Train Station, Musutafu.

The entrance to U.A. High School was empty when I stepped out of the station; the remains of the metal slab had been pulled clear of the frame, and in its place were roughly two dozen guards stationed all around it. The procession of students entered in an unbroken flow that was almost a match for the very first day, but there was an odd tension in the air. I hadn’t seen Eijiro, Tsuyu, or anyone else from our class on the train; either they’d arrived earlier than normal, or they had been hidden away inside of a separate carriage—I had seen the same third-year girl with the indigo hair talking with the tall, anxious boy that always stood in the corner, and was interested to see that he actually seemed far more capable of existing when she was present.

My network of sand nodes spread out through the hallways as I followed the same route to the classroom, and when I slid the door open, I found that most of the class was already present. Notably, I found Katsuki standing near the back of the room, looming over the top of Shoto’s desk in what was a clear attempt at intimidation while the entirety of the class looked on. Shoto seemed entirely unphased by the other boy’s presence, simply staring up at him without expression.

“What the hell did you say?” Katsuki snapped.

“I said that I’m not interested in fighting you,” Shoto said without raising his voice. “It would be a complete waste of time.”

Katsuki’s eyes flickered over at my approach, the movement attracting his attention for just a moment before he returned his full focus to the boy sitting in front of him. Tenya was standing nearby, arms crossed, as he stared at the two of them with a disapproving gaze, and there was something about the set of his shoulders that made me think that he had already made an unsuccessful attempt to resolve the situation.

“Don’t look down on me, you half-and-half bastard,” Katsuki threatened. “If you think—”

That was as far as he got before the teacher arrived, and Katsuki seemed to take one look at the man, gritted his teeth, and then stomped back to his desk without another word. I stepped past him to take hold of my own seat, unbothered by the boy’s unnecessary attempt to shoulder past me. Momo gave a strained smile in greeting, clearly affected by the argument that had been taking place a few feet away from her.

“Everyone sit down,” Shota said as he approached his desk. “We have a lot to go over today.”

“Teacher,” Ochaco said, sticking her hand up into the air. “Did the school find out who broke the gate?”

“There were too many people pressed up against it to see who was responsible, and the most likely culprits were wearing hoods, so their faces were hidden from the security cameras,” Shota said, “The reporters have all been reprimanded for entering the school grounds, but none of them possessed a quirk capable of damaging the gate.”

“Sir, there was a rumour that someone snuck into the school,” Mina said, speaking up. “Was that one of the reporters?”

“Several of the reporters made it into the lobby before they were rebuffed; that was most likely the source of the rumours,” Shota said, frowning. “Are there any other questions, or can we begin homeroom?”

Mina let out a nervous laugh at the attention, and Shota waited a moment longer before clearing his throat.

“You will be undergoing a training exercise shortly after lunch has concluded; costumes are mandatory, so make sure you come back here to change as early as possible,” Shota said, studying them. “The location is on the far east side of the campus, so we will be taking a bus to the site.”

Shota sketched out a few bullet points on the board detailing what he had just explained before dropping the chalk back into the tray with a clatter.

“All Might, myself and one other instructor will be organising and supervising the exercise,” Shota said, “You will split up into groups once we have arrived and then be tasked with a specific set of tasks based on the area you get assigned.”

Momo raised a hand—bravely, perhaps, given that Shota had just reprimanded them for asking questions—but the teacher nodded in her direction in a clear indication for her to speak up.

“Sir,” Momo said, “What type of training will this be?”

“The focus will be in preparing you to act inside disaster relief situations, which means that it is essentially rescue training in a variety of environments,” Shota said, “Some of those will be dangerous, or even unusual, and you may encounter simulated fires, floods, or things that are similar in nature.”

“Rescue training?” Denki said, in feinged concern. “Can Bakugo even do something like that without blowing up a building?”

“Huh?” Katsuki snarled.

“That’s not fair,” Mina said, already laughing. “It was Midoriya that did all the damage, remember?”

Izuku buried his face in his crossed arms, attempting to hide as Katsuki’s head snapped around to locate the boy in question, apparently furious at the comparison between the measure of their individual damage outputs.

“Enough,” Shota said, eyeing them. “Asui—what’s your question?”

“I am probably effective in the conditions of a flood, but that will not be the case for a wildfire,” Tsuyu said, speaking up. “Will the areas we are being assigned to take that into consideration?”

“It’s a good question; there will be times during the course of your career when you will be dealing with conditions that are difficult or even intolerable,” Shota said, nodding at her. “It’s important that you find out exactly how well you can function while inside a controlled environment, but today, you will only have enough time to complete one of them.”

That seemed like a sensible and practical way to address something they would no doubt encounter during their future careers. It just remained to be seen how well they could simulate those conditions and if it was close enough to the real thing to actually prepare us for dealing with the real thing.

“You can also consider this an auxiliary test of your costumes, so pay attention to how well they work and start keeping notes on things you want to change about them,” Shota said, “You can start trimming away anything that slows you down, gets in the way, or isn’t as useful as you thought it might have been.”

#

Cafeteria, Musutafu.

“Yes, she was ecstatic,” I said. “I suspect that she will end up visiting every shop in Musutafu in an attempt to find something to wear.”

“That sounds exactly like my mother,” Momo said, “I’m certain to find a dozen new dresses in my closet as soon as I arrive home—she has a tendency to go overboard with this kind of thing.”

“My aunt had some concerns about the travel time to reach your house,” I said, “Do you still live in Nagoya?”

“Oh, no—I should have said,” Momo said, “It’s been about seven years since we moved from there; we live in Hamamatsu now.”

Eijiro placed his tray down on the other side of the table, eyes still locked across the room at the queue of students waiting to pick up their own meals.

“Hey—that’s where I live,” Eijiro said, joining the conversation. “Are you in the Naka-ku ward as well?”

“We actually live in the Hamakita ward,” Momo said, “It must be nice to live right in the middle of the city.”

“Everything is super easy to get to,” Eijiro agreed, “We’ve got this big castle there—”

Mina dumped her tray on the table beside the boy and snatched up two sticks of celery from on top of it, raising them up to hold against her forehead.

“I have arrived,” Mina declared, “Huah. Huah. Huah.”

I stared up at what might have been the worst impression of All Might I had ever seen and wondered at her motivation for revealing something so tragic in a public setting.

“Hello, Mina,” Momo said with a giggle. “The celery really pulls it all together.”

“No way,” Eijiro said, outright laughing. “That was terrible.”

“As if,” Mina complained.

Tsuyu reached the table a moment later, and after a moment of thought, she slipped down into the seat beside Momo. Mina took a threatening swat at Eijiro with one of the celery sticks, but the boy just laughed it off.

“Now that the council is all assembled,” Mina said, taking her own seat. “What are we going to actually do in Tokyo?”

“That hairdresser is one of the places we’re going,” Eijiro said, “I made an appointment, but they said they do walk-ins as well.”

“We could visit the Tokyo National Museum,” Momo said with interest. “I’ve been there several times—the metropolitan library is also wonderful.”

That spurred on a bunch of responses—and some teasing from Mina about being an old soul trapped in a younger body—before they started to poll everyone for suggestions. I listened to the individual responses, taking note of what type of experience each of them seemed to be most interested in. Mina and Eijiro seemed to share an interest in arcades, pop culture and previewing street fashion. Tsuyu seemed more aligned with the outdoors, with her suggestions revolving around parks, gardens, walking tours and the zoo. Almost all of the ideas seemed to surprise Momo to some extent, and I wondered if it was a difference in environmental upbringing or class that was responsible for it.

“Hisoka,” Momo said, “Is there somewhere you would like to go?”

There wasn’t really anything in Tokyo that I wanted to see, nor did there seem to be a particular difference in undertaking those exact same experiences in Musutafu that would warrant the change of scenery. The leverage of a successful unsupervised trip was what I had wanted out of this, and it was something I had already unlocked. Everyone at the table was looking at me now, expectant of an answer, and I watched as Momo took a sip from her water bottle—

“Kabukichō,” I said.

Momo choked on her water, hunching forward as she spilled it onto both the table and her lap. Tsuyu let out a rumble of alarm at the word or at being caught in the crossfire, the true answer lost amongst the mess of noise the comment had generated.

“Dude,” Eijiro laughed, “You’ve killed her.”

“Yaoyorozu.” Mina cried, leaning all the way over the table to grab her by the shoulders. “Don’t die—you have so much to live for.”

Momo tried to fend off the girl’s concern with one hand while also holding her water bottle out at a cautious distance to prevent spilling any more of it, but couldn’t quite seem to stop coughing enough to regain her ability to talk.

“Sorry, Momo, that was just a joke,” I said, ducking my head in apology. “I would like to see the view of the city from atop the Sky Tree—I’ve heard that it is quite beautiful.”

“Momo,” Tsuyu said, “Are you alright?”

I noted with interest that Tsuyu was already using her first name, and I wondered if she was mirroring my own attempt to streamline the friendship-building process.

“I’m fine now, thank you,” Momo said, flustered. “Ashido—if you shake me anymore, I might really die.”

“She’s alive,” Mina cried.

“The Sky Tree is awesome,” Eijiro said, watching the fading chaos with visible amusement. “I’ve been up there twice; the top floor is something amazing.”

“We’ve just witnessed an assassination attempt in broad daylight,” Tsuyu noted, “This school is more dangerous than I had first assumed.”

I took a deliberate bite of my apple in order to avoid having to answer the accusation, but I found myself smiling without really knowing why.

“So the ones that seemed the most popular were Akihabara, the Sky Tree, that cat café and the Rikugien Gardens,” Eijiro said, ticking them all off on his hand. “That’s enough to fill up a couple of hours; what do you guys think?”

“I think that sounds lovely,” Momo said, coughing one last time into her hand. “I’ve never been to a cat café before.”

“It’s going to be so cool,” Mina insistent, “Cats are always so friendly—they just cuddle up to you and everything.”

“Hey, Hisoka,” Eijiro said with a stage whisper. “Do you think they’ll get like that at a Maid café as well?”

That caused an uproar amongst the girls, and Eijiro was forced to cover his head as Mina took another swat at him with the now half-eaten celery stick. There was so much laughter and brightness surrounding me that I almost couldn’t understand how I could have found a place within it, but for all of its vibrancy, it was missing something fundamental. Somewhere out in the world was a girl with brown hair, sparkling eyes, and a radiance that haunted my dreams—and here, beside me, sat a single, empty seat.

#

U.A High School, Musutafu.

Tenya led the charge in organising all of 1-A into a line directly beside the bus that would be taking us to the site of our next practical exercise, and through it all, the older man smiled down at them, perched upon the driver’s seat.

“Let’s fill the seats in an orderly fashion,” Tenya said, “We should each line up according to our class numbers.”

None of the other class presidents I had witnessed at my limited pool of public schools had ever shown this much interest before. There was no immediate downside to following his instructions, and if we were already under observation by the instructors, then it would only serve to improve their opinion of us. I had already determined that there were no instructors physically present—a combination of searching the area with my sand and also factoring in the fact that Shota had told us he would be meeting us on site—but there were cameras all over the school, so it wasn’t beneficial to assume that we weren’t still under observation.

The bus driver seemed to be paying close attention to us, so he may well have been reporting on our conduct, which meant that showcasing the ability to follow a loose chain of command while unsupervised was something worth considering. Unfortunately for Tenya, the layout of the bus was non-standard, and he hadn’t accounted for the fact that everybody had immediately moved to select their preferred seats once they had actually entered the bus. I took a seat four rows from the back of the bus in the segment at the edge of the rotated benches.

“Darn,” Tenya managed, “It was this type of bus after all.”

“All that for nothing, huh?” Mina said, laughing at the wasted effort. “It’s alright; it’s not like you could have known.”

Mina gave the boy a few rapid smacks between his shoulder blades as if to bring some life back into him, and Tenya clawed at his back in an attempt to blot out the pain of the unexpected strikes. Kyoka stepped past the two of them, looking like she was trying to avoid looking anywhere near the only seat left on the bus, but once it was clear that she was out of options, she sank down into the one directly beside Katsuki, looking distinctly uncomfortable—her situation seemed to only grow worse, as she turned forward and found that I was sitting almost directly in front of her.

“I hate buses,” Kyoka mumbled.

I watched as she slipped her headphones over her ears in an attempt to blot out the world around her, and then, when it didn’t seem full-coverage enough, she closed her eyes as well. The bus rumbled to life before carefully pulling out onto the road that would lead them across the campus.

“What do you think this rescue training is going to be like?” Rikido said, from near the very front of the bus. “It’s got me kind of excited.”

“Maybe it’s like the last exercise,” Mina said, taking up the question. “Except instead of fighting the other team, we have to save them?”

“That sounds like fun,” Rikido said, impressed. “Hey, Koji—let’s team up again.”

“Yes,” Koji managed, “That sounds nice.”

“Don’t think it will go the same as last time,” Mina said, eyeing the pair of boys. “We’re going to save the heck out of you no matter how much you hate it—right, Aoyama?”

“Yes,” Yuga said, then after a moment. "That is right."

“Uh,” Rikido said, sounding a bit confused. “Why does our rescue sound so violent?”

“You’re just hearing things,” Mina said, cracking her knuckles. “Got it?”

Koji let out a weak laugh and then sagged in his seat as Mina maintained a monstrous amount of eye contact with the tall boy. Tsuyu let out a rumble in her throat and then spoke up to address the boy sitting across the aisle from her.

“I apologise if this is abrupt, but I generally like to say what’s on my mind,” Tsuyu said, “Izuku, are you aware that your quirk has a strong resemblance to All Might?”

Izuku looked genuinely horrified at the words, and it seemed to take him a long time to wrench his features back into what was the most obvious facade I had ever seen. The question and the reaction drew my full attention, as the response was entirely disproportionate to the mundanity of the actual prompt. From everything I had seen and overheard, it was very, very clear that Izuku Midoriya held the man in the greatest respect—he had outright admitted to modelling his costume after the man. Any comparison made that put him standing beside All Might should have resulted in a favourable reaction—happiness, pride, and amazement—or, given how shy the boy could be at times, embarrassment at the attention. Why, then, would the response to such a basic connection being made between the two result in terror?

“I—I—I don’t think they are very alike,” Izuku managed, “Not at all.”

Tsuyu stared at the boy with visible confusion, no doubt noting how unnatural the reaction seemed to be, but before she could speak up, Eijiro let out a hum.

“I mean, they’re both strength quirks,” Eijiro said, “All Might doesn’t injure himself when he uses his, though, so they’re clearly different.”

Izuku looked as if he’d just been spared the gallows or saved from a grave mistake—something was going on here, something between Izuku Midoriya and All Might. There was something about Eijiro’s words that caught my attention as well. All Might couldn’t even maintain his own quirk without some kind of strain—was it possible that All Might did, in fact, injure himself with his own quirk? What if the constant usage of his quirk had caused internal damage in the same manner as what occurred with Izuku destroying his own arms?

I had witnessed several exchanges between Izuku and All Might over the last three days, enough to establish that they could have known each other before coming to U.A. High School as student and instructor, respectively. Was Izuku also aware of All Might’s decline? Was the terror on the boy’s face coming from a quiet acknowledgment of the clear symmetry that existed between their quirks? Was Izuku, right now, wrestling with the knowledge that one day, he might end up in the same state of physical decay as All Might?

“Either way, that sort of simple augmentation is pretty awesome,” Hanta said, “You can do a lot of stuff with a straightforward quirk like that.”

Rikido beamed at the words and then made a big show of tossing out a few iconic poses that allowed him to show off his muscles to the class. Eijiro laughed at the spectacle of it before lifting his own arm up and engaging his quirk—his flesh went rigid, and his bicep bulged beneath the stone-like skin with a clear definition.

“I’m actually jealous,” Eijiro said, with good nature. “My hardening works well in a fight, but it’s such a boring quirk, you know?”

The self-deprecation seemed to drag Izuku out of his quiet panic, and the boy spoke up to address the comment.

“I don’t think your quirk is boring, Kirishima,” Izuku said, “It’s an amazing quirk for a hero.”

Eijiro flashed the other boy a smile at the words, but Yuga spoke up before he could actually respond to it.

“That isn’t all you need to become a famous hero,” Yuga said, “You also have to worry about your popularity and how much you appeal to the public if you wish to rise in the rankings.”

That was only the case if you conflated the goals of being a hero with rising in the rankings—but those two goals were not mutually exclusive. You could be a hero and not step a single foot into the public view, provided you had the education and license to support it. Aizawa Shota was a clear expression of a hero who avoided the popularity race—not entirely, certainly, because he was actually on the rankings—but enough that he was a good test case for it being possible.

“In my case, my navel-laser is both strong and spectacular,” Yuga declared with easy confidence. “It’s the perfect recipe for becoming a popular hero.”

“As long as you don’t blow up your stomach first,” Mina crowed.

Yuga flapped his hand at her as if to dismiss the comment entirely.

“If you want to talk about strong and spectacular,” Eijiro said, clicking his still-hardened fingers together. “That practically describes Bakugo and Todoroki, doesn’t it?”

Katsuki grunted at his sudden inclusion in the conversation, but Shoto didn’t so much as twitch, content to stare out of the window without engaging at all.

“I find it hard to believe that Bakugo would be popular,” Tsuyu said, “He seems very unhinged.”

Izuku choked on his own saliva at the words, his experience with the boy in question probably alerting him to the oncoming storm the comment was likely to elicit.

“What the hell did you just say, frog-face?” Katsuki hissed, “You’re going to have trouble rescuing anyone after I blast you to pieces.”

“See?” Tsuyu said.

“Come on, guys, we’ve only just started getting along,” Denki said, “Let’s not drag the guy with the shitty personality into it.”

“You must want to die, too,” Katsuki snapped.

“What a vulgar conversation,” Momo said in distaste. “Please stop trying to infuriate each other.”

Tenya seemed to regain his previous force of will at the words, the boy rising from the ashes of his defeat like a phoenix.

“Yaoyorozu is right.” Tenya declared. “We must conduct ourselves with dignity befitting our status as students of the premier—”

“We’re here, you lot,” The bus driver said, “Look sharp now; you’re in for a long day.”

The bus rolled to a stop in front of one of the largest buildings on the entirety of the campus, and one that I’d wondered at the purpose of after seeing the domed roof on the very first day. It was a monstrously large thing, and I couldn’t help but think that the sheer mass of all that metal and concrete was somehow in defiance of the laws of physics—how it hadn’t collapsed under its own weight was something far beyond my ability to know. Eraserhead was present, garbed in a full costume, standing beside a hero that could have only been Thirteen. Behind them loomed a towering door, locked up tight and obscuring everything beyond the entrance.

“Good morning, students,” Thirteen said, the modulator in full effect to obscure the owner’s voice. “Welcome to the Unforeseen Simulation Joint, or just the USJ for short.”

As if on cue, the massive doors swung inwards without a visible cause, and Thirteen clapped their gloved hands together. The pair of heroes turned, directing us to follow, and as a group, we stepped through the entrance.

“Many of the staff at U.A. High School, and many craftspeople from beyond it have come together to create this facility,” Thirteen said, “Its goal is to simulate as many of the disaster scenarios that you may face in your careers and help prepare for the conditions you will face.”

The platform at the entrance was one of the highest points within the building, providing an almost unobstructed view of the entire area, with only the buildings, mountains, and trees providing any cover. A lake was visible; its presence within the building was somehow the least odd thing that was present, at least in contrast to the ongoing, controlled fire that seemed to be burning across one of the simulated city blocks. I could sense an immense amount of sand to the northeast, hundreds of feet deep, and spread across a massive section of the grounds—I reached out towards it, and my focus expanded outwards in a rush as I threaded myself throughout the simulated desert zone. There were dozens of mannequins spread across the dunes, each one in various states of dehydration, as depicted by the laminated sheet pinned to their chests and with it, I found some fragment of understanding about the tasks we would be called on to perform.

“All Might was supposed to be meeting us here,” Eraserhead said, eyes on his phone. “Thirteen, check your email to see if he’s sent something your way.”

“From what I’ve heard, he seemed to have tired himself out this morning; he just can’t seem to stop himself from being distracted by criminals during the morning commute.” Thirteen said, “I have no new messages, but I am sure he will join us as soon as it becomes feasible to do so.”

I studied the two teachers as they spoke openly about the man, unable to discern whether the reference to him tiring himself out was a true indication that they knew about his declining health or simply a retelling of an excuse All Might himself might have given—I glance over at Izuku and found him wringing his hands, visibly nervous about the conversation. The more attention I paid to him, the more I began to believe that he really was aware of the situation.

“How annoying,” Eraserhead said, “Fine, there is no point in waiting for him; let’s get this started.”

Thirteen gave a ponderous nod at the decision before turning back to face us.

“Before we begin, there is something I would like to discuss with you all regarding your quirks,” Thirteen said, “Some of you will be experiencing doubts—‘How am I supposed to rescue anybody with a quirk like mine?”

Denki sent a sheepish glance in Katsuki’s direction, no doubt recalling the words that had been exchanged during the ride here. Thirteen’s hand lifted up into the air before a spiralling black mass appeared above it, sucking in the surrounding air with a visible and violent force. There was a physical pressure tugging at my body now, and Ochaco actually stumbled forward a step, unbraced for the sudden shift.

“My quirk is called Black Hole, and I’m sure the reason is obvious enough,” Thirteen said, “It will draw in and then tear apart anything, and I shouldn’t have to tell you how easily it could be weaponised against another person.”

I lifted my own hand up to study my palm before allowing the tip of my finger to dissolve—the wisp of sand was torn away in an instant before vanishing into the mass of darkness. My connection to the sand held out for exactly six seconds before it was severed, and I couldn’t determine whether it was destroyed or if it had somehow travelled outside of my range.

“Some might say that the primary purpose of a power like mine is to kill,” Thirteen said, allowing the effect to dissipate. “Yet, if you were to search for information about me, what do you think you would find?”

Izuku raised his hand, and then, once it had been acknowledged, he spoke up.

“You’ve saved people all around the world and are famous for spearheading disaster recovery operations,” Izuku said in a rush of excitement. “You rarely get involved in combat situations, but when you do, it’s always over super quickly—you’re totally amazing.”

“An accurate, if somewhat flattering, summary, thank you,” Thirteen said, seemingly amused. “Students, there is a reason that quirks are as heavily restricted as they are, but even with all of the rules, it is not a perfect system.”

Thirteen let out a modulated hum of noise.

“Some have argued that these restrictions are too great, while others argue they are too little, but regardless of which side of the issue you fall on—one thing is certain,” Thirteen said, “It takes only a single miscalculation or an instant of lost control for people to die, and so careful instruction is important.”

The words echoed a lot of what Marcus had said to me in the aftermath of the Pasana Middle School Incident.

“Inarguably, the purpose of my quirk is destruction, but with training, care and determination, I have bent it to serve a new and far greater purpose,” Thirteen said, voice firm. “If, at this moment, you hold even the slightest concern for how you will conquer this same obstacle, know that we will help you to do the same.”

Thirteen gave another ponderous nod, this time to Eraserhead, a clear signal that the speech was now over, and Tenya started clapping almost immediately. The rest of the class followed his example, and I wondered at how much of Thirteen’s oratory ability was naturally occurring and how much of it had been honed through taking command in those very disaster scenarios that Izuku had spoken about.

“She’s so awesome,” Ochaco said, impressed. “I want to wear a spacesuit too.”

“Airhead,” Katsuki muttered.

“Alright, now that we have the preliminary stuff out of the way, it’s time to move on to the next part,” Eraserhead said, “I want you to start—”

The hero’s head snapped to the side, reacting to the distant sound that echoed up the stairs in front of us, and I watched as a swirling black hole appeared in the middle of the courtyard far below. For a moment, I thought it was some kind of remote activation of Thirteen’s quirk, but instead of drawing in the surrounding objects, a hand pressed forward out of the middle of it, gripping the edge. The hole in the world seemed to react to the touch, spreading outwards and rapidly bisecting the courtyard—within seconds, people began to step out of the darkness, a purple mist clinging to their skin.

Dozens of people emerged across the face of what was now obvious as some kind of portal before the next row began to emerge directly behind them. Each of them was wearing costumes, armour, and the vast majority of them carried some kind of weapon. Swords, axes, scythes, spears, knives, along with even more exotic weapons were all represented across the group. The numbers swelled as more rows followed after, and once the portal finally dissipated, a rough attempt to multiply the row by the column gave me a rough number of one hundred and forty people.

“I’m guessing this is like the entrance exam?” Eijiro said. “Just—people instead of robots.”

It was completely contrary to the stated goals of the exercise, and if we were receiving volunteers to play the role of the people who needed saving, there wouldn’t have been carefully prepared mannequins set up across the different zones—this was no longer a training exercise, it was an invasion.

“Nobody moves,” Eraserhead snapped, “These are real villains.”

There was more authority contained within his voice right now than I had ever heard from the man; it was no longer the voice of an instructor; this was a hero taking command of a dangerous situation. The nervous laughter that had taken the group at the sight of the army had been dispelled with those few words, and the tension in the air spiked to a breaking point—

“The destruction of the gate was their work,” Eraserhead said. “It’s obvious now—damn.”

I slotted the information in and tried to discern how he had gotten there—showing up at the USJ at any other time would have resulted in them arriving in an empty building with nobody present. This army of villains had arrived at the exact location at the exact moment when our class had come inside. How could they have collected that information? We hadn’t been aware of the location or specifics of this lesson until this morning. If our class schedule was stored on a computer or written down somewhere, they would have needed to gain access to whichever room that was kept in. Access to the school required dealing with the security features that prevented exactly that, which, in turn, meant that they had needed a method to bypass it—ergo, the person responsible for destroying the gate had infiltrated the building and found the schedule.

“These are real villains?” Eijiro managed.

A hundred and forty people—villains, criminals and thugs—would have taken an immense amount of organisation to gather together into a singular cohesive block. Beyond that, this level of cooperation between villains was completely unheard of, and the sheer scale of attempting to get that many villains to work together was absurd. This must have taken weeks or months to prepare—and for what purpose would they have gone to all that effort?

“I thought—” Momo started, “What happened to the trespasser sensors?”

“They receive maintenance weekly, and the most recent check was three days ago,” Thirteen said, “They should be fully functional.”

Of all the targets this kind of force could have gone after—shopping malls, banks, political buildings—they had decided to attack an isolated building inside of a hero school. They couldn’t have been here to kill twenty first-year students; there was simply too much effort involved in organising this for the target to be something like that. We were untrained; we hadn’t had time to build up reputations or cause any real waves in the world; it was a disproportionate amount of setup for such an unimportant target—but there was someone else who was supposed to be here, wasn’t there?

“With this many villains, there must be someone amongst them with a quirk that could disable it,” Shoto said, “An isolated area separated from the main campus, during a time when our class is supposed to be here—this is a surprise attack with a specific goal in mind.”

“They are after All Might,” I said, speaking up. “He was supposed to be here; that’s why they brought so many people.”

“Yes,” Eraserhead said, voice cold. “They are after All Might."

The bandages wrapped around his neck began to uncoil, manipulated by some unseen mechanism, and he took a step towards the stairs without fear of the massive crowd waiting below.

“Thirteen, start the evacuation and find a method to contact the rest of the school; with this level of preparation, they will have something prepared to counteract the sensors,” Eraserhead said, “Kaminari, use your radio headset to see if you can reach the front office, they might have overlooked that.”

Kaminari seemed to fumble for a moment, the suddenness of the request taking a moment for him to interpret it, but soon, he had his hand pressed against the device.

“Sir, even if you erase their quirks—with that many villains,” Izuku managed. “We can help split them into smaller groups—”

“Let me be very clear,” Eraserhead said, “You are not trained for this, and none of you will be fighting anyone.”

“Sir,” Izuku said, visibly shaken. “Are you really going to fight them all by yourself?”

Eraserhead glanced back over his shoulder for a moment, but instead of another reprimand, the man just flashed them a small, tired smile.

“You cannot be a hero with only a single trick, Midoriya,” Eraserhead said in answer. “I’m leaving it to you, Thirteen—get them out of here.”

Eraserhead burst forward from a standstill to leap out into the open air at a calculated, downward arc before finding purchase on the railing that skirted the edge of the massive set of stairs. He landed without a single moment of disturbed balance and then continued straight on down while moving at a flat-out sprint. He made it down to the courtyard in a dozen seconds, approaching the immense group of villains head-on and without slowing down even a fraction. Some of the villains at the front of the group actually stopped cold, their slow, forward march faltering before the man’s unshakeable confidence. The man was far faster than I would have expected from someone who didn’t possess any kind of physical augmentation, but there were only two outcomes for what was to follow—either Eraserhead possessed the skill to fight all of them off at once, or he was deliberately engaging in a losing battle in order to give us the time required to evacuate. I felt a shiver rush down my spine at the sight; there had been no hesitation, no second thoughts, no moment of doubt; he had simply made the decision to sacrifice himself to buy us some unknown measure of time—I wondered if this was what it really meant, to become a hero.

“Follow me; we’re leaving at once,” Thirteen said, moving back towards the entrance. “Do not dawdle.”

I left a series of sand nodes on the stairs to observe the ongoing battle, wanting to maintain some kind of surveillance on the situation. Eraserhead was already in the thick of the crowd, but despite puncturing deep into the mass of people, he hadn’t been touched a single time. The man was a blur of hyper-efficient motion, with no missed strikes, mistakes, or stumbles. Everything he struck out at was hit, and everyone that was hit recoiled or fell beneath the force of the strike.

“Midoriya,” Tenya snapped, “Hurry up.”

Izuku hadn’t had the benefit of detaching a piece of his consciousness and leaving it behind to watch, and so the boy had been slow to actually leave. It was with a visible resistance that he actually turned away to join the group, his fists clenched at his sides and pained by what was happening. We made it halfway to the gate before a mass of darkness washed into existence ahead of us, the dusting of purple mist making it clear that the portal user had decided to interfere with our evacuation. I sent twin streams of sand striking out on each side of the path, passing over the railing before darting forward around the darkness towards the gate, intending to force it open before we actually arrived—a mass of darkness formed in front of the portal in the rough outline of a person.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you go,” The figure said.

The details grew sharper as the form compressed, and soon, there was a rolling mass of black and purple smoke standing before us, a pair of sharp yellow eyes set into the place where his face should have been. Thirteen thrust a hand out to one side, a clear non-verbal instruction for everyone to stop.

“Ah, thank you; we are the League of Villains, and it is so very nice to meet you all,” The man said, “It may be presumptuous of us, but we have invited ourselves into your lovely school.”

Sand began to spread out from beneath my feet, a cloud of formless particles shifting into position around each member of our class in preparation for the inevitable attack the man must have been working his way up to. Some of that sand passed through the portal still looming behind the figure, and I felt it reappear far below in the courtyard.

“Why are you here, villain?” Thirteen asked.

“Our goal here is a simple one,” The man said, maintaining his perfect manner. “We aim to ensure that All Might, the beloved symbol of peace, will take his last breath.”

“This is insane,” Momo said, horrified. “They really are here to kill All Might.”

“I believe he was supposed to be here at this time, so I imagine that there has been some kind of change in the schedule,” The man said, pausing to wait for a response that didn’t come. “No answer? Well, it is neither here nor there, I suppose—this is simply my part in the play.”

The figure began to raise his arms, and I braced myself, waiting for permission to take some kind of action—Katsuki and Eijiro shot forward without warning, moving at the exact same time as if they had planned it out in advance. They passed by Thirteen just as the hero had raised her own hand in preparation to attack, and she was forced to abort to avoid friendly fire—

“Die,” Katsuki cried.

The two boys struck the figure at the same time, and a wave of force washed outwards from the impact, the explosion sending smoke, fire and dust scattering up into the air around them. The sudden fog of war made it impossible to see the outcome of the attack.

“You should have considered that we might fight back,” Eijiro said, still lost in the smoke. “You’re going down.”

“Oh my, oh my—this is very dangerous,” The man said, sounding rattled. “I mustn't be so overconfident, not even if you are just students.”

The smoke was torn away by a lash of displaced wind, and the figure was revealed, its head destroyed, but the metal brace that had been within the smoke remained untouched—a moment later, the shadows washed back up to regenerate the head, and the damage vanished.

“The task I have been assigned is clear.” The man said before his body exploded outwards. “I will scatter you and then torture you all to death.”

“Move away,” Thirteen cried.

Thirteen’s hand remained stretched out, ready to attack but unable to because of how close Katsuki and Eijiro had placed themselves to the target. The mass of shadow surged outwards on both sides, seeking to encircle the entire class at once—my sand exploded upwards between each and every person, multiplying from dispersed clouds into a massive torrent that sought to block the shadow—but it was too late, as more than half the group was caught within the now spinning dome of darkness. For a moment, there were multiple shifting perspectives, which I could see from seven different points within the USJ, the connection with my sand holding strong through the linked portals. High in the air, above all of the different zones across the building, and beneath each, a group of villains waiting to receive them.

Sand surged downwards, chasing my classmates as they fell from the air, pooling beneath them to create a platform to break their fall—I lost contact with all of them at once, and the connection severed as the portals vanished.

“No.” Thirteen cried.

Only Hanta, Ochaco, Mashirao and Fumikage had been close enough to the outer edge of the ring for me to push them free of it before it had closed around them—and so that was all that remained of Class 1-A on the platform.

“Shit,” Hanta said, “What did he do to them?”

“Are they even still alive?” Ochaco managed.

“He moved them to different areas in the building and dropped them from roughly thirty meters above the ground—there were villains waiting on the ground,” I said, “The only other people within my range are Rikido, Toru and Koji; they are now located in the desert zone.”

The distance was just far enough to mess with my ability to focus on both places at once without sacrificing my vision of either, and with the portal user directly in front of me, I couldn’t risk a lapse in attention.

“Did that explosion do nothing to him?” Mashirao said, “It was a direct hit—he has to be immune to physical attacks.”

“His body is covered in shadows, and so it is possible that the attack simply missed its target,” Fumikage said, “The metal brace is noteworthy, and if we focus our attack on it, we may yet defeat our foe.”

“How dangerously observant,” The figure said.

“You will not be fighting the villain; your only goal now is to escape this building,” Thirteen said, “Higawara, get to the school as fast as you can manage, alert the rest of the faculty to the events here—go.”

The darkness surged forward in response to the order, washing over my body—but I was already reforming outside of the building, using the sand I had sent to force it open early as my target. I burst forward into a cloud of sand, twisting into a dozen different streams that split off in different directions, a necessary preparation to avoid the villain if he did end up giving chase. The rest of the sand I had left behind at the doors surged upwards, wrenching the massive slabs of wood out of their hinges and leaving it in a state of permanent openness. I lost contact with the desert zone, the distance turning the connection into a muddy, distant point of focus through which I couldn’t hope to interact. I started leaving a pattern of sand behind, each piece a link in the chain of interconnected nodes to keep myself tethered to the USJ and a bridge by which I could return with a far greater speed.

The sluggish bus ride had taken us twenty minutes from the main section of the school, but it had been moving at a fraction of the pace I was capable of. I pushed harder, forcing the forward points of my sand clusters through the air like spears, refining the shape until the world was blurring with the strain of it all—a flash of a gaunt figure in a too-large golden suit caught my eye, and two of the spears wrenched themselves downwards. I crashed into the ground a dozen feet away from the motorised cart the shocked man was perched atop, the twin streams still in the process of reconfiguring my body as I spoke up—

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“All Might, more than one hundred and forty villains have invaded the Unforeseen Simulation Joint; Eraserhead is currently fighting the bulk of them in the centre of the courtyard, but he will likely expire if he doesn’t receive assistance,” I said, speaking as clearly as I could manage. “Thirteen and several of my class are fighting a portal user by the entrance; he has a metal brace just below his head that may be the weakness—”

The gaunt man’s shock shifted into a look of sharpened focus, and as he stepped down off of the cart, the bulk of the greatest hero in the world grew to fill the perfectly tailored suit like a skin-tight glove.

“—the goal of this invasion is to kill you, but the rest of Class 1-A has also been scattered across the building by the portal user; they were dropped from a great height, and I believe they are currently under attack by the villains,” I said, rising to my feet. “The trespasser sensors have been blocked somehow, and I have been tasked with alerting the rest of the faculty about the attack—please save them.”

I didn’t wait for acknowledgment, my body scattering as my point of focus returned to the streams of sand that had continued towards the main building—there was a ripple in the air that further scattered the remnants of my body as All Might vanished from beside the now rocking cart. I caught flashes of the man’s suit through each of my sand nodes as he crossed the distance that had taken me minutes to accomplish in just a matter of seconds. The front doors of the lobby were closed, and so I crashed straight through them in my rush, unwilling to stop and wait for them to actually open—I slid across the smooth tiles, carried by glass and sand, to a dead stop at the front desk and the shocked receptionist behind it.

“Villains are now inside the school, at the USJ building, and are in the process of killing my entire class,” I said, breathing heavily now. “All Might is on route, but there are at least one-hundred-and-forty villains present; please alert all of the teachers and the police as soon as possible.”

The woman wrenched the handle of the phone up off the setting and placed it to her ear—an alarm washed over us, an overlapping wail of noise that seemed to be coming from every single hallway at once, and a warning soon followed, indicating that an attack was underway and that everyone should remain inside of the building until further notice. The monitor on the wall above the desk turned on, and a series of faces appeared in the different sections, each one a different camera feed from a different place in the building. Principal Nezu, Cementoss, Vlad King, and Ectoplasm were all present on the screen and seemed to be listening intently as the receptionist repeated what I had told her.

I stepped away from the desk, eyes on the shattered glass doors and the grounds beyond; I had completed my assigned task, and so my part in this was finished—except for the fact that all of my classmates were currently fighting for their lives while I stood here doing nothing. This whole situation was a massive problem, first because the outcome of this attack could drastically alter the course of my studies. If a significant portion of my class was killed—and my homeroom teacher along with it—then there was potential for the class to be disbanded entirely. Not to mention that Momo Yaoyorozu was currently unaccounted for, and if she were to be killed, then the opportunity that had been presented to me to meet with her father would vanish.

Beyond all of that, I was surprised to find that the thought of my classmates dying actually bothered me—how was it that these strangers, with whom I hadn’t even spent an entire week, could cause this twisted feeling inside of me? I took another step towards the doors and then hesitated again—ignoring the warnings to return to the USJ wasn’t quite the same situation as the Pasana Middle School Incident, but it was close enough to parallel it. I’d told Principal Nezu that I hadn’t regretted attempting to protect my classmates from harm back then but acknowledged that I shouldn’t have left the building to do so. Back then, it had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, reckless and without forethought, but if I went back now, then I couldn’t hold that up as any kind of passive defence; it was a journey of several minutes back to the USJ—and that meant that it was premeditated. I would be actively going against a clear instruction to stay inside of the building during an emergency.

It was something that could have dire consequences for my future, endangering my place here at U.A. High School and everything that came downstream from that—the glass crunched beneath my feet as I found myself actively approaching the doors.

“Hey,” Midnight called, spotting me from the mouth of the hallway. “Stay inside the—”

Sand fell to mix with the shattered glass before vanishing completely, and I reformed at the first node on the chain. I shunted my consciousness towards the further node I could reach and reformed there, barely making it halfway back to my solid form before I did it all over again. The portal user was obviously the mobility of the attack force, but he was also our biggest source of information—he had said several things during the short interaction that hinted at something more. For one, referring to his presence here as ‘part in the play’ suggested that he saw the overall attack as something that was artistic, well-designed, or of high class. Whichever way you interpreted the phrase, it implied that he held a certain respect for the one who had actually come up with it. It was possible that the respect was self-referential and that he was praising his own orchestration, but it seemed unlikely when paired with ‘the task I was assigned.’ He had been given this task to accomplish, and so the role had been assigned to him—he wasn’t the mastermind of this attack; it was someone else.

The very first villain to exit the portal was a man with white hair and whose costume appeared to be adorned with a multitude of grasping hands. That man and the massive heteromorph with the exposed brain had stayed behind the army of villains, a separation that seemed to elevate them beyond the rest. Neither of them had reacted, not even when Eraserhead had attacked the invasion force, apparently content to sit back and observe. Those two were either responsible for blocking the trespasser systems and cameras, or they were the leaders of the invasion. An attack directed at those two might result in crushing the morale of the army and cause them to fall into disarray. I reformed between the still open gates to the USJ, expecting to find at least some of the students outside—but for some reason, they were still inside of the building.

I reformed amidst the sand I’d used to push them free of the portal user’s attack and stepped through into my previously abandoned clothing.

“Higawara,” Ochaco managed.

Terrified and alone, the girl was kneeling beside the prone Thirteen, attempting to provide some limited first aid, but the damage was visibly beyond anything she could fix without access to a healing quirk. A massive section of the woman’s back had been torn apart through some unknown means, the thick material of her costume simply gone. Mashirao and Kyoka were currently carrying Eraserhead’s broken body up the stairs to the platform, while Fumikage, Yuga and Hanta were below them, doing their best to fend off the mass of villains from ascending the stairs in chase—the three of them were firing off their quirks indiscriminately at everyone below, with a barrage of lasers, streams of adhesive tape, and the stretching black shadow providing just enough of a deterrent to slow them down.

There was an explosion of force beside the lake that sent shock waves of wind force radiating outwards in every direction, the participants too fast to be seen by the naked eye. The environment was breaking around them; the ground shattered in the wake of unseen impacts, and the trees were uprooted entirely. The white-haired man I had observed earlier was still present, standing on the outskirts of the battle, and Shoto Todoroki was standing across from him, surrounded by several overlapping walls of jagged ice—the heteromorphic quirk user appeared for a moment, sliding backwards across the ground as All Might barreled forward into him, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Mashirao and Kyoka finally crested the top of the stairs, the broken body of Aizawa Shota held limp between them, and the villains began to force their way upwards, forcing their way through the barrage of attack through sheer numbers and by keeping the most durable of them at the front to weather the attacks head-on.

“Ochaco,” I said, “The rest of the teachers are currently en route to our location, but it will be anywhere from five to ten minutes until they arrive—”

I caught a distant flash of something from the desert zone, and my head snapped around to stare at it, my attention shifting there entirely for a moment. There was a group of four villains standing on the dunes, clustered in a loose group. Koji, Rikido, and Toru were all lying still, half sunken in the uncaring desert sands—and two of them weren’t breathing.

“Higawara,” Ochaco said, shaken. “What’s wrong?”

The sound was enough to draw my focus back to my body, and I felt a shiver roll down my spine, followed by a rising heat that I had rarely felt before.

“Two of our classmates are now dead,” I said, starting towards the stairs. “Stay here.”

“Oh god,” Ochaco whispered.

I passed by Mashirao just as he was standing back up, Eraserhead’s limp body now lying completely unresponsive on the platform. Yuga stumbled up over the top step, pale and clutching at his stomach, unable to force any more use out of it after so many consecutive attacks. I stepped down between Fumikage and Hanta, hand rising up in front of me—sand burst forth out of the palm of my hand, multiplying into a tidal wave that overtook the width of the staircase in an instant. It surged downwards, the mass of it increasing with every second before it swallowed the entire column of villains, overtaking them and sending them all crashing backwards down the stairs.

Twelve of them managed to hold their ground against the torrent, but that wasn’t enough to keep them in place—sand crawled up their legs, ripping them up off the ground and dashing them against the concrete until they stopped fighting back, and then sending them tumbling down to join their comrades below—a flurry of spikes rained down on us, and Fumikage’s tethered shadow rose up to occlude the three of us. The spikes failed to penetrate the roiling skin of the construct, shattering into splinters and deflecting off to scatter into the air. The villain responsible—a heteromorph with a beak not unlike Fumikage—banked hard, the arc of his flight rapidly changing in order to attack from the opposite side.

Fumikage rotated with the attack, covering Hanta as the flurry of spikes began to bombard his position. A dozen tendrils of sand burst upwards, reaching for the villain as he continued his strafing run, and while he was focused on evading all of the different points of attack, I shifted a single grain of sand into his flight path—it erupted outwards just as he reached it, blossoming from a single invisible grain into an impassable wall. The villain smashed headfirst into it and attempted to get enough purchase with his legs to push himself free, but by then, I already had him inside of my grasp—I crushed his wings without mercy and then sent him to join the rest of the broken and defeated. The final villain who had weathered everything so far had almost managed to reach us during the rush, a woman with a pair of massive bulging arms, each one larger than her entire body.

Hanta fired a spread of tape at her legs, and the woman threw herself up into the air with her hands; she spun to avoid Dark Shadow as it passed through the space she had just been in, angling the demonic thing away from her before she desperately crossed her arms in front of her chest—the massive sand fist crashed into her block with the force of a bus, sending her uncontrollably tumbling back down to the courtyard. Hanta fell back onto the steps, panting for breath, barely able to stand from his building exhaustion.

“Thank you, Higawara,” Fumikage managed. “We—”

—I fell apart, already in the process of rising up out of the dunes within the desert zone behind the group responsible for something I may well have been able to prevent if I had been faster to act back during the initial stage of the evacuation. Koji, Rikido and Toru sunk further into my grasp, the outline of their bodies a perfectly distinct pattern in my mind as they fell beneath the surface—I attacked without warning, opening up a series of deep pits beneath all four of the villains. The woman dressed in a fishnet bunny suit was caught completely unaware as the ground beneath her vanished, gravity and her body weight working in concert to drag her down into the gaping hole. Her cry of terror cut out as I sealed the hole shut, leaving nothing more than a smooth patch of unbroken sand behind—but she was the only one I managed to catch.

The woman with the long black mass of spiky hair clapped her hands together out of some kind of well-practised reflex, and a spherical wave of force washed outwards, digging into the edges of the hole before she used the purchase to throw herself clear of the trap. I watched as she hit the ground and then rolled to her feet with a vicious smile on her face—the entire desert zone split into two halves under my command, pulling away from one another and leaving her to fall screaming into the gaping chasm below. I smashed the two halves back together before she could hit the concrete deep at the bottom. The woman clapped her hands together just before the impact, a new sphere of force washing into existence in a desperate effort to keep herself from being buried alive—I pushed inwards, crushing the barrier down, and she cried out with the strain of holding it all back.

The man in the white robe was far too fast to catch in the same manner, having started moving before the hole had even fully appeared beneath him. Likewise, he’d cut sideways as the chasm had opened, avoiding a similar fate, blurring around the dunes with a trail scattering behind him—he crashed into me from behind, arm extended, and my body exploded into sand upon contact, dispersing before the impact could damage me. I wrenched the cloud of diffused sand inwards in an attempt to catch him by reforming around him, but he blew straight through it, moving too fast to catch, and I was left to return to my solid form without success.

The last of the four was a woman with no mouth, long hair and a pair of sharp eyes that seemed to flash before a series of orbs smashed into the sand around me, sending great gouts of it scattering up into the air. I noted that the pair of red angular braces hovering above her shoulder was keeping her aloft, allowing the kinetic force of her attacks to push her backwards through the air—but she wasn’t anywhere near fast enough to match her ally. A massive hand struck up out of the ground directly behind her, snatching hold of her around the torso before wrenching itself down and dragging her down into the depths to join the others. The man in the white robe broke off on his next approach, aiming to escape the desert zone at that same ludicrous speed. I raised my arms, ripping all four faces of the zone directly up into the air in a terrible mass of sand, creating a cage around the entire desert and removing the man’s ability to flee—the man hit the wall at full speed, and then continued straight up the side of it, his sheer momentum enough to carry him upwards.

I dragged the top of the cage inwards until it was curling over into a monstrous tidal wave of sand, and the man fell, unable to defeat the sheer angle with speed alone. It crashed down on top of him, burying him beneath an immense amount of sand—and then, the sprawling surface of the desert grew still. Far below, the woman in the skintight bodysuit remained, hands pressed together, skin red and raw against the strain of maintaining her little pocket of air. The other three weren’t so lucky, forced to hold their breath as best they could while surrounded on all sides by the compact sand that sought to crush the air out of their lungs. The rest of the instructors had arrived, I knew, because I could hear them speaking to Ochaco and Thirteen. Beyond that, I could see a little cluster of them rapidly approaching the edge of the desert zone, no doubt drawn to the massive amount of sand that had been thrown around only moments ago.

I removed the protective core of sand I’d built around Koji, Rikido and Toru before shifting it up into a stretcher of sand beneath all three. Their bodies rose gently to hover around me as I started back towards the entrance—I had made it all of three steps before Toru woke up.

“Higawara?” Toru mumbled.

I shifted the stretchers until she was directly beside me and raised the lip around the two others to prevent her from seeing the bodies of the boys lying within.

“Toru,” I said, “I am unable to perform a visual assessment—are you injured?”

Toru sounded disorientated, and she had been laying still for at least a minute, suggesting that she had been unconscious for most of that time. That wasn’t something trivial because if you spent enough time like that, it would eventually compound into permanent effects. I couldn’t see her, but I’d inadvertently mapped out the entirety of her body when I’d first surrounded her in sand—right down to the details and shape of her invisible face—and it was clear to me that there was something wet trailing down the front of her head. I couldn’t inspect it any further without introducing contaminants into what might well be a still open wound.

“My face hurts,” Toru mumbled, attempting to reach up to touch it. “Something hit me, but it was moving too fast to see what it was; I don’t really remember what happened after that.”

“There was a man who possessed a physical augmentation quirk that increased his movement speed,” I said, “It may have been him.”

“Right—it was probably that,” Toru mumbled. “Koda and Sato were with me; what happened to—”

“All Might and the other teachers have now arrived,” I said, interjecting. “They are actually just ahead of us—can you see them?”

It was far easier to shift her attention away from the question and to something else than it would have been to explain that she was the only one of the three that had survived. I had already seen what kind of reaction that had caused when I’d made the mistake of telling Ochaco and repeating it would have been foolish.

“I think I can see them,” Toru mumbled. “But everything is a bit blurry.”

“You may have sustained a concussion,” I said, “Stay as still as possible, and try not to turn your head to look around because you might have injured your neck as well.”

“Oh,” Toru mumbled. “That makes sense.”

The heroes met us at the edge of the zone, Vlad King acting to ferry Recovery Girl to our location, and I watched as the towering man bent down to help the elderly woman reach the floor.

“Mister Higawara—” Recovery Girl started.

“Toru Hagakure has had a severe impact on her face, and she was unconscious for at least a minute,” I said, summarising everything I’d learned. “She has also reported both pain and blurry vision.”

As I spoke, I angled the two other stretchers in order to give the two teachers an unobstructed sight of the two boys, and Vlad King went still as he realised that they were far too late for medical treatment to be administrated. Recovery Girl raised a hand flat towards me, and I sealed the two stretchers, once again hiding them from view. Vlad King had both of his fists clenched shut now, knuckles white as he came to terms with the situation, the tortured leather of his gloves easily audible.

“You were fighting before,” Vlad King said, turning his gaze away from the stretchers. “Did they run?”

I considered the four villains still trapped beneath the sand and rapidly running out of breath—they had killed two of my classmates and aided in the invasion that might well have done so to the others I had yet to make contact with. It would be a fitting end for them to suffocate beneath the sand, and it would prevent them from ever going on to commit another wrong again—but it would also be discovered eventually, and then whatever remnants of a chance I still had of maintaining my enrollment at U.A. High School would vanish. I brought them to the surface, limbs locked tightly in place by the crushing grip of my sand, and as they emerged, their overlapping, desperate gasps for breath were met completely without sympathy, simply unable to find purchase against my chilling indifference.

“These are the four responsible,” I said, “I will contain them until you are prepared to take them into custody.”

#

U.A Infirmary, Musutafu.

I listened to the rapid staccato of tapping as Yuga played out an unconscious pattern with his foot against the ground, the boy’s hands linked in front of his face, pale in the wake of everything that had happened. Midnight’s sharp-eyed gaze fell upon me again, and I wondered if it wasn’t too late to pretend I was actually blind. The only reason she had yet to approach me was because she seemed to be fielding a non-stop sequence of phone calls. If I’d thought it might work, I might have attempted to slip away while she was otherwise engaged, but I had a feeling she was more than prepared for something like that. Less than a minute later, my luck finally ran out as she closed the call and then slipped the phone down into a hidden compartment located within her belt—Midnight stabbed a manicured finger in my direction before curling it back towards herself in a universally understood gesture.

“Higawara,” Midnight said, “Come with me.”

I stood up, moving to follow her as she stepped out of the waiting room and into the hallway beyond, ignoring the way Yuga seemed to startle back to awareness at my passing. The door swung shut behind me, and I stepped further into the low light of the corridor. Midnight pressed on until she had made it most of the way to the end and then posted up beside the closed door of a room, leaning back against the wall. I came to a stop beside her, standing in the middle of the walkway, content to wait for her to prepare herself for what was most likely going to end with my enrollment being cancelled.

“You don’t speak up much in class, so I actually couldn’t remember your name until I checked the sheet again,” Midnight said, arms crossed over her chest. “Even so, I know that you know who I was talking to back in the lobby.”

That tiny hope I’d held onto that this discussion had been about something unrelated vanished, and I turned to meet her gaze, no longer attempting to avoid it—

“Yes, I was aware that you were speaking to me,” I said, searching her face. “I deliberately went against the instructions to stay inside the building and then returned to the USJ.”

Midnight seemed to pause for a moment, possibly caught off guard by my attempt to shine the lens of the conversation directly onto the topic, which she had probably expected me to try and avoid. Pretending that I hadn’t broken the rules when it was so very obvious that I had would only work to sour her opinion of me further. It was, however, odd that Midnight was the one talking to me about this instead of Principal Nezu, but then again, I doubted he had time to handle this when his school had just been the victim of what could only be called a terror attack—and in which two of his students had been murdered.

“Why did you go back?” Midnight asked.

“Thirteen instructed me to inform the rest of the faculty about the invasion, and by undertaking this task, I was leaving my classmates to die.” I said, “The chance that I could stop that from happening was more than worth the risk that I might later be expelled for breaking the rules.”

As much as it had startled me at the time, I had made that decision fully aware that I was endangering my own future and that the path to locating Nanami may become more difficult in the process. It was a rationalised choice—albeit one that had been done under a great deal of pressure—and one that I still believed to be correct, even now when the consequences had come knocking.

“Your reasoning here is flawed,” Midnight asked, frowning now. “Why are you weighing the danger to your classmate’s lives against your chance of being expelled?”

“I don’t think I understand the question,” I said, genuinely unsure of the disconnect. “Breaking the rules of a system leads to a punishment that is scaled in proportion to the rule that was broken—”

I trailed off as Midnight uncrossed her arms and then held up a hand, palm out in a clear indication for me to stop.

“That’s not what I’m saying, Higawara—you aren’t even considering the danger your actions present to your own life,” Midnight said, “Why are you more concerned with being expelled than by stepping into a building with hundreds of villains that intend on killing you?”

Because if I died fighting those villains, then my consciousness would end, and after that, I would no longer be a part of the world. It was a post-rationalization to say that if I had stayed in the lobby, then Fumikage, Hanta and Yuga would have been killed—and beyond that, Kyoka, Ochaco and Thirteen would have been killed soon after—but even without knowing what the state of things had been, it seemed obvious to me that a class of fledgling heroes would inevitably fall beneath the weight of so many villains. If every single person in my class had died, if Shota Aizawa had died, and if I had been the only remaining remnant of Class 1-A—

“I was thinking about my own life as well,” I lied, “Now that the danger has passed, I am free to worry about other things—like my future, and so I misspoke.”

Midnight stared down at me through furrowed brows, and I wondered how long it had been since I had made such a poor attempt to deceive someone—she didn’t look even remotely as if she believed me, and I couldn’t really blame her.

“You regret breaking the rules, at least,” Midnight said, tilting her head to the side. “Is that right?”

“No, the only thing I regret is that I took so long to actually leave the building,” I said, without even stopping to think about it. “If I had made the decision faster, then I might not have been too late.”

Midnight blew out a rattled breath at the words before letting her head fall back to rest against the smooth wall of the hallway, eyes shifting up to study the ceiling. I remained in place, silent and fighting to get a hold of myself—everything felt so close to the surface, and the tight reign I usually kept over myself seemed to be faltering. I was revealing too much of my internal state, answering questions without proper caution, too locked into the present, and failing to think ahead to discern where those answers might lead me.

“That was never your responsibility, Higawara,” Midnight said with a quiet sigh. “You shouldn’t have gone back there—that’s the responsible thing to say, and it’s what I’m supposed to be telling you.”

“Supposed to,” I murmured.

“You shouldn’t have gone back there,” Midnight repeated, watching me from the corner of her eyes. “But even so, I’m really glad that you did.”

I was forced to break eye contact and glance away, something in that momentary admittance striking me entirely off guard. I had expected to find myself faced with stony faces and a repeated pattern of chastisement. I had expected punishment as a deterrence and discouragement towards any further actions of a similar nature. I had expected to have my future altered and for my hero academia to be ripped away from me. What I hadn’t expected was to find some small, quiet acknowledgment that while my actions had been in violation of the rules, they had also managed to affect some amount of good—Midnight let out a hum of noise at my sudden avoidance, the sound almost amused.

“I didn’t bring you in here just to yell at you,” Midnight said, “All Might has been bringing each of you in for a small talk, and you were the last one on the list.”

Midnight reached down to take hold of the handle of the door she was leaning beside and cracked it open just enough to indicate I should enter. I stepped through to the room beyond, still not quite able to meet her gaze, and felt an odd relief when she closed the door behind me, creating a solid barrier between us. All Might was seated on the edge of the bed, his previously perfect suit a tattered mess and his massive hands clasped together in his lap.

“Young Higawara, I’m glad to find you unhurt after today’s events,” All Might said with a tired smile. “The information you gave to me and your haste to alert my colleagues saved a great many of your classmates.”

I wondered just how much strain the man was under after holding this form up for the battle at the USJ and all of the individual talks he’d given prior to my own—the words he spoke were probably supposed to be reassuring, but it was hard to focus on the positive result compared to the negative that existed right alongside it.

“But not all of them,” I said, “If I had been more prepared to take action, or if I’d considered how the villain might initiate the encounter, I might have been able to prevent him from scattering them at all.”

All Might leaned forward a fraction, bowing under the strain that the man was fighting hard to keep from appearing on his face.

“That is no fault of your own, but rather, it is the natural manifestation of age,” All Might said, “You are still at the beginning of your journey to become a hero, and you cannot be expected to possess the skills you’ve yet to learn.”

All Might hunched forward again, one massive fist rising up to cover his mouth as he fought down a partially muffled cough—steam erupted around him as the man’s hold over his muscular form outright failed, and for a moment, the gaunt, sickly man was wracked by a full-fledged coughing fit.

“I must apologise, young Higawara,” All Might managed, looking every bit his fifty years of age. “It would appear I’ve reached my limit once again.”

“I have already assumed that it strains you to maintain that form,” I said. “There is no reason to force yourself to suffer on my account.”

“I admit, this is part of what I wished to discuss with you,” All Might said, a rasp in his words. “You knew exactly who I was on sight—how is it that you came to discover my secret?”

“My quirk has had a substantial effect on my senses, particularly my vision, and so long as a certain amount of sand is present within my range, I can remotely view the area around it,” I said, “It functions as a split in my perspective, allowing me to maintain and monitor several points of focus at once.”

I lifted a hand up in front of me, a tiny orb of sand rising from my palm up into the air and settled into an orbit around the ceiling light above, casting a tiny moving shadow that stretched out across the pristine paint like a spike of moving darkness.

“I have developed a habit of creating these nodes to monitor my surroundings,” I said, “I witnessed your transformation during the Battle Training, but there have been several occasions where I’ve spotted you approaching the classroom.”

“That is a very useful ability,” All Might said with a quiet sigh. “It has become quite taxing to maintain my strength, so I’ve had to become quite careful with its use.”

“All Might,” I said, studying his sunken eyes. “Are you dying?”

All Might appeared outright alarmed for a moment before he began to shake his head, the motion sending his jagged bangs tumbling about in the air.

“No, young Higawara, I am not dying,” All Might said, his left hand coming to rest against his rib cage. “I—was injured in a battle, and this is the result.”

For an injury to cause such a debilitating change to the man’s body and for him not to have been able to solve it with medical intervention must have meant that it was particularly horrific in scope.

“I feel I should tell you that when I first discovered you, I made the incorrect assumption that you were an impostor,” I said, “I spoke to my uncle, Sajin Higawara, and so he is aware of your general condition—he has instructed that I keep this information quiet to avoid causing any trouble for you.”

“Sajin Higawara,” All Might said, “I feel as if I know that name—”

The man trailed off, sounding troubled by his inability to place it.

“He is the hero known as Snatch,” I said.

“Yes, of course,” All Might said, snapping his fingers. “Your uncle is a good man; thank you both for your consideration.”

“This information may have already proliferated,” I said, “Considering the timing of this invasion and that the stated goal was to kill you.”

“I’m afraid that you are correct; the villains that attacked today were somehow aware of my weakened state,” All Might said, clenching one of his thin-fingered hands into a fist. “How they discovered this is still unknown, but it is a very volatile situation right now.”

“Perhaps it was the person who injured you that revealed it to them,” I said. “It—”

All Might outright flinched at the words, the visceral reaction causing me to pause for a moment to consider if I even wanted to continue.

“If the information was known to even a fraction of the villains who were here today, then it has likely spread to many others,” I said with more care. “It seems reasonable to assume that further attempts on your life will take place in the future.”

“You are very astute, young Higawara,” All Might said with another sigh. “I can see a great many discussions in the future with the staff of U.A. High School regarding the possibility of another attack—I am beginning to wonder if coming here was a mistake after all.”

I found that I genuinely disliked the idea of All Might being chased away from U.A. High School because of criminals who could not bring themselves to face him without a massive disparity in numbers, environment and hostages.

“Do you intend to leave because of what occurred today?” I asked.

“I cannot leave—” All Might said before shaking his head. “I have no intention of leaving, but it may not be up to me to make that decision; this tragedy will weigh heavy upon us all.”

There was a vast difference between ‘cannot leave’ and ‘having no intention of leaving’, and the fact that he had bothered to rephrase himself caught my attention. There was an implication hanging in the air, something that hinted that he was needed here for something beyond his normal teaching duties.

“Koji Koda and Rikido Sato—those poor boys.” All Might murmured, “Young Higawara, while I did want to speak with you about this secret, my main purpose was to discuss what has happened to your classmates; I want you to know that many resources will be made available to you to help—”

I had heard this before, from both the school councillor after Nanami had vanished and then again in the aftermath of the Pasana Middle School Incident—the types of support he was talking about were already something I had access to.

“All Might, thank you, but this is not the first time I have dealt with something like this,” I said, “I have spent several years speaking with mental health professionals, and today’s events will most likely come up in our next session.”

“This society of heroes and villains is a difficult one to live in, and tragedies continue to occur every single day despite our best efforts,” All Might said with a sad smile. “That does not mean that we will stop trying, and the efforts of aspiring heroes such as yourself are what will pave the way for a brighter future, one where these kinds of things will no longer happen.”

It was a noble sentiment and one that I could respect, but it wasn’t something that I had internalised. I wasn’t the type of aspiring hero that All Might was talking about—I was just a boy who couldn’t let go.

“I had a friend when I was very young, and you inspired her to become a hero,” I said, unsure of why I had even spoken the words. “We were going to save the world together—but she isn’t here anymore.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” All Might murmured. “This world—this place, there will always be those that are taken from us without warning, and so we must do our best to remember them.”

There was something in the way that he said the words that made me believe that he knew exactly what it was like to lose someone, and despite all of the things I had read or learned about him, I had not even the faintest idea of who it might have been—but it was clear enough that even the greatest hero in the world had his own private collection of tragedies. I let out a long breath and then did my best to regain my composure—there was still something I could do here to secure my future, and it would be a waste not to try.

“All Might, today I returned to the USJ despite the warnings to remain inside,” I said, “I have spoken to Midnight already, but she did not indicate whether or not my enrollment would be terminated as a result of my actions.”

“While I have not had a chance to speak to Principal Nezu for longer than a few minutes, I can assure you that your place here at U.A High School is something I will support wholeheartedly,” All Might said, raising his hand. “You did, however, break a rule, so I would not be surprised if you did receive a lesser punishment.”

It wasn’t a definitive answer by any measure, but having the support of the number one hero in Japan had to count for something.

“Thank you,” I said, voice quiet. “I’ll accept any punishment, provided I can stay here.”

“You are most welcome, young Higawara,” All Might said, “Is there anything else you would like to ask me before we go our separate ways?”

There was one thing that I had been thinking about for quite a while now and something that had only risen to prominence in my mind after what Tsuyu had said on the bus this morning. I considered whether it was appropriate to ask before deciding that I might as well go for it.

“I have noticed you were engaging in several private meetings with Izuku Midoriya during school hours, and you both share an absurd level of super strength,” I said, “It may be a weak connection, but it does exist—Is Izuku your son?”

All Might leapt up off the bed, coming to his feet in a sudden rush, and the man moved to check a watch at his wrist that certainly didn’t exist before he gave an affected cry of surprise.

“I’m afraid I’ve misjudged how much time I had at my disposal,” All Might said, muscles erupting back into existence. “Farewell, young Higawara—”

—a moment later, I was left alone in the empty room, the now open door just starting to swing shut. Midnight reached out and caught the door before it could close all the way, before peeking in through the gap in an attempt to establish what had just happened—how curious.

#

Higawara Manor, Musutafu.

“It’s unbelievable that anyone would just attack a school full of children,” Hayami said, horrified. “How do things like this keep on happening?”

It wasn’t the first time she had said something like that, and I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be the last.

“Those poor boys,” Hayami managed. “Their families must be inconsolable.”

“It’s far more unbelievable that only two children died when there were that many villains involved,” Sajin said, speaking up. “The level of coordination required for something like this—they must have been planning this attack for months.”

“It was highly organised, knowing the security system well enough to jam the signals and assembling all of the villains in a group to come through the portal together,” I said, “They even teleported additional groups of villains into the different zones in preparation to take out all of the students once they had been scattered.”

“You said they got a hold of the schedule when they knocked down the front gate—to think they would have that much of it planned out in advance,” Sajin muttered. “The fact that we work together is one of the best advantages the heroes possess; seeing this level of cooperation amongst villains is something that hasn’t happened since the old days.”

“Did villains often work together in the past?” I asked.

“Yes, but things have changed a lot since I was a kid,” Sajin said, “Remember I told you how we didn’t get into the city until we were teenagers?”

I nodded.

“Well, villains aren’t too interested in the farmers or hunting down people out in the sticks, so it wasn’t like we ran into much of it ourselves,” Sajin said, “There were a lot of stories about the big cities, though, in the papers, and on the news.”

“It’s easy to forget how different it was,” Hayami murmured. “I don’t like thinking about that—it makes me feel so old.”

Sajin tilted his head at her in acknowledgment of the comment, and Hayami blew a short breath out of her nose in response.

“Before All Might came along, things weren’t anywhere near as peaceful as they are now, mainly because there weren’t any laws to regulate quirk usage,” Sajin said, “The police lacked the ability to deal with the quirk gangs that sprung up, it was just too much power in one place for normal people to contend with.”

A society where quirk users were completely unrestricted was hard to actually envision, but I was left with the distinct impression that the number of threats, violence and crimes would have been far more overwhelming. I’d seen the kind of damage a single man could do with a dangerous quirk and a will to use it as a weapon, but scaling that up to a city filled with them?

“How old were you when All Might first appeared?” I asked.

Hayami turned her head away from the comment, her position crystal clear on answering anything age-related.

“He started showing up in the news around twenty-one-eleven, so I think I would have been about nine or ten,” Sajin said, glancing upwards for a moment. “All Might wasn’t the legendary figure you know him as now; he was just a particularly strong hero who was working alongside Gran Torino and a few others—at least until he left Japan entirely.”

I’d done enough research at Nanami’s behest to have heard most of this before, but it was interesting to hear it spoken about from the direct perspective of someone who had lived through that time.

“That’s when he started working with David Shield,” Hayami murmured, “I actually met him once, you know? I haven’t really kept up with his career, but he seems to have really made something of himself.”

Another name that I had seen in passing but of which I hadn’t researched to any real degree.

“It was bound to end up like that, given the genius-level intelligence the man was working with,” Sajin said, “His name is stamped across most of the documentation for the high-tech, anti-quirk equipment the police have stashed away.”

“Was the villain’s presence bad when you first moved here?” I asked.

“It was pretty damn bad, but there was a span of time a few years after that where all of the villains suddenly stopped being so disorganised,” Sajin said, furrowing his brow. “There was a change in how they operated, moving towards more organised criminal activity—drug distribution, protection rackets, extortion, and even human trafficking.”

“What was the cause?” I asked.

“There were rumours about a bogeyman villain who was behind it all, but if that mastermind really did exist, they were never formally identified,” Sajin said, “All Might came back to Japan near the end of that time, and things started to shift to the better again—it was around the time the hero rankings really took off as a thing.”

Sajin looked to Hayami for a moment, an unasked question regarding narrowing down the time period.

“Twenty-one-twenty-two, I think,” Hayami said, “Give or take a year.”

“That was around the time that the mythos surrounding All Might began to take shape—the man went after the villains with a vengeance,” Sajin said, nodding at her answer. “Hero agencies started appearing, and some real structure started to form when the unlicensed quirk restriction law was passed in—”

“Twenty-one-thirty-three,” Hayami supplied.

“—right.” Sajin agreed, “That dragged most of the troublemakers away from the patrolled sections of the city, forcing them deeper underground to avoid getting caught using their quirks in public.”

It was fascinating that a single man—however powerful he was as an individual—could have been the catalyst for such a massive societal change. The relatively peaceful and safe version of Japan that exists today would not have been possible if not for his unwavering efforts to force it to change.

“It’s a better place now, there is no denying that, but even with everything he did, this isn’t a problem that can be solved by throwing heroes at it,” Sajin said, “New people are being born every single day, and with how the world is changing, it’s basically a guarantee that each and every one of them will have a quirk.”

Sajin leaned back in his chair; his arms now crossed over his chest.

“We’re getting better at providing support for people with unusual or life-altering quirks, but there will always be those who slip through the cracks,” Sajin said, “Some of those people come from difficult upbringings and so they lack the responsibility they need to guide them—and some of those quirks can’t even be used responsibly in the first place.”

I had seen more than a few stories in the news of people like that, unfortunate recipients of a power that was either uncontrollable or that caused harm to others simply by the nature of how it functioned. How could you fit into a society like this when your quirk drove everybody around you to extreme aggression or where your body had fundamentally changed to only derive sustenance through the act of cannibalism? I nodded in agreement to what the man was trying to explain, but my mind was struck by the general trend that was being depicted. In a society that had been gifted sudden overwhelming power, criminal activity had grown to dominate. The heroes had fought to contain them, and in time, the villains had grown organised to rupture the balance of power. All Might had changed all of that, forcing the villains to disband and then retreat into the shadows to hide from his light—until today, when one-hundred-and-forty villains had shattered the status quo once again.

“Everything is swinging back into the villain’s favour,” I said, “Uncle Sajin—is Japan changing again?”

Hayami looked distinctly uncomfortable with the gravity of the question.

“That’s what us heroes are here for, Hisoka,” Sajin said, “We’re not going to let that happen.”

#

Higawara Manor, Musutafu.

Classes had been cancelled for the rest of the week, the aftermath of the invasion too volatile to risk letting anyone back on the grounds for the next few days. The police and what must have been three dozen heroes scouring the grounds for any sign of villains that had managed to evade the first responders and perhaps embedded themselves somewhere on the campus to wait it all out. I had yet to return to my own apartment, having stayed the night at the mansion because of just how shaken up Hayami had been about it all—she simply hadn’t wanted me to spend the night alone. I probably could have reassured her enough to return, but there would be too much resistance to fight through to make it worthwhile.

“Tighten the corner of the left eyelid—it’s drooping,” Hayami said, “You can raise the upper right one as well; the angle is slightly off.”

I studied the details in question, using both my proprioception to sense the shape of it and my real eyes to help alleviate the mistake—the minor adjustments vanished some of the uncanny valleys that had slipped into the face. Hayami’s stone statue stood beside my own, still connected to her arm in a mass of flowing stone; the sheer contrast between the two was hard to describe. Where my own had a smooth blend of features, Hayami’s statue was a masterpiece of tiny angles, the contours of the facial structure somehow visible beneath its stone skin. The muscles, veins and pores patterning it stood out in a showcase of detail that was—with the singular exception of a single well-practised face—far outside of my reach.

“That’s much better,” Hayami said, “Your practice is really starting to pay off, Hisoka.”

“I feel like I am a world away from the level of detail you are capable of,” I confessed. “It seems as if I always miss something, and nothing is ever perfect.”

Hayami flapped her free hand in the air as if to dispel the words.

“I’ve been doing this for decades, and I can tell you now that if I left this here for just three days, I would return to find it riddled with mistakes I should have caught the first time.” Hayami said, “Practice sharpens the tools that allow you to identify the mistakes, but if you look hard enough, there is always something to be found.”

“I shouldn’t be aiming for perfection,” I said, repeating something she had told me many times before. “I should be aiming for consistent growth.”

“Strength and perseverance,” Hayami said, smiling now. “You know, last night reminded me of something I have been meaning to talk to you about.”

I forced the statue into a state of rigidity so that it would not shift while my attention wasn’t on it and then turned to study her face—the words might have been troubling, considering exactly what the conversation last night had involved, but she didn’t seem upset.

“I’ve recently received two tickets to visit the official opening of I-Island to the public; it was a gift for my past contributions to their feature gardens,” Hayami said, “I know that I’m always going off and leaving you on your own, but I thought that perhaps this time—if you wanted to—that you could join me.”

Hayami trailed off, sounding far more nervous than she had a moment ago; this was the first time she had ever invited me to take a trip with her. It was entirely outside of the range of questions I thought were even possible from her. The very nature of those vacations, trips and visits had always appeared to me as a way for her to detach herself from my never-ending presence. A way to escape the tether that had bound her free-roaming spirit to a life she had never decided for herself—taking me with her defeated the purpose of that entirely. As surprised—and confused—as I was by the offer, I also knew that this was something I would not have declined, regardless of who it had come from. I-Island was linked to two of the ships that could have, at some point, held all three members of the Kureta family.

Even with my focus currently directed towards Minato Yaoyorozu and his private yacht as the most suspicious place, the reality was that in the event that I cleared him of wrongdoing, I would need to search out the other vessels on my list. Gaining access to I-Island—and the two ships in question—was something I couldn’t have accomplished without great difficulty. It was a floating island located somewhere out in the ocean, too far away to manage a trip in a single day—let alone search it to any real extent in that time—and so any attempt I could have made to reach unseen would have been noted by Hayami and Sajin both. The alternative would be to purchase the tickets with their permission or to wait until I was old enough to be granted enough autonomy of movement to visit the island without it.

This was an unexpected opportunity for me to gain access to the place legally, with permission, and without having to pay for the privilege—

“Thank you, Hayami,” I said, “I would love to come with you.”

The smile that had taken Hayami’s face was surprised, relieved and warm—and I felt that same old discomfort rise up within me at the deception. I could almost see the chain of thought that had led her to make such a drastic change in how we interacted, but even if some of it was still muddled to me, the origin of it was very, very clear—yesterday, I had gone to school like any other day, and then, the next time she had spoken to me, it had been in the aftermath of two of my classmates being murdered. In the aftermath of the Pasana Middle School Incident, she had reacted in the same way, although in that case, it had been effected by reducing the number of trips she had gone on for a short time to allow us to spend more time together—this time, she was attempting to bring me with her.

I shouldn’t have needed such a rationalised reason to accept what was unmistakably her attempt to connect with me in the aftermath of a tragedy, but I had spent so many years entangling myself with them that I wasn’t sure I could allow myself to receive the extension of kindness without it.

“That’s fantastic—it’s not for several months, though,” Hayami said, breathing out. “July 20th is the date if you wish to put it on your calendar, but I thought I should give you plenty of time to decide; we’ll have to speak with the school if there’s heavy conflict with classes.”

“I will ask on Monday,” I said.

“Perfect,” Hayami said, smiling again. “Now—in case you haven’t noticed it yet, you’re missing a fingernail on the left hand.”

I glanced down to check the indicated area, and sure enough, there were only four fingernails present instead of five—there was always something.

#

Hisoka’s Apartment, Musutafu.

It felt odd to finally return to my apartment after sleeping at the mansion for two nights, but there was also something comforting about regaining the privacy I had started to grow accustomed to. I just hoped that the return to normalcy would be enough for me to regain my ability to sleep undisturbed. Both nights had resulted in twisted sheets and nightmarish scenes that left me sitting up in bed long into the morning—a ringing sound that I had never heard before began playing through the headset attached to my computer. For a moment, I was lost as to what it could have been, but when I clicked the notification at the bottom of my monitor, the communication application flashed up to fill the screen. Across the middle of the screen lay a pair of icons, one red, one green and a short message—

“Eijiro Kirishima has invited you to a group video call,” I murmured, “Would you like to answer?”

It was the same application that my phone used for calls, and when I glanced down at the paired device, I found the same message playing across the screen—this must have been the video call notification, something I couldn’t remember using before. Both Hayami and Sajin preferred the standard call feature, and before this week, I hadn’t really had anybody else by which to send or receive a video call. After a moment of consideration, I accepted the call. A black screen appeared on the monitor, a series of five rectangles spread across it, with each one depicting a video feed from the respective user’s camera—the singular exception was my own, the window simply black, having never been turned on in the first place.

“Finally,” Mina said, her voice lacking most of its usual energy. “Why’s the camera turned off?”

There were no remaining signs of the cuts, scrapes and bruises I had seen spread across her body back in the aftermath of the attack, washed away by Recovery Girl’s quirk, or perhaps one of the other contractors that had brought in to help deal with all of the casualties.

“It was an unexpected call,” Tsuyu said with a rumble in her throat. “He could be naked.”

“We should probably say hello before we start demanding to know what he’s wearing,” Eijiro said, “Hey man.”

“Hello Hisoka,” Momo said.

“Hello,” I said, feeling entirely out of my depth. “I was unaware we would be participating in a discussion today.”

“Turn your camera on.” Mina insisted.

I scanned the settings of the unfamiliar application before hovering over the button that was shaped like a camera. A tiny red light flashed on beside the lens, and my own rectangle grew only slightly brighter on the screen.

“Your room is very dark,” Tsuyu said, “Can you turn a light on?”

I used some of the sand that had long since been spread throughout my apartment to flip the switch on the ceiling light, and the camera feed flashed into clear focus—there was a wash of noise as the four of them started speaking all at once.

“Is that sand?” Eijiro said, leaning right in until his face was large in the feed. “Dude, your place looks like that cave from that genie movie.”

I had absolutely no idea which movie he was referring to, but Mina seemed to catch the reference enough to start laughing.

“I see,” I said, “I’m afraid I didn’t get to see all of you before my uncle came to pick me up, but I’m glad to see you are all unharmed.”

“I was lucky enough to get out of it without a scratch; my quirk is pretty good for that kind of thing,” Eijiro said, “The three villains that we landed next to couldn’t even hurt me—thanks for dumping all that sand on them, it gave me enough time to get up.”

“I was trying to catch everyone,” I said. “But I lost control of it when the portals shut.”

“I guessed it was something like that,” Momo said, breathing out. “You actually kept me in the air long enough that I could grapple to a building.”

“Same,” Mina said, “Although we were close enough that we just jumped straight over to the roof.”

“I’m not sure what happened after the dome closed on us,” Tsuyu said, speaking up. “One moment I was on the platform, the next I was surrounded by fire, and I then blacked out from the heat.”

“They put you in the zone that countered your quirk,” I murmured. “I wonder if that part was intentional.”

If that was the case, then that showed a terrifying level of battle preparation on behalf of the villains, even more so than everything that had gone into the creation of the invasion.

“It definitely was; they put me, Bakugo and Kaminari in the rain zone—none of us could use our quirks at all.” Mina said, “My acid sucks when it’s diluted, and Bakugo needs to sweat in order to create his explosions—Kaminari can’t use his electricity with all that water around without hurting himself.”

“Kirishima, Ida and I all ended up in the avalanche zone, but I don’t know if they were trying to do that to us or not,” Momo said, “It was a difficult fight, but we managed to work together well enough to overcome them.”

“Probably thought they could just dog pile us,” Eijiro said. “Asui, do you know who was with you?”

“Izuku and Shoji,” Tsuyu murmured, “They defeated the villains, but they were both injured quite badly.”

“I saw Midoriya at the hospital wing,” Eijiro admitted, “The guy somehow broke all five of his right fingers and then his left arm as well.”

“Shoji had a concussion, and most of his ribs had been fractured,” Tsuyu managed. “If I had been able to stay awake—they had to carry me.”

Tsuyu sounded genuinely upset by how everything had happened, and I wondered if—like me—she felt as if she hadn’t done enough.

“I know how you feel; we were fighting a big group of guys—I’m pretty good in a fight, but we were up against full-grown adults,” Mina said, sounding uncomfortable. “Bakugo saved me like a dozen times over, and if Kaminari hadn’t put himself in the hospital in order to take everyone out, we would have lost.”

“Bakugo seemed pretty pissed off about that,” Eijiro said, “He didn’t like the thought of Kaminari sacrificing himself—not exactly how he said it, but that’s what I got from it.”

“Yeah,” Mina said with a quiet laugh. “He just about lost it after we went back to grab him—I thought he was going to explode, even with all of the rain.”

“I just—thank god that All Might arrived when he did,” Momo said, “I witnessed some of the fighting between him and that large heteromorph; to think that such a strong villain could have appeared.”

“That guy was just crazy,” Eijiro said, “How is a villain like that running around, and nobody has ever heard of him?”

I had attempted to research the villain in question, but there was nothing on any of the public databases about him, and considering how distinctive his exposed brain had made him, that seemed highly unusual—had he been working completely in the shadows until now?

“Don’t know, but at least they caught him,” Mina said, “He was the one who messed up our teacher.”

“Hisoka,” Tsuyu said, “What happened to you?”

“I was outside of the dome when it closed on everyone, and so I remained at the entrance with Fumikage, Hanta, Ochaco and Mashirao,” I said, “Thirteen ordered me to return to the main school building and alert the rest of the faculty—I found All Might as he was making his way to the USJ.”

“Midnight said you came back afterwards,” Mina said.

“Yes, I did, and I’m currently waiting to discover what my punishment for breaking the rules will be,” I said, “After I returned, I assisted Hanta, Tokoyami and Yuga with deterring the villains from climbing the stairs to the platform.”

“I saw that part; the chicken guy was trying to bury you guys in spikes.” Eijiro said, “When we actually got to the top of the stairs, you were already gone.”

“I moved to the desert zone,” I said, voice quiet. “Toru was unconscious when I arrived, and I managed to get her to safety—but Koji and Rikido were already dead.”

There was a silence in the wake of my words, and I felt that same terrible twist inside of me that I couldn’t identify—Koji and Rikido had shown an exceptional level of cooperation in the Battle Training together, and the strategy had been more than effective. If they’d had time to learn, study and grow into the hero role, I was sure they would have both become a positive force within the world. If they’d had time, they would have gone on to save a great many lives, but instead, all of that potential had been cut short. I had only known them for a few short days, and in that time, I hadn’t really had a single conversation with either, at least not one that could be considered anything more than a surface-level exchange of greetings—but they hadn’t deserved a fate like this.

“Hisoka—I’m sorry,” Momo managed. “I didn’t realise that you were the one who found them.”

I had found Koji and Rikido—but I hadn’t saved them. There was something unsettling about how those empathetic words carved themselves into the world, and for perhaps the first time since I had taken on the task of finding my friend, I was left to wonder if there really was anything more than tragedy to be found at the end of my path. If ten minutes could so perfectly define the contrast between finding and saving, then what about the magnitude of years? Was it even possible to save Nanami anymore, or was finding her really all that I had left?

“It’s fine,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “Has anyone heard any new information about our teacher?”

The unsubtle attempt to shift the conversation was far more effective than it should have been, with everyone on the call wanting to turn their gaze away from such an uncomfortable point of focus. Mina was the first to recover, and so she was the one to speak.

“Midnight said that it’s going to take multiple visits from Recovery Girl to get him back on his feet, but I guess that means he’s recovering,” Mina said, “Look, why don’t we talk about something else for a bit—like this trip we’re going on tomorrow.”

“At this point, I’d totally get it if you guys don’t want to do it anymore,” Eijiro said, speaking up. “I mean—we could always just shut it down.”

“Allowing the violence and threats from villains to dictate how we live our lives is not something I’m willing to do,” Momo said, breathing out of her nose. “I think we should go ahead with everything that we planned.”

“I want to go too,” Tsuyu murmured.

“Yeah, we’re definitely still going,” Mina said, “Shutting it all down now would just make me feel worse.”

“Hisoka,” Eijiro said, trying for a smile. “What do you think?”