The restaurant had been his idea.

Shoto sat between Bakugo and Midoriya, watching the room fill. Everyone had shown up. All of them. Kaminari was already too loud. Sero was laughing at something Ashido said. Tokoyami sat straight-backed and composed while Ojiro talked beside him.

Six years of group chats and distant hero feeds and occasional crossing paths on patrol. And here they all were.

That's when he saw you.

Far end of the table, already seated, talking to Jirou like the distance between your city and his had never existed. He'd seen you on hero feeds. He'd watched the group chat light up with your name. He'd thought that was enough.

It wasn't.

He'd known you were coming. He just hadn't prepared for you. The real version. Right there, laughing at something.

Bakugo was talking loudly about something. Shoto didn't hear it.

"Yeah."

The dinner moved the way good nights do with his old classmates and friends—loud, overlapping, everyone talking over everyone. Ranks were compared, sidekick stories traded. At some point you glanced down the table and caught his eye. You raised your glass slightly. He nodded back.

It was brief. Insufficient. He was going to fix that.

Then the alert hit every phone in the room at once.

The shift was seamless. Easy laughter replaced by something sharpened and focused. Chairs pushed back. Hero mode activated.

Shoto was already moving with Bakugo and Midoriya before the second alert came through, and the restaurant emptied quickly.

Catching up to the robbers only took an hour. No casualties.