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Congratulations! You have crafted something edible!

Probably.]

[Rank Up! You are now a beginner mediocre chef!]

[Achievement Unlocked: With your own two hands.

You actually made something worthwhile!

Reward: Crafting, Item Appraisal.]

[Achievement Unlocked: Skilled

In the loosest meaning of the word.

Reward: Skills]

[Item: Beginners Basic Mediocre French Toast of Basic Mediocrity.

Category: Food (Questionable), Consumable.

Effects:

+5 Hp

+3 Stickiness

High chance of a stomach ache

Creator's skill level low, effects may be randomized.

Created by Izuku Midoriya.]

Itsuka let out a gasp and looked at him with wide eyes. She had him by his shoulders, somehow shaking while also rapidly slapping him. Her excitement was written all over her face as she did a few jumps, looking between him, and the french toast he had just made. He couldn't help but share in her excitement, as after four classes, they had finally reached their goal.

Being skilled at something.

Anybody could make a sandwich, pour hot water in a ramen cup, cut some fruit. The first few attempts at cooking hadn't really failed. It was edible, sure, but for whatever reason, his quirk didn't count it.

But it counted the french toast.

There wasn't anything really special about it. It was just french toast. Battered bread, fried in a pan until it was golden, a bit of butter spread on top, a flurry of white powdered sugar, a couple of berries, and a cup of warm syrup. It looked like something a restaurant would sell. So maybe that was what did it?

[Itsuka Kendo: Gratz! That worked right? I can see it has stats and stuff! And it was made by you! That has to mean it worked, right?]

He looked at Itsuka, then back at his modest creation. She was way too close. How was it that every time he saw her she just got more adorable? Her long orange hair was pulled into the ponytail she often wore in the cooking class, it wasn't on the side of her head, rather it started and appeared just above her neck and cascaded straight down. The adorable apron she was wearing over her brown sweater she just made her so beautiful.

Her wide brilliant smile only made her just that much more so.

[Izuku Midoriya: Yeah, I think I unlocked skills now. And crafting, and item inspection.

Itsuka Kendo: Woah! That's a lot! I guess you just need to make food actually look like food! And I knew it would heal! Gratz Izuku!]

"Do you mind if I try it?" Itsuka half mumbled as she moved her hand forward, slowly pinching towards one of the thin cut pieces of toast. "Just to see what the taste is like? And other effects?"

"Uhh sure." Did she have to eat the whole thing to get the effect? Could they share?

"Thanks!" She wasted no time in dipping a piece into the syrup and then right into her mouth. Itsuka looked confused for half a moment, one eyebrow nearly going up to her hair, before she swallowed. She gave a frown of approval and nodded going for another piece. "Not bad Izuku, I think you might actually have a talent for this."

That was good. "I'm glad you enjoyed it."

She gave him another wide smile as she took another bite.

[Itsuka Kendo: Btw, the healing is per piece of toast. But I still don't know how much health I actually have.

Izuku Midoriya: Arbitrary numbers are arbitrary. What about the other effects?

Itsuka Kendo: Fingers are sticky, but I don't think I've felt any-

Oh.]

Itsuka stood straight looked at him with wide dilated eyes, and then sprinted towards the door. The rest of the classroom all looked at her, then to him. More than a few remarks were made about how it didn't look that bad. This had his quirk written all over it.

[Izuku Midoriya: Itsuka? Are you okay?]

No response. But her status appeared to be fine. Maybe she was too busy puking to respond? Great. He made Itsuka puke with his cooking. That was just great. It looked like good french toast too.

"Hey," a woman in the class came over to him. "I'll clean up for you. Why don't you go check on your girlfriend?"

"She's not-" He swallowed and stood straight. "I umm, thank you. Sorry."

Another person pointed him towards the bathroom. Great. He was about to enter the girls bathroom in a public place. Technically, he hadn't lived down the shame of walking in there in middle school. But this time, he was checking on Itsuka. And not lost.

"Itsuka?" He asked poking his head into the room and knocking on the door. Why couldn't the woman be the one checking on her? "Everything alright?"

"I uhh," Her voice sounded from one of the stalls.

[Itsuka Kendo: I'm alright. Just your quirk being weird. Again.

Izuku Midoriya: Oh, do you need anything then? Sorry.

Itsuka Kendo: Don't apologize. I was the one that ate it. But now we know that the random effects are uhh, super random.

Izuku Midoriya: I guess I can't use my quirk for anything anyways.]

"No!" Itsuka shouted from her stall. "It's not that bad. It's just well, it's weird! But don't worry."

[Itsuka Kendo: I can see the Debuff, I'm just going to wait it out.

Izuku Midoriya: How long does it last? And what is it?

Itsuka Kendo: Three hours. And it's nothing I'm fine. You don't even have to leave me alone. We can still chat. But you should probably head home, I'd hate for you to miss the train.

Izuku Midoriya: Umm, okay. Are you sure you're okay?

Itsuka Kendo: Absolutely. Just chalk this up to girls being weird.

Izuku Midoriya: Okay, well, I guess we can see exactly what skills are now.

Itsuka Kendo: ! I completely forgot about that!]

He laughed and headed out.

Itsuka said there was a debuff or something like that right? Looking at her status menu he saw what she was talking about.

[Minor Embarrassing Transformation: You have been transformed in an embarrassing way!

2:56:25]

Hopefully Itsuka would be okay in the bathroom. Wait.

[Izuku Miroidya: Wait, are you seriously going to wait three hours in a public bathroom stall?

Itsuka Kendo: No, I was going to sneak out once you were gone.

Itsuka Kendo: Dammit! Stupid train of thought!

Izuku Midoriya: Is it really that bad?

Itsuka Kendo: Doesn't matter, you're not seeing me for at least three hours. I will punch you.

Izuku Midoriya: Fine, but do you want me to like bring you anything? A hat or something?

Itsuka Kendo: Don't worry about it. I have most of my stuff, just go.

Izuku Midoriya: You're aware if I don't at least bring you your stuff they're going to think I'm a bad friend, right?

Itsuka Kendo: Fine, just toss them on the counter in the bathroom.]

After doing just that, Izuku began to head home. But more importantly, he began to play with his new menus. The crafting menu was bland at the moment, it showed the recipes that he learned from the class, plus a few basic ones. Some of them were greyed out, and a few were green or yellow.

According to Itsuka, the colors probably represented challenge level, and that if he wanted to get better at cooking, he needed to work on the yellow stuff, and that there might be orange stuff later. Hopefully the difficulty wouldn't end up changing around, but either way, he probably wasn't going to get any skill ranks from making a sandwich or instant ramen.

Maybe it was something that could be useful later?

And then he opened up the skills.

[User has achievement [One Big Ass Mistake]. Personal skills have been auto filled by system.]

Why was he not surprised? So he messed up once by trying to attack a level 15 shark man! That ended up in him becoming friends with Itsuka! He would never admit that was a bad idea or a mistake.

His own list of skills was short. At the top was cooking, he now had four ranks in it. Which sounded like a lot. Then there were a few other skills that he had less than a rank in, and a few that he had no ranks in. Things like perception, knowledge, handwriting, speech, were there and other things. Like Masturbation.

Masturbation was a skill.

It had the highest bonus out of all his skills. Even higher than cooking.

[Izuku Midoriya: So apparently Common Sense is a skill.

Itsuka Kendo: Don't tell my dad. I'll never hear the end of it.

Izuku Midoriya: My Bonus is negative 9999.

Itsuka Kendo: :)

Izuku Midoriya: How did you think that?

Itsuka Kendo: No idea. What'd you put your ranks into? Did you have any?

Izuku Midoriya: I did, but my quirk doesn't trust me and put all my ranks into cooking.

Itsuka Kendo: That's not too terrible. I was half expecting you to have max ranks in procrastination or something. Now…. My turn? :D

Izuku Midoriya: Sure, hopefully it doesn't auto assign them.]

His quirk did not. Instead when he saw Itsuka's skill sheet he couldn't help but feel a bit envious. She had a lot of skills. A lot of them were actually useful. From working out, to studying, to martial arts, to math, reading, and using her head, it really felt like Itsuka was the kind of girl that just succeeded.

So why was she wasting so much time with a loser like him?

Really, the only odd thing Itsuka's list was a few video game related skills.

And much like him, she had a bonus to masturbation. Best not to think about that.

She just had to put as many ranks as she could into fighting.

Naturally, neither one of them knew if the extra skill ranks did anything, but Itsuka was hopeful.

XXXX

She was beautiful.

Like really beautiful.

It was the kind of effortless beauty that just kind of grabbed the attention of everyone around. Long silky black hair, soft angular face and a tender smile that could stop a heart. It felt like she could easily be an idol or someone famous. She was wearing winter clothing, a furry brown coat, red scarf, pleated skirt, and black leggings. In her hand, she was reading a prep class book.

One for the hero courses.

And he was staring at her. Gah, what was he doing? Why was he being a creep in public? Sure, she was beautiful but that didn't mean he had the right to stare at her. Besides, she was at the train station for a reason. And he had a crush on Itsuka so he probably didn't need to be staring at her. At least he knew Itsuka's name.

It wasn't that the girl was prettier than Itsuka, she was just a different kind of pretty.

And it wasn't like he and Itsuka were anything more than friends. He just had a crush on her. And apparently, one on the girl he hadn't even met yet. Was he allowed to have more than one crush? Was that allowed?

It was a good thing his quirk didn't come with relationship advice.

Izuku let out a sigh and stared out at the train tracks. A reminder of all the times he thought about stepping onto those tracks and just letting nature take its course. It wasn't that he wanted to kill himself. It was just that the thoughts were there. But now, they just weren't tempting. For once, it felt like his life was actually moving forward.

All because he let some crazy redhead talk him into making some fancy toast.

Well, not really.

Still needed to figure out how to get rid of the actually random effects.

Maybe there was a feat for that? If he could figure out how to get a feat. Really, feats were basically the same thing as achievements in the dictionary. But Itsuka shared with him one of her D&D books and apparently, feats were special abilities that players could choose, and a lot of them were pretty powerful, it made sense that Itsuka would be eager to unlock those.

Crafting feats were pretty common in the books, so maybe if he kept getting better with cooking, then he'd get a feat for it?

Looks like he was still going to be taking those classes. At least Itsuka was more than happy to join him. And they needed to test just how much they healed, if at all. Maybe getting a paper cut or something, then eating?

Why did he have to jump through so many loops for his quirk to be useful?

That pretty girl probably had a quirk that was useful.

"Outta da way!" A voice screamed. Izuku looked through the crowd, towards the pedestrian walkway down below. There was a crazed looking man armed with a gun and carrying a duffle bag. Alarms sounded, people shrieked.

"Stop! You'll only make things worse!" A hero shouted as he tried to confront the man.

"Worse? What's worse than this? I can't be like you! I can't be a hero! Not when my quirk does this!" The man gave a crazed laugh and touched his hand against the skyscraper. "I can't save anyone!"

He couldn't help but feel for the man.

Then he saw what exactly his quirk was. Rust. It didn't so much crawl up the building as much as it grew and grew around the base, where the man had touched and then slowly the whole thing crumbled to dust. The glass and other bits were fine. The structure began to groan. And then tilt.

Panic spread through the area.

"Or this!" The man moved and touched the metal support beam of the train station. This time, the rust did spread like wildfire.

Shit! He needed to move before they fell down. It was nearly fifty feet down from here.

"Never fear!" His eyes whirled to the sky, then towards the crowd, just in time for All Might to appear. He moved with speed and caught the falling tower at the base. "For I am here to give a hand!"

That didn't solve the problem of the train tracks though.

Already, the ground was caving in as people hurried down the collapsing stairs.

The tracks themselves sputtered and snapped as the beams rusted away, leaving the ground beneath the platform a dangerous pit of spikes and rust. Falling from their height would already be bad. But with a trap like that down below, it would be deadly.

He needed to get down. Now.

[Press X to jump]

A blue glowing X appeared in his vision, a smaller outward circle drained away from it. How the fuck was he supposed to press X? Why couldn't his quirk just be straight forward? Why couldn't he move his legs now?

[Izuku Midoriya: Itsuka! Help! My body won't move I'm about to die and my quirk is telling me to press X!

Itsuka Kendo: What? I can't leave you alone can I? Okay, uhh, that kind of sounds like a quick time event. You really need to start playing video games.

Izuku Midoriya: You think? How do I press X!?

Itsuka Kendo: I don't know think it?]

Fuck it! Press X!

His legs moved on his own and he jumped over a hole that formed in front of him. Now this was pretty useful. Another prompt appeared.

[Press A to escape]

A scream tore him from the prompt, and the world seemed to slow. Out of all the screams, why was it that he heard this one? Because it came from that girl. The beautiful one with the black hair. She was falling backwards, the ground beneath he crumbling down into the rust filled spike pit below. She looked so afraid.

He had to help her. Why wasn't his legs moving. He needed to save her.

Please! Just let him save her. He could do it!

Please. Quirk. Just this once.

[Press Y to save]

He pressed it and his body moved again, dodging another hole as the world crumbled beneath him, the screams of the civilians falling deaf as he jumped towards her. Hands outstretched, she was falling so slowly. How was he moving so fast? The last bit of solid ground slammed into him as he barely managed to reach her.

But he was too late. She slipped from his hands.

Her eyes going wide.

Dammit! He was too slow!

[Achievement Unlocked: Risking it all.

It didn't matter if she was pretty. You were going to save her.

Reward: Extra party slot.]

The world stopped just like before.

[Itsuka Kendo: What the? What's happening? This again?]

[Would you like to recruit a new party member to aid you in combat?

½ free recruits left.]

Again the option for no was greyed out. He clicked yes with all his might. Please. Please let him pick this girl.

[Finding potential party members.

Refining list.

Please choose from the available candidates. .

Momo Yaoyorozu Level 6 Cleric of Creation.]

She was the only one on the list. Was his quirk listening to him? Was this the girl?

He selected her. It wasn't like he had a choice in the matter.

[Warning: adding more than one female party member to your party could result in an awkward social life and potential friendzoning. In order to avoid this and any future bouts of jealousy, please enable Harem Mode. Would you like to Enable Harem Mode now?

*Female Party members will not lose reputation with each other and will become faster friends*

Yes/No]

Huh, he had a choice this time. Still why was it called Harem Mode? And why did that matter? It wasn't like girls couldn't be friends? Whatever! If it meant saving her then yes!

[Achievement Unlocked: Degeneracy.

You enabled Harem Mode. Even if it was for a good reason.

Reward: Class: Harem Protagonist.]

[Momo Yaoyorozu has joined the party.]

AN: Sup? Cliffhanger? Cliffhanger!