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Chapter Text

Nezu sipped his cup of tea, a smile of his furry face. He’d just come from his lecture for the third year classes, Ethical Quirk Usage Under Both Legal and Moral Constraints, a subject that always put him in a good mood. Sure, the students always left looking vaguely drained from hearing a small furry animal with an IQ several times their collective mental sum spout off facts and statistics from years of philosophical and legal debates, but it was all worth it to enrich young minds.

So sue him if he enjoyed emotionally crushing them with the occasional three hour lecture. They’d never be able to prove it for certain. A small giggle slipped past Nezu’s lips. He already had plans in mind for next week’s lecture. Perhaps an intersection of Confucianism and 1900’s Spanish laws to begin with before spiraling into his own personal hybrid ethics system. That could be a good first twenty-six minutes.

The smile froze on his face as he turned the corner and saw the door to his office standing open. He definitely hadn’t left it open, especially because it was the fully human-sized door rather than the smaller one he used.

He lifted a paw to his mouth and pressed a button on his watch. “Office, prime security measures for contingency 283-KJ.”

With that settled, he reinvigorated his smile, took another sip of tea, and marched towards his office. He didn’t know who he’d find inside, but he’d make sure they learned a valuable lesson about breaking into UA.

He took one step into his office and stopped dead. He may not have known what he would find inside, but his intellect allowed him to calculate a number of potential scenarios in excess of quadruple digits. A Nomu assassin waiting in ambush. Yet another nosey journalist trying to swipe confidential files. Aizawa waiting to talk to him about a cute cat picture he saw. A scenario he’d never imagined was the one actually in front of him.

His office looked like it had been hit by a tornado. Filing cabinets had their drawers pulled out and hurled across the room, some embedded in walls. His computer had been rigged to project onto the ceiling and seemed to be displaying a Droste image of itself. Papers were scattered across the room and pinned to the walls, all marked up in scrawled handwriting that trailed off the pages and onto the wall to connect to others, creating a maddened spiral of tet that enveloped the room. And in the middle of the chaos stood Tenya Iida, franticly flipping through a thick sheaf of papers Nezu was certain he’d left locked in a strongbox under 7.3 feet of topsoil in his zen garden.

This wasn’t an oversight Nezu could blame on his short time to think of who he’d find. Iida would have remained at the bottom of his list of suspects even if he’d been able to think until the heat death of the universe. Nezu suspected Iida would spontaneously combust if he tried to jaywalk, and yet here he was breaking into the principal’s office and vandalizing the place.

“Mr. Iida?” Nezu asked warily.

Iida’s gaze snapped up from the papers so fast, Nezu didn’t even see him move. There was something in his piercing stare that Nezu couldn’t quite place. “Ah, Principal Nezu, sir! You’re just in time!”

Nezu quietly closed the door behind himself and walked towards his desk. It was an odd feeling to be on the other side of it like this. “In time for what?”

Iida’s face split into a wide grin. “My ascension.”

That expression, that wide smile that showed joy but no humor… Nezu recognized what he saw in Iida’s cold blue eyes now. It was madness.

Nezu’s paw crept closer to the button that would activate his office’s security systems, but didn’t press it yet. “Ascension?” He asked, masking his nervousness with a jovial tone. “And what could you mean by that?”

Iida’s ear-to-ear grin somehow widened. “The UA University code of conduct handbook, fifth publishing edition, words nine, twenty-four, one hundred six, forty-three, and one on pages X-iii, four, seven, ninety-eight, and the back cover, respectively.”

Nezu’s heart sank like a rock. Perhaps an intellect like his occasionally got bored. And perhaps he occasionally occupied his time by setting up complex puzzles and hunts. And perhaps, just perhaps, one of those would grant whoever solved it total control over UA and all within it. But it had taken him years to set that up, hiding the pieces in everything he had a hand in! It would be a logistical nightmare to solve, sorting through cryptic and incomplete clues found in everything from regional zoning codes for power line installation to city ordinances regarding Quirked animals to the UA teacher’s handbook. To solve it, someone would have needed an astronomical level of intelligence and several months of investigative work!

Or, it only now occurred to him, a complete encyclopedic knowledge of every legal and regulatory code for the entire prefecture.

And looking at the room indicated that Iida had the latter. The spirals of text were in perfect accordance with the instructions he’d buried piece by piece in the manufacturing standards for different types of street lights and road signs, their wording exactly laying out the cyphered phrases built into the school’s blueprints. Iida wasn’t exaggerating, from what Nezu could see he was only a few short steps away from gaining complete control over UA.

He almost pressed the button then, but stopped himself. He had to know what led to this first, or else this whole thing could start again.

“Well, alright then!” Nezzu said cheerily. “It certainly seems like you’re well on you way to having everything in order. May I ask, what brought this on?”

Iida’s eye twitched violently before he spoke in a voice with the most fake calm Nezu had ever heard. “Video games.”

Nezu blinked in confusion. “Pardon?”

“Video games!” Iida shouted, voice bordering on hysteria. “You see, Hero Brawl: Adamant came out this weekend, and everyone was playing it! This was all well and good, but on Sunday! Oh, on Sunday.”

Iida was terrifyingly still save for the near imperceptible trembled of rage running through his whole body. “They! Kept! Playing! It was a school night, and oh, how I tried to help them, to make them see the error of their ways! But. They. Refused. All through the night they played, all crammed into Kaminari’s room, and all night I sat awake as the sound effect and the conversation served as the soundtrack of my failure. And on Monday, of course! They were tired, they couldn’t focus. I thought that would be enough, that they would learn their lesson from that after Aizawa made them run laps for falling asleep in class. But that night, last night, do you know what happened?”

Iida stared at Nezu. Nezu stared at Iida. As the silence dragged on, Nezu realized Iida actually wanted an answer.

“No, I-”

“They played again!” Iida shouted, interrupting Nezu and nearly making him jump out of his fur. “A second night of failure, of sleeplessness, of contemplating my mistakes. The didn’t respect the rules, didn’t respect me. It tormented me. It haunted me. It gnawed at me like a hound at a bone, crushing me in my own weakness. A hero? Ha! How could I enforce the law when I fail to even enforce the rules of the dorm?”

Iida let out a high-pitched laugh, and Nezu would have sworn Shigaraki himself couldn’t have sounded more deranged. “I fell into despair. And then I fell, yes, I fell into, into madness. But then! But then. I found the answer! I found the solution. Your puzzle! I knew of it, and I knew I could solve it. I could have done so ages ago! But I did not, because then I was blind, because I had not yet contemplated and seen the true way of things.”

Nezu had his answers, but he still didn’t press the button. He was horrifically fascinated with what was happening before him and he wanted to see how it would end. “And what, pray tell, is the way of things?”

Iida took a shuddering breath and hunched forward over the desk, looking down at Nezu. “That you are weak. You allow such disobedience, such vile and disrespectful behavior! To willingly turn a blind eye to such depravity is horrendous, and if you allow it simply because you do not know of it, then that is simply incompetence. In either case, you are a wretch, a worm undeserving of your station, and thus I saw the necessary path I was to tread. I must tear you from your position and instill myself as the new ruler on this academy.”

“I would call this my holy mission, or claim divine mandate, such is the true power of my enlightenment, but I am above such things. Divinity pales before the force of my conviction as surely as a pebble cannot compare to the unadulterated might of the sun! And if God Himself attempted to bar my way on my mission, I would leave Him shattered and broken in my wake.”

“Make no mistake, I will accomplish my task. I will become the ruler of this institution, and I will remake it into perfection. It will be a bastion of law, of order! No more will chaos be allowed to reign!”

“Come now,” Nezu started, “Surely things can’t be that bad. Aizawa-”

“Aizawa?!” Iida shrieked, his voice as frayed as his sanity. “He will be the first to go! He does  this wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong…”

Iida trailed off, repeating the maddened mantra until it was only a whisper. Nezu opened his mouth to speak again when Iida lunged forward, reaching entirely over the desk gripping the edge with such force that the wood cracked, staring down at Nezu with maddened eyes. “Wrong! Do you know what he said to us on the first day of class?! He said lies~.” Iida said the last word sing-song, trailing off into a hiss.

“How can we trust him? His threats? His pro-mis-es? His words are vipers on his tongue, vermin between his teeth.” Iida’s voice quieted, lowering to a rapid, maniac pitch just above a whisper. “He says he will expel us but no no no he said that already and it was lies and does he mean it this time he does not he is a spineless wretch who cannot keep the class in line for they know well his lies and untruths and his threats are toothless in the face of knowledge.”

“But he has expelled students before. It can’t all be lies.” Nezu said, trying vainly to reason with him. It was clear Iida was beyond that, but he couldn’t help but poke the wasp’s nest to see what would happen.

Iida threw himself backwards from the desk though his feet didn’t move from the spot, back arching until he was practically looking behind him as he laughed. Then he snapped back to his previous position in the blink of an eye, laughter cutting off abruptly. “Expulsion.” He hissed the word slowly, as if tasting every syllable. “It is a coward’s crutch. To expel a student is not to fix the problem, it is merely to wash one’s hands of it. It is weak, and Aizawa is weak for using it. That detestable cur sees the mountain and decides it would be too hard to climb, and so leaves it for another. But I am not like him. I do not lack conviction!”

Iida jumped from a whisper to a scream on the last word, his arm slashing sideways in a violent chop that slammed into Nezu’s computer and hurtled it from the desk. The projection on the ceiling turned to a garbled mess of static and colors, casting the room in a chaotic and spastic light. Iida didn’t seem to notice.

“I will not avoid the mountain! I will grind it level beneath my heel! Problems shall be corrected, and this school shall be a shining example to the world!”

“Aoyama! French? Illegal! French?! A crime! Frrreeeennnnnch?!?!?! Unnnnnnacceptablllllle!!!!”

“Ashido! She prefers to live a life of indolence, to have fun instead of studying! No more! She will learn to learn, until she can recite more mathematical principles than me-mes!”

“Asui! Is a tongue for handing things to people? I think not! Unsanitary! If she will not use her hands, then clearly she has something against them! The solution is clear: make her use big dinosaur-head grabber claws!”

“Uraraka! She defies gravity, and in doing so defies the core tenants of our universal laws! The audacity! There is only one way to teach her true respect for the laws of reality! Advanced. Physics. Classes.”

“Ojiro! Is an icon of what we should aspire to be! I! Have! No complaints about him!”

“Kaminari! No more bideo games for him! He’ll learn to play reasonable games that end at normal times! Like D&D!”

“Kirishima! He obsesses over manliness! What is a man?! A miserable pile of secrets! A featherless biped!  He must be broken of his idolization!”

“Koda! He keeps the company of beasts, and yet refuses to keep them in check! Worse, he encourages their primitive instincts against those who irk him! He shall be placed below even the beasts of the wild, condemned to live among the vermin as they crawl and writhe and feed in the dirt, until such a time as he deserves to live as a man once more!”

“Sato! He punches? Very fast? But does not reference the JoJo? This is a crime most crusty and it cannot continue!”

“Shoji! He is very tall! But also in the front of the class! Very rude! Sit on the ground, you goblin!”

“Jiro! She plays music but neglects crucial genres! I will teach her true music! Gregorian chants! Folktronica! Kawaii core! Electro country! Simpsonwave.”

“Sero! His diet is criminally undervaried! I will make him eat a vegetable even if it kills both of us and everyone else within five hundred meters!”

“Tokoyami! Once tried to dye his entire uniform black! As atonement, he will be given a new wardrobe, one filled with nothing but bright pastel colors!”

“Todoroki! Angsty backstories are a burden upon the mind! I will snap his father like a glowstick over my knee and make him go to therapy!”

“Hagakure! She chews with her mouth open, and yet I cannot prove this because I cannot see it! As if my hearing is faulty, like some sort of octogenarian. No more! She shall eat nothing but soups! Nothing but stews! Nothing. But. Broths!”

“Bakugo! His speech is profane! Orphans weep at his voice! His mouth will be scrubbed out with soap until it’s clean enough to eat off of!”

“Midoriya! Every bone he breaks is an insult to the order of the establishment! There is only one logical solution to make him orderly! Only one way to keep the peace! I must make him BONELESS!”

“Mineta! His revolting perversions will be culled! I will surely break him, for I know of no other way to correct him. But when I reforge the shattered remains of his psyche it will be into an icon of chastity and abstinence that the greatest of monks will envy for his purity!”

“Yaoyorozu! Her life of opulence and indolence weakens her character! A monk’s life for her! A monk’s life for one thousand years!”

“All these and more, I shall correct! The aspiring hero student, Hitoshi Shinso! The maniac of the support department, Mei Hatsume! My rulings shall rain down upon all within this school like burning brands upon the penitent until they are scoured clean of their aberrant behaviors! And then, my bastion established, I shall expand my rule! Not to the world, for such a goal is petty and small. I shall seize the reins of the universe and wrest it to true order! A single infinity line, unwavering in its sole yet all encompassing law! A true singularity! T̶̜̖͍̓̔̈́͠ͅḩ̷́̄͒i̵̙͇̦͉̙͔̳̦̙̫͛͜ͅs̷͖̼̮̮̱͍̟͎̥̭̯̒̓̃̒̏̏̉̆̋̃̈́̄̚ ̸̩̗̭̓͊͌͛͆̈́͛̒̂̀͠î̶̺̲̪̲̂s̶̛̟̱͖͙̣̬̘̙̻̪̝̓̆͘͜ ̷̞̮͍̱̬̬̻͇̹̼̽͑͒̌̚͜ͅm̷͉͙̬͍̖̏̈́̆̃͑̀̿̌̄̿ÿ̵̡̮͖̝̦̝̈̓̀̈́̑̎͠͝ ̵̡͇̟̦̻̠̯͓̣̓̊̈́̎̒̎̓̀͂̊́̕w̸͍̖͚̩͔͈͇̦͎̬͊̂̋̽͘i̴̢̱͇̗̠̟̯̱̘̟̍̉͜ͅͅl̷̟̰̪͔̳̎͐̆̊͆̉̕l̶̨͔͙̮̰̭̥̳̲̭̇̄͗̕͠!̴̢͙͓̠̺̻̠͚͓̈́”

Nezu nodded slowly. Iida wasn’t just unhinged, he’d taken the entire door out of the frame and knocked down the surrounding wall. And all this was from a few sleepless nights? Sure, he hadn’t blinked once since Nezu had come in, but there wasn’t even a hint of bags under his eyes.

“Alright then.” Nezu said before pressing the button.

Immediately the walls sprung open and stun webs deployed from hidden panels. Everything in the room above the eighty-six centimeter mark was swept with their energy. Sitting comfortably at eighty-five centimeters, Nezu stood calmly as Iida got caught in them and immediately collapsed unconscious.

Equally calmly, he called the school robots to come drag Iida back to his dorm. Nazu couldn’t imagine how Iida had managed to sneak away from Aizawa in the middle of class, but it was probably better to have him sleep it off than send him right bck to class. First things first, he needed to redo the puzzle. More complexity, more rigorous challenges to complete. He couldn’t have a repeat of this. Second, he really had to have a chat with Aizawa about his students copying their teacher’s sleeping habits.

Chapter Text

“Wait, wait, I’ve got it! ‘My name is Red Riot, you did some crimes, prepare to get punched in the face!’”

“That’s…” Kirishima tapped a fist against his chin, trying to figure out a polite way to turn down the suggestion.

Mina beat him to it. “Dumb! That’s dumb!”

“Yeah,” Sero agreed, “it’s pretty wordy. Not a very good catch phrase when it takes an hour to say.”

Kaminari stuck out his tongue at his critics. “Yeah, well I don’t see you two coming up with anything better!”

Mina and Sero didn’t have a retort for that, their suggestions having been equally bad, if not worse. ‘Get a taste of my skin rock’’ had been floated as an idea, though no one was willing to take credit as its creator.

“Okay,” Sero said, “But maybe if we find a way to fit a pun in there…”

Kirishim let himself stop paying attention as he pondered the problem. He’d been at this for literal years,  ever since he’d decided he wanted to be a hero, and he still couldn’t come up with a good battle cry! A week ago he’d roped Kaminari, Mina, and Sero in on the issue, but none of them had been able to help much. Maybe he should have seen that coming, seeing as Mina was holding off on (procrastinating) making her own catch phrase until she resolved the copyright lawsuit to try and get her preferred hero name, and Kaminari’s own catch-phrase was a pun in an entirely different language (though he had to admit, “Shock and Awe” would have been cool if fourteen different heroes hadn’t used it first).

He just couldn’t come up with anything that properly encompassed the manly spirit and power he wanted to present! He was dimly aware the others were still talking, and he made a token effort to tune back into the conversation.

“-can’t just say that his type is anyone who beats him in a fight.”

“But it’s true! Bakugo and Midoriya-”

“Midoriya doesn’t count, he can beat just about everybody.”

“And just about everybody has a crush on him.”

“…shit, you don’t think-”

No, still no good. What was it that he needed?

He needed to show his manly spirit, that went without question. And to do that, he needed… what? The answer came easily: to tell people he wouldn’t back down, that he’d be able to keep going no matter what.

His Quirk! It was practically made for that. The more he kept it up, the more hits he could take and the more people he could protect. All thanks to his Hardening. Abruptly, the pieces clicked.

“I’m not saying everyone, but personally, if he got me in a hold like he did with-”

“I’ve got it!” Kirishima shouted, bolting to his feet. “I know what my battle cry should be!”

“Are you ready?” Aizawa asked.

Kirishima and Midoriya stood on one side of the arena, Bakugo and Jiro on the other. The rest of the class had been split off for their own fights, leaving the two pairs pitted against each other. The tension built as they waited for the signal to start until finally…

“Begin!”

Kirishima barely noticed Midoriya dash forward in a burst of green light as Bakugo fired into the air like a rocket. Chained explosions hurtled him straight towards Kirishima, his face split in a maniac grin as he screamed his now-traditional battle cry. “DIE!”

“BRING IT!” Kirishima grinned broadly as he hardened fast enough to throw off sparks. After a week’s worth of brainstorming, now was his chance! The chance to use his new battle cry, meant to surprise and strike fear into the hearts of his enemies!

Kirishima leapt towards Bakugou, shouting at the top of his lungs, “I’M ROCK FUCKING HARD!”

His fist was on a collision course with Bakugo, preparing to punctuate his battle cry with a powerful collision of fist and explosion. Instead he hit only empty air as Bakugo’s timing wavered, one explosion coming a bit too late and allowing him to dip just close enough to the ground to trip, hurtling him face-forward to the ground and taking him neatly under the haymaker. The too-late explosion only hastened his descent.

Kirishima spun to keep his eyes on Bakugo, watching in confusion as much as concern as Bakugo slammed into the ground and proceeded to bounce and roll halfway across the arena, letting out a muffled stream of what would have been curses if he could get more than a syllable in without a mouthful of dirt. His attention on his friend was the only thing that stopped Kirishima from noticing the noise that came from Aizawa. If he’d heard it, he would have fallen asleep each night for the next forty-three years how such a high pitched noise could have come from such a stoic man.

Instead all his focus was on Bakugo, who managed to snap back to his feet as soon as he stopped rolling.

“What the fuck did you just say to me, Shitty Hair?” Bakugo snarled, explosions already crackling in his palms.

Reassured that his friend was alright, Kirishima fell easily back into a broad smile. “I said I’m rock! Fucking! Hard!”

Contrary to his expectations, Bakugo did not immediately launch himself forward with another explosion. Instead he just sort of gaped in an expression of… surprise? The battle cry must be working! But Kirishima remembered one of All Might’s heroics lessons, about not letting up on an opponent until the battle was won. If he was intimidating Bakugo, he had to keep it up!

“You think you’ve seen me hard before?” Kirishima laughed. “You’ve never seen me hard like this! I’m unbelievably hard!”

Bakugo made a sort of choking noise. Unnoticed to Kirishima, Aizawa made another noise of his own, this time vaguely more recognizable as a whimper. Or maybe he’d just never stopped the first time and had been making a continuous tone of despair ever since Kirishima first opened his mouth.

Finally, Bakugo managed to say something. “You… You can’t-”

“Can’t what?” Kirishima asked, cutting him off, “Get this hard? Sure, you used to know how hard I could get, but I’ve been practicing, trying to stay hard almost all the time. In bed, at the gym, in classes, all to be ready for this moment, so I can just keep getting harder and harder! So that for this climax of manly passion, I’m harder than you could have ever dreamed of!”

Bakugo’s expression was incredulous. He looked past Kirishima with an ‘are you hearing this shit’ expression that a newborn baby would have understood. Not being a newborn baby, it went entirely over Kirishima’s head as he turned to see who Bakugo was looking to.

Clearly not Aizawa, who was looking straight up at the sky as he did a decent impression of a low wind whispering through a cave, except the cave was a school sanctioned fight pit and the wind was regretting not taking more interest in a career as a pianist, Mom always said he had good fingers for it, why didn’t he listen to her. Midoriya maybe, but no, he was hunched over Jiro instead of looking their way. Not Jiro either, she was laying on the ground clutching her stomach, body shuddering with… tears, probably. Midoriya must have gotten a good punch in while Kirishima wasn’t looking.

He turned back to Bakugo, who was also turning back to him. Crap, he had to keep talking before Bakugo did.

“Don’t believe me?” Kirishima challenged, going with the first thing to pop into his head. “Explode on me and see for yourself!”

Internally, he winced. Why was the first thing he though of challenging Bakugo to immediately attack him? The whole point of this was to intimidate and stop him from doing that!

But instead of taking him up on that, Bakugo made a noise vaguely reminiscent of a cat with a hairball and froze stock still. Kirishima had no idea why he wasn’t getting exploded right now, but he wasn’t going to question it. Instead, he doubled down.

“Come on! I’m sure you’ve got an explosion pent up in you. You want to do it right in my face? Against my chest?” He gestured at his aforementioned chest as he spoke, his hero costume conveniently leaving his chiseled pecs and abs on display for Bakugo to see as a demonstration. Oh, chiseled! He’d have to remember that one to tell Mina later.

Bakugo made a noise like he was trying to speak through a mouthful of shredded coconut. Oh, his face was getting red! Kirishima sagely concluded that Bakugo was getting angry as he realized just how impossible it would be to win this fight. Thought at this point, Kirishima wished Bakugo would just attack already. Weren’t they supposed to be doing combat training?

“What are you waiting for?” Kirishima asked. “Jiro already finished thanks to Midoriya, and if you wait any longer, he’ll come over here to help me double team you.”

Bakugo made a noise like a fish turning itself inside-out. His face was red enough to passably impersonate a blood-covered tomato.

“Just do it, man!” Kirishima goaded. “Give me a pounding! You know I can take it, no matter how rough we go at it! When you’re finished, I’ll be just as hard and ready to keep going!”

Bakugo’s face was red enough to surpass any simile by now, and he’d seemingly given up on noises.

This wasn’t working. “Alright, fine then! I’ll get us started by giving you a good-” Crap, what was the word for hitting someone with a fist?! Why couldn’t he remember?! Quick, think! His fist was like a stone, hitting someone with a stone was called stoning, so hitting someone with a fist would be called- “-fisting!”

Maintaining firm eye contact with Kirishima, Bakugo frothed at the mouth and promptly keeled over.

Kirishima blinked, waited a few seconds, then realized Bakugo wasn’t getting back up. “Uh, bro?” He prodded Bakugo with his toe, and to his relief found Bakugo was still breathing. He’d just… fainted?

He turned back to look at the others. Midoriya was bent halfway over as Jiro had managed to drag herself halfway into a standing position by clutching his arm. Midoriya’s expression was distinctly confused, though clearly blushing from Jiro’s closeness. For her part, Jiro’s face was streaked with tears as she continued to shudder with breathless noises. It was almost like she was laughing, but that couldn’t be right. She was probably just crying weird. He’d have to ask Midoriya what he did to take her down later.

His attention was drawn to the third person there as the intercoms of the battle zone crackled to life. Aizawa was now holding his comm up to his mouth, and though he’d lowered his gaze from the sky he was clearly not looking at any of the people in front of him.

“As you train,” Aizawa said, both in person and over the intercom, his voice terrifyingly flat even for him, “It’s important for you to understand the effects your Quirks have on your bodies. For example, I can no longer cry.”

He didn’t keep talking, but he didn’t stop broadcasting either. The quiet hum of the intercoms sounded through the battle arenas as Aizawa continued to stand stock still, the pause stretching on longer and longer. Finally, after much too long for anyone to be comfortable with how long the pause was, “Class dismissed.”

He turned off the comm and let it fall from his slack hand as he turned and began walking away, still refusing to look at anyone. As he passed, a flick of his wrist snared Bakugo’s unconscious body, dragging it behind him as he left in a manner not entirely unlike a murderer dragging his victim.

Kirishima felt a hand clamp onto his shoulder. Turning, he found himself face to face with Jiro, face still streaked with tears and mouth locked in an ear to ear grin.

“Thank you.” She said. Her voice was a quiet, nearly hysterical rasp and immediately tapered off into breathless laughter as she stepped past him and staggered out of the arena. “Thank you!” Man, Midoriya must have hit her hard.

Speaking of which, he turned back to Midoriya with a questioning look, only to get a shrug in return. It seemed he didn’t know what was up with their teacher either. But they still had the arena reserved, so…

“Hey Midoriya, I’m still hard! Want to go a few rounds?”

Chapter Text

“What is this?” Present Mic asked warily, looking at the mass that had just been dumped onto his desk. Behind it, Ashido, Kaminari, Sero, and Kirishima stood with broad grins like they’d just presented something amazing.

“Well, we all realized we hadn’t finished the assignment,” Ashido explained, and their project seemed to vibrate in excitement along with her “so we decided to collaborate.”

“It was supposed to be individual.” Present Mic said weakly, too distracted by the strange q-tip like protrusions that dotted its surface, each of which has a small marble glued to the tip.

“That’s the beauty of it,” Sero piped in, speaking up to be heard over the hissing sound as the blue liquid it was extruding slowly melted into his desk, “we all did our own, then we combined them all together!”

“Did you now.” A slight poke revealed that its chocolate-like surface was in fact slightly squishy and yielded to the touch like jello. “And why is it… like this?

“Yeah!” Kirishima said brightly, not picking up on their teacher’s wariness as he found the Disney logo branded into their project. “We thought the normal assignment was kind of boring, but we figured it would be better to go above and beyond with more than you asked for! And how to improve two dimensions more than by giving you three!”

“A third dimension!” Present Mic said, aware that his voice squeaked a bit but unable to stop it. He used a pencil to list a trailing strip of paper nailed to its surface and saw his full name written out, followed by a date eight years from now. He hastily put the pencil down and tried not to look at any more of the writing.

Kaminari, bless his soul, seemed to pick up on at least a little of his unease. “Do you… not like it?” Half a dozen speakers stuck in the thing’s surface or buried deep within it whispered along to his words in a static-filled chorus. Some of them translated it into Latin.

“Uh huh.” Present Mic said, not listening anymore. It had what looked like a human eye in it. He made the mistake of meeting its gaze and saw that the pupil was shaped like God and the Devil killing each other, while above them, a dark, thirsting pig’s head on a butcher’s hook laughed and laughed.

He forced an uneasy smile onto his face and looked at them. “Tell you what, little listeners! This isn’t… quite what the assignment was, but I’ll give you an extra week to finish it. I appreciate the effort though!”

The quartet seemed to break apart into relieved sighs and happy ‘thank you’s’ before splitting up to go back to their seats. Ojiro, the person in line behind them, gave them an odd look before handing Mic the two-page symbolism paper that had been yesterday’s homework.

Hound Dog looked in bafflement and fear at the class before him. Group relationship counselling had never been this involved before, but he hadn’t expected it to go this wrong.

The class was divided into several groups, each gathered beneath a large Yaoyorozu-produced banner. Yaoyorozu herself, who was at least partially responsible for this divide by giving them literal banners to rally behind, stood beneath one that boldly proclaimed ‘INCEST.’

“I am the top student in this class!” She yelled, and Mina had to duck beneath her arm as she took a page out of Iida’s book, apparently forgetting she was holding a sword. “I know what I’m talking about!”

“Lies!” Kaminari retorted from beneath another banner reading ‘MASTURBATION.’ “Mina and I had to tell you what a thot was, you don’t know dick or shit about this!”

“Both of you are wrong!” Asui pitched in from a third, whose banner read ‘THREESOME.’ “The only expert here is me!”

“Preach, sister!” Dark Shadow squawked from behind her.

“You just think it’s hot!” Kaminari screeched.

“Does anyone care what I think?” Tokoyami asked with the depression of a man who already knew the answer would be ignored. He lay flat on the ground in the middle of the room like a goth starfish, a small banner draped across his chest with the word ‘VOYEURISM.’ He was summarily ignored.

“Alright, enough!” Hound Dog finally tore himself out of his horrified and confused stupor to literally bark an order at the twenty delinquents in front of him. “Everyone back to your seats!”

He was met with grumbling obedience as the war parties disbanded, and he saw at least one sword besides Momo’s slipped back into a backpack. After a minute or so everyone was back in their seats and at least marginally quiet.

“Now,” he said, “we only have so much time here, and we can’t devote it all to one issue. Given how important it seems to you all, I’d invite you to think independently on how much Dark Shadow can be considered part of Tokoyami, and thus to what degree its involvement in his… trysts can be considered the participation of a third party, and we can have a short discussion next session.”

To his relief he was met with assent from most parties and let out a quiet sigh. “Now, next up…” He reached into the hat and pulled out a strip of paper with a new name. “Ojiro?”

Ojiro perked up. “Oh, me? I don’t have many issues, really. I’m in a steady, monogamous relationship with Hagakure and we’ve talked out our problems as they came up.”

Hound Dog waited for the other boot to drop. And waited. And waited.

“Sir?” Ojiro asked after a full minute of silence from the counsellor. “Is something wrong?”

“Oh! Nothing, nothing.” Hound Dog said, shaking his head and himself out of his wary anticipation. “But if that’s it…”

He waited again. It was. He let out a deep sigh as best he could without looking unprofessional in front of the crowd and picked up the hat again. “Okay, so next up is… Uraraka.”

Uraraka was on her feet in an instant, slamming a familiar poster against the blackboard. It was the same one she’d shown last time, clearly drawn by her boyfriend. “Okay, so you all remember this!”

She gestured at the illustration of three heads in circles, her’s, Midoriya’s, and Toga’s, the three arranged in a triangle and linked to each other with lines. Two other circles had arrows to them from Toga’s, mirroring Midoriya and Uraraka’s circles but with pointy teeth and glowing yellow eyes, dotted lines scrawled from them to the originals. The rest of the poster was filled with nearly illegible Midoriya scribbling that Hound Dog honestly wasn’t sure he wanted to read.

“Still haven’t figured this out, cool! But now there’s more!” She slammed a second poster up to overlap the first and Hound Dog’s heart sank to see the diagram expanded with a second Toga labeled ‘clone’ with her own set of extra circles. “So if Toga’s clone uses her own blood to become herself, but the real Toga is shapeshifted into Deku, and both of them are making out with me-”

Power Loader was dead asleep in the middle of a nap when he snapped to full consciousness, eyes wide. Hatsume had laughed. She was in the studio. These two things together could not be good.

He hurried out of the teacher’s lounge down to the support wing, speedwalking a distance he should not have been able to hear her laughter from, guided by his own sixth sense for disaster. He threw open the door just in time to find her giving Yaoyorozu a hearty handshake

“I can’t thank you enough!” Hatsume laughed, and every neuron in Power Loader’s brain lit up with a fight-or-flight response drilled into him after putting up with Hatsume’s projects for so long. “I couldn’t have done this without that hyper conductive alloy you made for me!”

“Of course!” Yaoyorozu said brightly. “Really, it was your genius that made this all possible. All I did was provide funds and materials, I could never have made it work as ingeniously as you did.”

Todoroki, who Power Loader hadn’t noticed with his terror-focus on Hatsume, clapped a hand onto both their shoulders. “You both have done the Lord’s work here today.”

Power Loader was reasonably certain that Shiozaki was the only Christian in UA, but Todoroki’s sudden religious inclinations weren’t important right now. He loudly cleared his throat, drawing their attention to him. “And what exactly have you done?”

Before any of them could answer, the door to the costume changing booths opened and a figure stepped out. They were dressed in something between a priest’s robes and a set of full plate armor. Armor that, by looking at the edge of one massive pauldron, was a solid inch thick at least. How they could move in it was beyond him, but they did so easily with thunderous steps. Each piece was laser etched to depict All Might, saving crowds from fires or vanquishing villains, with the breastplate covered in a sprawling tableau of him standing over the broken form of All For One like a battered but triumphant angel.

In one hand they clutched a mace, absent any spikes but with an odd cube-shaped head that seemed more technologically advanced than any ordinary weapon. The other held a massive heater shield whose bottom point could rest comfortably on the ground while covering its wielder up to just below their eyes. The surface was ornately carved into the face of Endeavor howling in agony, pierced with a dozen knives that he knew on some primordial level were fully functional and laser cut to a monomolecular edge.

The mace was hefted, and with the press of some unseen button, the head flared to light with burning flame, a perfect red and gold hue that the figure regarded with almost religious reverence. Finally looking at the face, Power Loader took in the grille of a metal mask and the glowing red slit of a visor below the uncovered scalp showing off a mess of fluffy green hair, and when they spoke they did so in a digitally distorted growl that made his bones shiver.

“Devastation upon apostates.”

His first thought was, ‘Oh, so this is why Aizawa drinks.’ His second was spoken aloud and took the form of “NO!”

Standing to the side, Ojiro did his best to ignore them as he turned in a request to one of the more sane support students asking for his costume to be tailored a bit for more mobility.

All Might stopped and rolled his segway back a few steps. The stealth exercise was glorified hide and seek, and few students were willing to pass up such an opportunity. Those who didn’t usually changed their mind when he found them and popped them with the paintball gun he had. So why were there students just out in the open?

He navigated carefully around the tree roots of Training Ground Omega, but the noise of the scooter’s motor didn’t seem to alert them. Was this some trick? A diversion so he’d waste time instead of searching for students?

No, that was definitely young Asui and young Koda, crouched around… All Might paused and peered closer. They seemed to be looking at a large, brown toad of some kind at the side of a pond.

“Young Asui? Young Koda?” He asked, somewhat confused and not wanting to lead with the paintball gun is there was something the matter. “Is something wrong?”

Koda shook his head without looking away from the toad.

“Then what are you doing?”

Also without looking away, Asui pointed at the edge of the pond. “He’s coming out.”

All Might looked from her to the pond, then back to her, then back to the pond, now peering closely. Upon more diligent inspection there did seem to be dark shapes clustered at the edge that might have been tadpoles to younger, more functional eyes. “Are you-”

He was cut off as the toad opened its mouth and snapped at the water, eliciting screams from both students.

“NOOOO!” Koda howled with more volume than All Might had ever heard from him. “HOW COULD YOU?”

Asui grabbed the fat toad with both hands and lifted it high into the air above her as if begging some bird to swoop down and eat it, screaming at the top of her lungs. “Bigot!”

Utterly baffled, All Might did the only thing he could think of: he hefted the paintball gun and shot them each twice in the chest. Neither of them seemed to notice.

Shaking his head, still with no idea what he’d just witnessed, All Might turned to continue looking for others. At the end of the exercise, with nineteen students found, it came out that Ojiro had put on camouflage, dirtied his white costume, and hid in the trees above the two of them, correctly reckoning that they’d distract All Might enough that he wouldn’t be noticed. He got bonus points for that.

Nezu took a sip of tea as he poked his head into the classroom.

“Where’s my fuckin’ money!” Uraraka said, leaning over the table as she jabbed it with a finger, inexplicably talking in a Brooklyn accent.

“I’m telling you, this is all a mistake!” Sato said, trying to laugh it off from the other side of the table.

“A mistake, huh?” Uraraka chuckled darkly as she settled back in her seat, straightening her pinstripe suit before snapping her fingers. “Tell that to my mooks.”

Shoji stepped out of the darkness behind her wearing a matching suit with the arms torn off along with a white fedora, cracking his knuckles. Ojiro stepped out on her other side in the same outfit, looking distinctly more confused. “I thought this was a costume party?”

Uraraka stood and put on her own hat, turning her back on poor Sato as Shoji closed in and Jiro emerged from the darkness in a lounge singer's dress, crooning a tune from a mafia speakeasy. “Fit this schmuck for a pair'a concrete galoshes. We’ll see if he forgets t’ pay up next time after Aoyama chews him a new one over the unfashionability of that kind'a footwear.”

Nezu closed the door and continued down the hall. Ah, young entrepreneurial spirit.

Ectoplasm first realized something was wrong on the grounds when a sword flew past his head. He hastily doubled back on his patrol and headed towards the exercise grounds, which led him to a scene of madness.

Sato howled, whirling a club around his head as Hagakure quickly backpedaled, clearing having just been disarmed. “YOU PUT MY SAFFRON IN SCRAMBLED EGGS!”

“It was worth it, they were delicious!” Hagakure yelled, turning aside as she put more distance between herself and the berserker. “Yaoyorozu, I need another sword!”

Yaoyorozu couldn’t reply, as Uraraka currently had her in a headlock with one hand over her mouth. “Sorry, I control the supply now! But for a reasonable fee-”

“No.”

Everyone quieted at the calm word and turned towards Bakugo, who lounged on a stone throne on a pillar like some bizarre lifeguard chair. He rested his head on one hand, and the quiet menace with which he spoke was so unlike his usual bluster that even Ectoplasm couldn’t help but listen.

“The kitchen is my domain. My word is law, and my law is law of the jungle. The fight has begun, there will be no more aid. You will fight or you will die, See-Through. They can’t help you now.”

Before she could reply, Sato fell to his knees. His eyes were wide and the club fell from his hands before he toppled over unconscious to reveal another figure behind him.

“Non.” Aoyama said as he stepped over the unconscious figure. “Sato can’t destroy you. Not until I make you pay myself for eating my putain de cheese!”

The rest of the class cheered and screamed at the sudden twist. Shinso was taking bets and seemed to have obtained some sort of leadership position in the crowd. Everyone ignored Ojiro, who was on the sidelines holding up a grocery bag. “I already bought more! None of this is necessary!”

Time seemed to be frozen as Aizawa walked into the common room. When asked about it later by Midnight, he described it between swigs from a flask as “a fucking medieval painting triptych.

To his left, Sero was falling to his knees with an arm outstretched to the central figure, face twisted in awe and fear, cowardice clearly overtaking him. Sato, Ashido, Kirishima, and Kaminari were close behind him, tearing at his clothes and trying to pull him back while Jiro and Tokoyami wailed and wept, turning away in disgust and shame. For some ungodly reason, a metal plaque was falling through the air, perfectly aligned to caption the image. ‘Castigation of the Traitor.’

To his right, Yaoyorozu stood with a pure white cloth draped over her like a robe, head thrown back to look up to the sky and her hair flowed freely out of its usual ponytail. In one outstretched hand she bore a single scale holding a bar of gold. In the other, a matching scale holding a plain stone. On some gut level, Aizawa knew she hadn’t made any of those items herself. She stood before Shoji, Koda, Aoyama, Asui, Todoroki, and Hagakure, who groveled and knelt before her. That one had a label too. ‘Judgement upon Apep.’

In the center was the source of all this. Iida stood in his battered and broken hero costume, as if he’d fought through the legions of hell to be here. His helmet had been torn free, revealing cracked glasses and an unyielding glare as he hefted Midoriya into the air by the throat, who hung limply like a kitten. Uraraka clung to his other arm, tears streaking her face as she begged for mercy. Bakugo and Shinso lay prone on the ground beneath Iida’s feet, obstacles crushed beneath his stride towards his goal. Their label was a single word. ‘Monad.’

“I! WILL! HAVE! ORDER!” Iida boomed.

In the background, Ojiro was getting a bowl of cereal.

Aizawa stepped up to the microphone and cleared his throat. In front of him, his class waited expectantly. Behind him, the rest of UA’s teachers did the same.

It took him a while to muster up the will to speak, but after a long sigh he managed it, though each word sounded like it was being crushed out of him by heavy stones. “It is with a new sense of humbleness that I hereby revoke Rule 53 of the dorms. Ojiro, get up here.”

The rest of the class, along with Hatsume who was forced to be there by Power Loader as an honorary chaos spawn, cheered as Ojiro walked up to the stage. Why they were cheering this, Aizawa didn’t know, but at least they weren’t setting the building on fire. He took a box out from under the podium and started to open it. “For the honor of being your class’s sanest member, I give you…”

He looked down into the box as he reached in for the trophy and stopped. Not suddenly like a car stopping in its tracks, more like the universe had just decided he was done moving. He stood like that for several long seconds before turning towards the other teachers. “Who was in charge of picking the trophy?”

In unison, every teacher pointed at Snipe.

Aizawa dragged his gaze to the shooting hero. There wasn’t murder in his eyes. There wasn’t even disappointment. There was only a deep, profound acceptance that weighed on the soul.

He turned back to Ojiro and continued as if he hadn’t stopped at all. “…this trophy.”

He let the box drop and handed Ojiro what was inside. “I don’t know what you’re going to do with this. I don’t fucking care. But you’re the most trustworthy person in your class to give this to, so I guess go buckwild, don’t kill anyone, I’m going to sleep.”

With that Aizawa lay down and curled up in his sleeping bag on the spot, ignoring any and every attempt to speak with him about why he just gave Ojiro a fucking gun.