Train, Musutafu.

The entirety of the weekend had vanished with alarming speed, but my time hadn’t been wasted. I had learned a great deal about I-Island during that time. At present, it was offshore, near California and well into its world-tour loop. It was already on a course back to where the I-Expo would be taking place on July 20th—something that would bring them back offshore from Japan. I had considered trying to make my way closer to it before then, but every plan I thought out for doing so seemed unlikely to succeed—International travel to America without a passport would be only the first obstacle I would have to overcome. Even if I had been as reckless as to attempt an immediate infiltration into what was the most well-protected city in the world, the distance would have made that next to impossible.

Not that I could have defeated that security when the city was often compared to Tartarus, the supermax prison that kept the most dangerous, powerful and deadly villains under lock and key. As much as I wanted immediate results, I wasn’t willing to take an action that would reduce the chance of success—not when I was the only one still searching. I would need to wait until July before I could continue my investigation on the island, and that had its own set of challenges. Hayami would be present, and that meant that I would need to navigate the situation while also under her supervision. It wasn’t an impossible task by any measure, but it would make things more difficult.

The first thing that came to mind was to increase my autonomy during the trip by engineering a situation where someone else was coming along with us—the tickets Hayami had received included a plus two, of which I only took up a single slot. If I could find another adult to distract her, then I would have far more unsupervised time. Alternatively, if I could invite someone my own age, then I could use that as an excuse to strike out on my own. I’d already attempted to buy additional tickets in service of that plan, but it had failed on two different points; the first was that the tickets were ludicrously expensive, and Hayami would notice if I spent such a large sum of money.

The second was that even if I had the money, all of the tickets were sold out and had been for the better part of a year now. Considering the amount of money flowing into I-Island and the countless inventions, breakthroughs and research that was coming back out, the I-Expo served as a way to bring in as many investors and publicity as they could manufacture—and they’d started that process years before I was even aware of the place. Any tickets I had a chance of accessing now would have to come from someone who had already purchased them—I turned to face Setsuna Tokage a few moments before she could actually manage her attempt to sneak up on me.

“Have you got eyes in the back of your head?” Setsuna complained. “I was going to scare you.”

“You aren’t anywhere near terrifying enough for something like that,” I said, “It’s nice to see you again, Setsuna.”

“First names already—” Setsuna said before pausing. “Hey, I’m totally scary—can’t you see these teeth? I might even bite.”

I watched as she dug a finger into her mouth, pulling her lips away to showcase the sharp points of her teeth—the self-impressed smile on her face made it clear that she thought she was plenty scary.

“Do you?” I wondered.

“I said I might,” Setsuna hedged, letting her cheek go. “I can’t believe I got put into 1-B—where is the justice?”

“Missing,” I said in agreement. “Did you participate in the standard entrance exam as well?”

“I passed the Recommendation Exam, so I didn’t bother doing the standard one,” Setsuna said with a huff. “You think it would have bumped up my score enough to get into 1-A? Then again, my class isn’t the one getting attacked by villains, so maybe it’s not so bad.”

“A silver lining,” I said, “Although I do not think any of the hero studies courses were sorted by scores; if there is a disparity between 1-A and 1-B, it can only be found in the letter associated with it.”

“Probably,” Setsuna admitted, “How are you guys doing after everything happened at the USJ? We were supposed to go there the day after you did, but it’s been pushed back.”

I considered the question for a moment, and the person who was asking it; we had spoken very little during the Recommendation Exam, so I didn’t have much of a mental model built up of her yet. Even so, my read of her so far seemed to place it as a genuine question, if one that was fueled by her own personal curiosity about the situation.

“The loss of our classmates has lowered the morale of the entire class,” I said, “But it has also had the side effect of motivating us to work much harder in the hopes that we will be better prepared to combat a situation like that in the future.”

“That’s a really positive outlook,” Setsuna said, smiling. “I’m rooting for you guys.”

“Thank you,” I said, “I imagine that the attack has had an effect on everyone at U.A. High School—how has your own experience been?”

Setsuna tipped her head to the side and then rocked it back again as if she were weighing the question in her mind.

“Everyone was confused when the alarm first went off, and Vlad King—that’s our homeroom teacher—wouldn’t tell us anything about it,” Setsuna said, folding her arms behind the small of her back. “After he left, Monoma kept insisting that it was just another false alarm like when the gate was destroyed, and Kendo had to rough him up to stop him from escaping the classroom.”

I nodded in understanding, noting the name as one I had read off their class seating plan near the start of the year. Even though the USJ was rather secluded, it was still on the campus grounds—it was easy to forget that we weren’t the only ones who were here that day.

“We were in lockdown for like three hours before we ended up getting escorted off campus by the police—there was a rumour going around about villains attacking the school, but nobody had the real story,” Setsuna said, “I just remember seeing how worried Vlad was when he first left, it was kind of scary, you know?”

“Yes, I understand,” I said, “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

Setsuna shook her head around in a sudden, quick movement that sent her hair flipping about her face before she rocked up onto her tiptoes for a moment in order to lean forward into my personal space.

“Don’t be silly,” Setsuna said, “We were just scared, but you guys were the ones in actual danger.”

I wasn’t sure the distinction mattered in the end. The villains may have failed their primary goal of killing All Might, but in place of that, they had managed to damage everyone’s sense of safety. The school, the city, and even Japan would be negatively affected by the attack because it sent a very clear message—nobody was safe from the villains.

“I don’t think that makes your experience any less valid than my own,” I said, “Just different.”

“Gosh,” Setsuna said, shaking her head again. “That’s such a 1-A thing to say.”

I wasn’t really sure what that actually meant, but the smile on her face made it pretty clear that she was attempting to make some kind of joke—the combination of that and what I had learned about her during the Recommendation Exam made it clear that this was how she usually interacted with people, and if that was the case—

“I’m sorry, Setsuna,” I said, “I can’t hear you from all the way down there in 1-B.”

“What was that?” Setsuna said, scandalised by the comment. “Maybe I should start biting after all.”

I found myself smiling in response—the train began to slow, and the two of us were forced to brace ourselves against the sudden change in momentum. Setsuna took hold of my arm, turned me around, and then pushed me towards the doors. As unexpected as the sudden physical contact was, she wasn’t actually doing anything that registered as an attack, so I allowed it to occur without complaint. The flow of students passed us by, heading up the stairs, and I caught a flash of red that I thought might have been Eijiro’s hair in the mess before it vanished again.

“I heard that your homeroom teacher was hurt during all of that,” Setsuna said, “Is he back yet?”

“Yes, he was, and yes, he is,” I said, “I believe the only person who was injured that hasn’t returned to U.A. High School is Thirteen.”

“We haven’t had a chance to meet that one,” Setsuna said, eyeing the dwindling mass of students. “Have you done Battle Training with All Might yet?”

“We have,” I said, “Setsuna, we will be late if we stay here.”

“Fine,” Setsuna said, “Walk with me?”

I fell in step beside her without issue, answering her scattershot of questions as we entered the school grounds—it soon became clear that I had been correct in that our two classes were almost identical in progress. On the days when we had completed the excursions to the larger training ground, they had completed work inside their classroom, and on the next day, we had swapped places. One day of difference was the only thing that decided which class would be present for the overwhelming flood of villains—it very well could have been Class 1-B.

“The strangest quirk?” I wondered. “Yuga Aoyama fires a laser from his belly, which might be considered an odd place for it to emerge.”

“That’s not even that strange,” Setsuna complained. “We have a girl called Kinoko Komori, and she can make mushrooms grow on just about anything.”

“I believe I saw her use it in the cafeteria on the day the gates were destroyed,” I said, considering it. “It looks like we have arrived.”

I eyed the massive 1-B that was stamped onto the door; half of it was obscured due to the door remaining partially open. There was enough of a gap for me to see most of the interior of their classroom, and I could see several familiar faces that I had seen in the halls or the cafeteria but never had a reason to speak with. Our arrival seemed to have attracted the attention of several of those who had a line of sight on the door; the closet group was a pair of girls—one was the girl with the mushroom quirk we had just been speaking about, the other was someone I hadn’t seen before, a mess of black hair hung around her shoulders.

“We have,” Setsuna said, drawing my attention back to her. “You really went out of your way.”

I considered the fifteen-meter gap that separated the doors of our respective classrooms before retrieving my phone from my pocket and holding it up between us. Having a link of communication between the two classes was something that could be helpful in the future, especially in the event that something like what happened at the USJ happened again.

“It is a sacrifice I might never recover from,” I said, “If you wouldn’t mind, I would like your contact information.”

I glanced back through the doorway as Kinoko Komori gasped out loud and noted that she was now furiously tugging on the taller girl’s sleeve.

“Seriously,” Setsuna said, staring down at the phone. “A member of 1-A mingling with 1-B—can you imagine the rumours?”

“I’m certain you will become very popular,” I agreed.

Setsuna laughed out loud before slipping her own phone out of her pocket and tapping it against mine—the confirmation screen flashed up in response to the exchange of information, and I placed my phone back into my pocket.

“Oh, will I?” Setsuna said, amused. “Thanks for walking me here.”

“It was nice speaking with you again, Setsuna,” I said with a nod. “Enjoy the rest of your day.”

Kinoko gasped out loud again, and the girl with the black hair clapped her hands together in front of her—Setsuna seemed to grow flustered at the attention of our audience and began flapping her hand at the open door in some kind of effort to shoo the two of them away.

“Bye, Hisoka, I enjoyed it too,” Setsuna said before slipping into the classroom. “Kinoko—”

“Did you hear that, Yui?” Kinoko asked. “She called him Hisoka.”

“You’re already using first names?” Yui murmured.

“Oh my god,” Setsuna said, trying to shush them. “Why were you both just standing there watching us—”

The rest of the conversation was cut off as she finally managed to slide the door shut behind her, and I turned away, angling towards the door to my own classroom. Shota didn’t usually arrive until fifteen minutes past at the earliest, and the walk was only fifteen seconds, so I considered myself relatively safe from receiving a tardy. I slid the door open and stepped inside—

“Hisoka,” Mina said, “Tell her she’s wrong.”

Almost the entirety of the class was already present, with the only exceptions being Tenya and Toru. I turned my attention towards Mina and found her standing far away from her normal seat, standing in a group made up of Ochaco, Momo and Tsuyu. Katsuki sat at his desk, about a meter behind them, glaring at everything with an aimless fury. Eijiro had dragged his chair all the way over so he could sit with Katsuki and was grinning from his odd place in the middle of the aisle.

“I’m afraid I am unaware of the topic of discussion,” I said, “What do you believe Ochaco is wrong about?”

“We were trying to figure out whether or not Aizawa could use his quirk to nullify All Might’s power,” Tsuyu said with a rumble in her throat. “Ochaco thinks it would work; Mina doesn’t.”

Izuku stared at the group with a pale face, his expression an odd mixture of fascination and terror; his notebook was held up in front of his chest like a shield, although what he was attempting to protect himself from was entirely unknown.

“It works on everyone else,” Ochaco said, “The only exception is mutation quirks.”

“There’s no way it would work on All Might,” Mina insisted. “Because it’s All Might.”

The public understood his quirk as an augmentation type that increased his strength to ludicrous levels, but from where that power was derived, nobody had an answer. Privately, I had seen the man transform from a gaunt, thin body into the taller and far more muscular body type that All Might was known for—it looked like a transformation quirk that gifted super strength, durability and speed along with it.

“Airhead is right,” Katsuki said, arms crossed. “For once.”

The most likely outcome for Shota using his erasure quirk on All Might was that he would be cut off from his connection to that transformation, returning him to his smaller, gaunt form. But no one here—with perhaps the singular exception of Izuku if my guess was correct—was aware of the private facet of his ability. From their perspective, the answer would be found in whether or not Shota could nullify the strength portion of his quirk. All of us had already seen the man erase Izuku’s quirk, and though I hadn’t seen it occur, that would probably be the same outcome if he had used it on Rikido.

“I believe Ochaco and Katsuki are correct; he would be able to nullify All Might’s quirk,” I said, choosing an answer that would be true for both cases. “If you recall, he used it on Izuku during our first class, and while the effect was invisible to us, the outcome was that none of the strength he was attempting to harness could be used.”

Izuku flinched at his inclusion as a comparative quirk, and I grew more certain than ever that there was a connection between the two—All Might had fled the room when I asked if he was related to Izuku.

“Crap, I totally forgot about that,” Mina groaned, “I guess you were right—sorry, Ochaco.”

Ochaco planted her hands on her hips and then began nodding her head as she basked in all of the attention—Katsuki grunted at the sight of it, perhaps regretting that he had teamed up with her in the argument and was now being associated with her glee.

“If it did block his quirk,” Tsuyu croaked. “Who do you think would win in a fight?”

Izuku crept closer to the group, now hovering at the far edge of it, his desire to join the discussion clear, but he seemed unable to bring himself to actually do so. Shota turned into our hallway, his eyes on his phone as he stopped just outside the still-closed door. Kyoka, who had been balancing her ear jacks on the top of her desk, glanced over at the doorway, no doubt alerted to his presence by the sound of the man's footsteps.

“It’s All Might,” Mina said, using the exact same answer for a completely different argument. “Of course he’s going to win.”

“Pinky is right,” Katsuki said.

Mina scrunched her nose up at the nickname but said nothing in response to it—I glanced over at Katsuki to see if he’d seen the effect his comment had incurred, but the boy had already closed his eyes. It wasn’t the first time he had picked a rather insensitive nickname for someone in our class, nor was it the first time he’d said something out of pocket that could be considered a few shades too inappropriate.

“The outcome of a fight between All Might without a quirk and Eraserhead is not obvious to me,” I said, still watching Katsuki. “Using the man’s reputation to decide victory is a weak argument.”

Katsuki looked annoyed at the call out, but he said nothing in response to it. Shota, still outside in the hallway, looked up from his phone, clearly able to hear us from the other side of the door but not yet ready to make his presence known.

“Izuku, you are the resident expert,” Fumikage said, “What do you think about this conflict?”

Izuku wilted a bit under the sudden attention, but it didn’t stop him from stepping forward to officially join the conversation.

“It’s not just about his reputation,” Izuku said in agreement. “But I still think that All Might should win most bouts under those conditions.”

“Midoriya thinks that All Might could defeat the sun if he had access to enough arms,” Tsuyu said, speaking up again. “I’m not sure we can trust him to be unbiased.”

“I was only joking about that,” Izuku managed, looking flustered. “Asui.”

“Tsuyu,” Tsuyu corrected.

“We saw firsthand that Shota Aizawa is capable of fighting dozens of villains at the same time; keeping track of that many threats—each one with unknown quirks and fighting styles—is a feat of skill that most of the heroes alive today couldn’t match,” I said, glancing at Izuku. “His level of reflexes, battle intelligence, positioning, and skill place him solidly as a world-class fighter, and if he had been born with an offensive or augmentation quirk, it’s likely that he would be counted within the top five heroes worldwide.”

“Okay, so Aizawa is totally cool,” Mina admitted, “But it’s All Might.”

Aizawa turned to lean back against the wall beside the door, apparently content to listen to our breakdown of his odds in a hypothetical match-up with the greatest hero in Japan.

“All Might is also a close-combat fighter, and he has at least four decades of fighting experience,” Izuku said, speaking up with that same level of startling confidence that he sometimes managed to find. “He has competed in multiple exhibition tournaments across the world without using his quirk and has won every single one of them—he has been a world-class fighter for most of his life.”

I smiled at the amount of energy radiating off him as he spoke.

“It’s noteworthy that for the last two decades, he hasn’t participated in any more of those matches, and while I am not disputing his level of skill, it is worth considering that best estimates put him in his fifties,” I said, “The prime fighting age is below thirty-five, and he is at least a decade out of that range; without access to his quirk, he would be relying entirely on the natural strength of his body, while Shota Aizawa is currently in his physical prime.”

“I’m not sure All Might is out of his prime, considering the complete lack of muscle atrophy on display,” Momo said, pressing a finger to her chin. “There is an obvious body type disparity between them as well; All Might is one of the largest people I have ever seen, but Aizawa is quite slim in comparison.”

At this point, I was arguing against half of the people in the room, which hadn’t really been my intention when I had first spoken up, but I was willing to see it through to the end.

“Shota is slender, but he’s been routinely defeating much larger villains—including those with quirks he can’t erase—throughout his entire career, and his skillset has clearly been built around the existence of that dynamic,” I said, “He uses agility in place of defence, intelligence in place of strength, and his equipment is specifically designed for restraining larger opponents—Shota Aizawa is a modern-day monster hunter, and All Might is just the next monster in line.”

“I’m telling All Might you called him a monster,” Mina crowed before wincing as Momo turned a sharp eye on her. “Wait, I wasn’t actually going to—this is completely different from what happened with Midnight.”

“Damn,” Eijiro said, “You’re making him sound almost as cool as Crimson Riot.”

Katsuki gave a sigh of long-suffering at the return of the prior dispute, and Izuku finally found the space to speak his rebuttal.

“The same logic could apply to All Might because—if we exclude Endeavour—he has fought more villains in his career than the rest of the top ten combined, and due to his size, he is almost always the larger person in any fight that he participates in,” Izuku said, practically vibrating now. “That means he has just as much experience defeating smaller opponents as Aizawa does fighting larger ones.”

The flash of insight it must have taken for him to twist my own point around and then use it in service of his own argument left me smiling—he was right, of course, that dynamic went both ways; I just hadn’t expected him to actually realise it.

“But all of those fights happened while he had access to his quirk, and if it really has been decades since he’s fought without it, then he might not be prepared to fight with the sudden handicap,” Tsuyu said, “Hisoka is right, the outcome of a fight like that is not nearly as clear-cut as everyone is saying.”

Izuku looked entirely ready to continue the debate; the confidence and fire in his eyes was something I had rarely seen from him—but the moment was interrupted as Tenya and Toru arrived together, alerting everyone to their presence as they reached Shota’s position out in the hall.

“Teacher,” Tenya cried, “I apologise for our tardiness; we were assisting Midnight with bringing in some packages.”

“A pair of delivery guys just dumped all of these boxes down near the gate,” Toru said with a sigh. “Teacher, my arms hurt—I am humbly requesting permission to take a nap in class.”

“Hagakure,” Tenya managed. “You can’t do that.”

“Permission denied, and I’ll make sure I keep an ear out for any sign of snoring,” Shota said in answer. “Packages should have been delivered to the proper drop-off point—was there anything unusual about the contents?”

“Midnight already checked them; they were these custom-made mannequins she got for class,” Toru said, sounding dejected at the denial of her request. “They’re for modelling our costume changes and picking poses for merchandise.”

“I’ll follow up on it anyway,” Shota said, “You two should go find your seats—it’s time for class to start.”

#

Training Ground Beta, Musutafu.

Training Ground Beta was just as sprawling as it had been the first time I’d been here, and all of the damage that had been inflicted on the various buildings had already vanished. All Might stood at the entrance, the mass of metal and glass spread out behind him, looking somehow small in comparison to the man’s sheer bulk—he spread his massive arms out wide and held them there as if to tell us that everything within our sight was now ours.

“Welcome back, my little students; we have something fun in store for you today, and you will find the details inside your email,” All Might said, “From this point onwards, you have only one hour to succeed in your assigned tasks—I wish you the best of luck.”

All Might vanished from directly in front of us with a gust of overpowering wind that sent my costume whipping back from the force, and even though I’d been staring directly at him from three different angles, I couldn’t discern exactly which direction he had gone. I sent my sand into the city beyond, firing a series of pellets to begin setting up a network of surveillance. My attempt to locate All Might’s hiding place failed as the building we had used to monitor the Battle Training was sealed shut, a smooth expanse of concrete blocking off the doorway—a wave of phone alerts rang out as the email the man had spoken about finally reached our phones.

“Dumping us in the middle of an abandoned city,” Toru murmured under her breath. “How could this go wrong?”

It was a valid enough complaint with consideration for what had happened at the USJ, but there had clearly been some trickery at work with our schedule this time; we were supposed to be in class with Midnight right now, but instead, we’d been intercepted by All Might. The goal of a ruse like that seemed clear enough, with our public schedules now acting as a layer of extra obfuscation for our actual location. The title of the email was made up completely of smiling faces—something I would never have risked opening under any other circumstance—and I was left to wonder how it had actually made it through the spam filter in the first place.

Team Four

Work together with your assigned teammate to complete the three tasks in order, as intended and without breaking or bypassing the integrity of the test. Once you are finished, please return to the entrance.

Building 117.

“Who the hell is in team four?” Katsuki demanded.

The boy’s voice was almost lost beneath a dozen similar shouts as each team attempted to locate their assigned partner. I stepped past Toru to join him at the front of the group, facing the towering gates, and his head snapped around to look at me.

“I am,” I said.

“Building one-one-seven,” Katsuki said. “You better keep up.”

Katsuki twisted on his heel and then let off an explosion beneath himself, sending him up into the air to pass between the gates as smoke washed over the rest of our class. I fell apart, partially restructuring myself up above the city using one of the nodes in my network; my clothes were abandoned at the entrance in pursuit of speed—a waterfall of sand fell from the sky, transforming into a massive arrow that pointed down towards our target building, the size of the marker making it impossible to miss. The rapid staccato of explosions shifted tempo as Katsuki changed direction at the sight of it, and the arrow crashed down onto the road before I rose up out of the already vanishing mess it had left behind, my lower body unformed and indistinct to preserve my modesty.

Katsuki twisted around the corner and shifted his trajectory with a final calculated explosion before he slid to a stop beside me, crouched down on the street with one hand flat on the tarmac. The building in front of us had a large, open entrance, and in the low light of the room beyond, a grid of bright red lasers crisscrossed from wall to floor to ceiling—all of it vanished, and then seven seconds later, it returned again.

“You forgot to get dressed, idiot,” Katsuki muttered.

“The rules suggest we are not allowed to destroy the wall, block the lasers, or bypass it by going to a higher floor,” I said as the mess of red vanished again. “There was no mention forbidding the recruitment of other teams; Toru would have no trouble completing this task.”

“We’ll do it without her,” Katsuki said, eyes flashing around the room. “There are two sets of footprints on the other side of the laser; we both need to make it across.”

“It vanishes every seven seconds before reappearing for a one-second interval; we could cross while it’s down,” I said, “But that may be against the spirit of the test, and there isn’t enough time to study the path through.”

“Take a picture of it,” Katsuki said.

I slipped my phone out, flipped it side on, and then took a wide-angled shot of the room as the lasers came back on. The two of us stood there, mapping out the easiest pathway through the grid, and once we had it down, I stepped forward. Sand surged forward, reconstructing the pathway we had just discovered and rising up off the floor to close it all in until a small, thin tunnel zig-zagged across the room through the middle of it the lasers. I was still walling off the most dangerous spots when Katsuki started forward into the tunnel, using the hand and footholds to climb his way through it all. I followed behind, passing through the tunnel without touching the ground at all, my indistinct body more than capable of effortless flight. Katsuki was already standing on one set of footprints when I arrived, and when I stepped up beside him, a panel on the wall directly in front of us clicked open before rising upwards. A massive golden key—one which was almost as tall as we were—was revealed in the hidden space along with a note with the next building number written inside.

“Find the next building,” Katsuki said, stepping forward. “I’ll get the key.”

I retreated back through the tunnel as he removed it from the wall, making sure to go through the path we had created to avoid disqualifying us for trying to bypass it on the return trip. Once I was at the front entrance, I let my body disappear again before reconstructing myself at the node closest to Building Seventy-Four—I was forced to twist out of the way as a flurry of rubber balls was fired from the side of the building. I continued to retreat until the auto-turret fixed to the wall of the building receded back inside its hiding place—it had a range of fifteen meters, and now that I was looking for it, I could see there were dozens of similar outlines across the face of the building.

Katsuki made it out of the building with the key jammed into his belt before he went skyward in chase of the series of arrows I had left behind for him—a platform of sand began to grow beside me in the air, the surface perfectly flat and more than large enough for a person to stand on. Katsuki followed the curving path of the arrows, even though it took him further away from our objective, and then broke his upward momentum with a carefully timed explosion before twisting in mid-air to land on the platform beside me.

“There are rapid-fire turrets on both sides of the street, aimed to cover the entrance to the building from every direction; the range of each is roughly fifteen meters,” I said, the thin tendril of sand I had sent crawling along the street remaining unnoticed. “The lobby has four turrets, one at each corner of the room and a pedestal rests in the middle with a large keyhole set into the top of it.”

This was something I could have cheated in multiple ways—either by creating a fake key inside the pedestal, sending the key down encapsulated by a shield of sand, or by covering each of the turrets to prevent them from emerging in the first place—but the message had been clear, we were supposed to be working together to complete the tasks, and that meant actively seeking out opportunities to demonstrate teamwork.

“The orders are too damn vague,” Katsuki muttered, “The turrets are there to stop us from putting the key in the hole, but if we destroy them, then we could be breaking the integrity of the test.”

“Then we face the test head-on,” I said, raising my arms. “I will handle defence; you unlock the pedestal.”

Sand burst forth from the palms of my hands, twisting into a dozen separate streams that thickened as they grew closer to their targets—the platform beside me erupted beneath the force of his quirk, and Katsuki surged downwards, passing between the streams, his body aimed directly for the entrance. The auto-turrets began to emerge from the face of the building, but the unending and overlapping chain of rubber balls struck nothing except sand as the tip of each stream expanded out into a hexagonal shield directly in the line of fire. Katsuki reached the street with an overhead, double-handed explosion that smashed into the tarmac. It flipped him into a forward rotation that kept him three feet off the ground and left his arms stretched out behind him.

Sand twisted past him and into the lobby, intercepting the four streams of rubber balls—half a dozen hidden panels opened up inside the room, revealing even more turrets and my sand split again, moving to intercept each with its own dedicated shield. Katsuki unleashed a wave of fire and smoke behind him, and he was sent hurtling through the entrance without a hint of hesitation—he planted his foot on one of the streams of sand, kicked up into the air, and tore the massive key free of his belt all in the exact name motion. I watched as one of his hands trailed upwards, fingers almost touching the ceiling before fire washed outwards, and he was sent straight downwards to stab the key into the centre of the pedestal—all at once, the turrets shut off and receded back into the walls. Katsuki rode the momentum down to the floor, using his hand on the key to turn himself back upright to land on his feet.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Katsuki said as I reformed beside him. “You god damned extra.”

The key had already vanished into the pedestal, and the top of it had opened up to reveal a bright red cushion—sitting atop it lay a pair of thick golden bangles and a small message.

One may progress, and one will fall.

Building Twenty-Seven.

“Escort mission,” Katsuki said, sounding annoyed. “Where’s the next building?”

“Two streets in, to the right of the entrance,” I said, “It appears to be a bakery.”

Katsuki reached out to pick up one of the bangles, and it snaked itself shut around his wrist the very instant he made contact with it—my hand snapped out before I had fully registered what had happened, and the second bangle crashed into my palm on its way towards Katsuki’s other arm. I could feel it trying to force my hand out of the way, strong enough that I had to lock my hand in place with my quirk—

“Don’t be an idiot,” Katsuki muttered, “Let it go before we end up failing.”

The bangle sunk into my palm at the words, passing through and out the other side, sand still clinging to it before it snapped forward to lock itself around his other wrist. Katsuki grunted as the bangles began to rapidly expand across his body, wrapping him in a mess of golden bandages until only a tuft of spiky hair remained. Sand washed over his body, lifting it up off the ground, and I left the building behind, rising up into the sky until I could cut a path directly towards the final building. Katsuki gave a muffled curse—the words indecipherable, but the tone very clear—of frustration, and I sped up, unsure whether or not he could actually breathe in the bindings. I built a more substantial shield around his body as I started my descent, but no turrets emerged from the walls, and as far as I could tell, there were none inside the building itself. I stepped inside, sand crawling over every wall in preparation to react to a hidden threat, but if there was anything present, it remained entirely dormant. In the back room, right in the centre of the floor, was a white outline of a body—it was oddly uncomfortable to see it there, though I couldn’t tell exactly why that was—and the context suggested that Katsuki himself would be the key to this part of the test. I placed his body down and then sent sand rising up towards the ceiling as a hidden panel opened up in response—I paused as a green light was emitted from the hole, and where it touched the golden bands, they began to shift, retreating back into the bangles around his wrists—

“Bastards,” Katsuki grunted. “We’re done here?”

“There are no more notes present, so the last task will be returning to the entrance,” I said, holding out a hand. “All Might is already waiting for us—it would appear we are the first to complete all three tasks.”

The bangles gave a chime as the bands were completely absorbed back into them, and the second he had the ability to move, Katsuki was already rising to his feet—I let my hand drop, unbothered by his refusal to accept my assistance.

“Then let’s get out of here,” Katsuki said, clenching his hand into a fist. “I’m not going to let some second-rate team catch up at the last minute.”

Katsuki ran straight up the building across from the bakery, a chain of explosions keeping him moving at almost a full sprint, and when he stepped onto the flat of the rooftop, he sped up again. I followed his path, twisting upwards into the air in my unformed state, staying far enough off his left side to avoid having to fight through the force of his explosive ascent. He launched himself off the rooftop at full speed, clearing the street and landing on the last row of buildings before the towering walls. We cut right, down again, darted across the street, then out through the entrance of Training Ground Beta—Katsuki skidded to a stop in front of All Might, smoke trailing behind him, and I rose up within my discarded costume, reforming completely for the first time since the test had begun.

“Well done, both of you—that was a perfect display of teamwork,” All Might said as he applauded us both with his massive hands. “Young Bakugo, you didn’t even destroy any buildings this time.”

“Whatever,” Katsuki said, looking away. “I don’t want to hear it.”

The blonde boy’s reaction held none of the aggression I had grown used to seeing from him, all of it apparently stripped away by the radiant smile on the man’s face—All Might was powerful indeed.

#

U.A High School, Musutafu.

The entirety of Class 1-B was present within the classroom, which was odd because Midnight was supposed to be our instructor for this period, and she was very clearly inside, sitting on the edge of the desk at the front of the room. I braced myself as Momo bumped into me from behind, her conversation with Toru having distracted her from realising we had reached our destination.

“Sorry, Hisoka,” Momo said, “Oh—I hope we didn’t get our classes mixed up?”

Midnight looked up from the tablet in her hands, eyeing us at the threshold for a long moment before she smiled and waved us inside. As the person at the front, I was forced to step inside ahead of the others, and I found myself under the scrutiny of the entire other class. Kinoko Komori grinned as she caught sight of me before her head snapped around to the girl sitting directly beside her—Setsuna looked entirely unimpressed at the attention.

“You came to the right place,” Midnight said, “Class 1-A, sit down at the benches right at the front, but don’t get attached to them because you’ll be moving soon.”

I slipped into the front row of the bench as directed before threading myself all the way to the end as the others began to fill in behind me—

“Teacher, are the students of Class 1-A struggling with their coursework?” A blond boy said with feigned concern. “That must be why you’ve brought them here—I just didn’t think we would be doing charity work until at least the second year.”

“What the hell did you just say?” Katsuki snarled.

Katsuki came to a complete stop, which bottlenecked the rest of the class at the mouth of the aisle, further splitting our group up as they were forced to circle around him. Toru was forced to slip down onto the bench directly beside me, with nowhere else to go. Midnight placed the tablet down on the desk beside her leg and then leaned back onto her hands, watching the interaction for just a moment before she spoke up.

“It’s a joint class, so try not to let your head swell any bigger, Monoma,” Midnight said, “Bakugo, you’re holding everyone else up—sit down already.”

Katsuki looked like he was genuinely considering nuking the entire classroom, but Eijiro stepped up and clapped him on the back—somehow, that actually seemed to work, and I watched as he managed to find the willpower to tear his eyes away from Monoma’s smile.

“Midnight,” Toru said, one gloved hand held up in the air. “Are we going to be using the mannequins today? I’ve been thinking about merchandising since you forced us to do all that manual labour.”

Monoma spoke up again before Midnight had even managed to locate the source of the question, still holding that odd, strained smile on his face.

“What are you going to sell?” Monoma said, smile widening. “I can’t imagine anyone buying anything from a rack filled with empty boxes.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Toru sat back in her chair, her hand dropping out of the air to rest on the desk, and I caught the shift in her breathing as she blew a long, quiet breath out of her nose—I studied Monoma for a moment, wondering at the source of his dislike for us, and why he had chosen now to lash out.

“It wouldn’t be an empty box, idiot,” Kyoka said, rolling her eyes. “Haven’t you ever heard of a costume—you know those things heroes wear?”

“Monoma—just stop it already,” A girl with brown hair said, her expression filled with frustration. “You’re making us all look bad.”

Monoma huffed at the rebuke and then turned his gaze back to the front of the room as if it and everything else that had been said was now beneath him. I noted that while the boy was willing to take shots at our class, he seemed entirely unwilling to be villainised by his own classmates—or perhaps it was just that girl in particular.

“That was a good question, Hagakure, but unfortunately, we aren’t doing it today,” Midnight said with a smile. “I’m still waiting for some more stuff to come in first, but keep your enthusiasm because it’s going to be fun.”

“Awesome,” Toru said, not sounding half as interested as she had been only moments before. “I can’t wait.”

Midnight sat back again, clearly waiting for everyone to find their seats before she actually began the class. My attention was focused on Toru, or more specifically, on her left shoe, which was twisting itself against the floor—it was a gesture that felt like annoyance or perhaps just discomfort, and it was something completely at odds with her affected tone.

“The U.A. Sports Festival is approaching rapidly, and since all of you will be participating in it, we need to knock some of the important stuff out of the way right now,” Midnight said, “Thankfully, we’ve already had a demonstration of exactly the kind of thing this class is going to fix—I’m talking, of course, about Monoma and Bakugo.”

“Teacher,” Monoma said in surprise. “I haven’t said anything wrong.”

“I didn’t demonstrate anything,” Katsuki muttered, “So don’t lump me in with that bastard.”

“Fail, and fail.” Midnight said, with a pair of thumbs down. “Very, very soon, you are all going to find yourselves in the spotlight, with millions of eyes picking apart your behaviour, tone, body language, actions, reactions and everything else they can get a handle on.”

Midnight let her hands drop back down to the edge of the desk before she crossed one of her legs over the other—her eyes shifted over to Monoma, who had found the confidence to stick his hand up into the air.

“But teacher—” Midnight said, drawing in a shocked breath. “Why does that even matter?”

Monoma furrowed his brow at the mockery, and he let his hand fall out of the air, the question on his lips remaining unasked. Midnight glanced over to Katsuki next, and the boy folded his arms across his chest, apparently uncomfortable.

“Who cares about a million bastards?” Midnight said, sticking her clenched fist out and brandishing it at everyone in the room. “I’ll still be number one.”

Katsuki grunted at the call out and then turned his head away entirely, unwilling to look at her as she laughed out loud.

“That’s what you were both thinking, wasn’t it?” Midnight said, visibly amused. “Well, tell me then, how are you going to crack the top ten when the largest commonality between every single one of them is and always has been popularity?”

Katsuki sat forward, and I thought I could already see his argument forming—but apparently, so could Midnight.

“It doesn’t matter how single-mindedly you chase your dream or how amazing your quirk is because the top ten isn’t decided by those factors,” Midnight said, “You need to contribute to society in a way that is seen by the masses who look up to us, you need to save people from harm, you need to cultivate respect—and you need, at the very, very least, to be tolerable.”

Toru shifted again, her hands moving to rest in her lap, and once again, she let out a long, steady breath from her nose—something I would have absolutely missed if I hadn’t been sitting so close to her that our legs were touching. I couldn’t tell if she was experiencing some kind of satisfaction in witnessing Monoma get lambasted in front of everybody in both classes or if she was clamping down on an expression of disgust for what amounted to a country-spanning popularity contest.

“If you go out into that arena, in front of all of those people, and you act like you just did in my class—” Midnight said, casting her gaze across the entire class now. “You will irrevocably damage your chances of even making it into the top one hundred heroes.”

There was a shift in the group at that, and I watched as everyone started to look around at each other as if considering exactly what kind of things they might have been saying that wouldn’t have passed that threshold and if they would have hurt their own chances.

“But teacher—” Midnight cried again, raising her arms above her head like she was in some kind of play. “I can pretend to be nice in front of the crowds—surely that is enough?”

Monoma shifted in his seat, but his face was blank now, entirely empty of expression—pretending at non-reaction to steal away any easy ammunition that Midnight might reach for next.

“It’s not enough to just pretend because the people you spurn with every thoughtless action will not thank you, and they will find a way to share those stories; rumours, scandals, and even motivated lies have toppled more than one hero,” Midnight said, slowly lowering her hands down as she spoke. “Being an asshole has only one benefit, and it’s self-gratification, but this line of work is built around maintaining a spotless image, so if you seek goals beyond pleasuring yourself, then you had best come to terms with that fact.”

There was a general stir at her language, but nobody spoke up in protest, to inject, or to argue, and Midnight clapped her hands together in sudden pleasure, a bright smile back on her face as if the prior discussion had never even occurred.

“Now that the theatrics are over, why don’t we dive into the actual classwork?” Midnight said, wiggling her legs in the air in front of her desk. “Class 1-B, group up into teams of three, and then select a minimum of two people, up to a maximum of three people from Class 1-A—they will be your partners for this class, so make sure everyone has a group.”

Monoma glanced down towards where Katsuki was sitting before he scrunched up his face and then turned away again—I wondered exactly what he had just been about to say. The odd, vague pairing instructions clearly stemmed from the uneven class sizes; that much was obvious, but social etiquette should have taken that off the table as a point of insult. Still, even if he’d been considering taking a shot like that, he seemed to have unlocked the sudden ability to restrain himself. As the entirety of Class 1-B broke out into discussion revolving around the teambuilding portion of the class, I turned my gaze to the front of the room and then spoke, voice low enough that only one person could really hear it.

“Toru,” I said, drawing her attention. “I’m looking forward to seeing what design you decide on for the figurines; I will make sure to buy one in the future.”

The floating uniform twisted oddly as she turned to look at me, and I glanced over at where I thought her face should have been. I felt the distinct urge to fill the air with sand—or perhaps bury her in it—in order to discern the expression she was wearing, but doing either would be inappropriate, both through social conventions and because she had already asked me not to get any sand in her hair once before.

“You will?” Toru said, “You don’t look like the sort of person who would buy a figurine.”

I wasn’t sure what correlation existed between my appearance and my buying habits or how she could believe it possible to determine one from the other, but even so, she had still somehow managed to arrive at the correct conclusion.

“I’m not,” I agreed.

Toru shifted again, perhaps turning further towards me, but I couldn’t discern anything else about the movement other than that it had occurred.

“You really are weird,” Toru murmured, “But thanks, Hisoka.”

Toru pushed herself up to her feet before I had a chance to say anything in response, turning to address the horn-headed girl from Class 1-B, who was now standing across the desk with a wide smile. The resulting interaction between the two of them was somehow both abstract and whimsical. The sight of it left me with a sudden loss of faith in my own ability to communicate—it was clear that the girl could not speak much Japanese. Still, she seemed to have more than enough enthusiasm to carry her through the nonsensical conversation regardless. In turn, Toru seemed to transform into a professional mime as the two of them negotiated the parameters of joining up as a group. Fumikage stood up—in the row of benches directly behind me—to address a girl with silver hair who had approached him.

“I’ve been chosen to ask you to join our—dark alliance,” The girl said, her voice coming out in a steady, affected rasp. “The boy in front of you shall also do our bidding; if you could please speak with him for me.”

The girl’s posture was odd and not at all naturally occurring; she was, in fact, deliberately hunching forward, with both of her elbows tucked in tight against her hips. Both of her hands stuck out in front of her, fingers curled to point downwards.

“Of course,” Fumikage said before raising his voice. “Higawara, I believe we’ve both been selected for this group.”

I stood up, turning to face the two of them—as if I hadn’t already been watching them from the back of my neck—and then considered them for a moment. This was the first real class-based interaction we’d had with Class 1-B since we had been accepted into the hero studies course. There seemed to be a lot of hesitation represented throughout the classroom now as the students of both classes spoke to one another, and perhaps that was the entire point of the lesson that Midnight had set up for us—we were meeting with, talking to, and interacting with strangers in a group setting, something which would serve as the foundation for our future public interactions.

“Then I will join you,” I said, “Would you like us to find a third member, or have you already selected someone else?”

While the girl’s voice was quiet in volume, it seemed clear to me that she wasn’t at all shy; between the affected posture and the deliberate rasp to her voice, she seemed more than confident at playing with the conventions of social interaction.

“I have already asked the boy with white and red hair to join us,” The girl said, eyes shifting between the two of us. “Please, come sit with us—if you dare.”

The odd tail to her request lingered for a moment in the air before Fumikage gathered himself enough to respond.

“I—very well,” Fumikage managed, “We are in your care, although I’m afraid I haven’t heard your name yet.”

It was about as clear of an opportunity for the girl to introduce herself as was possible, but instead of doing so, she simply drew on a knowing smile—without answering, she turned away, holding herself to that same odd posture, before shuffling forward up the aisle. Fumikage and I shared a glance before we turned to follow the strange girl to the desk where the rest of our group was already sitting.

“I have returned with our—victims,” The girl said, sending another cryptic glance over her shoulder. “They do not yet know what we have in store for them.”

Shoto watched our approach without expression, apparently more than willing to dare without any form of backup. I took the seat beside him without comment, but Fumikage hesitated beside the desks as if he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to place himself directly across from the odd girl.

“Reiko,” Setsuna said, rolling her eyes. “Stop trying to scare them.”

“Is that what she was doing?” Shoto wondered.

“Setsuna—you shouldn’t pull back the veil so quickly,” Reiko cautioned, “It would be best if they had time to stew in the fear first.”

Fumikage managed to find the courage to sit down before he was forced to lean back in his chair as Reiko leaned heavily onto the desk and wiggled her fingers in his direction. There was a beat of silence following the exchange, in which Reiko seemed entirely pleased with the reaction she’d managed to draw from the boy.

“My name is Hisoka Higawara; it’s nice to meet you all,” I said, speaking up. “This is Fumikage Tokoyami, and Shoto Todoroki.”

“Hello,” Shoto said.

“It is a pleasure to meet you all,” Fumikage said, “May I have your full names?”

“I’m Setsuna Tokage; these two are Reiko Yanagi and Yui Kodai,” Setsuna said, gesturing to each of them in turn. “How is that?”

“It’s perfect,” Fumikage said, “I must say that I am quite curious as to why you chose the three of us.”

Fumikage’s curiosity seemed to startle the three of them because there was a rapid exchange of glances in response to it, and then Yui nudged Setsuna with her shoulder—

“Hisoka is the only person I’ve really spoken to from your class,” Setsuna admitted, “Since I never get a chance to talk to him, I thought now seemed like a good time.”

“First names,” Yui murmured.

Setsuna scrunched her face up at the comment, but before she could say anything in response, Reiko spoke up, entirely unprompted.

“Yui likes Todoroki’s hair,” Reiko said, “That’s why she picked him.”

Yui sent her a silent but scandalised glance at the words and then attempted to kick her under the table—but she couldn’t quite manage it with Setsuna in the way. Shoto seemed unphased by the comment, simply glancing at the girl in question once before returning his gaze to the distant window.

“I chose you, Tokoyami,” Reiko said, wiggling her fingers again. “Because you’re quite spooky.”

Shoto’s head came back around, brow furrowed, and Setsuna let out an audible sigh—under the table, Yui went for another kick, and this time, she actually managed to bend her leg enough to land it on the other girl’s shin.

“Spooky,” Fumikage said, visibly uncomfortable now. “Does my appearance truly frighten you?”

“Your appearance doesn’t frighten me, Tokoyami,” Reiko said, wincing. “I didn’t mean for it to come across like that—you might not remember, but we were in the same group during the exam.”

“I do remember you,” Fumikage said, “You were surfing around the examination area on top of a glowing purple door.”

“Yes, that was me; I saw you using your quirk to conjure a large, spooky creature to destroy the robots,” Reiko said, clapping her hands together in apology. “I’m not making fun of your quirk either, if it sounds like that—I like spooky things, just so we’re clear.”

“Nice save,” Yui murmured. “Very smooth.”

Reiko swept her hand across the desk, and a purple outline washed up around the eraser before it was launched up to smack into the other girl's chest.

“I think I understand,” Fumikage said, bowing his head slightly. “Forgive me for misunderstanding.”

“Everyone seems to have a group now, which means we can move on to the actual lesson,” Midnight said, a stack of papers held aloft in her hand. “Each of these contains a dozen scripts, and each of you is going to act them out with a member of the opposite class.”

Midnight started forward, sorting out three of the packets from the stack before handing them off to each group as she went. Fumikage—the closest person to the aisle—received our stack with a thank you before he placed them down in the middle of our workspace.

“You’ll work one pair at a time, and the two other pairs will critique the exchange using the guide I’ve included on the back,” Midnight said, “Any groups with uneven sizes will have some overlap, so form a group of three if you need, and then take turns going through the script.”

I took hold of one packet, flipping it over to find the guide in question before scanning the list of marking criteria printed there. Confidence, genuineness, receptivity, accuracy, avoidance, and a whole list of questions that would seek to tease out whether or not our responses were colouring well within the line.

“You’re going to have multiple joint classes throughout the year, so you’ll be seeing a lot of each other in the future,” Midnight said, smiling. “Don’t worry if you don’t do perfectly on your first attempt; it’s a process—I’ll be moving through the groups to offer some of my own critiques, so try to make it interesting for me, will you?”

“Setsuna,” I said, speaking up. “I would like to make a pair with you.”

Yui started a sudden minor scuffle of shoes beneath the desk—a series of semi-gentle kicking, shoving and twisting movements—all of which seemed to fluster Setsuna.

“That sounds—fine,” Setsuna said, blowing a burst of air out of her nose as she stamped down on the other girl’s shoe. “But why do I feel like this is going to be totally embarrassing?”

“Because it’s exactly like the drama classes in middle school,” Shoto said, selecting one of the packets for himself. “Kodai, I’ll be your partner.”

Yui glanced away and spent a moment fussing with her hair, apparently no longer interested in the war that had been going on beneath the table.

“Cool,” Yui murmured.

“Uhuh,” Setsuna said, rolling her eyes. “Real cool.”

“Tokoyami,” Reiko said, fingers already wriggling in the boy’s direction. “Are you prepared for the unspeakable horrors that will now befall you?”

“Dark words from an even darker mind,” Fumikage said, linking his hands together in front of his beak. “I think you’ll find that I am more than up to the task.”

#

U.A High School, Musutafu.

“Today will be the last day when you will receive any advice, instruction, or time to prepare, so I suggest you make it count,” Shota said, eyeing us through the slit in his bandages. “Your first day back here after Golden Week concludes will be the day of the U.A. Sports Festival.”

There was an odd mix to the atmosphere in the room, a sort of lethargy taking hold with the arrival of the break, tempered by the rising excitement for the upcoming festival and then sharpened into an anxious rush at the knowledge that soon, all of Japan would have its eyes upon us.

“Schedules have been emailed to you already, but considering that half of you don’t even read them, we’ll be going over the structure of the day now,” Shota said, “The first thing you should know is that you’re expected to be on campus, and waiting down in the lobby by five in the morning.”

“That’s too early,” Ochaco said, startled. “I can’t do the festival anymore—I’ll be sleeping.”

“If you’re not down there by then, you’ll be running laps every day after school for the rest of the year,” Shota warned, “We have a transport lined up to ferry all of our school’s participants to the stadium, and they’ll be leaving from out front at fifteen minutes to six.”

Ochaco looked horrified at the threat.

“Isamu Academy High School, Ketsubutsu Academy High School, Shiketsu High School, Seijin High School, and Seiai Academy have their own transport, but you can expect them to be on our campus at roughly the same time,” Shota said, “Each of the participating schools has its own set of waiting rooms inside our stadium, and you’ll be expected to remain inside the one you are assigned to unless given permission to move elsewhere.”

I was aware of several of those schools, but it was only a shallow understanding. Shiketsu, I knew more than the others because it was where Sajin had gone when he was my age. Seiai Academy, on the other hand, I knew of because Denki had mentioned its existence as an all-girls school three times since the beginning of the year; he had made a joke about it being his first choice of hero academia, even over U.A. High School—at least I thought it had been a joke until he had mentioned that they had sent him a formal declination letter.

“We’re not allowed to mingle with the other schools?” Toru wondered. “I was hoping we would have time to look around the stadium, at least.”

“You will be able to interact with them during the events, after you have been eliminated and in the hours after the festival has completed and the venue has been opened up to the public,” Shota said, “If you are eliminated early in the day, you are free to wander about the stadium in the public areas, and if you need to, you can sign yourself out of U.A. custody—but I would suggest staying for the entire festival.”

“To party and have fun—right, teacher?” Mina tried, with quickly fading hope. “No? I’m feeling like that’s a no.”

Even I didn’t need to see his face to discover the answer to that question.

“Make rational use of the public eye to bolster your career prospects—the competitor’s view box and the elimination common room will be streamed live for the entire day, so you’ll have up until your elimination to make a splash,” Shota said, “Showcasing analysis, strategy, intelligence, insight, and other sought after traits will go a long way towards drawing the eye of hero agencies and even private companies that are seeking marketable faces.”

“I suppose we will need to be on our best behaviour,” Yuga murmured, “With so many people listening in on us.”

The bags under his eyes still hadn’t faded, and the energy he had brought to the classroom before the attack had yet to really return—sometimes, he seemed capable of rallying a bright mood, but it was always a fleeting thing.

“Precisely—listen, I’m currently unaware of the exact events that have been chosen, and if I was, I would be forbidden from sharing them with you,” Shota said, “But history has shown that the final event will most likely end at around three in the afternoon, so make sure to stick around for that long, at a minimum, whether you get eliminated or not.”

“It doesn’t matter what the events are because you forced us to watch all of them,” Mina said, rallying from her earlier defeat. “Don’t worry about us because we’re going to make you super proud.”

“Yeah,” Kyoka agreed. “We’ve got this.”

“I am one of the U.A. High School commentators, alongside Present Mic, and the two of us will be watching everything you do throughout the day—so I’m going to hold you all to that,” Shota said, “For reference, there are actually two members of staff from each school that will be providing a running commentary of the quirks that are in use during each portion of the festival.”

“This is going to be awesome,” Eijiro said, practically buzzing with excitement. “You’re going to make us sound way cooler than everyone else, right?”

“It would be irrational to take on such a difficult task—” Shota said.

There was an overlapping chorus of ‘teacher’ mixed with a general protest from most of the class, but the man just waited it all out with great patience—by all rights, we should have been neck deep in running laps by now.

“—but I will do my best,” Shota said, “Cementoss and Midnight will be present to oversee and referee the events, along with some of the other school’s volunteers, so make sure you listen to everything they say.”

Shota folded his arms across his chest with a slow and careful movement that made it clear his arms weren’t yet fully healed.

“Lunch Rush is catering the event, so both breakfast and lunch will be provided for all of you, but if you have more specific dietary requirements then make sure you come prepared,” Shota said, “There is supposedly a special after-event for the participants who did the best out of each year level, but I haven’t received all the details for that yet—expect dinner to be served if you make it that far.”

“We should probably bring our wallets,” Denki said.

“Idiot,” Katsuki said, “Like hell I’m buying my own dinner.”

“Remember, you’ll be wearing the U.A. High School tracksuit to distinguish you from the other schools, and the only equipment you can bring with you is what we have already cleared you for,” Shota said, “Bringing anything else into the events is grounds for disqualification—anything you create inside of the events is fine, Yaoyorozu.”

Momo dropped her hand down, a sheepish smile on her face. Shota took a moment to turn his gaze across the entire room before he lifted his head completely upright for the first time, rising out of his slumped position on the edge of the desk.

“If gaining enrollment at U.A. High School was the first step in your journey to becoming heroes, then consider this as the first leap—when you walk into that stadium, I want you to leave everything else behind,” Shota said, “Work together, fight alone, be cunning, be resourceful, be strong, use your hard-earned skill, leverage your natural talents, and show the world a glimpse of what I know you will all go on to become.”

“Teacher,” Mezo murmured. “Thank you.”

“Hell yeah,” Mina cried, standing up. “We’re going to win the whole damn thing—a total U.A. Victory.”

“You’re damn right we are,” Katsuki muttered.

#

Hisoka’s Apartment, Musutafu.

—each quirk has a set of boundaries that constrains it, a structure that governs its usage and shapes its effects in very specific ways—but not all of them adhere to consistency, and some don’t have a sense of coherency at all. Rules that are universally true outside of those boundaries are routinely broken inside of them. There are unknown qualities, undetectable energies, highly specific forms of telekinetic control, production of energy far exceeding what should be possible to generate, and even permanent creation of matter without any visible input mass for conversion. There are secondary qualities that exist parallel to the primary quirk, many without any form of physical link to the mechanism that actually generates the main function of the quirk—and in some extreme cases, the secondary effect outperforms the primary one by most observable metrics.

With the sheer variety of quirks in circulation, these secondary qualities are far more numerous and far more strange. What quality allows for All Might to so perfectly transform physical strength into wind pressure? What link is there between the unknown origin of his muscular, skeletal and cerebral augmentation and the generation of wind? The size of his fist—while certainly large even for that of an adult man—lacks the surface area required to manage such a feat, and no amount of pure strength could cause it. What secondary quality allows the water inside of Endeavour’s body to resist boiling or evaporation when metal is being heated into slag on the other side of his skin? What complex distribution of heat or unseen chemical coating could protect an entirely mundane strand of human hair from the temperature of the flames surrounding his body?

What hyper-specific form of telekinetic force exists that translates sparking neurons into the shape containers that restrict the flames to the thin streams observed in his Hell Spider technique? How does his body survive the heated air that he draws into his lungs with every breath? What secondary quality allows for Edgeshot to breathe at all while his organs are rendered flat and stretched out across dozens of meters? How does his nervous system remain functionally unchanged, and the speed of his reflex does suffer not at all despite the marvellous lengths he is capable of reaching? What conditional logic of harm and health determines the difference between a mechanical punch rupturing his skin upon impact, and the utter crushing of his flesh as he folds himself down to the thickness of a sheet of paper? The answers to all of these questions are ones that are currently unknown, but through this study, we will move to uncover—

—I glanced down at the sound of my phone vibrating on the desktop, my concentration drawing away from the research paper that had left me impossibly captivated. Hoshi, Susumu. (2122). Understanding Quirk Characteristics: Secondary Qualities was something that had far too terrible of a hold over my attention for something that had been written by my enemy. I forced myself to pick up the phone and placed it against my ear.

“Hello, Uncle Sajin,” I said, “Did something happen?”

“The case I’ve been working on just hit a breakthrough, and the lead we have is time-sensitive, which means I’m getting called away,” Sajin said, “I’m already on a train headed out of the city, so I won’t be able to make the visit tonight—I’m sorry, kiddo.”

“You don’t need to be; I understand completely,” I said. “Where are you going?”

“I’ll be in Fukuoka for at least the next three days, but I’ll make sure to be back in Musutafu before the end of Golden Week,” Sajin said, “I already spoke to Hayami, and she won’t be back until the day after tomorrow—you’ll be alright on your own for a night or two?”

“Yes, Uncle Sajin,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

“Try not to fill your apartment up with all those girlfriends Hayami was worried about while we’re gone,” Sajin said, lowering his voice into a false whisper. “Then again, now probably is the best time for it, so maybe it’s worth taking a chance.”

“I’ll begin summoning them at once,” I said.

“It’s like clockwork,” Sajin laughed, “Talk to you soon, kiddo.”

“Stay safe,” I said.

I carefully placed the phone down on my desk and then sat back in my chair, trying to distance myself from the research paper that was still fighting to consume the entirety of my attention—the situation had just changed drastically. Tsuyu’s inability to commit to the trip to Shimoda had derailed my initial plan to use Golden Week as an excuse for a second trip out of Musutafu. Now, with almost forty-eight hours of zero supervision, checkups, or responsibilities, I had more than enough time to accomplish the most time-consuming part of my search. Shimoda was a five-hour round trip via train, but I would lose at least an hour organising tickets, and there was no guarantee that I would be able to find one so late at night.

The map application on my computer told me that a straight shot from my current position to Shimoda—that is, cutting straight through Suruga Bay to manage it—was sixty kilometers. I could use my quirk to pass straight across the water, and that would shave off a decent chunk of the journey by train. If I left soon and timed it well, I could reach Shimoda just as the businesses in the area were starting to close for the night—which was the best time to search them for evidence. Context suggested that Hayami would call me within the next hour as a follow-up call to the one I just received. I could manage a call without giving anything away, provided I encapsulated the phone in enough sand to muffle the wind—minimising the article was far too difficult, but once it had vanished from the monitor, I found myself rising to my feet.

Within two minutes, I had retrieved the same dark clothing I had used on the previous nights and a new pair of portable hard drives—within four, I was already outside and on my way to the beachfront, my clothes being drawn along behind in my wake. I made it all the way to the beach and then out onto the water before my prediction came true—the phone vibrating in the pocket of my pants, inches above the surface of the ocean. In the dark and this close to the water, I was basically invisible in my diffused state, but I would need my voice back to manage a call—I transformed enough to regain my voicebox, surrounding myself in a shell of sand and then answered the call. The sound of the wind cut out as I mostly sealed myself away and slowed my pace down to a fraction of the speed.

“Hello, Aunt Hayami,” I said, “Uncle Sajin mentioned you might call.”

“Yes, he’s running off to chase some poor soul across Kyushu—or so he tells it,” Hayami said, “I suppose it can’t be helped.”

“It sounded urgent,” I agreed, “How are you enjoying Osaka?”

“Oh, it’s as lovely as ever—” Hayami said before catching herself. “Hisoka, I don’t like leaving you all on your own like this, even if it’s just for a little while.”

“Thank you for worrying about me,” I said, “But it’s only for a night or two, and I don’t really plan on leaving the apartment—Uncle Sajin suggested I invite several girls over while you were gone.”

“That—of course he did,” Hayami said, “No girls in the apartment, at least until I’ve had the chance to vet them first.”

“I wonder if Momo is still awake,” I wondered.

“Little Momo is exactly the kind of girl who I would trust in that situation,” Hayami said, “Although perhaps I should sit you both down and give you the talk—just to make sure.”

“On second thought, girlfriends sound quite troublesome,” I said, “Maybe I’ll invite Eijiro over instead.”

Hayami laughed out loud, and I let her set the pace of the conversation from there on, my eyes locked on the distant but steadily rising mass of land ahead of me.

“I actually received an email about it,” I said, speaking up. “Family members of the participating students have seats reserved for them; we just need to confirm the reservation.”

“That’s very practical of them—it’s on the 7th, isn’t it?” Hayami said, “Sajin will be back before then as well, so we’ll both be coming to watch you.”

“Thank you,” I said, “Aunt Hayami? I heard that I-Island is starting its return trip to Japan; I’m really looking forward to seeing it in person.”

“Yes, it’s scheduled to arrive around the time of the I-Expo—it’s a rather languid return, isn’t it?” Hayami said, pleased. “I actually spoke with Ume about it last night; the Yaoyorozu’s are significant stakeholders in several companies that are based there, so they received their own tickets around the same time as I did.”

My mind shifted into a higher gear as I pulled more of my attention back towards the phone and away from the tip of the bay.

“Originally, they were going to send little Momo in their place with a few of her friends to keep her company, but Ume changed her mind,” Hayami said, pleased. “The three of them will be attending the I-Expo with us.”

The presence of Ume and Minato, along with a comment like that, suggested that she was already planning on splitting the group into two distinct sections—namely, she would be attaching herself to the couple for the duration of the trip, and I would be playing companion to Momo. That partially fulfilled my original plan of diverting Hayami’s attention, but with just one other person—and one as observant as Momo Yaoyorozu was—I would have difficulty slipping away to search for anything without drawing suspicion to myself.

“There is supposed to be a reception party where several famous figures will be giving speeches; All Might, David Shields, and the president of the Hero Public Safety Commission are all scheduled for speaking time,” I said, “According to some of the forums I’ve read, there are going to be a lot of very well connected people in attendance—it sounded like something you and Momo’s parents would enjoy.”

That had originally been something I was keeping in reserve in case her interest in I-Island had waned over the duration as a way to reignite her desire to make the trip happen, but now, with the inclusion of Ume, Minato and Momo, it was entirely unnecessary and could be reduced to nothing more than a way to engineer a split in the group, and with it, create more time to act without supervision.

“That does sound fascinating; I’m sure they would love to attend something like that,” Hayami said, tone rising slightly higher in her excitement. “Oh doesn’t this work so much better? Now you’ll even have someone your own age to share the experience with.”

“I will take on the arduous task of accompanying Momo,” I agreed.

“You had better not tell her that it’s arduous, Hisoka,” Hayami said, laughing again. “You’ll get yourself into some serious trouble.”

“I will be discreet,” I promised.

“Oh, will you?” Hayami said, amused. “Ume said that she would speak to Momo about it last night, so I would expect the topic to come up the next time you talk with her.”

“I understand,” I said.

“Okay, Hisoka, I’ve kept you long enough,” Hayami said, “I’ll come by to see you as soon as I’m back.”

“Thank you, Aunt Hayami,” I said, “Please stay safe.”

We finished saying our goodbyes, and once the call ended, I let the core of sand I’d been hiding within dissolve completely. I burst forward, ramping back up to a speed I could maintain without deteriorating my stamina. The distant beach of Musutafu was already far behind me, a faint strip of white amongst the inky black water, and ahead of me, lay a place that had long haunted my dreams—Shimoda.

#

Shimoda, Shizuoka.

Shimoda was a scattered place, bisected by the narrow mouth of the Inouzawa River, before spilling out into the ocean through the unrelenting tide of human progression. From high above the city, I could see the bay and the mountains, then passed it all the way to Sotoura Beach. I had seen hundreds—or perhaps even thousands—of photographs capturing the docks over the last eight years, enough so that within me, there existed a haunting level of familiarity for a city I’d never actually been to. That was where the city grew thickest; the first dozen layers of buildings back from the waterfront towered over everything else behind it, and the streets seemed like narrow veins squeezed in as an afterthought between too much concrete flesh. This was the place where the abductors had brought Nanami and her parents. This was the place where they had ripped her away from everyone and everything she had ever known—what an unfairly beautiful place.

“Strength and perseverance,” I murmured.

My sand fell to the city below, a dozen thin tendrils descending upon the building surrounding the docks and finding tight knots of shadows to seep into. I crawled down the buildings in scattered lines, the few people still walking around the area, unaware that they were being watched from above every streetlight and from the shadowy mouth of every alleyway. I found three different storefronts in the shopping complex that could have been the café that Minato had been talking about, each one locked up tight, the tables and chairs that were usually spilling out onto the pavement tucked away until the sun made its return. All three of them sat amidst the concrete plaza, resting within the curve of the building and facing the water from a spread of different angles. I slipped under the door of each, as well as going straight through the pull-down security gate that kept the mall from being accessed during the night.

There were four dozen shops inside the front half of the building, spread across three different floors, and though I searched through all of them, only a fraction had their own security rooms. There were cameras in every single storefront and stock room, but all of them were sent to a remote place that I didn’t manage to locate until I found the centre management office near the back end of the mall. I took note of each of the cameras on the upper floors that were pointed out into the plaza, with angles that placed the waterfront in their line of sight, building up a mental list of those that were useful and those that could be discarded. The security room was large, with a dozen monitors spread across one wall, and even that wasn’t enough to capture all of the feeds; the application was forced to cycle through a different spread every fifteen seconds.

The lights were off, and the trio of security guards that were on site were walking through a patrol on the outside of the building, checking the carpark for anyone who had lingered. The setup—while far larger—was the exact same as the one I’d seen at the restaurant in Musutafu, with all of the equipment stamped with the same logo. I searched every container in the room until I located a lanyard with an active keycard and then used it to sign into the computer. The settings got me the file path to where the footage was stored, and each of the storefronts had their own individual folder, sorted by year. I brought the two portable drives in via one of the air ducts and then set about copying each of the uncompressed files from each of the buildings I had identified. Once they were on it, I navigated into the folders to actually search out the specific date—March thirteenth, year twenty-one-forty-one.

I opened all three of the external camera feeds for the three different café at the front of the plaza, arranged them side by side on three different monitors, and then hit play—the feed was entirely empty on all three, with no sight of anyone around. The timecode showed it was just after midnight, which meant I had a lot of time to cover. I ramped the playback speed up to six times the rate and then sat back, splitting my attention between them—between the three feeds, I had a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree angle of the plaza and much of the waterfront directly in front of it. As the timecode ticked ever onwards, the darkness began to recede, but nothing moved until about four in the morning—an elderly man shuffled across the length of all three feeds with a speed that would have impressed All Might. More people began to appear after that, rushing in and out of frame amidst their morning walks, some with animals in tow, others pushing prams across the walkway.

I watched the plaza come to life as the staff began setting up the mall for the day—a young, dark-haired woman zipped around in front of the café on the left-hand side of the plaza, pulling out chairs and tables. The other two cafés opened soon after, a man and an elderly woman attending to much the same task. The timecode struck six in the morning, then past seven without any sign of anything out of the ordinary—I paused the feed at four minutes past seven as a tall man in a ruffled suit stood frozen amidst the frame, one leg raised up in the middle of stepping forward. The blue skin was impossible to miss, and the spike jutting out of his left elbow—the only one currently visible on the feed—sent a shiver racing down my spine. I returned the video player to a normal playback rate and then let the feed play.

The blue-skinned man walked across the plaza, passing by the two closer options to reach the café on the left-hand side, vanishing inside the building and below the frame of that specific camera. I paused the feed, opened up the folder of that date for the internal camera, and then skipped to the timecode—the man approached the counter and ordered something. The dark-haired woman I’d seen setting up earlier seemed intent on talking to the man at some length—Ami, according to her name tag—but eventually, he headed back outside to sit at one of the tables. He slouched in his seat, one elbow propped up on the table, the serrated fin carefully resting against the edge while his cheek pressed against the palm of his hand. I watched him from three different angles, burning every movement into my mind—but the thing that stuck with me the most was that he was watching the water.

Ami came outside three minutes later, a steaming cup of coffee on a small tray, and she remained there, standing beside the man as he sipped at his drink. After two minutes of unheard conversation and an overt exchange of contact information via phone contact, the woman vanished back inside. I paused the video, found the folder for the current year, and then skipped through a few different days of footage in an effort to discover whether or not the same woman still worked here—despite the years that had passed, the exact same woman was present almost every morning. A search of the tiny office attached to the back room of the café brought with it a roster sheet pinned to a corkboard, a series of nametags, and three different bills, all of which were addressed to one Ami Suzuki—but just one had an address listed that didn’t match the location of the café.

I used my phone to find the address—six streets away from the docks, in an apartment building highrise—and then I turned my attention back towards the feeds. I reversed the feed until he was at the very edge of the frame and then started pulling up the cameras on the outside of the mall, searching for an angle that would keep the man in the frame—I found one on the far left prong of the plaza, the angle sheer enough that I could see all the way to the docks and a slice of the ocean. I inputted the same time code as the first feed, then shifted backwards several seconds, tracking the man’s progress until he was at the very edge of the frame. I skipped back another five seconds—and the man vanished entirely. I hit play, and without any sort of warning, the man stepped up out of the water by the railing that skirted the edge of the walkway, water rolling down over his shoulders and falling away from him in a visibly unnatural way that left his suit somehow perfectly dry—

“That’s how you did it,” I murmured.

With a quirk that could manipulate water, he could have placed Nanami, Hiroshi and Kana on any one of those ships while it was already in transit—that would avoid the initial security scan that both of them would have undergone before they’d left the docks in search of I-Island. Why bring all three of them all that way if they were going to kill two of them halfway into the journey? Why not do it at their home or in the water prior to boarding the ship? I needed to find out who had been on the ship with them. It wasn't Susumu Hoshi; it might have been this man, but it was possible that it was someone else entirely. Process of elimination said that it could also be either the massive man with the tattoos, the short man with the moustache, or the androgynous one with the dual-toned hair.

Kana had been assaulted prior to her death, which narrowed it down to one of the men—but that might have occurred before she had even reached the ship, which meant that the blue-skinned man might still be responsible. I skipped forward again, attempting to follow the man’s path after he’d left the café, but I quickly lost track of him once he left the range of the shopping mall, and no matter which camera feed I switched to, I couldn’t reacquire him. One of the security guards had reentered the mall and was now circling back through the main walkway towards my position—I began packing up, making sure I had everything I needed on the two drives and then retreated up through the vent. I emerged from the grate on top of the building before heading away from the docks entirely.

Less than a minute later, I settled down on top of an apartment building, sand creeping down through the roof access door and into the stairwell. I found her apartment on the third floor of the building, a dozen grains of sand slipping beneath her door to spread out through her apartment—Ami Suzuki lay on the couch in her living room, naked from the waist up, with a bowl of popcorn cradled in the crook of her elbow. The room was dark except for the shifting light of the television, and it took several minutes before I finally located her phone, half buried beneath the skin of her ribcage. There was no way to retrieve it unless she moved, and so I was forced to settle in to wait. Minutes turned into an hour, and through it all, the old and haunting movie played itself out at a volume three times louder than it really needed to be.

It seemed clear that Ami wasn’t going to be moving any time soon, and I settled in to watch, reforming in the shadow of the roof access point, sitting with my back against the wall. The movie seemed to revolve around a young girl turned serial killer who had unlocked a quirk that allowed her to crawl out of televisions, and she used it to commit a string of murders for a reason that hadn’t yet been explained. I observed as Ami turned on and unlocked her phone twenty-three times, the code a simple set of numbers. It took another two hours and a second movie featuring the same terrifying girl before Ami finally fell asleep, the popcorn mostly gone and her phone dangling carelessly on the very edge of the couch cushion.

I turned the television off in an attempt to keep her from waking up and then retrieved the phone in the dark. I opened the front door to her apartment by filling the lock with sand and then ferried the phone into the hallway, then up through the stairwell. I unlocked the roof access with the same method, and then once I had the phone in hand, I put in the stolen passcode. I opened the contacts list and paused at the ludicrous amount of contacts listed there—three-thousand, seven hundred and twelve different people—before I started to slowly scroll downwards, eyes on the small, square, attached image that sat beside each entry. Contact lists carried through over phones, attached to the account, and not the device itself, which meant that so long as she hadn’t deleted it, it would still be there.

But considering that Hayami still had Ume Yaoyorozu’s old phone number in her own contact list after a period of time that was almost as long, I felt it was likely that it might still be present—I stopped cold at entry number nine-hundred and four, my thumb pressed against the middle of the screen. A handsome man with blue skin and sharp eyes stared back at me, the faintest trace of a smile at the edge of his lips, and I felt a thrill run down my spine as I slowly shifted my gaze across to look at the name—

“Kaito Habiki,” I said, smiling. “Found you.”

#

Hisoka’s Apartment, Musutafu.

Kaito Habiki’s online social presence was almost entirely non-existent. There was no active profile in the man’s name on any of the large social media platforms—something very unusual, considering how ingrained they were in everyday life—and a direct search led to articles describing people with similar names but who had no connection to the man I was looking for. A search through deleted and archived pages, however, revealed that a decade and a half ago, he’d once had a few scattered accounts. One of them had his birthday publicly listed on the profile, and it was clear that all of his Internet activity had ended completely a small time after he had turned fifteen.

Two of the archived pages had a family member associated on the profile page, and that was where I first laid eyes on a picture of his mother—Kimiko Habiki. While Kaito had evidently scrubbed his presence from the Internet, Kimiko lived on it, her life splashed across the digital space in a thousand pages, profiles and pictures. Kimiko was fifty-six years old, currently unmarried—if she ever had been, it wasn’t alluded to anywhere—and currently living in a sprawling estate within the city of Fukuoka, on the island of Kyushu. It was clear to me that Kaito had inherited his blue skin from her, but the serrated fins that the man possessed were entirely missing from her body.

Kimiko appeared to have no career or job directly described on her social profiles, but there were thousands of photos attached to each website, and her public post history hinted at a heavy investment into real estate. There were pictures of her in empty apartments, condos, houses, and homes, pictures of her in the same places after extensive remodelling had taken place, which she seemed to have no personal interest in documenting. Kimiko dressed well, drove a series of expensive cars, and seemed to frequent high-end restaurants and establishments. There was so much information available, and it dated so far back that I was not quite sure how to begin sorting it all. It was clear that in the very earliest posts and pictures—of which she was only a young teenage girl of barely thirteen or fourteen—that she had lived a completely different life than the one she had now.

All of her early life seemed to be contained within Osaka, and from the years of candid pictures, it was clear that she had grown up in the slums. Kaito Habiki existed there, in digital fragments, ambiguous mentions, and dated pictures, but there was no mention of his name in any of the posts—it was always ‘my baby,’ ‘my darling,’ ‘my son,’ and many other indirect references that seemed to dance around his identity. Kaito’s early childhood was documented in snapshots with vast gaps between each, a shutterwork of images depicting his growth from a baby to a boy, with a backdrop of small, cramped and messy rooms. The photos grew far more sporadic after that, and then, after his fifteenth birthday, Kaito Habiki simply stopped appearing completely.

Kimiko’s life in the slums of Osaka continued on unabated, even without the digital ghost of her son, until the month of June, in the year twenty-one-twenty-nine, there was an inexplicable uptick in her financial situation—her clothing shifted from old, worn, and ill-fitting things, to brand new, and brand named articles. There were celebrations depicted and with large expenses attached to each: the purchase of a car, moving into a far more expensive apartment, pictures taken inside of restaurants instead of outside on the footpath beside them. There was nothing at all credited for her sudden change of circumstance, no mention of a job, a rich partner, or a heavenly benefactor, but whatever the source of this influx of money was, it didn’t slow down at all. In the following decade, Kimiko moved at least six times, and the walls of the rooms went from peeling wallpapers to sheets of sleek-framed glass.

The living spaces became more spacious, her clothes more beautiful, the cars newer, sportier—and through it all, Kaito Habiki lived in the frames between the pictures, never visible, an uncast shadow that lived in every room his mother ever stepped into. Finding Kimiko Habiki’s residence was easy, even without her exact address being listed; it was a simple process of matching the rooftops and buildings in the background of her posts with those on the public map application and fiddling with it until I had the general area locked down. From there, I found the old listings for houses in that area and searched through them until I found the one that matched her most recent photos.

Kaito Habiki may have been a ghost, but his mother was alive and well, and I knew exactly where she lived—all that was left was to come up with a strong enough reason to excuse why I needed to visit Fukuoka.

“Where did you go?” I murmured.

It was clear that Kimiko’s life had taken a dramatic turn the very moment that Kaito had vanished from her life, but that wasn’t enough to draw any solid conclusions—but it was enough to speculate. All of that money had to have come from somewhere, and when every other facet of her life was documented in painstaking mundanity, the question mark stuck out all the more. The struggle of a single mother, trying to make ends meet in the slums of a well-populated city, transitioning almost overnight into a woman buying her first home and a new car every single year for the following decade. There were no posts about a sudden, well-paying job, there were no photos with work colleagues, and it was clear that her education had ended halfway through middle school. No education, no skills, and no connections—so how was it that she had found such a lucrative source of funds?

The possibility that she had sold her son for some kind of payout seemed well within speculative reach, but the idea had a significant hole in it. The continuous influx of money didn’t match up with a scenario like that because selling her child would have resulted in a single payment, not multiple increasing payments over a decade and a half. Winning the lottery would have accounted for the money, but Kaito had been running around abducting people years later, so his sudden absence right when she finally obtained the ability to care for him didn’t fit. I was left with a thousand questions and only one real way to find answers. It was incredibly unfortunate that I hadn’t discovered this until after Sajin had already set off to the exact city I now needed a reason to visit.

If I had known, I could have attempted to convince Sajin to take me with him—perhaps to see how a real hero works on an actual case. While he would still be there for several days, there wasn’t any way I could embed myself into it now without raising a great deal of suspicion—a sudden impulsive decision was entirely out of character, and it would alert both Sajin and Hayami to the fact that I was doing something out of the ordinary. That meant I needed to come up with a natural way to visit Fukuoka. It was too far away to suggest as a destination for Eijiro and the rest of the group to visit—but maybe there was another way. We’d spent the last several weeks researching the U.A. Sports Festival, both everything that went into it and everything that would come out of it.

One of the major outcomes we would be addressing in the aftermath of its completion was the Hero Agency Internship requests—internships that would last up to a week and would require short-term living arrangements in the city where the Hero Agency was located. The obvious solution here was to make a list containing every single Hero Agency in Fukuoka and then tailor my performance during the U.A. Sports Festival to that specific group. Considering all of the different Hero Agencies, the different heroes, and that they would be looking for different things, it would be difficult to play towards all of their tastes simultaneously. But if I performed well enough overall, I would likely pick up recommendations for all of the lesser-known ones.

One week, on my own, without direct supervision, in a city anywhere in Japan, it was more than enough time to track down Kimiko Habiki and find out if she had any information that would lead me to her son.