-Rain of Sins-

-Trial of Fools: Ch 3-

Aoyama watched through the window as Fumikage Tokoyami, one of the few consistent sources of conversation he had in UA's mini-hospital, walked down the road and towards his parents' car. The crow had been absolutely covered with injuries, with everything from fractured bones to burns & bruises, fortunately they had all been relatively light-weight, at least in comparison to Aoyama and Mineta.

Aoyama had tried to grill him on what had happened in "the attack", since apparently they had been in the same subsection of the USJ joint when it all went down, but unfortunately he hadn't learned much. Apparently his quirk was sentient, and had been running the show the entire time. Tokoyami had been drowning in a sea of inky blackness, and had been more concerned with trying to breathe than look around, on the odd occasion he'd managed to get his head above water.

All he'd managed to get from the dark bird was that they had been dropped into the "Down-Pour Zone" (whatever that was) with a bunch of D tier villains, that there was a chase of some kind, and that a black cloaked Villain had managed to topple a building onto Dark Shadow.

A Villain with a black coat…

An alleyway-

Rain-

A black coat-

Pain-

P- a I N

Aoyama hissed and clutched his head with his hands, desperately trying to suppress the memories that threatened to overwhelm him.

He usually welcomed the brief flashes of memories that would come to him, it was how he'd been trying to string together a jumbled picture of his forgotten life, after waking up barely able to recall his name.

But that particular set was unwelcome, because not only did it fail to provide anything useful, it also caused his head to flair up again.

The memories, with a few exceptions, had been incredibly helpful, but they weren't the only tools at his disposal. He also had his incredibly helpful fellow-hospital-buds who claimed to be his classmates.

Fumikage was rough on the surface, but once you took a bit to understand some of the more dramatic vocabulary he used, he was actually a pretty cool guy.

Mineta was nice enough, if a little forward in his desires whenever the nurse came around, but was a master at entertainment- even if it wasn't always on purpose.

"Dropped into hostile territory, alone, without any backup, surrounded by all sides by dangerous thugs, and he still managed to hold his own." Aoyama chuckled to himself as he spared one last look out the window. "And then on top of all that, when he wakes up in the hospital, he's more concerned about us than his own injuries… Tokoyami's gonna be an amazing Hero." He gripped his bed sheets and frowned to himself. "I want to reach his level one day… I want to be just as great a Hero."

"Yeah, you were kinda obsessed with that before, too." Mineta yawned from an adjacent hospital bed and took a bite of his grape flavored hospital yogurt. "Something about lighting or somethin'."

"Illuminate?" The blond raised his one good eyebrow.

"Nah, it was something simpler. It was like your motto and everything." Mineta took another bite and penced his face up in thought. "Beam? Glow? Dazzle? No, that sounds close though. Uh, Sheen? It had an 'S', I know that."

"Shine?"

"That's it!" Mineta snapped his fingers and grinned smugly for a few seconds, his mouth and eyes the only thing visible beneath his fresh batch of bandages. "I think…"

"The Shining Hero." Aoyama laid back onto his mattress and smiled to himself as he repeated it to himself. "Like a knight in shining armor, lighting the way, vanquishing the dark and spreading hope… Something about that just sounds… right."

"Pfft." Mineta spat his yogurt back into the cup as he doubled over laughing. "'Knight in shining armor?' Dude, that's rich! Haha!"

"H-Hey!" Aoyama sounded mildly offended. "What's wrong with that?"

"Everything." Mineta put his cup to the side and looked at him with a flat face. "Dude, look, 'knights'? That's totally last year, chicks just aren't into that stuff anymore, it's behind the times! Now it's all about the 'bad boys' and being cool. Don't you remember the sacred texts? Nice guys always finish last."

But before Aoyama could interrupt, the door did it for him.

"Excuse me, ribbit." Tsu, another one of his supposed classmates, poked her head into the room. "Are you guys busy? Or do you have a moment?"

"Don't worry, you're not interrupting anything important." Aoyama smiled at her, earning a hurt look from Mineta. "What brings you here? Is there anything we can do for you?"

"No, nothing like that." Tsu entered the room, revealing the reason she was still in the hospital wing, even so long after the attack- a heavily bandaged arm sling… one that was half empty. "I'm actually here to talk to Mineta."

"Eh?" The grape tilted his head and pointed to himself. "Me?"

"Yes you." Tsu sighed. "I wanted to say thank you for saving me, you stood up against that disintegration quirk guy, you put yourself between us when I was hurt. I wanted to get you something as a gift to try and repay you." Tsu put a finger to her chin. "I spent a long time thinking about what you would like, but then I realized I was overthinking it. For someone who it turns out has a surprisingly decent character underneath everything, that still doesn't change the surface that it's underneath."

"Oh? You've been swooned by my natural charm, hm?" Mineta, completely misinterpreting what Tsu was saying, put on his "swav"-est face, not that anyone could see it beneath the bandages, and prepared to pull out every one liner he'd memorized just for an occasion like this.

"Chu~*"

"I-I-I-who-bwuh-wha-" Only to turn red as a tomato and melt into a stuttering mess as Tsu pulled away.

"Geeze." She shook her head with a slight blush. "It was just a kiss on the cheek, literally a greeting in several cultures, and it does this to him- even through an inch of cloth." Tsu chuckled awkwardly to herself and slowly began making her way back to the door. "Sorry for barging in, I'll leave you guys be now."

"Wait, Tsu!" Aoyama called out before she could close the door. "Before you go, did you happen to see anyone wearing a black coat during the attack?"

"Black coat?" Tsu tilted her head, and scratched her chin with her good hand. "You know, that might have been the guy who sicked that big lizard thing on All Might." She closed her eyes, trying to picture the scene in her head. "Yeah, the Lizard showed up to defend this one guy- now I didn't get that good of a look, but I'm almost positive he was wearing a black cape or cloak of some kind. Why? Was he someone important?"

"No, nothing like that." Aoyama shook his head. "Just curious, thanks Tsu. Hope to see you in class."

Tsu hummed, obviously not buying it completely, but chose not to push the issue. "I'll see you there, get well soon."

Aoyama raised a hand in a weak wave as Tsu left, and once the door clicked shut he sent a questioning glance to Mineta who was still staring off into space like a broken toy.

A loud smack filled the room, as Aoyama slapped the back of his friend's head.

"I TAKE IT ALL BACK!" Mineta screamed, practically jumping into the air. "NICE GUYS ARE NOT LAST! THEY ARE FIRST!"

"Aoyama!" He gripped the railing of his bed and leaned over it. "PLEASE! You have to let me join your team!"

"Team?"

"Yeah!" Mineta nodded vigorously. "We could be the Knights of Justice, or the Chivalry Bros, I don't care! The cheesier and more 'good guy' the better!"

"Woah woah woah, hold on there." Aoyama held up his hands. "Positions on the esteemed 'Chivalry Bros' are extremely limited, and we only accept the best of the best- as is our century long tradition."

"Dude, I will pay you!"

"Ah-Ah-Ah- Knights of chivalry don't resort to bribing people, now do they?"

Mineta snapped his mouth shut, and made a sound like he'd just bit into a lemon, as he tried to think of a comeback.

Aoyama laughed at his friend and stuck out his hand. "I'm messing with you dude, of course you're welcome on my totally real team, that I definitely didn't just make two seconds ago."

"Well of course you didn't just make it." Mineta shook his hand, and nodded sagely. "Because then you wouldn't be a true knight of honor, and I'd have to ask for a refund.

The two friends were only able to hold the serious atmosphere for about five seconds more, before bursting into laughter.

"All that aside," Aoyama winced, his head flaring up again, "The attack, that guy in the coat… I can't help but feel like I'm forgetting something really important.

"Look bro," Mineta sighed and held up a finger in a lecturing pose, "I live by a strict set of codes, and while most of them have been changed to honor this new pact, one has stayed untouched for almost all my life."

Mineta stared at him intensely, and Aoyama leaned forward, eager to hear his friend's wisdom.

"If you can't remember it," the grape said, "It's probably not that important."

Aoyama tilted his head and opened his mouth to say something related to 'dude I literally had amnesia', but paused upon realising that most of the highlights had come back to him.

"Huh. You're probably right."

-Rain of Sins-

All for One drummed his fingers on his chair and frowned at the screen.

He wasn't angry per say- no that would mean there was something that people could take advantage of, and he was All for One, he didn't have things to take advantage of. He was just very, very, frustrated at a specific event that had resulted only because he underestimated the human race's stupidity and lack of basic survival instincts!

He'd been trying to get eyes and ears into UA's main campus for years now, but had never succeeded. Nezu, the rat he was, only hired trusted pro Heroes for a reason- they were trustable. And more than that, Nezu was a master of manipulating information, keeping it balanced and sifting through as few hands as physically possible, so that when something did get leaked he immediately knew who did it.

The tech side of things wasn't much better, the Rat had layers upon layers of backup contingencies and firewalls for his firewalls, all of which he had written himself and constantly updated. Now this didn't mean they were impenetrable, especially by All for One himself, who had quirks that gave him direct access into technology, but while he was able to occasionally get things through, getting anything to stick was another matter entirely.

He was half convinced that Nezu had gone through and memorized every line of code so that, instead of fighting malware the way you were supposed to, the rodent could just scroll through everything and go "oh that's different from before!" and delete it.

…knowing Nezu, that was entirely possible.

His trick with the USJ's cameras was only possible because it wasn't a "main" UA facility, wasn't even connected to the central network, meaning it wasn't as thoroughly protected, and even then he'd only managed to take hold of the facility's surveillance system for a few hours before he was booted out.

So with both a facility spy and digital spying shot down, he had finally bit the bullet and stooped to the level he had sworn he would never touch.

Using student spies.

Not for any moral reason, but because it was just a terrible idea.

The fact was, students made bad spies. 1: They were children, and children were children for a reason- they didn't have the years necessary for good training. 2: Students didn't have access to a fraction of the information that the faculty did, at best he'd get UA's schedule and the class rosters, but that's the thing-

The schedule, the student rosters, the teachers, what classes were available, even the lunch menu- all of those were available for everyone to see on the website! Old Granny Mcuffet down the street could find all that out!

The whole reason for a spy was to get the information Nezu thought important enough to only share with the people he trusted- things a student obviously didn't have access to! And if the damn operative got caught, the resulting interrogation would likely give UA more information than the spy had given him!

Which was why wasting the resources on a student spy was a stupid idea.

…But…

Something was better than Nothing, and after a month straight of dedicated failed attacks on UA's firewalls, combined with the rumors that All Might would be teaching at UA, he'd been exasperated enough to give in.

The plan had been simple- go to a forgein country, preferably one known for poor record keeping, find some poor quirkless kid, offer them a quirk and a better life, they're so grateful they're practically eating out of the palm of his hand, put them in UA and have them report back every once and awhile. He wouldn't even have to tamper with the already bad records, and there would be nothing for Nezu to catch wind of to begin with.

He'd found his candidate on the burnt out borderlands of the German Confederation and the Commune of France, which he found rather funny in an ironic way.

UA loved to spew on about "progress", but here were two states that were hardly even recognizable from the pre-collapse nations that they'd formed out of, and yet even all these years later they were still sending people to go and die for the same stretch of land that they'd been fighting over for centuries.

"Alsace-Lorraine has a large French population- it should be French!"

"Elsass-Lothringen has a large German population- it should be German!"

Here's a hot take, more people have died on that five thousand mile stretch of land than had ever lived there. It has a majority dead population- give it to the country of "dead".

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

Not that he thought there was anything wrong with fighting for land- he was a former warlord after all, but it supported his world view, not the fake garbage that UA and Hero society tried to push, and he loved the idea that he'd get his agent to infiltrate UA from there.

And it had gone swimmingly!

He brought the kid over, gave him a relatively strong quirk, and pulled some strings so that he landed right on the lap of a wealthy family looking to adopt a son.

(Granted the process had taken longer than anticipated, and he'd originally intended to use the boy for something else, back when he first set it all up almost a decade ago, but he digressed.)

All for One had given the boy everything he could have possibly ever wanted on a silver platter, and all he asked for in return was absolute, unquestioning loyalty, was that really too much to ask for!?

Well apparently so!

Because his "spy" had dropped all contact and basically cut ties with him! And because there were no faked records, and the boy hadn't reported anything useful, there was nothing for him to drop to get the boy kicked out of UA!

Aoyama Yuga was apparently a lot more cunning, and simultaneously a lot dumber than he'd anticipated, if the boy was capable of double-crossing him this way.

All for One drummed his fingers harder, and seethed in his chair.

Amnesia? Really? You expected him to buy that flimsy excuse? The boy could have at least tried to be a little more creative.

The kid was smart, and had been holding up in UA under the pretense of "recovering" from injuries. UA was a veritable fortress and attacking it for one kid was a major waste of resources, especially when the target had such little actual value.

He'd have to let the boy go.

For. Now.

But the moment one of his real attack plans launched, he was putting that boy's face and name on the priority hit list! No one tries to cross the Shadow King of Japan, and comes out alive!

But whatever! He'd already condemned himself to using sub-par informants, and the one advantage that those had was that they were a dime-a-dozen.

It shouldn't be that hard to get another.

And so, with a sigh filled with so many emotions he was positive it took a couple years off his life, the King of the underworld did what he had done every day since being crippled by All Might.

He opened his terminal and got to work.

-Rain of Sins-

"Well my boy!" Ujiko grinned and spread his arms out, gesturing to the giant room they were in. "What do you think? Not too shabby aye? This is where I made some of my greatest masterpieces, back in the day!"

Izuku stepped forward, and couldn't help but smile at the sight before him. The old failed cloning facility, the incredibly large underground labyrinth of labs and testing chambers that had served as Ujiko's personal HQ for almost a decade, was abuzz with activity for the first time in years.

Old equipment that has sat gathering dust for ages, was wiped clean and powered up, while new equipment and materials poured in through warp nomu. Rooms were being refurbished, entire facilities upgraded. Security posts were being set up, the surveillance system was being updated. Personnel flooded in, from elite ex-military soldiers, to some of the brightest minds in Ujiko's sphere of influence.

The lab was alive.

And more than that, it was his.

Izuku Midoriya, Ujiko's successor, and now the official Laboratory Overseer of the Origins Lab.

Don't let the name deceive you, because it wasn't the original lab that evrything had stemmed from, no that one was "Laboratory Alpha", but Ujiko thought himself an artist, and he wanted the lab that would create the first human clone to have an equally grandiose name. So, the "Origins Lab", as in referencing the origin of life. One of the largest, most comprehensive, and most secure lab that Ujiko had ever built.

And it was all his.

Izuku smiled faintly as he ran his hand across the glass of a large tube-like machine- wiping away dust and revealing an empty interior that was beginning to fill up with a strange green sludge.

"Thank you…" He muttered as he turned back towards the doctor. "For giving me this chance."

"There's nothing to thank me for, kid, you earned this!" Ujiko clapped Izuku on the shoulder and smiled at him. "And I'm proud of you."

"Mr Ujiko…" Izuku blinked, and visibly paused, unable to form the right words. Eventually he just smiled and hugged the doctor. "I wasn't talking about the lab. Thank you, for everything."

"No problem, my boy." Ujiko hugged back after just a moment of hesitation. "I'm always happy to help you."

"Now if you'll excuse me," Izuku broke the hug with an excited grin. "I've got work to do."

"Ohohoho! That's the spirit!" Ujiko clapped as he watched his successor walk away. "But I'm interested, what's the first thing my new official second in command is going to work on with all his new resources?"

"Oh come on Doc, it shouldn't be that hard to guess." Izuku tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling. "Omega Properties, Meta Powers, Quirks… whatever you call them, or however you view them- be it religious or otherwise, the fact is that they exist, they exist and bend the world around them to their will." Izuku glanced back at Ujiko one last time, a smirk on his face and a calculating gleam in his eye that just barely managed to reign in a raging fire. "As a scientist, it is my job to study and understand them. As an artist, it's my job to bend them to my will."

The usual rant about "being careful" and "not testing anything too dangerous on yourself" bubbled to Ujiko's lips, but he found his words failing him as he watched his student walk away.

Izuku's lab coat, the one Ujiko had first given him, and that he'd worn on the day of the USJ attack, had been completely totaled. But when he'd finally gotten out of his slump, and Ujiko offered a new one, Izuku had made an odd request: he asked for it to be dyed.

A charcoal black cloak swirled behind Izuku as he marched deeper into the lab, permanently stained the color of ash and soot, permanently stained the color of that Hellish smoke ridden night. Permanently stained as a reminder.

So that he'd never be allowed to forget.

"I know you didn't believe me when I said this before, kid…" Ujiko whispered to himself. "But I am proud of you."

-Rain of Sins-

*Two Weeks Later*

*One Month Post USJ Attack*

"So…" Aizawa sighed as he scratched his stubble, happy to finally be free of most of his bandages. "Just to make sure we're all on the same page, I'm not technically supposed to tell you all this, but I don't really care because it's kind of obvious."

"In case you haven't been clued in by the lack of general announcements, and the lack of a new schedule," The teacher looked over his class with his signature dead expression, "we haven't changed anything, and the sports festival is still going to happen."

"Wait seriously?" Kiroshima stood up from his hair with a toothy grin. "Sweet!"

"Excuse me." Momo raised her hand with a confused expression. "Why wouldn't you be allowed to tell us that?"

"Because it hasn't technically been decided on." Aizawa pinched the bridge of his nose as recent annoying memories bubbled to the surface. "The Hero Safety Commission has been pushing hard for UA to cancel the entire thing, in the wake of so many injuries in the USJ attack, but Nezu's made it obvious he's not going to budge."

Momo's face made it clear that she still had plenty of questions she wanted to ask, but she lowered her hand regardless, content for the moment.

"Anyway, while I don't agree with the Safety Commission about how they're approaching the issue, I do agree that something needs to be done now that we're aware of just how dangerous villains are becoming, and for that reason-"

"WE'RE GOING TO STEP UP YOUR HERO TRAINING!" All Might burst through the door, finishing Aizawa's sentence.

"...yes." Aizawa sighed. "That."

"More specifically, we'll be stepping up your practical Hero training." A stern voice echoed from behind All Might, and the majority of the room gasped as a lean man in a business suit stepped around him.

"Oh my gosh!" Jiro gasped. "It's NightEye!"

"Who?" Denki aked, before a vine smacked the back of his head.

"Social studies, fine arts, philosophy, mathematics, all of those things can help you as a Hero, but only in the long term- we need immediate and short term improvements." NightEye addressed the class and scanned over them. "The best way to accomplish that is simple: Combat training and physical drills, that is what you all will be focusing on for the next two weeks."

"Usually you only have All Might's class for two hours on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays," Aizawa brought the class' attention back to himself, "but starting tomorrow both you and class 1-B will have it for four hours, every day for the next two weeks, and will be instructed not only by All Might, but also myself, Vlad King, and NightEye."

"AND WHAT BETTER WAY TO SEE HOW MUCH YOU'VE ALL GROWN THAN BY RE-DOING YOUR FIRST EVER TRAINER EXERCISE!" All Might grinned and pumped his fist.

"To start your training campaign, we'll be doing a slightly altered version of the Attacker vs Defender bomb exercise you all did on your first class with All Might."

Hollers and whispered excitement swept the room, but were quickly hushed by Aizawa's stern glare.

"Once again I'll remind you: you are here to be HEROES, not to have fun! No matter how much you enjoy these exercises and being able to test yourself, remember to take this absolutely seriously- it's the only way to improve in any meaningful way."

He paused, waiting a moment to see if any chatter would resume.

It did not.

"That being said, if we're going to repeat the exercise, we'll be a team and a half down from the number we need." He gestured to the three empty chairs in the room. "Luckily for the exercise, and unluckily for my mental health, the three idiots that we should be missing have proven to be much more stubborn than I gave them credit for, and have somehow managed to get a doctor's note from Recovery Girl, giving them permission to participate." Aizawa glared meaningfully at the second door to the classroom. "Which is odd, because not once in her entire tenure here, do I remember her ever doing so before, and I also don't remember her having the handwriting of a five year old."

In the quiet of the classroom, everyone could clearly make out the hushed "I told you, you should have let ME write it!" before the door swung open revealing Aoyama's charming smile.

"I don't know what to say to ya' teach." The blond shrugged. "I guess her old age is finally catching up."

"Yeah Dude!" A Mineta with most of his face still bandaged stepped around Aoyama, and struck a pose. "I think I saw her coughing up dust yesterday, like no offense but she's practically a relic at this point."

Tsu poked her head through the doorway and sent an unimpressed look to Mineta before addressing Aizawa. "For the record I wasn't part of this, they just asked me if I wanted to go back to class."

"Woah, woah, woah!" Mineta nervously glanced from Tsu to the teachers. "The Chivalry Bros have a code of Honor! We'd never do whatever you're insinuating!"

"A club dedicated to the ideals of chivalry and a Hero's honor?" Ida stood from his desk and raised a hand a perfect 90 degrees into the air. "I would like to join!"

Ochako snorted and held a hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing.

Mineta clicked his tongue and did a finger gun motion. "De-nied!"

…

Aizawa had to use his quirk to stop Ochako's desk from floating off, she was laughing so hard.

Nighteye watched the classroom antics unfold in front of him, with torn emotions.

On one hand, laughter, smiles, joy, those core tenants of being a Hero were being grown into the next generation. But on the other hand every second they spent like this was another second they weren't being prepared to face the monsters that were to come.

The monsters, they were real, he'd seen them.

And the scariest part?

...

They were already here.

-Rain of Sins-

The pro hero Sub-Aqua tried to say something, she desperately called out for someone, anyone.

For her parents, for her best friend, for her husband, for the child they had adopted just three weeks earlier.

She called for help.

But all that came out was a pained gurgle as she choked on her own blood, the crimson life fluid pouring into her lungs from the giant gash through her throat. The horrific rain of the thunderstorm that had been boosting her quirk to its maximum just a few minutes prior, and had carried her to her goals as a Hero, seemed to betray her in her final moments, drowning out her pleas and the sounds from their fight.

No one was coming.

She was going to die.

Shock and a feeling of all consuming dread engulfed her, as it finally set in, and threatened to send her into shock.

She was cold.

Her eyelids were heavy.

She was tired.

…

…so… tired…

…Tabitha…

TABITHA!

Her eyes jolted open as horror gripped her, her best friend was set to go on patrol through this area once the storm subsided, she was in danger!

Blinking past the black spots that were threatening to engulf her vision, she pushed herself forward, dragging her body across the slick ground and towards her phone. The device had been knocked out her hands during the struggle to keep her from calling for backup, and sat forgotten just a few feet away.

Pushing out her arm with all the strength she could muster, she reached for the phone and was just barely able to touch it with one finger. Twice she tried to coax it closer, and twice she feared she had pushed it out of her grasp, but on the third attempt she successfully pulled it close enough to grab it with her hand.

Despite all the pain she was in, she smiled… she could still save them.

And then she couldn't.

The woman stared in horror at the metal boot that replaced where her phone once was, not even registering the pain of her hand being crushed along with it.

Mustering all of her willpower she lifted her head up and saw two red eyes glaring down at her very soul with nothing but hatred.

Her gaze fell back to where her phone lay, now shattered.

The Hero Sub-Aqua died crying.

-Rain of Sins-

Stain huffed as he wiped off his sword and glared down at the dead "Hero" in front of him. The girl had not only been caught lying about her numbers in an attempt for a bigger check from the government, but she had also used her fame to cover up her father's business scandals.

He had known fighting her in the middle of a storm would be a tough thing to pull off, considering her quirk linearly scaled with how bad the weather was, but playing into someone's ego was a good way to get a solid opening that might not occur if they were fighting cautiously.

And with the way he fought, he only needed one good opening.

…still a bitch of a fight though.

His new gear was really coming in handy, he wouldn't have dared attempt this with his old gear. His old armor might have been military grade, but it was really-out-of-date military grade and had been battered so much that his latest repairs were basically just holding the thing together with what amounted to duct tape. Hell, his sword had been near and dear to him for years, but the thing was so well used that it was one bad hit away from snapping in two.

He still had it on his back, just in case, but the new one the lab had made for him was almost scarily good.

…speaking of the lab.

"What do you want?" Stain glared out into the dark. "And how did you find me?"

"How did I find you? Well, I'd say you were hard to track down, but, well…" Izuku Midorya walked out of the shadows, holding a dark gray umbrella to keep himself dry, his black coat seeming to flow out of the darkness itself. "I have unrestricted access to the most advanced information network in Japan, so putting together where you'd hit next was really just more annoying than anything else."

Stain glared at him, but Izuku just chuckled.

"Really the only reason you haven't been caught yet is because Nezu's been too busy to review your case file, and the police are probably just waiting until they have an actual way to take you down, before they decide to corner you."

"...Thanks for the tip." The red Villain said after a moment of hesitation. "I'll make sure to lay low for a bit and change up my pattern."

"Please do, wouldn't want you to get caught after all." Midoriya chuckled and pulled something out of his coat. "As for why I'm here, well, I have a gift."

Stain easily caught the small grey brick that was tossed to him, without batting an eye. After a brief inspection he easily identified it as a waterproof data drive.

"That stick contains just about every spec of dirt I could dredge up on the mid level Heroes, and a decent bit on the top ones. The problem is, once Heroes get to the top, they have the resources to cover things up really well, and the top hundred or so are personally looked after by the Hero Public Safety Commision- with the top Ten being gone over again by Nezu himself. Can't have your symbols of justice looking like thugs and getting sued, after all."

"Thanks." Stain grinned as he turned the stick over. "I guess Christmas came early, because this is exactly what I've been wishing for." He clenched the data stick, as if to make sure it was really there, before putting it in one of his most secure pockets. "I can do some good with this."

"Glad to hear it." Izuku laughed. "But what was that you said back in the lab? 'If you truly believed your ideals you would go out and prove them' 'Ideals are justified by action'?"

Stain spared a sideways glance at the scientist as a foamy grayish-black liquid wrapped up his coat and began to swirl around him- a product from one of his creatures no doubt.

"Better not get caught."

Izuku's smirk vanished from view as the foam fully encased him in a pillar of gray before freezing and splashing back to the ground…

The scientist nowhere to be seen.

"Fucking Spooks." Stain muttered as he turned away. "Creepy as hell, all of 'em."

-Rain of Sins-

"Sunshine, I can't let ya do this." An ederly voice echoed through the phone. "Your mother and I are so, so grateful, and it means the world t'us that you'd go'n do this, but we can look after ourselves. This money's better spent on your future, investin' in thangs, buying a car, o-or saving it up to buy a house."

"Nope." Ochako sang into the phone, a huge smile on her face.

"Sunshine, your Mah' an I can-"

"Nope!" Ochako giggled into the phone. "And you better not let your pride keep you from using it, I specifically set it up so you can't send it back! You're stuck with it!"

"Sunshine, listen." Her Dad sighed through the phone. "It makes us so happy tha' you'd do this for us, but we've already settled ourselves- you've still got th' rest uh your whole life tuh prepare for."

"And I am preparing for it! This money didn't come from nowhere, I've found a really well paying side-job that runs on different hours than school." Ochako bit her cheek, and forced the words out through her teeth. She hated lying to her parents, and it hurt her to do this, but it was for their own good. "I have a decent amount saved up, but I want to send a chunk home every now and then as a thank you for everything ya'll have done for me."

"..." Silence echoed over the phone line.

"Are ya' absolutely sure, Sunshine?"

"Of course Dad." She smiled sadly. "I just want to help you and Ma'."

"...Thank you Sunshine." Ochako had to choke back a sob and blink back tears as she heard her Dad's voice crack over the phone. "Thank you so, so much."

The call disconnected, and she dropped the phone to her bedroom floor as she collapsed into her bed, a whirlwind of emotions clawing at her.

A couple days ago she'd received an odd email, and what made it really stand out from the myriad of shitty ads and dubious links that were spam mailed all the time, was that it wasn't an email. She had logged on, only to find a draft on screen that she had most certainly not written.

The message was simple. Whoever it was knew about her family's financial problems, and would pay her for every piece of information she provided about UA. If she was interested, all she had to do to play along was provide the info by typing up a draft and not closing it whenever she logged off. If she wasn't interested, she could simply change her account password.

No Email would ever be sent, nothing would ever be saved… no one would ever know.

She'd asked for a downpayment, something to make sure that this wasn't hollow, that it was just the scam she was sure it was. She didn't provide any information whatsoever, and she completely expected a return reply asking for her credit card information.

She'd gone to bed, smug that she'd wasted a scammer's time, and resolved to change her password the next day- not that there was any useful information on there for anyone, she'd sent maybe a single Email her entire life.

And then 10k USD was deposited in her parent's account.

That much money… it wasn't really a lot, not by society's standards, and especially not in the bigger picture, but it was more than her family had ever held at once.

Her family had always been poor, as in poor poor, with the vast majority of their small rural construction company's earnings being immediately put back into it to pay for machine repairs and upkeep.

But now she had a chance to change all that.

Every rumor, every scrap of information was worth its weight in GOLD, the bigger the better.

She was willing to set aside her own personal safety and enter one of the most dangerous careers out there to secure a future for her family… What more was setting aside her morals?

-End Chapter-