TL;CR MEME

[retellers]

1. Comment with your character.
2. Receive comments from others.
3. Reply to their comments with long ballads and explanations of your characters' relationship throughout the game.
4. Suffer as we have suffered over your CR.

Comments

[infreefall]

So honestly, Ochako didn’t really know what to make of Kano most of the time! And that’s probably what he wanted, right? Even if they didn’t talk a whole lot, she could kind of tell that he didn’t want anyone to really get to know him, least of all by this herd of weirdos that the Realm brought in. It’s not like he ever really hid that, so she just kind of accepted it even if she wanted to get to know him anyway.

But she never really thought that he was a good person, really. Like when they first talked and Ochako told him about Plus Ultra, she was pretty sure he was making fun of her? She just ignored it because the motto means a lot to her, and she didn’t need the validation of some rando for it to keep motivating her. That said, she did think it was a little sad that Kano apparently didn’t have anything to try to go Plus Ultra for, you know? It made her wonder if something happened to make him give up on it, but it seemed pretty obvious that he wouldn’t be forthright about that even if she asked. Ochako wanted to know, though, because she thought that people like him - people who seem alone or like they have nothing they really care about - are the people who need someone to care about them the most. So even if she wasn’t sure that she could be that person for Kano, she wanted to at least try and see if they could be friends, and maybe she could help him out a little.

Then he died, so she didn’t really get that chance! And she regretted it, a lot. She felt like she should have tried harder in the little bit of time that they had, or at least tried harder to find proof that Kano wasn’t the culprit. Even if he was being pretty disruptive (and that was really frustrating!), Ochako never thought for a second that he was guilty, so she threw away her vote that week in the hopes that one less vote for Kano meant they’d have a slightly better chance at finding the real culprit. It didn’t work, obviously, and she and Hikaru later had a great conversation about how, yeah, maybe Kano wasn’t a good person, after all. But that didn’t mean he was any more deserving of being scapegoated, or any less deserving of some kind of support or friendship than anyone else. And when the execution came around, Ochako refused to look away because she thought that even if she had thrown away her vote, she was as much at fault for the situation as anyone else. They’d failed Kano, so she wasn’t even upset with him for sneaking in scalpels and fighting back, and she honestly had a little respect for him for taking his fate into his own hands in the end, instead of just accepting the unfair hand he’d been dealt.

When she met him again in the graveyard… she’d forgotten Plus Ultra, so she thought Kano asking about that was just kind of weird? Then he pulled on her cheeks for volunteering! And that was annoying! And then he started in with that pessimistic stuff about how they were dead and they’d probably stay that way, but Ochako refused to let go of hope, so of course she argued him on it. Not giving up is part of going Plus Ultra, you know? So even if she didn’t remember that, she had to hold onto something, and… again, she thought it was sad that Kano refused to do the same. So after this, she just… decided that she would prove him wrong, that they would succeed, no matter what. It didn’t matter that they didn’t have any way to go about it yet; Ochako just treated it like it was a fact until it came true.

So she was really glad when he started talking about his sister, honestly? It was cute, and proved her wrong in that Kano did actually have something (someone) that he cared about, even though she was dead. It was still encouraging to know that Kano wasn’t completely hopeless, even if his version of hope came off more like defying the odds and spiting fate than anything. He may not be a great person, but he still deserved to have something like that, so Ochako was very relieved to hear about it. And she doesn’t know what he’s going home to, or that he was the cat on the endgame log, but she really hopes that Kano still holds onto his own version of hope no matter where he goes. She might want to check in on him now and then, just to see how he’s doing - especially once she’s a pro hero someday, just to make sure he doesn’t lose that spark or forget what Plus Ultra means.