because her normal amount of food she could buy with her limited funds was nowhere near enough to quell the raging hunger that only grew with each day that passed.
As she tucked herself into bed, she smiled at the knowledge that she could actually fill her belly to a satisfactory level. As the weeks went on, she went to school, ate normal food, laughed and joked with her classmates, then went off in search of another source of food, one big enough to sate her desires. Over the weeks, she had eaten all of the gravel in the abandoned lot, devoured a pile of unused dirt at a construction site, and chowed down on a pile of two by fours someone had left on the side of the road. All of these unusual food sources tasted exactly like normal food to her, and went down just as easily, cursing her no problem with her digestive system. Unfortunately, all these resources were limited, and were eaten in just a day or two of her finding them.
One day though, after a day or two of no extra food, she found a junkyard. Now, having never eaten metal, and knowing the dangers of tetanus, she was rightfully wary of finding something to eat amongst the piles of old microwaves and discarded sheet metal. However, after yet another day of painful hunger, she decided, screw it, and hopped the fence to eat some old metal.
At first, she stuck to the least rusty bits she could find, still having a healthy fear of tetanus. Eventually though, she ran out of non-rusty metal to eat, and she hadn’t found a better food source yet. So, she put on her brave face and took a bite out of rusty metal. As she chewed she was pleasantly surprised to find that the rust gave the usually bland metal a bit of spice!
From then on, she was much less reserved about sticking random things in her mouth to see if they tasted good. Some of the more exciting things she tried were some rubber from a bike tire, which tasted like beef jerky, copper pipe, which had the crisp freshness of celery, and an old gas tank from a car, the film of old gasoline on the inside tasted vaguely like soy sauce, though there wasn’t enough of it to tell for sure. That experience in particular made her eager to someday try straight gasoline to see if it really did taste like soy sauce.
She eventually got used to her odd dietary habits, though she was still reserved about showing them off in public, and they were a part of her daily routine. Wake up, go to school, go to the junkyard and eat her fill, go home and sleep. Her hunger only became a problem when dorms were instated.
She realised that her neighbourhood, and by extension, the junkyard, were too far away to be easily accessed once dorms were installed. This meant that she would have to find a new place to eat. So, the weekend before they moved into the dorms, she scoped out any good junkyards, garbage dumps, recycling centres, or unsupervised construction sites where she might be able to find food. Unfortunately none were close enough to her school to be worth it.
When Ochako moved into the dorms, there was something peculiar about her things. Others would say that it was the fact she only had three boxes, a duffel bag and a backpack. Ochako would say it was the rusty metal stuffed into said cardboard boxes, thinly covered with her personal belongings.
She could’ve made do with just one box, she didn’t own that much after all, but she spread it out into three boxes to make room for her ‘food’. As she unpacked, she hung her clothes up, put her various trinkets and posters in their places, made her bed, and shoved the three boxes of junk into the very back of her closet, where (hopefully) no one would ever find them.
At first, she only meant to use them as snacks for when she got too hungry, but by the first weekend, two of the boxes were gone and her hunger was worse than ever. She had to figure out a way to get a lot of food, and fast, lest she keel over from starvation. While she crafted a game plan, she gorged herself on food the class made. She ate enough food to rival Momo, who needed lots of food for her superpower to work, and Izuku, who ate almost as much as Momo due to his workouts and muscle building.
Her classmates took notice, obviously, but most of them brushed it off due to her poorer background. Other classmates, like her best friend Izuku, and Iida, the class president, made sure to ask her if anything was wrong and why she was eating so much. She just brushed them off with responses about how the food was “so good she couldn’t help herself”, and "No, she wasn’t sick, don’t worry”. She was too embarrassed about her peculiar dietary needs, and how much stuff she needed to consume in order to feel even slightly full.
As she got hungrier and hungrier, she was getting rather upset with this quirk of hers. The only good thing about it was that she could eat a truckload of food and never lose her figure. Other than that, she considered it torture. One day, while wandering the halls of support, after getting help from one of the teachers about support gear, she stumbled across a large garage door labelled metal scrap.
“Bingo!” She thought to herself as she went to try the door. She tried to lift it up, but it wouldn’t budge. “Locked, darn it. Makes sense since it is in the support department I guess.” She thought despondently as she trudged away from the door that kept her from eating her fill. As the days went by, she consistently got hungrier and hungrier, until it all came to a head during yet another training exercise.
It was a redo of the one they did at the beginning of the year, except her and Izuku were protecting the target instead of trying to get it. As Bakugou and Iida came thundering up the stairs, her vision swam as her stomach audibly growled. It was so loud, Iida and Bakugou could probably hear it. She couldn’t care though as she was too busy trying to keep her balance. As they burst into the room, ready for a fight, she fell to the floor and blacked out.
When Ochako came to, the first thing she noticed was the gnawing hunger that clawed at her insides, begging to be filled. Then came the bright lights of the doctors office and the quiet whispering of… someone. She carefully peeled her eyes open, being careful to not look directly into the bright overhead lights. She turned over and pushed herself up into a sitting position, catching the attention of whoever was in the room with her.
When she looked up, she found her teacher Mr. Aizawa right next to her. She definitely did not screech like a feral cat, definitely not. When she was done screaming, totally normally, Mr. Aizawa began to talk.
“Ochako, you passed out during the training exercise. Your classmates were kind enough to get me and help carry you to Recovery Girl’s office. She has run some tests and you apparently collapsed from exhaustion. Have you been eating enough?”
Ochako looked into her teacher's eyes, seeing only concern for her wellbeing. She quietly debated with herself on whether she should tell Mr. Aizawa or not. Eventually, she decided that, yes, she would tell her teacher. Maybe he could help her get enough food?
“I-uh, something happened Mr. Aizawa…” He hummed to let her know he was listening but let her take her time and gather her words. “I- I’m super, super hungry Mr. Aizawa. Like, always. And, normal portions barely do anything anymore. It- it hurts, so much! Pl-please help me, Mr. Aizawa!” She was full on sobbing in hunger and deperation by the end and Mr. Aizawa brought her into a tight hug, which she eagerly returned.
After Ochako calmed down she quietly explained to him about the fact she could eat non-edible substances like dirt and metal, and how that had been helping her survive. Aizawa sat and listened to her tale, rubbing small circles into her back as she talked. Due to the exhaustion of revealing her biggest secret to her teacher, her eyes began to droop close. Mr. Aizawa laid her back down on the bed and let her nap.
When she woke up, Mr. Aizawa asked to speak to her in his office and to set up a meeting with her parents. He noticed that she looked dejected at the mention of them, but she did agree to talk to him. Once she had curled up in his armchair with a fiddle toy and he had settled onto the couch facing her, he began to talk. In a low quiet voice he explained that he would help her find ways to sate the hunger that clawed at her insides, whether it be by larger meals, a large supplement of metal or dirt, or a combination of both. He also said that Recovery Girl would check for the effects of someone's Quirk causing this gnawing hunger, with her permission of course.
She listened carefully to her teacher, nodding and humming in agreement, and she was very thankful that Mr. Aizawa was going out of his way to help her. But then, the topic turned to her parents. Now, she loved them, she really did, but she missed them a lot and sometimes, she couldn't quite shake the feeling that they abandoned her when they sent her off to live closer to UA.
Mr. Aizawa asked if her parents knew about her hunger. Her lower lip trembled as she softly shook her head, before turning away and curling further into the chair. He made a note on his clipboard full of paper, which was full of the necessary forms he would have to fill out regarding Ochako’s condition. Ochako gathered her thoughts while he wrote and soon began to speak. “I- I haven't told my parents, we’re poor you know, and they shouldn't have to spend any more money on me. Th-they shouldn’t have to.”
She broke into quiet sobs at the feeling of being so disconnected from her mother and father and at the pain that gripped her stomach. Her teacher looked at her kindly and silently opened his arms for a hug. She looked up, saw his gesture, and immediately went over and wrapped her arms around him, thankful that somebody cared.
After she calmed down some, they finished filling out forms, Ochako curled up at his side, fighting off sleep and losing. When she woke up she was back in the dorms on the couch. As she walked up to her room, she thought about Mr. Aizawa. She realised that she viewed him sort of as a father figure. It made sense, since her real dad was so far away, and Mr. Aizawa was so nice. She decided she was okay with this development, even if she’d never admit she thought of her teacher as a father figure.
The next few months were good for Ochako. Her and Mr. Aizawa had come to an agreement, if she was feeling hungry after school, she would tell him. Then he’d accompany her to the scrap metal storage by the support course. She would eat her fill and then she’d go back to the dorms. It was a nice routine, she got to spend time with Mr. Aizawa and was not painfully hungry anymore. Soon, though, the storage garage ran out of scrap metal.
When that happened, Mr. Aizawa came up with a great solution. UA had a fake city just for the support students to test gear on, so it was almost constantly in ruin. Someone had just thoroughly destroyed the city and it needed to be rebuilt and Cementoss couldn’t rebuild it until all the rubble was cleared.
Now, it had been a few days since the storage garage ran out and Ochako was hungry, so when Mr. Aizawa brought her to the training site and told her to “Go wild”, she did. She ate, and ate, and ate, and ate. By the end, the city was almost completely cleared of rubble.
Mr. Aizawa found her curled up near the last few piles of rubble, with a contented look on her face, sleeping. He picked her up and took her back to the dorms, where her friends took over and got her into bed.
In the end, Ochako was thankful she had such a great teacher. He never told her secret to anyone unless she said he could (She did end up telling her friends, eventually), and he always made sure she got enough to eat. Even into her Hero career he still helped her out, and she was very thankful for that!
Omake:
List of notable things Ochako has eaten/drank:
A bicycle
A rusty Sedan
An aeroplane wing
A gallon of gasoline (It did taste like soy sauce and she enjoyed dipping metal in it.)
A large pile of dirt
The rubble of an entire city
Her doorknob (She got locked out of her apartment)
32 orange golf balls A rusty shovel
An old needle (It was on accident and she was sick for a week after)
Mr. Aizawas scarf (Another accident)
A log
A proposal ring (Yes it was the ring her boyfriend got her. He had baked the ring into a cake, but he didn't know about her eating habits so she ate the ring and didn’t notice until afterward. It was very awkward to explain.)
A dollar bill (One of her classmates dared her to after they learned her secret. It hurt her soul, being rather poor and all, but it didn’t taste too bad.)