Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Monoma Neito never meant to eavesdrop. He was just chilling on the roof of his apartment building when it happened, and there really wasn’t anywhere else he could have gone. 

(Technically, he didn’t have to hide behind the big potted plant his neighbour left on the rooftop, but it was too late now. He couldn't leave, not after hiding—at least not without making everything awkward.)

And even if there had been somewhere to go (other than behind the plant pot), he had been too shocked to think because All Might, of all people, had flown through the air towards him with someone—wait, was that a kid?— hanging onto his leg and screaming for dear life. 

As if the situation wasn’t confusing enough, they landed on the roof and All Might started steaming. Literally steaming. Neito guessed it could be a side effect of his mysterious quirk, but he’d never seen anything like it in any of the videos he’d watched of the hero’s fights. 

He shrugged the question off, watching as All Might turned to leave. Suddenly, the green-haired boy that had tagged along on his jump called after All Might and asked him if he could be a hero without a quirk. He sounded so hopeful, yet Neito could practically feel the desperation behind the question. 

Before he could answer, All Might suddenly disappeared in a puff of steam. The green-haired kid panicked (because who wouldn’t, when faced with that?), and rushed forward, to where a skinny man was standing—or rather, kneeling and coughing up blood—in All Might’s place.

He said he was All Might, and that a villain had hurt him enough that he only had a few hours left in his buff form each day. Neito was horrified. What sort of a villain could have done something so horrible to the Symbol of Peace? Who could have gone against the Number One Hero and almost won?

Before he could contemplate anything more about that, All Might gave his answer to the boy’s question: a resounding no.

Neito winced. No matter how he tried to sugar-coat it afterwards (“you need to be more realistic, what about being a doctor or a police officer?” ), the Number One Hero had just crushed a kid’s dreams. 

(And he couldn’t help but take it a little personally; without another quirked person around, Neito himself was basically quirkless. How would All Might have reacted to him , if he had been the one to ask if he could be a hero?)

When Neito next glanced around the plant pot, All Might was gone, and the green-haired boy was standing numbly on the roof, staring down at his bright red shoes. Neito considered helping him—All Might had just given them both (albeit unknowingly, in Neito’s case) a lot to think about, and the boy wasn’t looking too good—but that would mean revealing that he had been listening in on the whole conversation. The whole very private conversation, in which the Number One Hero in Japan revealed a national secret to a random middle schooler and crushed his dreams, all in one fell swoop. 

Hmm, maybe he’d go scream into his pillow about that later once he fully comprehended what had actually just happened. It was so surreal that he was half certain he was going to wake up to his alarm in a few minutes.

The next day, Neito went through the motions of his daily life, but he wasn’t really paying attention to anything. He was stuck back on that rooftop, playing All Might’s words over and over again in his head. 

That was, until he was walking home from school and spotted someone that made him do a double take.

It was All Might, in his skinny form.

Neito didn’t really know why he followed All Might, but he did. All the way back to what he assumed must be his house. He then found himself hiding in a bush outside All Might’s kitchen window. (Wow, that sounded creepy. Was he a stalker now?!)

A phone rang and Neito nearly jumped out of his skin, frantically patting his pockets in search of his phone. It wasn’t until All Might greeted someone that he realised it wasn’t his own phone that had just rung.

“Hello, Mirai,” All Might said, pausing to let the other person on the line speak. 

It really was unfortunate that Neito could only hear All Might’s side of the conversation. Neito cringed. That seemed like a stalkerish thing to think. 

“Actually,” All Might continued, “I wanted to tell you that I’ve chosen a successor.”

Neito gaped. Who could possibly succeed All Might?

“Midoriya Izuku,” All Might told Mirai, “I met him yesterday. He is more of a hero than many pro heroes I’ve met, even though he doesn’t have a quirk right now.”

Neito blanched. How likely was it that All Might met two quirkless boys yesterday? And the name would be ironically fitting, what with the boy’s hair colour. Hopefully, that meant that All Might had apologised for crushing his dreams and leaving him alone on a rooftop.

“Yes, I’ve told him about my quirk,” All Might said. He was quiet for a moment. “But All for One’s dead!”

All for One?

“Yes, I know we didn’t find a body, but I’m sure of it!”

Hmm. That sort of confidence about a death never turned out well in the movies.

“I suppose I could tell young Midoriya about him. Just so that he knows the history of One for All.”

Neito nearly gasped. All for One and One for All? 

…Oh, who was he kidding? Whatever—or whoever—those were, they were clearly important, but Neito had no clue why or how. He’d have to search up the names later when he had the chance, though, considering they were likely part of some national secret, he doubted anything about them was publicly available.

“What? No, I’m not giving him One for All until later! I don’t want it to break him!” All Might exclaimed.

Was One for All a machine or something? A deadly machine?!

…Maybe All for One made One for All and then died? Or didn’t die, since they never found a body? Neito shook his head. This was too confusing.

“I’ll train him until the entrance exam, and then I’ll give it to him. By then, he’ll be strong enough to take a quirk like it.”

Neito froze.

One for All… was a quirk? All Might’s quirk?! And he was going to give it to this Midoriya person?!

Was it possible to transfer quirks?!

Wait a second… if All for One was connected to All Might, and he was supposed to be dead, then did that mean he was the villain that injured All Might so badly that he was running out of time in his buff form and coughing up blood? The name All for One certainly sounded like a villain name, if anything.

If Neito was right (and, as usual, he believed he was), then he had uncovered a terrible picture. Especially if he went with his gut feeling that said if there isn’t a body found when a super dangerous villain supposedly dies, then the villain’s probably not as dead as everyone thinks.

“Oh,” All Might said, sounding a bit sheepish, “I was just going to give him a piece of my hair to eat.”

What. The. Fuck?

Out of everything, this might just take the cake. Why would someone eat All Might’s hair? What was even—

“I know, I know,” All Might said, cutting off Neito’s train of thought, “but hair seems like the easiest way to get him to ingest some of my DNA.”

Neito could just barely make out muffled sounds of screaming from the other end of the phone. 

He had to agree with this Mirai person’s sentiment. What was All Might thinking?! If he had to get someone to ingest his DNA for whatever reason (which was already weird), there had to be much better ways to do it—

Wait. Was that how One for All was passed down? Neito’s eyes widened. It must be! Why else would he be talking about that right now?

All Might sighed. Neito suddenly realised that he had just learned more about a massive national secret with the ability to collapse society as he knew it, which he wasn't supposed to know anything about in the first place. And he had done so by following a pro hero—and not just any pro hero, but the Number One Hero in all of Japan—to his home and hiding in a bush while eavesdropping on one of the aforementioned pro hero’s private phone calls. 

…He should probably leave before he gets caught.

Neito was perfectly content to keep All Might’s secret to himself. Or, rather, that was what he’d been repeating like a mantra in his head since he overheard two of the hero’s conversations a week ago.

It wasn’t true.

He wasn’t about to go tell the whole world about it—that could turn out disastrously, if anyone even believed him—but he felt like he had to do something with the information. 

He could barely comprehend that there was a single villain so powerful that he could take on All Might and nearly win. But, if there was one, it wasn’t much of a stretch to say there would eventually be more—and would there be more heroes of the same calibre to take them on when the time came? 

Neito didn’t think so. As far as he could tell, no one with All Might’s level of power was training to be a hero, and no one that was currently a hero could even hold a flame next to All Might.

He had stayed up researching until he passed out every night since he learned about All for One. To say he was scared of All for One’s reappearance was an understatement, even though all he could find on him were a few urban legends. A villain who could take quirks? That was unheard of! 

(Neito couldn’t help but feel resentment toward him for more personal reasons, too. People like All for One were the reason that people were scared of his own quirk, Copy.)

Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or his distraction, or maybe it was just inevitable that Neito would get caught up in a villain attack.

Regardless of the cause, he suddenly found himself in the middle of a full-blown attack from an organised group of villains. One of them had some sort of long-range explosion quirk and she was blowing up buildings left and right, trapping people and preventing them from leaving the area. Someone shoved Neito out of the way, trying to get to another exit, and he stumbled, falling onto the street. 

The street, where he was in direct view of the explosive villain. She looked right at him and raised her arm, a dangerously sparking object appearing in her hand. Neito paled, scrambling backwards, but before she could hurl the bomb at him, he heard a voice.

“I AM HERE!”

All Might flew through the air, landing in front of Neito and subduing the villain. The others tried to flee, but the heroes in the area quickly gave chase. 

After the villain with the explosive quirk was fitted with quirk suppressing handcuffs, All Might turned to face Neito.

“Are you alright, my boy?” he asked, a heroic smile on his face.

“Um… Yes, thank you,” Neito managed, irrationally terrified that All Might would recognise him from the rooftop or when he followed him home.

All Might offered him his hand, and he took it, shakily rising to his feet. Suddenly, he felt something akin to electricity surge through his veins. The sheer amount of power was astounding, and it was begging him to move, to do something.

It was One for All. Neito must’ve activated his quirk on instinct.

“I’m glad to hear it! But you should still go see the paramedics over there,” All Might said, pointing to the left. “You look a bit shaken.”

Neito nodded mindlessly, distracted by the shock of feeling One for All for the first time. No wonder All Might was the Number One Hero—Neito felt like he could do anything with this sort of power.

(There was something else, too. Neito could sense something in nearly every person around him—some force that called to him. It felt almost like when he touched someone, and could feel their quirk thrumming beneath their skin.)

Out of the corner of his eye, Neito saw All Might jump off into the horizon, no doubt to help with another villain attack. 

Neito started towards the paramedics, and then decided to pass by them entirely—he hadn’t gotten injured past a small scrape on his knee—when he noticed a hero with some sort of a cow-related mutation that must have come with strength enhancement, holding up half of a building. Heroes and police officers were rushing out of the building with injured civilians, and then heading back in to help more.

The hero holding everything up was starting to look bad. Her face was red, and her arms were shaking from the strain. Neito looked around frantically, but no one seemed to be paying much attention to her, and all the other pros were busy.

Then, an idea popped into his head. His eyes widened.

It was a stupid idea; a terrible one, because of how likely he’d be caught, but there were so many people in that building—too many to just ignore.

So, Neito rushed into a nearby corner store and grabbed a water bottle, leaving his payment by the register where an employee would see it once the evacuation was over.

He popped off the lid, and grimaced before spitting into the bottle. Neito frowned. Would that be enough? He spat into it one more time before running toward the hero.

Her whole body was shaking now, and she looked moments from collapsing. Thankfully, everyone was too busy to notice a middle schooler approaching the hero.

“I know it isn’t much, but you look like you could really use some water,” Neito said, holding out the bottle in a shaky hand. His heart was beating wildly from the adrenaline of both lying to a pro and standing underneath a building seconds from collapsing.

“Thank… you,” the hero panted. “Could you…?”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” Neito helped her take a few careful sips from the bottle, anxiety writhing around in his stomach. Hopefully, having One for All for the next six minutes before his quirk ran out would give the pros and police enough time to get everyone out safely.

Once the hero said she’d had enough water, Neito slipped back into the crowd, taking the bottle with him. He watched nervously as more people streamed in and out of the building. When he glanced back at the hero again, she looked noticeably less shaky, and her face was returning to its natural black and white cow-like colours. She even hoisted the building up an extra few inches, a rejuvenated determination flashing in her eyes. 

Neito glanced at his phone. Less than a minute was left until his quirk ran out. What if she had gone overboard because of her new strength, and would get crushed once it wore off? He estimated that at least four people were left in the building, searching for any last victims, but there wasn't anything he could do. 

He held his breath, surrounded by people who had no idea that a tragedy might be about to befall them. 

But nothing happened. 

Neito checked his phone again. It had been eleven minutes since he copied All Might’s quirk. 

The hero continued to hold up the building, even as a team began to bring more permanent equipment onto the scene. Neito heard her tell one of them not to rush. 

Fourteen minutes. 

This was impossible. His quirk only lasted for ten minutes. 

…Maybe she would have it for ten minutes after he gave it to her, instead of for the remaining time he would've had it copied for?

He waited anxiously, and when he checked the time again, twenty-three minutes had passed.

Had he given her One for All permanently?

Was that even possible?!

After half an hour, the crowd was beginning to thin. Neito took one last glance at the hero—who was still holding up the building, as if she hadn't been seconds from passing out just thirty minutes ago—and fled. 

Neito obsessed over the news for the next few days. Namely, any stories that included All Might in them, especially instances where there was video footage of him. But no matter how much Neito scrutinised the videos and compared the amount of articles featuring All Might to the ones before the day he copied and passed on One for All, he couldn't find any differences at all.

In his search, he found a few short articles on the Hefty Hero: Heifer, the pro he’d given One for All to. They mentioned her quirk’s sudden “mutation” in passing, claiming that the stress of holding up such a heavy building triggered it. 

Combined, all the evidence indicated that he transferred a completely separate, but just as powerful, version of One for All to Heifer.

A plan began to form in Neito’s mind; one where he could help protect the world from the most dangerous villains of all. 

He could never have One for All himself, not for longer than his quirk allowed. He couldn’t be one of the heroes the world needed to take on villains like All for One.

But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t help create those heroes.

Neito may never become anything more than a side character, but if that was the case, then he was going to be the best damn side character the world had ever seen.

Chapter Text

Neito was ready to put his plan into action. The only problem was that he had no idea where to start. 

So, he decided to take the long way home from school that day, to give himself a chance to clear his mind and figure out his next steps. 

Lost in thought, he bumped into a person around his age, causing them to spill a few drops of coffee from the cup they were carrying. 

Were middle schoolers supposed to drink coffee? He felt like he'd heard somewhere that it stunted people’s growth if they had too much, but he supposed that certainly wasn't a problem for this kid. He was a fair bit taller than Neito, with gravity-defying purple hair and matching eyes, though his pupils were white, and had deep bags under them despite the coffee. 

Neito apologised for getting in his way, but the boy just glanced at him with an unchanging bored expression and kept walking. Maybe coffee made young people rude, too. Neito shrugged, and continued on his way. 

That was, until a group of kids wearing the same uniform as the purple-haired boy walked by, jeering at their peer. 

“Yo, Mindfreak!” one of them called, while the others snickered behind him, "I heard you wanna become a hero. Someone with a villain’s quirk like yours will never even be allowed to try to be a hero. Everyone knows you're just going to run off with your pathetic villain friends the second you see a little action."

Neito stiffened. He’d had his fair share of bullies, though they’d… mostly forgotten about him by the time middle school had come around. So this kid was a kid with a villainous quirk. That hit a bit too close to home. 

…However, he was facing all this abuse and he still wanted to be a hero. 

Hmm. He’d found a dedicated hero wannabe. Wasn’t that exactly the sort of candidate he was looking for?

Neito snuck a glance over his shoulder. The group had nearly cornered the purple-haired boy, and although he was trying to keep up an unbothered facade, Neito could see it beginning to crack. 

He wanted to be a hero. They both did, regardless of how other people saw their quirks. And it wouldn’t be very heroic of Neito to stand by and let someone get hurt for no reason. 

“Hey, I thought I recognised you!” Neito called, forcing a triumphant grin onto his face and pointing at the purple-haired kid, “You’re from that volunteer program at the cat shelter by the pier. Remember me? We were in the same group.”

The group of bullies and their target were staring at him now. They looked confused, though at least the purple-haired kid was trying to hide it. 

Neito strolled confidently toward the group, ignoring the tension in the air. 

“What, are you another villain the Brainwasher hangs out with?” one of the bullies sneered. 

Neito feigned innocence. “Villain? The only villains I see right now are you.”

Rage lit up the boy’s eyes, quite literally, since his quirk seemed to be something to do with how his eyes were suddenly glowing orange.

“Come on.” Neito grabbed the purple-haired boy's wrist. “Let’s go catch up somewhere else. I’ll get you a coffee or something—I made you spill some of yours, didn’t I?”

The other boy didn’t protest, though he looked at Neito like he didn’t know who he was or what he was doing (which was fair, since that was true) while Neito dragged him away. The bullies seem utterly lost, as if something like this had never happened when they confronted any of their targets in the past (which, again, was probably true). 

Once they turned a corner and were out of view of the other kids, the purple-haired boy tentatively spoke. 

“I don’t know you,” he said, almost like it's a question. 

“Yeah, we’ve never met. But it seemed like you wanted those people to leave you alone and I know what that feels like, so I thought I’d help you out.”

The boy nodded slowly, though he clearly didn't trust him. "But why would you help me ”—he eyed Neito like he was going to bite—“even after you learned my quirk?”

“Brainwashing, right?” Neito asked. The purple-haired boy flinched. “I don’t hate you for your quirk, if that’s what you’re asking. It’d be counter-intuitive for me to view any quirk as bad when all my quirk does is copy them.”

The boy’s eyes widened.

Neito took one look at him and continued, figuring he needed to hear something he probably hadn’t heard from anyone before, “People look down on me because of Copy, and some have gone so far as to call me a villain because of my quirk. But if I’m a villain just because of my quirk, then shouldn't everyone else be villains, too, since their quirks are all that I copy?” Neito sighed. “That’s how I first came to the conclusion that quirks don’t make heroes or villains—people do.”

He glanced at the purple-haired boy, only to blink and do a double-take. The boy had stopped a few paces behind and was frozen in place.

“Come on, you can finish your crisis at the café,” Neito said, not unkindly, beckoning for the boy to follow him.

The purple-haired boy’s name was Shinsou Hitoshi, and he wanted to be a hero to prove to everyone that his quirk didn’t make him villainous. 

(But it wasn’t as spiteful of a goal as it seemed at first glance. By becoming a hero, Shinsou would be picking away at the idea that quirks made heroes and villains. Alone, he couldn’t possibly solve the problem, but he could help.

And he’d be more than just a licensed pro.

Shinsou would be a hero not just by profession, but in spirit to all the people labelled villains because of their quirks.)

Neito sat in Beans and Friends, a cat café that he’d only ever passed by, with a cat on his lap, staring at the boy across the table. He hoped he hadn’t weirded out Shinsou too much with his interrogation-like questions, but they gave him what he wanted.

He had needed to know whether Shinsou would be a good hero; a hero deserving of One for All.

And he’d found his answer.

Shinsou took another big drink out of his third cup of coffee, before looking Neito in the eye. “So, how did you know I volunteered at the cat shelter? Did you use someone’s quirk?”

Neito laughed. “No, that was just a lucky guess. I saw that your cup was from this café, so I assumed you liked cats and went with the first thing I thought of.”

Shinsou’s lip quirked up slightly. 

Neito took that as a win.

This boy was going to be a great hero; one of many that were going to be unlike anything the world had ever seen. Neito would make sure of it.

Neito had a problem. 

He and Shinsou had become friends—which wasn’t the problem, but was what caused the problem, however contradictory that seemed—and Shinsou was quickly becoming his closest friend, as both of their classmates were nothing more than acquaintances (or bullies). The problem was that Neito still wanted to give Shinsou a copy of One for All, but wasn’t sure whether to ask Shinsou if he wanted it. Or whether to tell him that it existed at all.

If he gave it to him without telling him, and then Shinsou found out later, it could break their friendship. That wasn’t something he was willing to sacrifice.

But, if he told him, then he would have to tell him everything , even though it was a huge society-ending secret that he wasn’t even supposed to know. And then Shinsou might refuse One for All, or try to talk him out of his plan. 

(And that was if Shinsou even believed him in the first place.)

Neito paced his room, contemplative. 

It was worth the risk, he finally decided, picking up his phone to message Shinsou.

CopyCat

Do you want to come over to my place right now to hang out?

There’s something I need to tell you

coffee_cat

that sounds ominous

but sure

i’m free for the rest of the day

Neito sat on his desk chair facing Shinsou, elbows resting on his knees and hands clasped in front of his face. “What would you say if I told you that I know a way to make you stronger—to make it so that you’ll definitely get into the hero course, no matter how biased the exam ends up being?”

“Is this your way of telling me to exercise more?” Shinsou deadpanned, raising an eyebrow from where he sat on Neito’s bed, “Or are you trying to convince me to go villain with you?”

The serious expression didn’t leave Neito’s face.

Shinsou frowned. “I mean, as long as it’s not super dangerous.” He paused to consider the options. “Or illegal. That probably wouldn’t get me any points at a hero school.”

“I don’t actually know if it’s illegal.”

Shinsou’s eyebrow rose further.

“Maybe it’d be illegal because of public quirk usage… or theft…” Neito mumbled, “No, it’s not really theft. Hmm. Can you be arrested for copying someone?”

“...Do you mean cloning someone or copying someone’s actions?”

“Neither. I’m talking about copying someone’s quirk and then giving the copy to another person.”

Shinsou gaped.

“Yeah, yeah, I know it sounds impossible, but I can assure you that it’s not. I’ve already done it once, so there’s proof!”

Shinsou blinked. And blinked again. “You… gave someone someone else’s quirk.”

“A copy of it,” Neito corrected.

“You gave someone a quirk .”

“A copy of one, but yes, that’s what I said.”

“Who?” Shinsou choked out.

Ah, now that’s something Neito prepared for him to ask! “Have you heard of the Hefty Hero: Heifer?” Shinsou nodded cautiously. “If you read any recent articles about her, you’ll think that she went through a recent quirk mutation because she held up a collapsing building for so long. But that’s not the full picture! I was there, and I gave her a copy of All Might’s quirk, since I… might have… eavesdropped on All Might multiple times and learned his quirk—but that’s not important! The point is that All Might still has his quirk, and now Heifer has a copy of it, too, so she’s going to become just as strong as him! Or maybe even stronger!”

“What?!”

“So, what I’m wondering is if you want All Might’s quirk, too. I was originally going to give it to you by sneaking it into your coffee one time, but since we’re friends, that doesn’t seem fair.”

“All Might’s quirk can go in coffee?!”

“Well, it just has to be a piece of his DNA—”

Shinsou choked on his spit.

“—or, rather, mine, since you’d be getting One for All from me.”

The bags under Shinsou’s eyes seemed to have grown tenfold. “I don’t know if I want to ask, but what the fuck is One for All?”

Neito decided that that was the perfect time to inform Shinsou of everything he had heard about One for All’s history. What better opportunity was he going to have? 

He made sure to stress that All for One was not actually confirmed to be dead. And that he wasn’t actually sure if One for All was really just a strength and speed enhancer, since Heifer seemed to have had other quirk enhancements, too, and when Neito had One for All, he could sense other people’s quirks.

“That’s… something,” Shinsou said after Neito finished his explanation.

Neito nodded grimly. 

Shinsou squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced, flopping onto his back on the bed. “Okay, say that I decided to get One for All—which I’m still not sure about—how would I explain the sudden change? A mutated mental quirk doesn’t usually come with a side of super strength.”

Neito hummed. “You could just make something up, like that you get energy from the people you brainwash and it builds up so you get really strong,” he suggested, “You could twist it to explain why you still look like a twig, too, if All Might’s quirk doesn’t change how you look.”

“Hey!” Shinsou sat up just to glare at Neito. Then he sighed. “...But I guess you do have a point.”

Neito smiled a small smug smile. 

Shinsou sighed. “I’m still not sure.”

"Well, you certainly don't have to decide now," Neito said, "But in the meantime, I don't want to pass up an opportunity if I do come into contact with All Might again. So," he grinned "Do you want to help me choose some other people to get One for All?"

Shinsou’s eyes lit up. “Have you ever heard of Eraserhead?”

As it turned out, tracking down the elusive underground hero was harder to do than finding out the secret of One for All. Luckily, having Eraserhead’s self-proclaimed biggest fan on hand made the whole process exponentially easier.

“So, this is everything I’ve collected about Eraserhead’s general patrol area. I couldn't get much more specific, since even underground hero forums and that one cryptid Eraserhead spotting blog aren’t that good,” Shinsou said, smoothing out a massive map covered in a bunch of pen scribbles, “Most of this stuff is from a few months ago, but I can ask around online to see if anyone’s noticed any changes since then.

“I also know that he goes to Beans and Friends, that café I like, pretty often in the morning. It was a total coincidence I saw him there, though, since I had just started going there ‘cause they have good coffee. And cats.”

Neito stared at the paper, mouth agape.

Shinsou didn’t seem to notice. “Then the only problem is how we’re going to get you to copy One for All from All Might and give it to Eraserhead within the ten minute limit your quirk has.”

Neito blinked, still looking at the paper in awe.

“Monoma?”

He startled suddenly, a hand waving in front of his face. “Huh?”

Shinsou sighed. “I said we need to figure out how to get you from All Might and to Eraserhead within ten minutes.”

“Hmm…” Neito said, stroking his chin, “I think I might have an idea, though it’s kind of risky.”

“Riskier than everything you’ve done so far?”

Neito and Shinsou dedicated all of their free time in the next week taking turns stalking (or attempting to stalk) All Might, mostly while he was in his skinny civilian form. They both set up their phones so that they were notified whenever a new article about All Might came out, and when they put those together, it wasn’t too difficult to figure out where he was most of the time. Especially since they knew where All Might’s residence in Musutafu was.

Neito’s mom was happy for him, since she thought he was just spending a lot of time out with his new friend. It wasn’t really a lie, but Neito still felt a curl of guilt in his stomach when he made up excuses about going to a café or mall with Shinsou. He shoved it down every time it rose up, though, since he was doing this for the good of everyone around the world, including his mom (but maybe discluding his scumbag of a father who had abandoned them). 

There needed to be more heroes who could go toe-to-toe with villains like All for One, and if he was the only one who could make that possible, then he wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity, no matter how challenging it was, or how many laws against stalking they had to break. 

It was on Tuesday at lunch when Neito had a breakthrough. He was hiding behind a bush yet again, as All Might sat on a bench with his friend, Naomasa, who was some sort of a police officer. (Admittedly, the fact that he hung out with a cop made it a bit nerve-wracking to be stalking him, but at least neither himself nor Shinsou had been caught yet.)

At first, All Might and Naomasa were talking about trivial things, and it was taking a lot of effort on Neito’s part not to tune them out. But then All Might said something that made Neito perk up. 

“I’m a bit worried about my meeting with Nezu.” All Might sighed. “I was going to work there to find a successor, but now that I have chosen Young Midoriya, I’m not sure whether the position is still open for me.”

All Might was meeting with Nezu? Nezu, the principal of UA?! So was All Might planning to work at UA?! 

Was that why he came to Musutafu?

Naomasa hummed sympathetically. “At least there isn’t too much time to stress about it.”

Please , Neito begged in his head, say when the meeting is!  

“Yes,” All Might said, “There is that.”

Come on!

“It’s Friday, right?”

Bingo!

All Might nodded. “Right when school begins, in fact. So thankfully, I don’t need to come in with my quirk activated, otherwise the media and students would never leave me alone!” He laughed, and it turned into a coughing fit. Neito winced, watching as Naomasa fussed over his friend.

Neito took the chance to check his phone for the time, and his eyes widened. Lunch was nearly over, and he couldn’t be late for class! He crawled along the ground, hiding behind bushes until he was far enough away that All Might and Naomasa wouldn’t think he was spying on them. Then he jumped up, scaring a random passerby, and sprinted to his school, repeating what he heard in his head so he wouldn't forget it before he could tell Shinsou.

An idea was beginning to form in the back of his mind.

“So you have a plan?” Shinsou asked as soon as they met up after school.

“Don’t sound so skeptical!” Neito chided, “It’s a flawless plan!”

Shinsou raised an eyebrow.

“...Okay, maybe there are a few potential flaws—”

“Knew it.”

“—but otherwise, it’s flawless!”

They started off with the flyers. 

One went in All Might’s mail box, and another on the front door of his house. They taped some to the doors of a few shops he passed by on his commute, but they got taken down soon after by staff. They managed to sneak one into the police station where Naomasa worked, too, since All Might frequented there. 

Neito dropped a few on the ground near where All Might was fighting a villain, and the wind blew one of the flyers directly into the criminal’s face. It helped to stop the battle before it got too destructive, and afterward Neito saw All Might reading the flyer.

During lunch, he got a text from Shinsou that consisted of two photos. The first was of the bench All Might and Naomasa frequented, with a flyer sitting on its surface. The second photo, which was clearly taken quickly and from a distance, was of All Might and his friend sitting on the bench and staring at the poster in puzzlement.

After school, Neito posted a few more flyers on poles, trees, and in the train stations along the path he knew All Might took to get home.

Really, they should be getting paid by Beans and Friends for all the advertising they were doing for them.

The next step was a bit harder. 

Neito made sure to ‘accidentally’ bump into Yuki, a classmate that he knew had a lock-picking quirk, before he practically sprinted out of the school for lunch.

They were lucky All Might’s house was nearby, or else their plans might as well have been a fantasy. It took him only seven minutes to meet Shinsou near All Might’s house, and then another one and a half to actually make it to the door, since they wanted to look nonchalant to any neighbours who might be watching. 

Neito used Yuki’s quirk to unlock the door, holding his own apartment key in his hand so that it looked like they hadn’t just broken in. He made sure not to leave fingerprints anywhere, too, by pulling down his jacket sleeve to cover his hand.

Once they made it in the house, they didn't have to rush, but their anxiety still made them work quickly.

They searched the kitchen, finding All Might’s (admittedly small) coffee and tea stash. Neito dumped the coffee grounds and tea into a plastic bag to throw away once he got home, while Shinsou worked on searching the house for any extra caffeinated products All Might might have.

Neito replaced the now-empty containers for coffee and tea in their places, so that All Might would think he had just forgotten to refill them after he used them up.

Shinsou returned with a small box of black tea, saying that he couldn't find anything else. Good. It would be less suspicious if All Might didn’t have a lot to begin with. 

Neito stuffed the black tea and now-full plastic bag in his backpack, and they headed out, trying to act as if they hadn’t just stolen from the Symbol of Peace. 

Miraculously, they managed to make it back to school and through the rest of the day without combusting due to stress or guilt, but, as soon as they met up at Neito’s apartment after school, it was a different story.

His mom would still be at work for another hour, thankfully, or else they would have gotten a lot of questions about the inhuman screams that Neito and Shinsou made after they fully acknowledged that they had broken into All Might’s house and stolen from him. 

Neito could only hope they wouldn’t get any complaints from the neighbours. 

On Friday morning, Neito woke up from his alarm at 6:00 AM. He fell out of bed trying to silence the alarm (so much for being quiet) and groggily went through his morning routine. He had already told his mom he was hanging out with Shinsou before school, so all he had to do was eat a quick breakfast, grab his bag, and leave a note on the counter before heading out. 

It was just after 6:30 in the morning. At least they were going to a café, because he was going to need coffee to get him through the day. 

Shinsou met him at a park between their homes, somehow looking even more tired than he usually did. Neito was surprised he managed to get to the park alive, let alone on time. 

They went over the plan a few more times, trying to simultaneously ignore and plan around any unexpected situations that may come up. Neito was practically shaking from nerves, because no matter how much he tried to deny it, their plan was far from flawless. It relied far too much on the actions of people other than themselves, namely Eraserhead and All Might. 

But, there was nothing more they could do right then, so at a quarter past seven, the two boys headed towards Beans and Friends. 

A bell above the door chimed when they walked in, and Neito greeted the barista—who might even be more tired than Shinsou, by the looks of it—with a pleasant smile. They ordered their drinks (Shinsou’s being a highly sugary monstrosity that shouldn't be allowed to exist, and his, a simple black tea) and Shinsou nudged him in the direction of a table in the far corner of the café. It had a good view of the whole café, but, more importantly, it was just past a table seating a lanky blonde man who was trying to convince a pitch-black cat to let him pet it. 

All Might. 

Neito sagged in relief once they sat down. The first part of their plan had worked. 

"Now we just have to hope Eraserhead shows up," Shinsou said under his breath, though Neito could tell he was confident he would. 

The barista called out their order, and Neito went up front to get it. After he came back and was just about to take a sip from his drink, a bell chimed, signalling that the door had opened. 

In walked a man in a black jumpsuit and a white scarf piled around his neck. Shinsou perked up as soon as he saw him, and Neito took that as a hint that this was the pro hero Eraserhead.

Neito watched as Eraserhead shuffled up to the counter, talking momentarily with the barista before paying and sitting down at a nearby table. One of the cats jumped onto his lap immediately. Eraserhead glanced in their direction briefly, and Neito looked away as quickly as he could, catching a frankly terrifying glare from Eraserhead in the corner of his eye. There was no way he already knew their plans, or even who they were.

…Right?

Neito felt eyes on the back of his head, and he broke out in a cold sweat.

“Are you sure he won’t notice?” Neito hissed, knuckles turning white as he gripped his cup.

“He has no reason to suspect us, and besides, it’s Eraserhead! He wouldn’t hurt children!” Shinsou whispered back.

Neito gave him a deadpan look. “Even if those children look like they're trying to poison him?”

“Oh look, the barista’s almost done making his drink,” Shinsou pointed out, completely ignoring Neito’s question, “You should go up before our whole plan is ruined.”

Neito sighed, getting up and making sure to ‘accidentally’ brush into All Might on his way to the front counter.

Todoroki Natsuo was not having a good day. He was tired, and stressed, and had a project due in one of his university classes that he hadn’t even started. But hey, at least there were cats at the café he worked at.

It was kind of surprising to see two middle schoolers walk into Beans and Friends before seven thirty in the morning, but it wasn’t anything too unusual. The purple-haired kid was a regular, though he usually came later in the day (and alone). However, there was one thing that really got Natsuo: the second middle schooler.

He honestly thought the blond kid was a hallucination at first. Natsuo was positive he was the same kid he had spotted spitting in a bottle of water before giving it to a hero holding a building up a while back. He had been too far away to warn the hero or do anything at the time, no matter how disgusting and downright confusing it was, but the memory had stuck with him. 

Just who was this kid? Did he always spit in the water of heroes trying to rescue innocent civilians? The strange thing was that the kid had looked genuinely worried about the hero, even though he must have some sort of grudge against her—why else would he do something so rude?

Or maybe it was a quirk thing? Natsuo doubted it. And even if it was, that didn’t change the fact that it was really fucking weird.

So when the purple-haired kid came up to order a frankly disgusting-sounding sugary coffee, with the blonde kid beside him, the logical conclusion that Natsuo came to was that he was hallucinating as a punishment from staying up all night for the second time that week. That was, until the purple-haired kid turned to the blond kid and pointed out where on the menu their tea selection was. 

Natsuo didn’t remember taking the rest of their order. Or making their drinks. Though he knew he had, since the kids were sitting at a table in the corner, drinking from cups with Beans and Friends’ logo on them. Eh, they weren’t complaining, so his muscle memory must’ve served him well.

After a few minutes of contemplation and a mini-crisis, he had convinced himself that he wasn’t hallucinating, which meant that the kid that spat in some hero’s water had actually come to the café he worked at.

That was until the kid came up to the counter again, right as Natsuo put the next customer’s drink down and was about to call out his name.

The kid leaned on the counter, clearing his throat. “Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you have any straws?”

Natsuo blinked. This kid wanted to drink hot tea with a straw? “Um. Yeah, they’re right next to you on the counter,” he said, pointing to them. Seriously, how had the kid missed that? 

The kid looked up from where he was pulling something—was that a nail file? —out of his pocket, and had the audacity to act surprised when he saw the straws. “Oh! Silly me, I’ll just grab one now.” He reached towards them very slowly, and then suddenly froze just before he touched one, retracting his hand. “Wait, do I have to pay for these?”

“No, you’re allowed one with your drink. Though you might want to be careful—” Natsuo cut himself off.

The blond kid had taken the lid off the drink Natsuo had just set down, and was filing his nails overtop of it .

“What do I need to be careful about?” The kid was looking at him with a perfectly innocent expression on his face, as if he wasn’t filing his nails into another person’s coffee. 

Should he… say something? But then again, there was no way this was actually happening. The kid wasn’t acting like anything unusual was happening. This had to be a hallucination. “Uh, it’s just dangerous to drink hot drinks through a straw. You could burn yourself,” Natsuo said after too long of a pause.

“I guess I shouldn’t get a straw then.” The kid frowned. Then he smiled at Natsuo. “Thanks for helping me out!”

Then he turned around and went back to his seat. Natsuo looked down. The lid was back on the coffee cup. Natsuo just stared at it, unblinking.

“Is that mine?” A gruff voice came from in front of him. Natsuo recognised it as Aizawa’s, the man who had ordered the drink sitting on the counter in front of him. The one that had motherfucking nail dust (or whatever it’s called) in it.

“Yes, but—”

Aizawa grabbed the drink, taking a large gulp of it. “Thanks.”

Natsuo stood there, gaping and unable to speak, as Aizawa walked out the door.

He hoped he had hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe that was wishful thinking, but how was he supposed to believe that was real?! Natsuo rubbed his eyes and looked over at where the two kids had been sitting.

They were gone. The only person in the café besides himself was a tall blonde man with a black cat in his lap.

“I think you broke that poor barista,” Shinsou said, doubled over and wheezing, “I can’t believe that plan worked!”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Neito said dryly. Then he groaned and buried his face in his hands, “I’m never going to be able to go back there, am I.”

Shinsou patted his shoulder, still half-leaning against the wall of the back alley they had escaped to. “Look on the bright side, now Eraserhead has One for All.”

Neito thought back to the paralysing glare Eraserhead had sent him. “The bright side,” he muttered, “...Sure.”

Aizawa Shouta was having a normal day. The key word being “was” .

He had gone to Beans and Friends in the morning, like he always did, to pick up a coffee and pet a few cats before he headed to UA. He had taught the classes he had in his schedule that day (which was a lot less than every year previous, having expelled his entire homeroom class), and then he had gone on patrol.

That was when everything went to shit.

Shouta spotted a mugging taking place in a convenience store, and had stepped in to intervene. One of the criminals had jumped at him from behind, so Shouta had kicked them in the gut, quirk activated.

The criminal had flown into the wall of the store. And then through it, and to the other side of the street, leaving Shouta, the cashier, and the other two criminals to stare at them through the gaping hole in the wall. 

By the time the police arrived, the two remaining criminals had surrendered peacefully, too terrified of Eraserhead’s newfound strength to even try to put up a fight.

What the actual fuck had happened to him?

Chapter Text

The days passed by quickly, school blurring together with countless hours spent stalking All Might and keeping an eye out for any news about Eraserhead. While Shinsou had taken over most of the information gathering on Eraserhead, Neito had managed to find a blog post about his first patrol with One for All—complete with some fanart the blogger had drawn. They hadn’t known who Eraserhead was, and seemed to think that he was some sort of red-eyed demon vigilante, which made Neito cackle and text Shinsou a link to the post.

Before Neito knew it, over a week had passed since the transfer of One for All to Eraserhead. No one had come after them for nonconsensual quirk transfer, as they had been paranoid about for the first few days, so they were beginning to relax. And with this relaxation came a newfound confidence, and another target: Yaoyorozu Momo.

Her family was very rich, but that wasn’t what caught Neito’s attention. No, he had overheard Yaoyorozu speaking on the phone with someone about her plans to go into heroics, and her genuine desire to do what she could with her power to help people who needed it had resonated with both him and Shinsou. 

So they had stalked her on social media, and maybe just happened to be in the same place as she was a few times in the next few days, to make sure that they had judged her character correctly. She proved to be a dedicated and capable person, certainly someone that would use One for All with only the best intentions.

They found that Yaoyorozu had been discouraged from heroics enough in her life—whether it was because of her quirk, gender, or responsibility to her family’s company—that she lacked confidence in her abilities. However, the fact that she was still trying her hardest to become a hero despite backlash and feelings of inferiority only made Neito more sure she should receive One for All.

And he had the perfect plan for how to give it to her.

Neito was a long-time member of the theatre club at his middle school, which meant that he had picked up a thing or two about acting over the years. 

And his plan was to use that.

Yaoyorozu Momo didn’t go out a lot alone, other than to go to her fancy private school. Even then, she was driven by an actual, real-life chauffeur , so there wasn’t much opportunity there. So, instead of waiting for Yoayorozu to come to him, Neito was going to go to her. More specifically, he was going to break into her house.

It wasn’t like it was a big deal, really, he was just going to sneak in right before dinner and put something in her food before it was served. Which… does sound a bit bad, admittedly, but it wasn’t like he was poisoning her or anything, so it’s fine.

Totally fine.

At least he barely had to worry about trying to copy One for All from All Might anymore, since he pretty much knew his schedule by heart.

“Who are you?”

Neito turned around to see a man in a chef’s outfit frowning down at him. He was holding a very large and very sharp knife in his hand, and suddenly Neito was second-guessing himself.

But he swallowed down his nerves and smiled at the chef. “Ah, I was hired to help out around the kitchen, sir! It’s partly for work experience, and—”

“I don’t care about your story,” the chef said gruffly, cutting him off by throwing an apron in his face, “Don’t just stand there! You’re not being paid to laze around, boy!”

Neito squeaked as the man shooed him off to work, the knife still in his hand. 

Too bad he wasn’t actually being paid for this.

It was much easier to give their next target One for All.

All he had to do was commit a bit of B 'n' E (the cool way of saying breaking and entering), on two separate occasions. Really, it was barely something to sweat over at this point. Especially after that run-in with the chef.

 Neito snuck into All Might’s house in the dead of night, which was surprisingly easy—the hero didn’t even stir when the door creaked open—and tapped him lightly on the shoulder before leaving the same way he came. Then he rushed to Kirishima Eijiro’s house and managed to pry his bedroom window open without too much fuss. He crawled into the room and tiptoed toward the fast asleep and snoring form of Kirishima. 

Clenching his teeth to stop himself from making any noise, Neito pulled out a sewing needle he had tucked in his pocket and pricked his finger deep enough to draw blood. He stared at it for a moment before carefully flipping his hand over so the droplet fell directly into Kirishima's open mouth. 

By the time Neito made it to school the next day, Kirishima had activated One for All for the first time. 

Consequently, there was also one less tree in front of Kirishima's house. 

Neito grinned, almost manically, at his computer screen. He had been browsing social media, blog posts, and news articles claiming to talk about the "best" and "most heroic" Japanese heroes, when he had come across a forum. The forum, called SupportSupport, was dedicated almost entirely to analysing heroes' quirks and discussing hypothetical (or not so hypothetical, in some cases) support gear, which meant that it contained a ton of detailed analyses of different heroes. 

…Many of which were heroes in Musutafu, where Neito lived. He had essentially just found a huge checklist to go through. Of course, he'd have to research each hero individually, but he had been handed everything he needed to get started on a silver platter. 

Neito bookmarked the tab. 

The Sudden Rise of the Smile Hero: Ms. Joke

Within the past few weeks, the popularity of previously-mid-ranked hero Ms. Joke has skyrocketed, mainly due to an increase in involvement in highly publicised and dangerous fights. In an interview, Ms. Joke stated that she was able to jump into these fights with much more dangerous villains than she usually deals with partly because of an “unexpected but highly welcomed” quirk mutation that occurred nearly a month ago.

According to data collected from the Japanese Hero Statistics website, Ms. Joke is predicted to rise by at least fifty places in the Hero Rankings next year, as one of many heroes with recent and sudden popularity boosts. Expected to advance along with her are a few other heroes located in and around Musutafu, including the Hefty Hero: Heifer and the Laundry Hero: Wash…

One of the users that Neito kept track of on SupportSupport was called SmallMight. He mainly posted analyses of heroes’ quirks, and while he rambled a lot, he was good—especially considering that SmallMight insisted he didn’t have an analysis job. But that wasn’t really what Neito was there for. 

He followed him because he posted almost entirely about heroes in Musutafu, and often went on about their personalities and support gear. (Technically, the parts about support gear weren’t much help in Neito’s mission of giving One for All to heroes, but he still found them fascinating.) SmallMight’s analyses gave Neito insight into whether a hero would abuse the power of One for All or if they were a good candidate for it. 

It was through SmallMight that Neito learned he would never give Endeavor One for All. 

And it was also SmallMight that convinced him (albeit unknowingly) to pass One for All to Ms. Joke.

So it didn’t come as too much of a surprise when it only took a few days of Neito wishing he could request a follow-up analysis on Power Loader for him to officially become a member of SupportSupport. 

It took a few minutes for Neito to set up his account, and then draft a message that would give him what he wanted to know about Power Loader’s personality without being like, ‘Hey, do you think Power Loader would be a good hero to get All Might’s quirk, which just so happens to be a transferable quirk—yes, I know that sounds impossible, but, no, I’m not lying—that I’m considering giving to him?’

Neito took a deep breath, and sent the message. He didn’t even have to wait ten minutes before he got a response.

CopyCat2615

I’ve read a few of your posts and I really enjoyed them! I liked your analysis of Power Loader, but I have a question about it, if you’re up for answering it. You wrote a little bit about his personality when you mentioned he works at UA, but I’m curious what you think about him personality-wise. He’s a teacher, but do you think he’d be a good one? Or even very good with civilians in general? UA doesn’t release a lot about their classes/teachers (especially non-heroics ones) so I haven’t been able to find much about what he’s like

SmallMight

thank you?? that’s so nice of you to say!!

and, personally, from what i’ve seen of videos of power loader, and past ua sports festivals, i think he’s a good person. he seems to care about civilians a lot when he’s in the field, like when he protected that family during the fight against the villain Fryer. and for what he’s like as a teacher, i’ve talked with some past/present ua students on supportsupport, and they all seemed to like him. he’s a bit strict, but since he teaches the support course that makes sense (i’ve heard enough horror stories abt support students blowing things up that i think it's justified)

are you planning on applying for ua’s support course?

you don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to!

but if you are then i just wanted to wish you good luck!!

Neito stared at his computer screen. The support course? Him?

Neito was about to respond that he was applying to UA, but to the heroics course, when he paused. 

Based on what Neito had asked, it made sense that SmallMight would assume he was going into support. Did he really need to correct him? And besides, why would a kid who wanted to be a hero be asking about what Power Loader was like as a teacher? Heroics students didn’t get him as a teacher, as far as Neito knew. 

Plus, he was talking to SmallMight on a support forum. If he wanted to ask him about more heroes later, then it would be less suspicious if he pretended to be aiming for the support course. 

The more Neito thought about it, the more he was convinced that was the best choice to make. Was it really so wrong to lie? Surely not, since everyone lies on the internet.

CopyCat2615

Was it really that obvious? Yeah, I’m applying this year

And thank you for answering my question, that was very helpful!

Neito’s conversation with SmallMight didn’t end there. Somehow, he got sucked into an hour-long back and forth with him about heroes, quirks, support gear, and even a bit about themselves. 

He learned that SmallMight was going to attempt UA’s heroics exam. And, while he was extremely excitable when it came to everyone else’s quirks, he oddly didn’t mention his own even once (not that Neito had, either—he wasn’t about to spill personally identifying information after one conversation with a random person on the internet).

Even after they both had to stop messaging so they could get at least some sleep before the next day began, they didn’t actually stop talking. Most days, he’d wake up in the morning and see a message or two from SmallMight about something or other that he’d deep dived into the night before. And whenever Neito wanted to know something niche about a hero, he’d message him.

It was probably only because SmallMight thought Neito was going into support, but sometimes he would even ask him for help on the support gear segments he wrote for his hero analysis posts. Neito didn’t think he was very much help, but SmallMight must’ve thought he was doing something right since he kept coming back to ask for more of his input. 

The first time Neito saw his username credited at the end of one of SmallMight’s posts, he felt a burst of giddy joy appear in his stomach.

And when SmallMight finally convinced him to start making posts of his own, that feeling came back tenfold.

Kendou Itsuka was about to tour the place that she might attend for the next three years of her life. 

Yes, the entrance exam was still over six months away, but her parents had this weekend free, so they had travelled to Musutafu to visit UA. And the tour was happening in twenty minutes! She was more excited than she had been in a long time—maybe even ever! 

There was no guarantee she'd be accepted, but she was going to try her hardest to make the cut. She'd go plus ultra, just like UA’s motto said!

Itsuka turned around a street corner, her parents following a few paces behind her. She could see UA in the distance, towering above—

Someone bumped into her, knocking them both to the ground. The bag Itsuka had haphazardly thrown over her shoulder fell next to her, spilling its contents on the ground.

“Oh, I'm so sorry! I should've been paying more attention to where I was going!” said the person that had collided with her. He was about her age, with blond hair and an expressive demeanour. 

“It's okay, I was also a bit distracted,” she said, hurrying to help him once she realised he had started putting her stuff back in her bag. It looked like he had dropped his backpack, as well, so she dusted it off and put his pencil case back in it, along with a few papers that had fallen out.

Just as they were putting the last items in their bags—a water bottle, in Itsuka's case—a cloud of dust exploded from somewhere next to her. 

She, the boy, her parents, and a few passersby got caught in the dust, and began to cough. Itsuka fumbled for her water bottle, throat suddenly parched. If she hadn't been in such a hurry, she might've noticed that the bottle was a different brand than the one she had packed with her. But, alas, at that moment she wasn't worried about pesky little things like swapped water bottles.

By the time she had taken a big enough swig to soothe her throat, the boy was gone. Itsuka stood up, made sure her parents and the other people caught in the dust were okay, and then continued towards UA.

She had a tour to attend, after all.

Neito stared at the notebook on his desk, where he had written down some details about people and One for All that he couldn’t remember on his own. It was in code, of course; one that he had invented himself based on a post SmallMight had made on cyphers.

“Hmm.” Neito tapped a finger to his chin. “Who should we give One for All to next? There’s this one second year at UA that I’ve been keeping an eye on, same with—”

“Me.”

Neito spun around in his swivel chair, spinning a full circle and then some until he was facing Shinsou. “Huh?”

“Me,” Shinsou repeated, “We should give me One for All next.”

Neito’s eyes lit up. “Really? I bet we could do it right now! Lemme see… it’s Friday afternoon, so All Might should be—”

“Whoa, slow down,” Shinsou said, raising his hands in front of him, “If we’re really doing this, we’re not half-assing it. And that means having some sort of a plan, since I don’t want to accidentally rip a door off the hinges of my foster family’s home because I don’t know what I’m dealing with.”

Neito looked at him blankly. He… hadn’t really thought of that.

Shinsou sighed. “Do you know where Dagobah Beach is? It’s pretty secluded, so I think it’d be a good place to test out One for All.”

On Sunday morning, Neito bought a cup of sugary coffee from a café (one that wasn’t Beans and Friends, since he had resolved to never step foot into that establishment ever again), and hopped on the train. He made sure to time it so he could get One for All from All Might while he walked to Dagobah Beach. He hadn’t spotted the beach before when he had stalked—ahem, followed —All Might, but when he looked up where Dagobah Beach was on a map, he learned that All Might walked nearby it pretty often. It was awfully convenient, almost suspiciously so, but it wasn’t anything that Neito was going to look into anytime soon.

Shinsou was already there by the time he arrived, which was a good thing because Neito probably would’ve turned around if he hadn’t seen him.

“Is this really the right place? It looks like a garbage dump,” Neito said, kicking a rusty microwave lying by his feet, “Smells like one, too.”

“Yeah. It used to be worse, though.” Shinsou shaded his face with his hand and gazed at the heaping piles of garbage. “Someone must be cleaning it.”

“...Really?” Neito said, skeptical.

Shinsou nodded. “Looks like they’ve been doing it for a while.”

Neito must’ve made a face, because Shinsou snorted before turning around and disappearing behind a wall of trash.

They traversed through the garbage until they found a small empty space, hidden enough that no passersby would be able to see them or their illegal quirk usage.

Neito took a drink from the coffee and offered it to Shinsou. “All right. Whenever you’re ready.”

Shinsou made a face. “Ugh, did you just backwash? That’s gross.” 

“Yes to both of those, but I think it’s going to be gross no matter what.”

“...Fair enough.”

“So do you want it or not?” Neito said, raising an eyebrow.

Shinsou took the cup.

And just stared at it. For at least a minute.

“You realise you have to drink it to get the quirk, right?” Neito prompted.

Shinsou glared at him.

“Okay, I get it,” Neito said, putting his hands up in surrender, “This is a big life-changing thing, blah blah blah. Take your time.”

Shinsou continued to take his time. Neito rocked back and forth on his heels, whistling nonchalantly while he waited for Shinsou to drink the coffee. He had thought giving One for All to him in coffee would make the whole process go quickly, since Shinsou never turned down caffeine, but maybe he was wrong.

After another minute, he spoke up again. “So, I know I said there’s no rush, but there technically is a limit on how long you can take because there’s”—Neito checked his phone—“four minutes until I don’t have One for All anymore.”

Shinsou looked up, sighed, and then glanced at the coffee cup one more time. Then he stared Neito directly in the eye, and chugged the entire coffee in one go.

Neito clapped. “Good job!” he said, as if he were talking to a small child.

Shinsou threw the empty cup at him. Neito shrieked and jumped away, kicking sand in Shinsou’s direction when he heard him laughing.

“So? Do you feel any different?”

Shinsou threw a punch in the air. Nothing extraordinary happened. “I don’t think so. Maybe it’ll take a while to show up.”

Neito nodded. “But you know what might help it show up quicker?”

“What?”

“Exercise!”

Shinsou groaned.

“Is that,” Shinsou panted, “enough for now?”

“Hmm…” Neito considered him, sitting on an old arm chair he’d flipped right side up and covered with the tattered remains of a mostly clean tarp. It had been a few hours since Shinsou had gotten One for All, and he still hadn’t shown any signs of inheriting All Might’s legendary power. “Maybe a few more laps around the beach will do the trick.”

Shinsou collapsed to his knees, moving to hit his fist on the ground in anguish.

Right before his fist made contact with the sand, Neito spotted a strange purple glow gathering around his hand. Evidently, Shinsou noticed it as well, as his wide eyes met Neito’s a split second before his hand hit the ground and the impact from it forced them apart.

The armchair flew into the air, Neito along with it, away from the newly-formed crater in the middle of the beach, while Neito saw Shinsou rocket in the other direction, towards the nearby water. 

Neito’s head knocked into something hard as he landed, and a moment later he was sprawled on the ground, the armchair half on top of him.

He groaned, touching the back of his head gingerly. His ears were ringing and the sunlight felt brighter than before—painfully so. That probably wasn’t a good sign.

“Monoma!” someone called, sounding panicked, “Monoma! Where are you?!”

“Shinsou?” Neito croaked out, pulling himself up from underneath the armchair and wincing whenever he moved.

“Monoma?!” Shinsou’s voice was getting louder, and soon Neito could see his silhouette approaching when he squinted against the light.

“Monoma! Shit, I was so scared for a second there—I don’t know what I’d do if—” Shinsou’s voice cracked and he cut himself off, kneeling on the ground next to Neito with a sniffle. “Are you alright?!”

“Just a concussion, I think.” Neito made a move to get up, and grimaced. “And a bunch of bruises.”

Shinsou ran a hand through his hair, which was soaking wet. “Shit, Monoma—”

“Neito.”

“Huh?”

“We nearly died together. You should call me Neito.”

“O-oh… Then I’m Hitoshi, ‘kay?”

Neito nodded, closing his eyes again. His head was killing him.

Shin—Hitoshi swore under his breath again. “We need to get you to a hospital or something.”

Neito waved a hand. “My mom’s a nurse, she can take a look at me when she gets home. What about you? Did you get hurt?”

“I’ll be fine. My arm feels like it just ran a marathon, but it's just sore, not actually injured.” Hitoshi shivered. “I guess I should warm up, though. That water’s cold .”

Neito jumped to his feet, ignoring the pain of his brain slamming into his skull. “Great! Then let’s go. The sooner we get back to my place, the sooner—”

A sudden wave of dizziness took him over. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was Hitoshi face-palming.

Neito’s mom was not impressed when she came home, to say the least. Especially since she clearly didn’t believe their sad attempt at convincing her Neito had fallen down a set of stairs. But, thankfully, she had given up questioning them when she found out Neito had a concussion, and instead sent him directly to bed with strict orders to rest and not to go on his phone or watch TV.

So, of course, once Hitoshi had been sent home and he was left alone in his room, Neito immediately pulled out his phone, ignoring the throbbing behind his eyes.

To his disappointment, before he could text Hitoshi, his mom walked in with a glass of water and some pills and took away his phone with an exasperated sigh and a promise he would get it back once he was healthy enough.

The next few days passed by both as slowly as molasses dripping off a spoon and as quickly as molasses exploding out of a tank in Boston on January 15, 1919. For the most part, Neito just laid in bed and tried to sleep, though at first he was too anxious to know how Hitoshi was faring to properly rest.

His mom let Hitoshi come over after school to hang out with him, which was about the only thing that stopped him from doing something stupid like searching the apartment to steal back his phone. 

However, on Monday, Neito’s mom made Hitoshi leave early because according to her, they were being ‘too loud and rowdy’ and nothing they wanted to talk about could ‘possibly be more important than Neito healing,’ as if she didn't know about One for All (which, admittedly, she didn’t). So, Neito was left alone with only half the story of how Hitoshi was dealing with One for All, and a renewed desire to get his phone back.

It wasn’t like he could text Hitoshi about One for All (they weren’t about to discuss top-secret secrets through something with so little security), but that wasn’t really what he wanted to do. No, Neito was going to get advice for Hitoshi, and he was going to get it from the best person around: SmallMight.

From what Neito had heard, Hitoshi hadn’t had any big accidents with One for All, but that was only because he had been trying to use it as little as possible. Using it didn’t hurt him too badly—nothing like breaking three of his limbs or anything ridiculous like that—but if he, say, used One for All to punch something, then his whole arm would be so sore that he could barely use it for the next few days. 

If anyone could help Hitoshi solve this problem, it was SmallMight. 

According to Neito, It took far too long for him to get his phone back. According to his mom, it was just long enough, if a bit too soon. Neito was clearly right, even though he wasn’t a nurse and his head still hurt when he focussed on the screen for too long.

Anyway, when Neito got his phone back on Wednesday, the first thing he did was text Hitoshi. The second thing was to open up SupportSupport, and, after getting a bit sidetracked by a new post the user mei_explode had made about a jetpack she’d built, message SmallMight.

CopyCat2615

I need some advice, if you’re up for it

My friend has an enhancement/strength quirk, but whenever he uses it, it hurts his limbs. Like, if he kicks something, then for the next couple days his leg will be really sore

The quirk counsellor he went to wasn’t very helpful, but I was hoping you might be able to think of something for him

SmallMight

i’ll try my best!!

Like usual, SmallMight responded within minutes of the message being sent. Neito only had to wait a moment more before a huge paragraph was sent his way.

SmallMight

is his quirk always active? it sounds like he only has it on sometimes, or is it always  there in the background? if he can use it on any of his limbs thne im guessing it isnt only an enhancement for one part of his body so he could prob figure out how to use it on his whole body at once? is the strength aspect just bc the enhancement part makes him stronger or is it a mutation that makes him naturally strong? bc if the strength is part of the enhancement, then maybe hsi body isn’t suited to it rn since he doesnt have enough muscle? does he work out often or do strengrh training? bc if he does have a lot of muscle then maybe it’s more bc of where the quirk is focussed - like if he kicks something like in ur example then is he focussing his quirk on one part of his body? it could be that the quirk should be evenly distrivuted around his body. if thats the case but he only uses it in one limb at a time then it could hurt that limb because he has too much power there, so maybe he needs to spread out his quirk if that’s possible?? he could even be getting hurt bc of a combo of limited muscle mass and concentrated quirk use, but that’s also prob onnly if he doesnt have very much muscle mass

ah, sorry that got really long!

CopyCat2615

Pft, don’t apologise, that just means I’ll take a minute to answer since I can’t type as fast as you

Starting from the beginning: It isn’t always active, and he has to focus to get it to activate unless he gets startled and accidentally uses it. He hasn’t tried using it on his whole body, from what I know, but that sounds like it should work. The strength isn’t a mutation, the enhancement just makes him stronger. He’s basically a twig, so no, he doesn’t have much muscle mass (neither of us had thought of it as a factor but it’d make sense if it was one). I'm pretty sure he always just focuses his quirk into one one limb when he uses it

SmallMight

hmm

then i’d suggest trying to activate his quirk (w out actually doing anything, just sitting or standing so he doesnt hurt himself again) thru out his whole body. maybe he could do some breahting exercises or soemthing? he should prob take up strength training (also w out using his quirk, at least at first) so his muscles can take more strain 

i think if he can have his quirk active thru out his whole body when he uses it then it wont hurt him, esp if he works his way up from a small amount of power gradually

CopyCat2615

And yet you say you aren’t a professional quirk analyst 

Thank you, I owe you one

SmallMight

np! let me know how it goes!!

CopyCat2615

Of course!

I’ll make him try your suggestions whether he wants to or not

SmallMight

don’t be too mean to ur friend, copycat!

CopyCat2615

No guarantees…

“You’ve almost got it,” Neito called, peeking out from his hiding place behind an old mattress at Dagobah Beach. They had learned from the last incident. “Just be careful—don’t mess it up now!”

Hitoshi stood in the clearing, purple lightning arcing around his body, as he slowly took a step towards a half-broken chair. He was so focussed that he didn't even respond to Neito’s teasing.

Hitoshi had spent days practising with One for All like SmallMight suggested. Neito didn’t understand how he wasn’t bored out of his mind from just sitting and standing around with One for All activated for hours on end—Neito was already sick of it, even though he was only there with him half of the time—but he supposed that was a good thing, since Hitoshi was the one who actually needed to put in the effort.

But, today was different, because Hitoshi was moving onto the next step: moving with One for All active. They had decided that the best way for him to do that was to try to pick up something (hence the broken chair) and carry it to the other side of the beach.

Neito had to admit that while he wanted Hitoshi to succeed, he also wanted to see him punch the ground so hard that things would go flying (though he’d prefer if he wasn't one of those things again).

And it wasn’t like Neito didn’t have confidence in Hitoshi, or that he didn’t trust him with this, or thought he might fail, or… okay, maybe those were just a bit true, but still. He trusted his friend, it was only that with a strong, unknown, and, frankly, weird quirk involved, he wasn’t certain that he’d come out unscathed if he didn’t take precautions.

So, when Hitoshi reached over to grab the chair, Neito simultaneously tried to hide behind the mattress and look closer to have a better view of the potential explosion, or weather change, or whatever other All Might-inspired move Hitoshi might accidentally pull.

In doing so, he nearly face-planted into the sand, only barely managing to catch himself before he went and got another concussion that he wouldn’t be able to explain to his mom. When he looked up, Hitoshi was holding the chair. And the chair wasn’t even any more broken than it had started as.

Hitoshi turned around—a bit faster than he had been moving before, without incident—and made eye contact with Neito. He was beaming; it was the most genuine smile Neito had ever seen on his face.

Neito grinned back and gave him two thumbs up, forgetting that he was supporting his entire body with his arms. This time he did face-plant into the sand, though the physical pain was far less than the pain he felt from the thought that he’d have to get all the sand out of his hair later.

Hitoshi snickered, so Neito flipped him off, face still in the sand. 

“Watch this,” Hitoshi said one day, after dragging Neito to Dagobah Beach before school. 

Neito glared at him, still half asleep. “This had better be good.”

Hitoshi merely rolled his eyes. He turned to face an old fridge, and wound back his fist, purple lightning surrounding his body. 

When he punched the fridge, it flew forward with a loud boom, crashing through piles of garbage and landing at least a hundred metres away. 

Neito gaped, suddenly wide awake.

Picking his jaw up off the floor, he tried to regain his composure (though it was an impossible feat) and act nonchalant. He cleared his throat. “I guess that was worth losing some of my beauty sleep over.”

“It sure is,” Hitoshi drawled, grinning triumphantly, “And, look, I'm not even sore!”

Neito huffed. “Now that's definitely an improvement from—”

Suddenly, a thick fog came over his mind. He tried to move, but found that he couldn’t, and he vaguely comprehended Hitoshi’s face morphing into an expression of shock and panic—

Just as abruptly, the strange haze was gone, and he was back in control of his body. 

“Fuck, I didn’t mean to do that. I’m so sorry,” Hitoshi rambled on, eyes wide as he stumbled a few steps back away Neito, “I’ll—”

“Huh.” So that was Hitoshi’s quirk. 

“I—I’ll just go. Shit—”

“Why would you go?” Neito asked absentmindedly, deep in thought. Something wasn't quite adding up. “Don’t you need to ask a question to brainwash someone?”

“Huh?” Hitoshi stopped in his tracks, the question snapping him out of his panic. “Yeah, I do.”

“But you didn’t.”

“What?”

“You said, ‘I'm not even sore.’ That’s not a question.”

“I must’ve said it as a question, then, ‘cause it’s impossible for that to have happened otherwise.”

“Well, you didn't.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No, you didn't.”

“Yes, I—”

“We’re going to keep doing this forever at this rate.” Neito groaned, running a hand down his face. “Or, we could test it out.”

“I'm not brainwashing you! Why would you be okay with that?!”

“Why wouldn't I?” Neito deadpanned, “I trust you, and besides, did you really think we were going to ignore your quirk forever? I was going to bring up training with it eventually.”

“I don't need to train it—”

“Yes, you do. You've got to use your full arsenal when you're a hero! You can't just ignore something, because then when you need it, you won't be good enough with it to use it. And are you really saying that when you go to hero school they're going to let you not use your quirk, a quirk that is perfect for diffusing conflict and taking in villains without any further violence?!”

Hitoshi was silent. Neito swore he saw tears in his eyes.

Neito fidgeted with the sleeve of his uniform. Had that been too much?

Finally, he spoke. “You said when I go to hero school. Not if.” Hitoshi’s voice broke. “Why?”

Neito scoffed. “Because you're obviously going to get in. You're determined, and smart, and they'd be stupid not to accept you! And when you factor in quirks, I can see how you might’ve not passed the exam because they're biased towards physical quirks, but that's why you have One for All—didn't I tell you that from the beginning? There's nothing stopping you from getting in now!”

Hitoshi blinked back tears. “Thank you,” he whispered. Then he looked at Neito with renewed vigour. “Then, let's do this.”

“Great, I’ll—”

Neito fell back into the fog of Hitoshi’s brainwashing for the second time, though it only lasted an instant before he was released. 

“So it does work when you don’t say a question!” Neito grinned. “I knew I was right!”

Hitoshi looked like his entire world had been turned upside-down. He was so deep in thought that Neito could almost see equations floating around next to his head. 

Neito didn't blame him. How long had his quirk been like this without him knowing? Was it a misdiagnosis? There should've been signs if it had changed, or— 

“I’ve got it!”

“You do?!”

Hitoshi nodded. “One for All must’ve made Brainwashing stronger—it must enhance quirks as well as strength!”

Neito and Hitoshi stared at each other in silence.

“We should've already been able to guess that would happen, right?”

“...Yeah, it's pretty obvious in hindsight.”

“Wait... do you think All Might has a shapeshifting quirk, then? It's not like I can suddenly become super buff now.”

“Does that mean someone had One for All before him?”

“I mean, if he knows how to transfer One for All then it probably wasn't his original quirk."

“...Well then who had it before him?”

They pondered this new revelation.

“All for One?”

“Ha! That’d be something.”

“I’m glad you two could join me today,” Nezu said, pouring the last of three cups of tea, “Admittedly, it would be much more pleasant under better circumstances.”

Naomasa nodded, watching Toshinori take a cup, and followed suit.

Toshinori nervously took a sip of his tea. Considering why they were here, as well as the presence of UA’s notorious principal, he had every right to be anxious. Naomasa couldn’t help but feel bad for his friend, although his concern was nearly overshadowed by the sheer gravity of the situation they were in.

“I’m presuming you are caught up with the situation at hand?” Nezu asked, gaze flicking between Naomasa and Toshinori.

Naomasa glanced at Toshinori, who was nodding. Their eyes met. “We both know everything, unless something has happened within the last few days.” Naomasa sighed. “Which I wouldn’t be surprised by, since it’s hard to keep track of something no one else in the police force is even aware of.”

Nezu hummed. “We’re on the same page, then. The past few days have been quiet—almost suspiciously so.”

“Could the villain have been arrested, then?” Toshinori asked, voice hopeful.

Noamasa grimaced. “I doubt it. I’ve checked the records, and no one arrested recently seems to bear any connection to any of the incidents.”

“I have come to the same conclusion,” Nezu said, “It is more likely that they are planning something bigger, rather than stopping for good.”

“Something bigger than bribing a bunch of heroes into working for villains in exchange for more power?!” Toshinori burst out.

Nezu clicked his tongue. “Now, now, Yagi, we can’t come to any conclusions just yet. Do you really believe Aizawa, of all people, was convinced to betray his loyalties in order to get a quirk considered ‘heroic’ by society’s standards? Or that your other colleagues would do the same?”

Toshinori was silent.

“And there’s something different about this,” Nezu continued, “If all these heroes were having regular quirks forced on them, then they would be showing signs of mental and physical deterioration. However, they are not. Whatever changed for them is more along the lines of what One for All does for one of its users. It is as though someone was able to replicate One for All, and I daresay the only person who—”

“Don’t tell me you mean—”

“Yes, I do.” Nezu cut Toshinori off. “We must consider the possibility that All for One is behind this.”

A tense silence filled the room.

“But… how?” Naomasa asked, hesitant, “Wouldn’t it be more likely for some followers of his to be doing this, since he’s dead? He… he is dead, right?”

“Technically, All for One is only presumed to be dead. His body was never recovered, though no sign of him has appeared since his last fight with Yagi. So, yes, that is a possibility,” Nezu acknowledged, sounding as though he had already considered and dismissed Naomasa’s thoughts, “But I find it unlikely. What follower of his could possibly have the means to do something as big as this? There are, perhaps, twenty pro heroes that have shown signs of having a quirk similar to One for All within the past month, but not one seems to know why or how their ‘mutation’ happened. You interviewed most of them yourself, detective.”

Naomasa nodded. They hadn’t put together formal interviews—drawing attention to this before they knew what was going on was a very bad idea—but every pro hero had to come to a police station at some point, so Naomasa had made sure to talk to as many of the heroes on their list as he could, under the guise of making friendly small talk. Every person had admitted to not knowing why their quirk had supposedly ‘mutated,’ and each time Naomasa’s quirk had detected that they were telling the truth. While that didn't entirely eliminate the possibility of bribery or spying being involved, it did make it significantly less likely, which was simultaneously relieving and frustrating. 

Nezu sighed. “I will admit I do not know how or why All for One would go to such lengths to do something that seems, at first glance, to benefit hero society, but we must stay on guard. Nothing has happened in the past few days, so the chances of something big happening soon are high.”

Nezu’s beady eyes stared into Naomasa’s soul, chilling him to the bone.

“For now, all we can do is keep an eye open and prepare for the worst: that All for One is back and planning something devastating.”

Chapter Text

"What's your name?"

"Monoma Neito," Neito heard himself say. 

Hitoshi instantly deactivated his quirk. Neito’d have to have another talk with him about how he didn’t need to stop using it so quickly. Now that he thought about it, they should also try to figure out how long Hitoshi can keep someone under his control. He doubted he’d ever experimented with that before, even before gaining One for All. 

"Woah!” Neito exclaimed, "It worked! Is there anything else you couldn't do with your quirk before? You've gotta try them all out!”

“I couldn’t fly,” Hitoshi deadpanned.

Neito gave him an unimpressed look.

Hitoshi rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. “All I can think of is stretching the activation requirements past having to get a verbal response, but I don’t think that’d be possible—”

“You never know—”

“ And I guess I could try asking you more complicated questions when you’re being brainwashed, to see how much critical thinking is possible. Though maybe you’re not the best person for that, seeing as your critical thinking skills don’t always exist—”

“Hey! Rude!”

Hitoshi sighed overdramatically, staring forlornly into the distance. “But it’s not like I have any other people to help, so I guess I’ll have to settle for you.”

Neito made an offended noise, clutching at his chest dramatically. “How could you say such a thing?! I’m perfect!”

“And I’m All Might.”

Neito pretended to faint from shock, falling onto his back on the sand.

“Oh no, my hair,” he despaired, after comprehending what he’d done.

Hitoshi snickered.

“Ugh, whatever. Now, we’ve got a few more hours, so let’s try all those other ideas out, yeah?” Neito suggested, grinning up at him from the ground.

Hitoshi grimaced, probably thinking of how he had nearly gotten quirk exhaustion just a few days ago, but then his face stretched into a slightly creepy smile. “Just wait until I figure out how to make you do my math homework for me.”

Neito squawked.

"So this is your idea for your hero costume?" Neito said, scrutinising the paper in front of him. 

"Yep," Hitoshi replied, popping the 'p', "Just ignore my bad drawing skills. Not everyone can be an art prodigy like you."

Neito huffed, rolling his eyes. He wasn’t a prodigy , he just had a bit of practice, and, admittedly, more natural talent than some. 

He turned his attention back to the sketch. It was labelled thoroughly and he could tell Hitoshi had put a lot of effort into the design, despite the anatomical inaccuracies and such. 

"You can definitely tell you're an Eraserhead fanboy from this."

Hitoshi spluttered, face turning red. “It’s not that obvious!”

Neito merely snorted. Anyone who knew anything about underground heroics would be able to tell who Hitoshi took inspiration from. "You have a good idea, though,” he said, “There's a reason Eraserhead’s costume is dark and unassuming. And these purple accents you added give it some flair and personality, without taking away from its stealthiness.

"But, I see a bit of a problem with the pockets on the pants”—Neito tapped them on the paper—“because the fabric isn’t skintight. Anything in these pockets would move around whenever you move, which wouldn’t be good for stealth or overall comfort. I think I have a simple solution, if you like it.”

Neito sketched a few stripes onto the legs of the pants, ones circling each of the lower thighs and another two for the shins, where Hitoshi had placed pockets. “If you make these stripes tight against your legs, then your pockets won’t get in your way. And you could make them purple, too, since you don’t have many accents on the legs right now.” 

Hitoshi nodded along, looking a bit dumbfounded. “That… sounds really smart, actually.”

Neito scoffed. “What? Did you doubt me? I said I’d help you with your costume, so I’m not going to give you any half-assed suggestions! And I’m not done yet. I feel like there’s still something missing…” Neito tapped the pencil on his chin, staring intently at the paper. “Oh! I’ve got it!”

Neito added a few angular lines to the chest, arms, and hands of the costume. “You could make these either purple or white, if you keep them. They could just be for decoration, or you could request that they double as lights you can turn on and off, especially for the hands. Then if you’re out at night or somewhere dark, you can use the lights on your hands to see anything detailed you need to work with, like a keypad or buttons.”

Hitoshi blinked at him. “You’re good at this.”

Neito waved him off. “It’s just stuff I picked up online.”

“If you say so.” 

Hitoshi still looked skeptical. Neito couldn’t fathom why. It wasn’t like he was a professional or anything, he just liked coming up with ideas. He did things like this all the time, since some heroes' suits were so boring or obviously impractical that Neito winced at the sight of them and couldn't help but mentally redesign them. 

And now that he was on SupportSupport, he had adopted more of an eye for the practical aspects of hero costumes by osmosis. 

But it wasn’t like it was anything special, not really.

“The weather’s pretty nice today, isn’t it? Not too cloudy.” 

Hitoshi cringed, overhearing Tsukauchi’s awkward attempt at starting small talk.

All Might nodded absentmindedly, mournfully watching a pigeon walk in circles next to the bench he was sitting on.

“I heard it’s supposed to rain a bit tomorrow. You should make sure you have an umbrella so you don’t get caught in a downpour again,” Tsukauchi prompted after a solid thirty seconds of silence.

He got a near-identical nod in response, along with a small burst of coughs. All Might looked even more saddened by the prospect of rain.

Hitoshi considered the benefits of jumping out of the tree he was hiding in and running back to school, where he would likely be tormented for the rest of the lunch period, but would be far, far away from the second-hand embarrassment he was currently experiencing.

It hadn’t even been his intention to eavesdrop. Not this time, at least.

He blamed Neito for everything—it was all his fault that he had All Might’s schedule drilled so deep into his head that he unconsciously chose to climb the tree right behind the bench All Might and his police detective friend always sat on during lunch. In fact, Hitoshi was willing to bet his limited edition Present Mic Halloween keychain that Neito had sat in this very tree on one of his many All Might-stalking escapades. The tree was a very good hiding spot, after all. All Might and Tsukauchi still hadn’t noticed him, despite how he kept banging his head on the tree trunk whenever one of them made an especially awkward comment.

They had been talking about the weather for at least ten minutes. Ten minutes! Though, to say they were talking was far too generous of a statement. Tsukauchi was the only one trying to start a conversation, while All Might sank lower and lower into the bench, coughing sporadically. Something really bad must’ve happened for him to be looking like this.

“The weather—” Tsukauchi started again, but thankfully All Might decided to speak up before Hitoshi had to hear any more.

“I can hardly believe it,” he whispered, looking away from the pigeon to bury his face in his hands, “I truly thought he was dead.”

Hitoshi perked up, removing his head from where it was resting on the tree trunk.

Tsukauchi tensed. “He could still be dead. We don’t know for sure.”

“But he’s most likely not.”

Tsukauchi hesitated, but ended up nodding. “...Yes. He’s probably alive.”

Hitoshi listened on with mounting dread.

“And what have I been doing all these years, then, while he gathered his forces and recovered his strength? Nothing, that’s what! I’ve just been sitting here with my health deteriorating, letting him do whatever he wants, and now he’s making a move and it’s too late to do anything about it! We don’t even know what he's trying to do, and now I’ve thrown a child into this whole mess, too!”

“Stop that!” Tsukauchi slapped a hand on All Might’s shoulder, moving him to face him. “Don’t call everything you’ve done useless and wrong! You couldn’t have known you were putting Midoriya in danger when you chose him. It won’t be an easy thing to have a protégé during this, but you would devastate him if you took back your offer without explanation! Besides, it’s a good thing we learned about his return before you passed on your quirk, since now you can tell Midoriya what’s going on and make sure he’s informed and protected if he still wants to take on that role. 

“And what’s all this about having done nothing good?! You’re the Symbol of Peace! You’ve been working so hard to maintain that peace, and you’ve succeeded so much! Look at Musutafu! The crime rate here has dropped nearly a quarter since you’ve arrived. That’s not nothing!”

“But it doesn’t matter, not with All for One back—”

All for One?! Back?! Hitoshi kind of wished they had kept talking about the weather.

“How can you say that?!” Tsukauchi interrupted, “Of course it matters! All you can do is fight the injustices you see, and then when you learn about more you can fight those, too. You didn’t know All for One was alive before now, but since that’s changed, I know you’ll do everything in your power to defeat him. We all will!”

Yes, they all will. Hitoshi gripped a tree branch until his knuckles turned white, his face the picture of determination. 

They needed to speed up their plan.

“—I know you’ll do everything in your power to defeat him. We all will!” Naomasa caught his breath after his impromptu monologue and then said, softly, “It’s not just you that messed up by assuming All for One was dead. We all could have done better.” He ducked his head to try and get Toshinori to look at him instead of the ground. “You’re not alone in this, Toshinori. And Midoriya isn’t, either.”

For the first time since Naomasa had met up with Toshinori that day, he met Naomasa’s gaze. The troubled look he had adopted since Nezu gave them the bad news had finally disappeared, replaced by something akin to awe.

Water welled up in Toshinori’s eyes. A tear dripped down his cheek, and Naomasa gently wiped it away. 

“You beat him once, and you’ll do it again,” Naomasa told him, keeping his voice quiet, “I—We’re all here to help you fight this battle.”

Something heavy hit the ground behind the bench, followed by a quiet “ow!” and what sounded like running.

Naomasa barely heard any of it, too lost in Toshinori’s eyes. 

Trigonometry was the bane of his existence. Forget All for One; Neito didn’t think even the boogeyman of the criminal underground could come up with a torture more excruciating than his centimeter-thick pile of trigonometry practice worksheets.

Suddenly, a frantic knocking sounded from the front door. Neito jumped out of his desk chair, only to collapse back into it with a defeated sigh when he heard his mom call, “Coming!”

Muffled voices filtered through the walls. Neito couldn’t make out any words, but he recognised Hitoshi’s voice, even as panicked as it was.

Wait. Panicked?

Within ten seconds of Hitoshi’s arrival, Neito’s bedroom door slammed open. Neito managed to catch the corner of it with his foot before it made contact with the wall, thankfully, so he didn’t have to endure yet another scolding from his mom about ‘dramatics verging on property damage’ and ‘disrupting the neighbours’. 

But, he quickly forgot all about those concerns. Hitoshi looked scared—even more so than his voice had suggested. He rushed over to Neito and grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him. “He’s back! He—I barely made it through the rest of the school day without trying to find you because I heard them talking and All Might said he is! And he’s planning something big —he’s already started doing stuff, but I don’t know what—”

“Hold on!” Neito said, standing up and shoving Hitoshi into the chair. He went and sat on the bed, facing him. “Start over from the beginning!”

Hitoshi floundered for a second, before speaking. “Okay, so I was sitting in a tree by that bench where All Might and Tsukauchi always sit for lunch—”

Neito lit up. So Hitoshi was stalking them without Neito! “I feel so proud—”

“Shut up,” Hitoshi groaned, “You’re a bad influence.”

“But you’re still my best friend!” Neito sing-songed.

He glared at Neito halfheartedly. “Anyway, I was sitting in the tree, and I unintentionally overheard them talking, and they were talking all ominously about someone being back and planning some big evil plan. Then, All Might let it slip that they were talking about All for One.”

“All for One?!” Neito shrieked. He clapped his hands over his mouth, hoping his mom hadn’t overheard him. “So soon?! Why now? We only just started giving people One for All, and most of them are students since I thought it’d be at least a few years before he’d come back!”

Hitoshi nodded, serious. “Exactly. They said that All for One was already taking some sort of action, enough for them to know it’s him, but they didn’t say what and they don’t know why. I think it’s because we’re the reason! He must have noticed that heroes are getting stronger because of One for All, and decided that he needs to do something about it!”

Neito felt the blood drain from his face. “We’re screwed, aren’t we.”

Neito had always known that this plan of his would require great sacrifices. He knew that he could be arrested or even killed, depending on who figured out he was giving people All Might’s quirk. 

It was all worth the risk, though. The end was far greater than the means.

But this … this was almost too much, even to save the world.

Neito stared up at the sign on the front of the building. Beans and Friends, the establishment that haunted his nightmares. He shuddered at the thought of going inside.

But, it had been at least five minutes since All Might and Tsukauchi went in. He could see through the window that they had sat down at one of the cute-looking purple tables and were trying to get the attention of the black cat All Might had been holding on the day of Neito’s greatest embarrassment. Most importantly, they were talking. And he was outside, unable to hear what they were saying.

Neito steeled his nerves and opened the door. A bell chimed, letting the cashier know a new customer had arrived.

The cashier looked his way. It was the same person from that day.

Neito tried not to seem suspicious by quickly redirecting his gaze to the menu. The truth was, the only reason he didn’t sprint out of the café immediately after recognising him was because his legs were suddenly frozen, and it took all his strength to make them move enough to just walk up to the counter.

At least he had had the foresight to wear a disguise when he set out to follow All Might and Tsukauchi that morning. The black wig and too-large animal print sunglasses, the latter of which he had borrowed from his mom without her knowledge, made him look like a totally different person, if he did say so himself.

Feigning nonchalance, Neito ordered a pastry and a herbal tea. He figured that he didn’t need any caffeine, since he was jittery enough just being in Beans and Friends. 

He ordered and received the tea and pastry without any issue, which meant that his disguise worked! Neito shook his head as he sat down at a table next to All Might and Tsukauchi. Of course it worked, since it was his brilliant idea! He really hadn’t needed to worry so much.

Neito pulled his earbuds out of his pocket, putting them in his ears so it looked like he was listening to music. In reality, he was listening in on a conversation that could very well give him all the information he needed to know about All for One’s big return. 

“I’m glad we could go out somewhere nice,” Tsukauchi was saying, “We’ve been so busy that it feels like we hardly ever have time for anything besides work.”

All Might nodded glumly. “With him back, I feel like I can’t take a break.”

Tsukauchi sighed. “You need to start working less. It’s bad for your health!”

As if it was timed, All Might started coughing. He pulled out a handkerchief to cover his mouth. “Naomasa, I must say that is a bit hypocritical of you. I need to work to be the symbol you say I am!” He smiled, raising a fist halfway in the air. “Besides, it’s likely you work even more than I do.”

“You have a point.” Tsukauchi ran a hand over his face. “I’m just worried, is all. And it’s not my fault I work so much. Everyone calls me in for their important interrogations, as if my quirk will instantly make criminals spill everything. It’d be nice if it did, but it’s not like it’ll ever miraculously get stronger.” Tsukauchi chuckled dryly. “We’ll just have to stick with our slow and arduous way of doing things, which means I’ll probably be overworked until I retire.”

It took all Neito’s self control not to whip his head around to stare at Tsukauchi. His eyes widened, and a nearly maniacal smile grew on his face. He quickly took a drink of his tea to hide it.

“Like you said, we’re doing all we can,” All Might comforted, reaching over to rest his hand on Tsukauchi’s on the table between them.

“This is depressing.” Tsukauchi sighed deeply. “I think we need a break from work talk.”

All Might hummed in agreement, sounding just as tired. 

“Let’s talk about something else, like… How did you hear of this café? It isn’t along your usual route.”

All Might lit up. “Ah! That’s actually a funny story! You know a bit of it already, but I don’t think I’ve told you about everything. You see, these flyers kept appearing…”

Neito stopped listening. He drank the last few sips of his tea in one big gulp and stuffed the remainder of the pastry in his mouth before standing up to leave.

He hadn’t learned any more about All for One, but he had discovered something just as good: a way to help!

Distracted as he was, he missed the garbage bin when he went to throw his cup and napkin away. 

Neito bent over and picked them off the ground. Too late, he noticed the wig and too-large sunglasses begin to slip off his head. He quickly tried to right himself, forgetting the garbage in his hands, and ended up smacking himself in the face with them.

“Agh!” he said, just as the wig and sunglasses fell to the floor, revealing his face to the entire café.

“You!” the cashier yelled, sounding half disbelieving and half angry.

Neito didn’t take any chances. He ran like hell.

Neito crouched behind a bush, adjusting the wig on his head. This wig was blue and curly and he had paired it with some cheap costume glasses he had lying around. He was even wearing an apron to complete the look.

Hidden from view, Neito scanned the crowded farmer’s market. Through the branches and people, he watched as Tsukauchi and All Might stopped at each market stall together. 

His leg bounced, jostling the tray of cookies resting on it. All Might began to move on to the next stall, but Tsukauchi hadn’t noticed. The timing was nearly perfect—

Dammit! 

Tsukauchi had moved and now he was once again glued to All Might’s side.

Neito checked his phone and grimaced. He only had a few minutes to do this before he would have to go get One for All again. 

All Might said something to Tsukauchi, and then went over to a stall selling an assortment of brightly-coloured mugs. Tsukauchi didn’t follow him. Neito grinned.

He plastered an innocent smile on his face, and jumped out of the bush.

Naomasa was about to go ask the owner of the fresh fruit stall if they had any discounts for buying more than one container of cherries, when someone tapped him on the shoulder. Confused, he turned around, only to come face-to-face with a blue-haired kid wearing an apron and holding a tray of cookies. He had a few leaves in his hair. 

“Hi! Have a free sample! You’ll never have something like it ever again!” he said, smiling and shoving his tray at Naomasa. 

Naomasa blinked. What an odd way of phrasing that. He was telling the truth, too. “...What type are they?”

“They're miso butter cookies! The best around!”

Naomasa’s quirk told him that he was telling the truth. Well, then, if he truly believed them to be that good, they must be worth a try.

He took one of the cookies, and the kid’s smile widened. The kid watched him eat the cookie, which was a bit weird, but the cookie’s taste overshadowed his discomfort. It was heavenly. No wonder he had been telling the truth.

“Where—” Naomasa began to ask.

“Bye!” the kid shouted, waving to Tsukauchi as he slipped away into the crowd.

“Wait!” Naomasa called, but it was too late. He frowned. The kid hadn’t told him what the name of his stall was, let alone where in the market he could find it. 

A shame, really. He would’ve liked to buy a few of those cookies.

Neito grinned like an evil genius as he snuck away from Tsukauchi, garnering some odd looks from passersby. He took off his apron, shoving it in his bag along with the glasses and wig. 

He stuffed two of the cookies in his mouth, humming in satisfaction. 

Like always, his grandma’s famous miso butter cookies solved every problem. Though, thankfully, he hadn’t had to ruin an entire batch with arsenic like she did.

After spending hours at the market, Naomasa was exhausted. He waved tiredly to Toshinori before he drove away, a fond smile gracing his features. Then, he trudged to his apartment, using one hand to unlock the door and the other to set his bag full of boxes of fresh cherries and other produce on the counter once he got inside. 

He yawned, looking at the clock. It wasn’t even that late, just a few hours after he had eaten supper with Toshinori, but Naomasa was tired enough that going to sleep felt like the best thing in the world.

Besides, when was the last time he had the chance to sleep for nine consecutive hours?

In the morning, Naomasa woke up a minute before his alarm went off. He blinked groggily at the glowing numbers until the clock started beeping violently at him, prompting him to sigh and finally get up.

As Naomasa went to make breakfast, he remembered the cherries he had bought the day before and put in the fridge. 

When he pulled open the fridge door, the entire fucking door ripped off its hinges.

Naomasa stared at it for a solid minute, still holding it with one hand, his mind completely and utterly blank.

Then, he calmly leaned it against the fridge, pulled out his phone, and dialed a number he knew from memory.

“Toshinori,” he said, as soon as his call was answered, his voice carefully devoid of emotion, “We have a problem.”

Toshinori stared at the broken fridge, mouth agape. “That is certainly a problem.”

Neito stared out the window, ignoring the trigonometry worksheet sitting on his desk and his teacher’s droning voice. Tsukauchi had probably figured out that his quirk had ‘mutated’ by now.

He smiled. Now the detective’s workload would be lighter, and he could focus more on figuring out what All for One was doing.

Tsukauchi was probably so relieved!

The atmosphere in Nezu’s office was tense. Naomasa resisted the urge to fidget as both Nezu and Toshinori stared at him, though at least the latter was trying to hide it.

“I don’t know how I got this… this replica of One for All,” Naomasa started, trying and failing to keep the desperation out of his voice, “I didn’t do anything to get it, and I don’t have any memory of All for One approaching me or doing whatever he did to give me this! I know you can’t guarantee I’m telling the truth because I‘m the one with the truth quirk, but please believe me! I’m not working for All for One, or—”

“Of course we don’t think you’re working for All for One!” Toshinori grabbed Naomasa’s hand earnestly.

Nezu nodded, taking a sip from his teacup. “Yes, he is correct. There’s no need to panic, detective. I already know you’re unaware of the circumstances that gave you this quirk.

“It is an interesting development, though, as you are the first non-pro hero we know of to get one of these replicas of One for All. We can now assume that at least some of the people who got replica quirks are innocent, if not all of them.”

The room once again lapsed into silence.

“Have you discovered anything else about All for One’s plans? Or how he managed to make replicas of One for All and give all it to all these people?” Toshinori asked.

Nezu’s teacup paused halfway to his mouth and was set back down in its saucer. It clattered loudly in the quiet room. “Unfortunately, besides identifying a few more recipients of these quirks, this conversation has been the most substantial thing to happen in my investigation since we last spoke.”

Naomasa and Toshinori sat in stunned silence. Was All for One’s plot really so flawless that the Nezu had hit a wall while investigating it?!

“That being said, I believe it is time to get another person involved now that we have confirmation that people can receive this quirk without having anything to do with All for One.”

Naomasa eyed him warily. “Who are you thinking of?”

Nezu grinned widely. “Just someone who’s been asking me about his ‘quirk mutation’ for a while now.”

“Aizawa,” a voice called, “Do you have a minute to talk?”

Shouta looked up from the horrific essay he was grading—seriously, had this kid never paid attention to a single word he said in class?—to see Detective Tsukauchi standing in the doorway of his classroom.

He grunted, gesturing for him to come in. 

“What are you doing at UA?” he asked, once Tsukauchi had closed the door. “Did something happen?” 

Tsukauchi hesitated. “I suppose you could say that.”

Shouta raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nezu wants you to join an investigation. A very important, off-the-records investigation.” Tsukauchi sighed. “So, I’m here to ask you a few questions to make sure you won’t compromise it if you join our efforts. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you why I’m the one he sent.”

“Nezu?” Shouta asked, sounding tired. Then, realisation dawned on his face, and his other eyebrow shot up as well. “Does this have to do with what happened to my quirk?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

So it was, which meant that Nezu had finally decided to tell Shouta something about whatever the fuck had happened to his quirk. Shouta was tired of being dismissed whenever he asked about it, and his independent investigations had been leading nowhere.

“Do you know the name All for One?” Tsukauchi asked.

“Of course I’ve heard of him. He’s the boogeyman of the underground.” Shouta looked at him strangely. 

Tsukauchi nodded. “Have you ever met him?”

“What? Obviously not!” Shouta sputtered, “You’re investigating an urban legend? Are you saying that he’s real?”

Tsukauchi sighed. “Please just answer the questions. We’ll tell you everything after.”

‘If you pass this test’ was left unsaid.

“Fine.” It was Shouta’s turn to sigh.

“Are you in any way involved with All for One, his people, or any of his plans?”

“No.”

“Do you know anyone who is?”

“No, though if he’s real like you’re suggesting, then I could know someone that’s involved with him without being aware of that fact.” Huh. Shouta hadn’t really planned on saying all that, but it just slipped out anyway. 

Tsukauchi hummed. “Good point. To clarify: to your knowledge, do you know anyone who is involved with All for One or his people?”

“No.”

“Do you know why or how your quirk changed?”

“No.” Shouta was starting to see the connection between these questions.

“Do you want to be a part of this investigation? Why?”

“Yes, I definitely do,” Shouta stressed, “I know Nezu knows something about what happened to my quirk, but he won't tell me when I ask, and all the investigating I’ve been doing on my own has been fruitless. Honestly, I wouldn't be all that surprised if All for One is real at this point. From all the questions you've asked just now and all the thinking I've done throughout the past four months or so, it’s starting to seem like there isn’t really another option. 

“At first, I just wanted to figure out what happened to me, but now I’m afraid that this is a lot larger than myself and that my quirk changing is only a small piece of a big and dangerous picture. I don’t want to stand around doing nothing when people might get hurt.” Shouta concluded, taking a moment to catch his breath. 

Then, he blinked, a bit dazed. He also hadn’t meant to say all that. He must be really sleep-deprived today if he was spilling an unnecessary amount of his inner thoughts to Tsukauchi just because he asked him a few questions.

The loudspeakers in Shouta’s classroom crackled to life. “Welcome to the team, Aizawa!” Nezu’s voice said, “Please, come up to my office so I can fill you in on everything you need to know!”

“Y’know, Hitoshi, you should really start some sort of combat training for the entrance exam,” Neito said one day, sitting with his back against the headboard of his bed and a sketchbook full of hero costume ideas on his lap, “It’s only a few months away and the practical could be anything, so you shouldn’t just rely on your quirks.”

Hitoshi looked at him quizzically. “Don't you think you’re forgetting something?”

Neito looked up from his latest sketch of Hitoshi’s hero costume—he had taken up Neito’s offer to take over the drawing part for him, since Neito was better at drawing and was helping him with the more detailed design aspects of his costume. “What do you mean?”

Hitoshi raised an eyebrow.

Neito gave him a blank look.

“We’re both trying for the hero course,” Hitoshi said, “Or are you saying you’ve elected to ignore your own advice? Hypocrite.”

“I’m not a hypocrite!” Neito quipped instinctually, only to then find himself at a loss for words. 

That’s… weird. He always knows what to say. 

He’s also always known he was going to be a hero. He’s been planning for that for years! Just look at all the times he’s drawn out his costume!

Neito’s eyes widened abruptly, a sinking feeling forming in the pit of his stomach. With trembling hands, he looked at the sketchbook in his lap, and began flipping through its pages. Ignoring Hitoshi’s concerned questions in the background, Neito found what he wanted: his most recent design for his own hero costume.

The date above the drawing seared itself into his mind. 

It was a day from over two months ago.

He sucked in a sharp breath. The last time he drew an idea for his hero costume was two months ago. The last time he thought about being a hero himself was two months ago . Every sketch since was either for Hitoshi or a random hero he heard about online.

Not Monoma Neito.

Strangely, the thought didn’t seem new. It made some sort of sense that he’d be making hero costumes not for himself, but for other people.

After all, hadn’t he already realised that he wasn’t going to be able to be one of the great heroes that saved the world?

When was the last time he examined what he actually wanted? Being a hero was something that he had decided on from a young age, and it had just followed him as a constant since. He hadn’t given it any actual thought for years .

And now that he did, he wasn’t sure that was what he wanted.

Neito didn’t need to be the one in the spotlight, at least not in that way. He’d rather play to his skills—skills that he’d been unknowingly using this whole time, whether it was in his own sketches or when he posted on SupportSupport, helped SmallMight, or gave Hitoshi advice.

Neito’s eyes widened as he recalled a conversation from months ago. A conversation where he lied about wanting to apply to the support course when SmallMight had assumed he did.

Maybe it didn’t have to be a lie anymore.

A sharp pain on his cheek knocked him out of his thoughts. His hand flew to his face.

“Ow! Did you just slap me?!” Neito said, aghast, after he reoriented himself.

“What else was I supposed to do?!” Hitoshi countered, voice a few octaves higher than usual. Neito suddenly noticed how scared he looked. “You just flipped through your sketchbook and stopped moving, and you wouldn’t respond to anything I said!”

“Huh,” Neito said. He hadn’t realised that.

“So, what happened?! Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I am now. I just realised something.”

Hitoshi looked at him expectantly.

“I don’t want to be a hero.” Neito looked at his hands, suddenly blinking back tears. “I’m going to sign up for the support course instead.”

When Hitoshi was silent, Neito glanced up, expecting him to be betrayed or confused. Instead, he looked contemplative.

“That actually makes a lot of sense,” Hitoshi said, resting his chin on his hand, “You’re really good at that stuff. I think you’ll do really well in support, maybe even better than you’d do in heroics.”

Neito tackled him into a hug.

Shouta sighed for the third time since he and Hizashi had come back home after UA’s school day. 

Hizashi looked up from the test prep he was doing to see Shouta slouching on the couch, Mochi in his lap and Anko resting half on his head and half on the back of the couch. The cats were purring softly, content.

Shouta, however, was clearly not content.

Hizashi closed his laptop and slid onto the couch next to him. “What’s up?”

Shouta sighed again. “Nezu finally stopped ignoring my questions.”

“Isn’t that a good thing? You’ve been asking him what he knows for ages, and he kept brushing you off.” Hizashi frowned, suddenly concerned. “Is it something bad? Are you in danger?!”

Shouta grimaced. “It isn’t good, that’s for sure.”

Hizashi leaned into Shouta’s side and threw an arm around his shoulders, accidentally scaring Anko away. “How bad is it?”

“The most dangerous man in the criminal underworld has some role for me in his villainous plans and may want me dead.”

“WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!” 

Neito stared at the computer screen in front of him. “Apply now!” the page on UA’s website screamed. With a hesitant smile growing on his face, Neito scrolled past the section advertising UA’s famous heroics course.

His mouse hovered over a box reading “Apply to the Support Department!”

Neito clicked the link.

Chapter Text

From: Nezu <[email protected]>

Recipients: BCC [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], and 31 more

Subject: [CLASSIFIED] Ongoing Investigation

Greetings,

If you are not already aware, there has been an abnormal influx in the amount of pro heroes near Musutafu that have experienced quirk mutations. It is becoming clear that these mutations have some similar traits.

This email has been sent to every pro hero that has experienced this mutation as of yet.

Currently, I am working with the police to investigate this situation. We have reason to believe that these mutations all stem from one source, a source that is suspected to be malicious. I urge you to stay vigilant, as we do not yet know what level of danger you are in.

As of now, information regarding this investigation is classified, and cannot be released to the public. Try to limit the information you give about your quirk mutation to only necessary people. If you have any questions, please get in touch with Tsukauchi Naomasa in person or at [email protected]. Please contact him directly to keep any queries discreet. 

My team will update you if any key information comes to light. For now, please continue to work and live as you always do. 

Best regards,

Nezu

Principal of UA

[This email has been encrypted by <UA Security>.] 

Naomasa yawned, shuffling out of bed and into his kitchen to make breakfast. He started his coffee machine, grateful once again that Toshinori had bought him one that didn’t leak for his last birthday. While he waited for the coffee to brew, he absentmindedly opened up his email on his phone. 

As soon as Naomasa read the number at the top of the screen, his eyes flew wide open and he dropped his phone on the ground.

How in the world had he gotten forty-two new emails overnight?!

“Come on,” the little pervert whined, taking a step forward, “Just let me touch them!”

Ashido Mina recoiled in disgust. “I said no! Go away!”

“It’ll only take a second—”

When the boy—only half her height and with purple balls on his head instead of hair—reached toward her chest, Mina’s instincts kicked in. Literally. She kicked him in the chest, sending him flying through the air, into the alleyway, and then into a garbage bin.

Suited him right.

But… How had she done that? As far as she knew, working out didn’t cause as dramatic and sudden changes as that…

CopyCat2615

Hypothetically, if I Copied my friend’s enhancement quirk and we both punched each other at the same time (like a fistbump), what would happen?

SmallMight

you’d probably both go flying? it depends on a lot of factors. since it’s an enhancement, whoevers more grounded and has a stronger punch without the quirk would probably move less, or even not at all. it’d also depend on who used more power (aka who’s more used to the quirk, so probably your friend)

wait no

this isn’t hypothetical, is it

copycat!

DONT DO IT!1

DO NOT

COPY!!!!

@CopyCat2615

STOP!!!

Naomasa stepped into the viewing room, letting the heavy door fall shut behind him. He went to stand beside the officers who were looking through the one-way mirror into the interrogation room, where a man sat handcuffed to a table. The man was ignoring whatever the lawyer next to him was saying, instead opting to glare angrily at the officers watching him. Or, rather, glare angrily slightly to the left of them.

“Good morning, Detective Tsukauchi.” Detective Suzuki nodded to him. “I’m glad you could make it here so quickly.”

Naomasa returned her greeting. “May I ask what the situation is? I heard you took in a Yakuza member, but I was sent here before anyone told me more.”

Detective Suzuki nodded, handing him a case file. “This is Eto Haru, a known member of the Shie Hassaikai with a criminal record consisting primarily of minor theft and vandalism charges. We’ve suspected the Shie Hassaikai of being involved in smuggling and dealing Trigger, though until today we haven’t been able to catch anyone red handed. The Yakuza may have fallen far since the dawn of quirks, but they’ve still kept enough influence to weasel their way out of any major charges we’ve tried to bring against members without unshakeable evidence. 

“That’s why we need a solid confession from Eto, so our Trigger case is backed up by more than what the Shie Hassaikai’s lawyers can brush off as happenstance.”

Naomasa flipped through the file, noting Eto’s quirk—a transformation type simply called Beans, which raised more questions than it answered—as well as other important details like his age—twenty-eight—and criminal history.

“I’m the lead detective on this case, so I’ll do most of the talking, but you can ask follow-up questions when necessary, as usual.” Detective Suzuki continued. “Would you like a moment more, or are you ready to head in?”

Naomasa closed the file with a snap. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

They headed into the interrogation room. As soon as the door opened, Eto’s eyes snapped towards them, his glare not once wavering. 

The two detectives sat down at the table, the metal chairs scraping harshly against the cement floor. 

“Good morning. I am Detective Suzuki, and this is Detective Tsukauchi.”

Eto just scoffed. 

After an awkward pause, his lawyer introduced himself as Yugasa Ao, and they began recording the interview. Detective Suzuki went though the usual introduction spiel, and then it was Naomasa’s turn.

“I am legally obligated to tell you that my quirk, True Man, is always active, and as such will be active for the duration of this interrogation. It is a lie-detector quirk, so I encourage you to tell the truth to make this easier for all of us.”

Eto scoffed again.

“We are going to start off with the basics,” Detective Suzuki said, “First of all, for the record, can you confirm that you are Eto Haru?”

Eto’s lawyer looked pointedly at him.

He rolled his eyes, but nodded. “Yes, that’s me.”

“True.” Naomasa confirmed.

“Then let’s continue. Where did you get the Trigger we found on your person?”

The interrogation continued on like normal. But, soon after Detective Suzuki managed to get Eto to admit to selling Trigger for the Shie Hassaikai, it took an unexpected turn.

“—I just wanted to earn some extra cash, but, really, most of the money went to the Shie Hassaikai. I wanted a larger cut, but they’re really strict about the amount they get.” Eto was saying.

“True.” Naomasa gave Detective Suzuki a meaningful look. “But, why does the Shie Hassaikai need extra money so desperately?”

“To fund their experiments,” Eto said immediately, with no hesitation. He froze in his seat as soon as the words left his mouth.

Yugasa’s eyes looked like they were going to bulge out of his head. 

“True,” Naomasa said, sharing a tentative glance with Detective Suzuki.

“What experiments are you talking about?” Detective Suzuki asked.

“Nothing important! I didn’t mean that when I said it—that was just a slip of the tongue!”

“False,” Naomasa stated, “Please tell the truth this time. What experiments are the Shie Hassaikai doing and why?”

“They’re trying to make a way to take away people’s quirks. Overhaul’s goal is quirk erasing bullets, from what I’ve heard. I don’t know how—I don’t want to know how—but they’ve got a whole theory behind it, and they’re into the testing stages. Nothing’s permanent yet, but I heard some people talking about how they got some temporary quirk-erasing drugs to work. They only last a few hours, but at this rate it won’t be long until they’re erasing people’s quirks entirely.”

“Eto—!” Yugasa said, taken aback.

Naomasa was speechless. Detective Suzuki was in a similar state.

Eto’s face lost all its colour. He looked like he had just seen a ghost, though his terror quickly morphed into rage.

“Fuck you,” Eto spat, lips drawn in a snarl, “All that talk about truth, and then you go and lie about your own fucking truth quirk. I’m not saying anything else. I don’t care what tricks you pull. I’m already dead, just get out of my sight so I can spend the last bit of my life in peace.”

They sat in silence, Eto’s words ringing in Naomasa’s head. He hadn’t lied about his quirk. That couldn’t have been his quirk, compelling Eto to say that—his quirk didn’t work like that. But, he couldn’t deny what he had heard. If he didn’t know better, he’d say it was almost like his quirk had mutated.

Wait. Naomasa’s eyes widened. His quirk kind of had mutated.

He was brought back to reality when Detective Suzuki shook herself out of her stupor and said a few final words to end the recording. Then, she stood. “Thank you for your time. Yugasa, once you’re done talking to your client, an officer will show you out.”

Still reeling from the confession and his epiphany, Naomasa followed Detective Suzuki out of the interrogation room. As soon as the door shut, and they were faced with only the other officers, Detective Suzuki’s demeanour changed entirely. She lost her cool and collected air, rushing to grab a few files off of a desk. She paused momentarily, looking at Naomasa with an odd expression, before shaking her head and booking it for the exit in a blur of papers and panic.

“Call Sir Nighteye!” she called before the door slammed shut behind her, “Send him to my office ASAP!”

Naomasa sighed. It was looking to be another long day.

“So, we’ve already been doing our own course-specific training, but we still need to study for the academic part of the exam,” Neito said, opening his desk drawer and pulling out a calendar with a flourish, “That’s why we need to make a plan.”

“You bought a calendar for the whole year just so we can make a study plan for the next few weeks?” 

Neito held a finger up to silence Hitoshi. “Shh, we’re not talking about that, we’re making a studying schedule!” 

“The Shie Hassaikai raid will happen three days from now at 15:00. We don’t have a moment to waste,” Sasaki Mirai addressed the room, tone grim, “We must be prepared for anything. The Yakuza managed to keep their prototype quirk erasing drugs a secret for who knows how long, so we don’t know what else they might have in store for us.”

Tension built with each of his words. Mirai scanned the pro heroes, sidekicks, and police officers sitting around the table, taking in their determined expressions.

“After we got intel from a member of the Shie Hassaikai”—Mirai glanced at Detective Suzuki and Detective Tsukauchi—“Bubble Girl and Centipeder managed to find and stake out one of the Shie Hassaikai’s compounds. Thanks to them, we have details about the outside layout of the building, as well as the personnel that are stationed there.”

Mirai turned to the slideshow at the front of the room. He clicked to the next segment of slides, depicting a basic layout of the compound that they made using what Mirai saw with his quirk and what Bubble Girl and Centipeder learned from their stakeout.

“Team Ryukyu will lead with an attack on the front of the compound, reinforced by Team Rock Lock. Team Nighteye will hold back until the Yakuza is drawn to the main entrance, and then enter the compound through a secret passage I discovered when I used my quirk, Foresight. Team Fat Gum will stay outside the compound, making sure no one escapes unnoticed.

“Our priority is to arrest Overhaul and as many of his people as possible. Our secondary goal is to find the plans and research the Yakuza has about their quirk-erasing drugs and bullets. If we don't manage to do both of those things, then their experiments could be continued in another location or by another group. We cannot afford to let that happen.”

Neito rummaged through a mess of random wires, plastic, and metal scraps. He thought it might have used to be a Wi-Fi router, but he couldn’t quite tell, with how completely and utterly destroyed it was.

No matter. He just needed a few pieces from it, and then he could move on to dissecting an old microwave he saw a couple metres back.

Neito was almost sad that Dagobah Beach was nearly clean. It was a goldmine for parts he could use to make little machines for practice for the support course practical exam. But it wasn’t like his newfound passion for making things was going to stop the random person or people cleaning the beach. So, he was grabbing everything he thought could be useful as quickly as he could, before it was thrown out. He already had enough stuff to last him months, but he kept finding more and more useful things. It was a never-ending cycle. His mom didn’t need to know how much garbage he had hidden under his bed.

At least the beach was being cleaned at a consistent rate, so Neito could estimate that there would still be enough garbage there to hide Hitoshi’s (illegal) public quirk use until just a few days before the entrance exam. It was a nice coincidence.

Suddenly, something rocketed over Neito’s head, slamming into a garbage pile and causing a mini garbage avalanche. He jumped backwards, grabbing a handful of rare non-rusty screws off the ground before they could be buried.

Neito looked around the corner of a pile of garbage, hands on his hips. “Hey, watch it!”

Hitoshi whipped his head around as soon as Neito spoke. “Huh? Weren’t you just on the other side of the beach?!”

“Like an hour ago!” Neito started to roll his eyes, but paused half way through. He had started there, before he meandered over to the maybe-Wi-Fi router. Behind all the garbage piles, where Hitoshi couldn’t see. “Oh. Hmm, maybe I should get a helmet…”

Shouta adjusted his earpiece and double checked his gear while he waited for the cue to head inside the Shie Hassaikai compound. He had been put on Nighteye’s team—along with Bubble Girl, Centipeder, and, of course, Sir Nighteye himself—as they were most likely to come into contact with Overhaul.

He was still getting used to his quirk’s mutation, even though it had been months. It had the potential to completely change his fighting style—not that he was going to change it too much, let alone into something reminiscent of All Might or other strength-enhanced pros. He shuddered at the thought, picturing himself pummeling a criminal into the ground and yelling “DETROIT SMASH!” in the middle of the night. 

He would die before that happened.

But the change was still difficult, especially since he only recently discovered that Erasure itself had been enhanced, as well. 

Shouta had suspected something was different about his quirk for a while, yet he had been so distracted by everything else going on that a little detail like Erasure lasting a few seconds after he looked away from someone had slipped past him.

He’d only been able to put words to the strange, off-putting way his patrols had been going when Tsukauchi learned his quirk had changed, prompting Nezu to see if Erasure had, too.

His earpiece crackled to life, Rock Lock’s voice filtering into his ear. “Team Rock Lock is heading inside, following Team Ryukyu. It looks like most of the Shie Hassaikai’s fighters are locked in battle, but some are still coming from deeper in the compound.”

Shouta refocused on the present. He needed a clear head for this raid.

“Copy that. Team Nighteye is on standby,” Nighteye said, voice coming from both Shouta’s earpiece and where he was crouching next to him.

Shouta readied himself to move in. He remained alert, scanning their surroundings for enemies and listening to the commentary other heroes were giving on the fight. Centipeder’s mandibles clicked as the four of them waited, tense, for the order to enter the compound.

“The Yakuza’s reinforcements are in sight,” Rock Lock said, “It doesn’t look like anyone else is going to join the fight here.”

It was as if everyone had frozen, holding their breaths in anticipation of Rock Lock’s next words.

“Go, Team Nighteye.”

Instantly, everyone was on their feet. Nighteye sought out a hidden keypad and typed a code into it, causing the secret entrance to open with a creak. It revealed a dark and ominous tunnel that Nighteye didn’t hesitate to step into, with Bubble Girl, Centipeder, and Shouta following close on his heels.

“And… Go,” Hitoshi said, starting the stopwatch on his phone.

Neito grabbed a copper wire from the pile of materials in front of him, quickly winding it around to form a bunch of loops. He made supports for it, attaching them to a piece that would act as the base of his ‘car’. 

He worked quickly, adding magnets and a battery to the contraption, and then adjusting it so that the loop could spin freely. He attached some lightweight wheels—which were really just bottle caps—and then finished off all the other little details it needed. 

Soon, he had a small toy car rolling around the ground on its own, powered by a very simple but functional DC motor.

“Six minutes and fifty-two seconds,” Histoshi said, showing Neito his phone’s screen, “That’s a new record!”

Shouta and Bubble Girl were cut off from Nighteye and Centipeder by the sudden appearance of a wall in the middle of the corridor.

They both attacked the wall, but it proved too durable to completely destroy and kept repairing whenever they broke a chunk of it, even when Shouta used his newfound strength. Their only choice was to continue forward, hoping to find a way to rejoin their other team members in another part of the labyrinthine compound. 

“A villain named Mimic is changing the layout of the building!” a hero’s voice came from Shouta’s earpiece, staticy and harsh. He and Bubble Girl made eye contact, both listening intently to the warning. “Team Fatgum saw him for a moment—he’s hopped up on Trigger and stronger—”

The sound cut off suddenly. Bubble Girl pressed her fingers to her earpiece, a confused look on her face. So it wasn’t just him. Shouta pulled out his earpiece, pressing a button on it, but nothing worked. It was on, technically, but something was blocking the signal.

“We’ll have to do this the old fashioned way,” Bubble Girl said, after she fiddled around with her earpiece a bit more. 

Shouat grunted, and they continued on their way.

A few minutes later, he turned a corner and stopped. Bubble Girl came up beside him, getting into a fighting stance. Two men wearing plague masks stood on the other side of the hallway, one carrying a bottle of what smelled like alcohol, and the other wearing a black cloak and hat.

“Well, what do we ’ave here, eh, Nemoto?” the one with the bottle slurred, “Some heroes askin’ for a fight?”

Shouta shared a look with Bubble Girl, and they sprinted forwards at the same time. His eyes glowed red as they clashed with the villains.

“A group of villains are building a superweapon, but the heroes discovered it before they could finish it. Now, the villains have taken hostages and rigged a bomb to kill the hostages if the heroes try to prevent them from leaving with the weapon and plans. If the heroes attack the villains and attempt to stop them from leaving with the weapon, the hostages will die. However, if they choose to allow the villains to leave, the superweapon will stay in the hands of the villains,” Neito read out the question from the practice test, “Chose the heroes’ best course of action: A, attack the villains immediately and take their superweapon; B, wait until the hostages are safe and then go after the villains; or C, send one team to attack the villains and another to rescue the hostages.”

Hitoshi hummed. “C would be ideal, but it’s too risky. The villains could blow up the hostages as soon as they thought they were being attacked, before the heroes could disarm the bomb. The answer is B. Always prioritize the rescue.”

Neito grinned. “Correct!” 

After subduing the two men in plague masks, knocking them out, and securing them with capture tape, Shouta and Bubble Girl continued down the hallway. They didn’t come across anyone—or anything—for a suspiciously long time. Shouta was beginning to worry they were going in circles, when they turned another corner and spotted two doors along one of the walls.

Shouta approached the first door, signaling for Bubble Girl to be prepared to fight. He pressed himself against the wall, with Bubble Girl on the opposite side of the door, and twisted the doorknob. It was unlocked. He pushed it open silently.

The room was dark. They entered cautiously, scanning the dim room and confirming no one else was there. 

After they found the light switch, they had other concerns.

Bubble Girl inhaled sharply. “What is this place?”

Shouta didn’t want to know.

The room looked like a cross between a lab and a torture chamber. There was a medical examination-type chair in the middle of the floor, with straps to hold down a person’s arms and legs. Bloodstains littered the ground, and Shouta could see a tray of scalpels and needles on one of the counters.

The worst part was that the chair was small. Too small to fit the average adult. 

Dread pooled in Shouta’s stomach.

Quietly—it felt wrong to talk normally here, where countless atrocities may very well have happened—Shouta spoke. “We need to see if any of their… their research is here.” 

“We need to leave,” is what he actually wanted to say.

“...Yes. We—you’re right,” Bubble Girl looked at the cabinets nervously. Shouta didn’t blame her. He also didn’t want to see what they contained.

But, they were on a time limit. If the lab hadn’t already been cleared out, someone would surely come soon.

The contents of the room were sparse, thankfully. They found medical equipment in most of the cabinets and drawers, as well as empty vials. They looked like they were meant for blood. Shouta tried not to think too hard about that.

One cabinet had a few sparse files in it, as well as a notebook. Bubble Girl grabbed them, tucking them under her arm. 

“Let’s go,” she said, as soon as they had checked the last drawer. 

Shouta nodded, just as desperate to leave, although he knew the room’s afterimage would haunt him for years to come.

They shut off the lights and closed the door. 

Shouta felt something like relief for a second before he remembered the second door.

He and Bubble Girl made eye contact.

They opened the door with the same caution as the first. This time, however, the door had a lock on it. A lock that didn’t need a key, but could only be opened from the outside.

The dread in Shouta’s stomach grew.

The door swung open, light pouring into the hallway. Cautiously, Shouta peered into the room. 

He froze. Then, he blinked, and looked again, unmoving.

Bubble Girl took that as a sign to peek into the room. Her whole body tensed, and her eyes widened. “No…”

Shouta finally looked away from the scene, leaning against the wall for a moment to take a few deep breaths. Soon, he steeled himself and entered the room, attempting to look as non-threatening as possible—a difficult task for an underground pro hero whose costume is made to be intimidating.

A little girl—no older than five—with a small horn sticking out of her white hair and bandages wrapped around her arms and legs sat on a bed in the middle of the room. A few toys were scattered on the floor of the otherwise empty room, giving it the look of a bad parody of a nursery.

The child clutched at a thin blanket, eyes wide and fearful. 

Shouta kneeled by the edge of the bed, keeping his distance. “Hey, what’s your name?”

With much hesitation, almost too quietly for Shouta to hear, the little girl answered, “...Eri.”

“Hello, Eri,” Shouta said, “I’m Eraserhead. I’m a pro hero. This is Bubble Girl”—he motions for her to enter the room, slowly—“and she’s also a hero. We’re here to rescue you.”

Eri’s eyes widened again, but this time it wasn’t fear that caused it. “Heroes?” she whispered, disbelieving.

“Yes, that’s right. Heroes. We want to help you,” Bubble Girl said, softly, still a few paces away from the bed.

“You’ll take me away from him?”

“Does he hurt you?” Shouta eyed the bandages. He was positive he already knew her answer.

Eri nodded.

“Then yes.” Shouta paused, searching for the right words. “Is he a man with a long mask like a bird’s beak?”

She nodded again.

“Don’t worry, we’ll make sure he can’t hurt you again,” he said, “Can I pick you up? Then we can leave this place.”

“Yes.” Eri let go of the blanket, reaching for him.

Shouta picked her up, gently, trying not to jostle her injuries too badly. She was pitifully thin. Anger bubbled up in him, but he pushed it down; Eri didn’t need to see anyone’s anger right now.

She buried her face in his capture weapon, tiny fists holding onto his shirt as though she never wanted to let go.

Shouta’s heart clenched. He didn’t want to let her go, either.

“People with quirks—”

“Which were called meta abilities.”

“—faced a lot of discrimination and violence during the Vigilantes Era, since everyone was scared of them and they had been painted as dangerous. It wasn’t until 2XXX that there was a law put in place in Japan that protected quirked people from discrimination-based violence.”

Neito nodded, yawning. “And even then there were anti-meta extremists that attacked people with quirks, like the Anti-Paranormals. When were they disbanded, again?”

“2XXX, I think?” Hitoshi flipped through some papers. “Yeah, it was 2XXX.”

They came across Overhaul only a few minutes after they found Eri. His assistant, Chronostasis, who Shouta recognised from Nighteye’s presentation, was by his side. 

Overhaul’s eyes immediately locked on Eri. 

Shouta held her a bit tighter to his chest. 

“Eri.” Overhaul’s voice was cold. “What are you doing with those heroes? Do you really think they’ll help you once they learn you’re cursed? Or are you going to wait until you make them disappear like you did to your father?”

Eri flinched. 

A ‘curse’, quirk erasing bullets stemming from Overhaul’s hate of quirks, a disappearing father, and a room with bloodstains and a child-sized chair. All the pieces of the puzzle were coming together, and Shouta didn’t like the picture he was beginning to see.

“Come here, and I won’t have to hurt them.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Shouta told her, eyes locked on Overhaul, “We’ll help you no matter what. You don’t have to go back to him.”

Eri pulled back from where her face was hidden in Shouta’s capture weapon. Her eyes filled with tears. “You don’t hate me? Even though I’m cursed?”

“Of course not.” Shouta’s heart broke a little bit more when he looked at her. He decided to go out on a whim, testing his assumption. “And you aren’t cursed, you just have a quirk like most people do. You only need help so you can learn to control your quirk.”

She looked at him in wonder. 

So, his assumption had been right. He didn’t know how to feel about that.

“Well.” Overhaul sounded disgusted with them. “If you’re going to be that way, then I suppose I have no choice.” He pulled off one of his gloves and slammed his hand on the ground before Shouta could activate Erasure.

Concrete spikes shot out of the floor and rushed towards them. Shouta dodged, forced to look away from Overhaul to protect Eri, and was left unable to cancel his quirk. In the corner of his eye, he saw Bubble Girl send a wave of bubbles toward Overhaul.

Both Shouta and Bubble Girl excelled at close combat, but right now, getting close to Overhaul wasn’t possible. Not to mention the dangers of fighting Overhaul hand-to-hand when he could disassemble and reassemble matter, including living matter.

Finding an opening in the barrage of spikes, Shouta spun around, scanning the battlefield. His vision was blocked largely by the spikes, but he managed to spot Overhaul crouched on the ground, with Chronostasis nowhere to be seen.

He activated Erasure, hair floating up and eyes glowing. Overhaul tried to use his quirk, but started hitting the ground repeatedly in confusion when it didn’t work. It was ironic, considering the drug he was trying to make.

Shouta didn’t get a moment to catch his breath, as suddenly a long piece of white hair was rushing at him, the end shaped like an arrowhead. He narrowly sidestepped, but it turned midair to keep following him. Using his enhanced speed, Shouta continued to dodge as quickly as he could. 

Nighteye had said something about Chronostasis’ quirk slowing his opponents down during one of their intelligence meetings. At the time, Shouta had simply filed it away as ‘don’t let his hair touch you, or you’re dead’.

If only that were as easy as it sounded.

Shouta kept glancing back at Overhaul, Erasure activated, as much as he could. Since he first erased it, Overhaul hadn’t been able to use his quirk once thanks to his mutated version of Erasure, but if he slipped up and didn’t refresh the effect often enough, Overhaul’s quirk would be back in the fight.

Eri whimpered. Shouta adjusted his hold on her, still dodging Chronostasis’ hair. He kept trying to follow it back to find the man, but with dodging and having to look back at Overhaul every few seconds, it was proving to be a difficult task.

Shouta glanced over at Overhaul once again. Bubble Girl had begun fighting him hand-to-hand, meaning that she was close enough that Shouta Erased her quirk when he Erased Overhaul’s again.

He hoped she wasn’t too thrown off by it.

Finally, he managed to follow Chronostasis’ hair back to his person. He was up on a rafter by the ceiling, shrouded in shadows. Thankfully, that wasn’t enough to stop Erasure.

His hair snapped back to its regular length as soon as Shouta turned his glare on him, but he quickly recovered from the shock.

Chronostasis jumped down from the ceiling, throwing a punch at Shouta.

Shouta cursed his lack of foresight. He had picked Eri up with both arms, even though he should have known they were going to end up being in some sort of a fight. He adjusted his hold on her so that he would have one arm free, at least, and prompted her to move her head so he could use his capture weapon without hurting her.

Shouta and Chronostasis danced around each other, Shouta focusing most of his energy on making sure Eri didn’t get hurt. They each landed a few hits, but it was risky to get close enough to use his full strength, as he was still holding Eri in his arms. He opted to attempt to subdue him with his capture weapon, instead.

Chronostasis wasn’t notably fast, but he was a formidable fighter and the spiky terrain made wielding his capture scarf more difficult.

Suddenly, Bubble Girl cried out in pain from somewhere behind him. 

Shouta’s eyes widened. Shit. He hadn’t erased Overhaul’s quirk in a while. Too long of a while, if the sounds of reforming concrete were anything to go by.

He circled around Chronostasis, trying to get Overhaul into view. But, Chronostasis could tell what he was doing, and tried to force him to look to the opposite side of the corridor. 

When Shouta finally did look at Overhaul, he was just in time. His quirk stopped working seconds before a spike drove itself through Bubble Girl’s chest. Shouta could see that she was rooted to the ground by another spike impaling her leg. Even without Overhaul’s quirk to worry about, she wouldn’t be able to fight him any more.

Shouta spun back towards Chronostasis, dodging a kick. They circled each other once again, both tired but unwilling to give up.

It was in that standstill that Overhaul spoke, his voice echoing throughout the corridor. “Look what you did to them, Eri. They’re both hurt, all because you made them protect you. If you just come back with me, then we won’t have to hurt them any more.”

“No! It’s not your fault, Eri! Don’t listen to him!” Bubble Girl yelled. Overhaul kicked her injured leg, and she cried out again, doubling over. 

Eri stared at Bubble Girl and Overhaul, eyes wide and terrified.

“Don’t be selfish, Eri,” Overhaul spat, “You can stop this whenever you want to.”

“He’s wrong. You’re not being selfish, wanting to be safe,” Shouta told Eri, “Nothing he does is your fault—it’s all his choices and his actions, not yours.”

Eri looked between them, face scrunched up in concentration. 

Shouta tried to look as reassuring and genuine as he could, but with his eyes glowing red and hair floating around his face, he doubted the effect was very strong. 

Chronostasis was slowly inching his way out of Shuota’s field of view, so he turned slightly to keep him in his periphery. Something needed to change soon, or they were going to lose the fight.

All of a sudden, Chronostasis was lunging at Shouta—at the side he was holding Eri on. A blade flashed in his grip, and Shouta knew he only had a split second to protect her. He twisted so he was between Eri and the knife’s path, tensing for impact.

The hit never came.

Instead, something thudded to the ground, followed by a muffled ‘oof’. 

Shouta glanced over his shoulder, still cradling Eri away from where Chronostasis was. Chronostasis’ white coat was floating frozen in the air right behind Shouta, though it was torn down the middle. Chronostasis himself was lying on the ground under it, with Rock Lock pressing a knee to his back so he couldn’t move.

“Need some help here, Eraserhead?” Rock Lock said, a handful of other heroes emerging behind him from a newly-formed hole in the ceiling.

“The hero system was put into place just after that, to—” Neito cut himself off with a yawn, “To act as a unified force to protect… to protect people.”

“Yeah,” Hitoshi yawned as well, blinking slowly, “And then there was the era of…”

Neito listened to him drone on, staring blankly at his history textbook. The characters on the page blurred together. He rested his head on his hand, eyes slipping shut. 

“Hey!”

Neito jolted awake. “Huh?”

“Are you even paying attention?”

“Yes?” Neito responded.

Hitoshi eyed him blankly. “Then I’m sure you could tell me what I was just saying.”

“Uh,” Neito desperately tried to remember the past few minutes—seconds? Hours? He didn't know.

“Maybe we should move on to something else.” 

Red and blue flashing lights reflected off the open back doors of the ambulance, bright under the night sky, as people rushed around outside of the Shie Hassaikai’s compound. 

A paramedic was bandaging a few cuts he had on his arm from Overhaul’s cement spikes, while another checked Eri’s vitals.

She was still in his arms, refusing to let go even in her sleep.

When the other heroes had appeared right before the end of the fight, one had offered to take Eri to safety, but she hadn’t let them, holding tight to his shirt even as he stayed in the middle of the battle so he could keep cancelling Overhaul and Chronostasis’ quirks.

And now they were safe, or as safe as they could be, with only the pain of the past to hurt them. Overhaul and Chronostasis had been arrested, and the papers he and Bubble Girl had found were someplace secure. Thankfully, she had managed to stash them around a corner in the hall before she had gotten injured in the fight.

The paramedics finished treating Shouta and Eri, leaving to do whatever else they needed to do—Shouta knew they wouldn't be getting off work for a long while, despite the time. One had handed him a shock blanket, and he pulled the crinkly material tight around himself and Eri, tucking it under her chin.

His thoughts wandered back to the rooms he and Bubble Girl had found in the compound. What horrors had Eri gone through? No one should ever experience the things she had, and she was only a child.

Unbidden, he remembered his fostering licence. He and Hizashi had discussed adopting a few times before, but it had never been as concrete as the idea that was forming in Shouta’s mind as he watched Eri sleep. 

But, that was a thought for tomorrow—or later today, if he was being technical—Shouta decided, relaxing against the side of the ambulance.

Just before his eyes slipped shut, he caught a glimpse of Nighteye standing next to a police car a few metres away. He was looking at Eri, eyes wide with something Shouta might have identified as a tumultuous mix of fear and shock, if he hadn’t fallen asleep at that very moment.

Monoma Shiori yawned as she shuffled out of her room in the morning. Though, really, 3:00 AM shouldn’t be called morning. 

But, she was covering her coworker’s shift at the hospital, so it counted as morning for her.

Shiori paused in front of her son’s room. Light was coming out from underneath the door, though she couldn't hear any movement within. Silently, she opened the door and peeked inside.

Sure enough, the boys were both asleep. 

Neito was slumped over at his desk, drooling slightly onto a pile of papers his head was resting on, while Hitoshi was lying on Neito’s bed, a textbook resting on top of his face. The entire room was a mess, study materials scattered haphazardly on every surface possible.

Shiori stifled a giggle. She quickly pulled out her phone and snapped a photo, before grabbing a few blankets from the hall closet.

Flicking off the lightswitch in Neito’s room, Shiori let her eyes adjust to the darkness. She used the light from the window to traverse through the clutter without tripping.

Carefully, Shiori approached Hitoshi and lifted the textbook off his face, placing it neatly on the floor beside the bed. She draped a blanket over him, kissing his forehead once. 

The poor boy’s eyebags were even more pronounced in the darkness. She was glad he was finally getting some sleep. Insomnia was a difficult challenge, and she was sure his home situation didn’t do anything to help.

Shiori felt a tug on her heartstrings, thinking once again of the signs of neglect and potentially abuse that she saw in Hitoshi. She had spent nights lying awake, trying to think of something she could do to get him the help he needed, but she had yet to be satisfied by any conclusion she had come to.

Going to anyone at this point would be useless. A friend’s mother claiming Hitoshi was being neglected or abused by his foster parents, with no evidence—never even having gone to his home—would be dismissed immediately.

The only thing she could do was create a safe space for Hitoshi, and try to be a safe person for him. And, of course, record any instances of abuse that she saw.

At least she already knew he felt safe with her and Neito, as he spent more nights at the Monoma apartment than away from it.

Shiori tucked the edge of the blanket under Hitoshi’s chin, lips pursed halfway between a grimace and a fond smile.

She shook her head to rid herself of her dark thoughts, leaving the bedside to tip-toe over to Neito. Shiori placed the other blanket over his shoulders, hoping he’d at least be warm, even though there wasn’t much she could do about how sore his back would be once he woke up. 

Brushing a few hairs out of his face, she saw he was starting to take after his friend, with how tired he looked, even in sleep.

Sometimes Shiori worried for her son. It wasn’t just the regular motherly anxiety she had always felt, either. She wasn’t stupid or clueless. Sometime in the past year, a huge burden had been shoved on Neito’s shoulders, the origin and contents of which she was unaware.

She knew something was going on in an area of her son’s life that she wasn’t a part of. Something big. Something dangerous.

She had heard Neito and Hitoshi talking, sometimes, when they thought they were being quiet or forgot there was another person in the apartment.

Something strange and potentially illegal was going on behind her back. Something that had to do with the words one, for, and all—not necessarily in that order—and relied on her son’s quirk in a way she didn’t understand.

Shiori trusted her son not to get involved in anything too criminal, especially not without a good reason. He was a smart kid, and although she hated to admit it, his father had somehow passed on his fascination with finding loopholes in the law in the few years before he left. Truly, Atomu’s attempts to teach their toddler the best way to get away with vigilantism without legally being a vigilante (among other strange topics) should have been an obvious red flag, but she had overlooked all the red flags until they slapped her in the face when he left.

Since then, there had been plenty of time to look back on all the mistakes she had made when she had been young and naive.

Shiori huffed. Apparently, the morning was making her sentimental. 

She quickly kissed Neito’s forehead, before stepping out of the room and closing the door softly behind her. 

The sky was still pitch black when she set off for the hospital, leaving her boys to rest for a few more hours in the quiet stillness of the morning.

Somewhere far away, in his spooky evil lair, All for One sat, elbows resting on the arms of his chair and fingers interlocked.

The Shie Hassaikai, defeated? Chisaki Kai, in police custody? 

Just a day ago, he would have said that law enforcement wasn’t anywhere near discovering the Shie Hassaikai’s plans. Perhaps he needed better moles in the police. He glanced at the body on the floor. He needed a new one now, anyway. No time like the present. 

At least the previous mole had given him information on something he had a use for. Or someone, he supposed.

A little girl with a Rewind quirk.

Chapter Text

Neito was panicking. 

He had come across skinny All Might when he was walking to a café after school to meet up with Hitoshi, so obviously he had copied One for All from him. But, when he ran through his mental list of potential targets, he realised, with dawning horror, that no one was close enough to get to within his quirk’s time limit.

Logically, he knew he could just not give One for All to anyone this time, but that felt like a waste.

There had to be somebody nearby that was hero material. All for One wouldn’t hesitate, so Neito shouldn’t either—well, except to make sure he wasn’t giving some random unheroic civilian or villain One for All.

Continuing down the sidewalk, Neito stood on his tiptoes and craned his neck to look at all the people around him. He wasn’t the biggest hero fan around, but he had done a frankly disturbing amount of research on local heroes, so he’d probably recognise most of them on the street. 

Distracted, Neito bumped into a green-haired boy walking in front of him.

“Oh, sorry!” he said, but it didn’t seem like the boy noticed him talking, or had even registered him walking into him. He was mumbling a steady stream of words, seeming simultaneously anxious and determined.

His uniform was from a middle school nearby—Aldera, Neito recalled—and he looked to be about Neito’s age, so he was probably just stressed about high school entrance exams or something. 

Before Neito went back to looking around, he caught the words ‘hero’ and ‘UA’ from the boy. He perked up, listening closer.

“—I’ve trained a lot to get into such a prestigious school, but what if it’s not enough…” he mumbled a few things too quietly for Neito to hear, and then continued, “I have to be strong enough to beat the most powerful villain in the world. I’ll make my mom and All Might proud, I have to, which means—”

Neito found himself nodding along to the boy’s monologue as he followed him down the sidewalk. This kid’s hypothetical super strong evil villain figure was just like All for One! And he also wanted to make All Might proud, which meant that he had lofty goals to save as many people as he could, like All Might did! Plus, there was something familiar about him that made Neito think of a hero. 

Clearly, this kid was the perfect target!

Neito checked his phone. He had six minutes to give someone One for All.

There was no way to know if the boy was going to be a good holder for One for All by just listening to him mumble, and it wasn’t like Neito had the time to put together any research. 

Coming to a decision, Neito slipped the boy’s water bottle out of its pocket on his yellow backpack, and subtly spat in it. He replaced it carefully, watching warily to see if the boy noticed what he’d done, but the boy continued his mumbling as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

Neito smiled, satisfied. Then, he reached over to tap him on the shoulder.

Sometimes a direct approach was the best option. 

Midoriya Izuku was stressed. 

Tomorrow, he was going to become the ninth holder of One for All. 

He knew he was placing a target on his own back—All Might had told him all about All for One and how he had reappeared after years of silence—but he still wanted to inherit All Might’s quirk.

Izuku was going to be a hero. It was all he could picture himself being, even though he’d been told his entire life that it was a stupid, impossible dream. Maybe it was stupid to try to take on such a huge role when he was only a useless, quirkless deku, but Izuku had to try. And, besides, he would have All Might’s quirk. All Might’s quirk! The thought still made him feel giddy with disbelief.

He would soon have both All Might’s approval and his quirk. It was surreal. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity that Izuku couldn’t possibly give up.

Someone tapped Izuku on the shoulder, startling him out of his thoughts.

“Hey!” a voice came from behind him.

Izuku turned around, flinching in on himself when he saw a boy in a middle school uniform. He wasn’t from Aldera, but he wouldn’t put it past his bullies to—

“Were you talking about UA? Are you doing the heroics entrance exam tomorrow?” the boy asked. 

Izuku eyed him warily. There was no way he was being genuine, right? This had to be some sort of a ploy his bullies had cooked up. Why they put so much effort into tormenting him was beyond him. 

But, there was still a chance that the boy was actually just a random person that had overheard his mumbling—shit, he hoped he hadn’t mumbled anything about One for All—and then decided to… start a conversation with Izuku, a random stranger? Yeah, no, his bullies were definitely involved.

The kid cocked an eyebrow at him, and Izuku suddenly realised that he had just been standing there for a solid minute without answering his question. His face burned as he stumbled out an answer, “Y—yeah, I—I am.”

The boy grinned, something like satisfaction gleaming in his eyes. “Maybe I’ll see you there, then! Not in the hero course—I’m aiming for support—but I do have a friend who’s vying for heroics like you.”

“T—that’s cool," Izuku said, still hesitant.

The boy’s smile stretched wider.

What commenced after that was one of the most baffling conversations Izuku had ever had the pleasure—displeasure?—to be a part of. Without introducing himself, the boy proceeded to interrogate him about his planned hero career, down to what merchandise companies he would get contracts with and how much he cared about hero rankings.

Izuku was positively dripping with sweat after his flurry of questions. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out the boy’s motivation. It had to have something to do with Izuku’s bullies or quirklessness, but the punchline still hadn’t come. Even more surprisingly, the boy actually paid attention to his answers. He had nodded along to Izuku’s stuttering, gaze analytical but not overtly malicious. 

Then, once he had his fill of questioning Izuku, he had started staring at him. His gaze was scrutinizing, and the smile had left his face. He was clearly looking for something, though Izuku couldn’t fathom what could be so serious as to warrant his expression. 

He didn’t even know this kid, for fuck’s sake! What sort of situation even was this?!

Suddenly, the boy nodded decisively, and took a step back so he wasn’t leaning into Izuku’s space. Izuku’s shoulders relaxed minutely before he abruptly realised that the boy might’ve come to the conclusion that Izuku really did deserve whatever scorn his bullies had placed on him. 

The boy turned a relaxed smile on him. “You’ll be a good hero.”

Izuku’s mouth fell open. He—he sounded genuine. Genuine! Izuku searched the boy’s face for any sign he was making a joke. He couldn’t find anything.

He… he actually thought Izuku could be a hero. A good hero. Admittedly, he didn’t know Izuku was quirkless, but still. He hadn’t even mentioned quirks, and he’d cared about Izuku’s plans, and had asked him questions, and now he’d decided that Izuku had passed whatever evaluation he had run.

And that was another thing! He said ‘you’ll’: no ‘if’s or questions about it. Just ‘you will be a hero’.

In other words: the boy definitely wasn’t with Izuku’s bullies.

“You look pale. You should have some water!” the boy says, concern blooming on his face as he gestures to Izuku's backpack. 

He looked so sure of himself that Izuku immediately slid his backpack off one shoulder, grabbed his water bottle from its pocket, and took a big gulp from it.

The boy grinned at him. “We’ll see each other at UA then, right?”

Izuku, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve, nodded hesitantly.

“See you around!”

The boy waved, turning and disappearing into the never-ending stream of pedestrians. Izuku held his water bottle in his hand, uncomprehending.

Did… did he just make a friend? Is that how people made friends? Izuku thought back to the novels he had read for reference on how one made friends. After a moment of contemplation, he decided that it wasn’t too far-fetched of an idea, though he had the inkling that they missed something important…

Izuku groaned. Of course! They hadn’t exchanged names! 

He’d have to just hope they both get into UA, so they could introduce themselves properly there.

“So, let me get this straight, you gave One for All to some random kid you met on the side of the road without doing any sort of stalking—” 

Neito mock scoffed, affronted.

“Sorry,” Hitoshi said sarcastically, rolling his eyes, “You gave One for All to some random kid without doing any research on him first?”

“I interviewed him!”

“Yeah, I’m sure you learned his entire life story in the five minutes before you, what, gave him a piece of your hair to eat with no explanation?”

This time Neito really did scoff. “As if! I did the sensible thing and spat in his water. No way would he just eat a hair someone gave him!”

Little did they know that the subject of their conversation would do that very thing just the next day.

UA was huge. Izuku knew that in theory (he knew a lot of facts about it—it was All Might's alma mater, after all), but it was something else to see it in person.

It wasn’t like this was the first time he had seen UA, but it was the first time he was going to go inside—and as a potential student, nonetheless.

Crowds of students were also gawking at the building as they made their way inside. Izuku’s eye caught on a head of blond hair, and for a moment he panicked, thinking it was Kacchan. But, no, it wasn’t Kacchan—the hair wasn’t spiky enough—though the boy still looked a bit familiar.

He was standing next to a taller boy with a shock of gravity-defying purple hair—

Speaking of gravity, Izuku was about to feel its effects first hand. His foot caught on something, and he was plummeting to the ground.

Until, unexpectedly, he stopped, floating midair.

“Sorry for using my quirk on you without permission!” a bubbly voice came from behind him, “I just thought that falling before the exam would be bad luck!”

“Hero hopefuls, head down the left hall! Support and general education written exams are to the right! Management is straight ahead! Follow the signs, listeners!” Yamada Hizashi called out to the many students traversing through UA’s halls for the first time.

A blond boy and a purple-haired boy paused at the fork in the hallway. Hizashi’s eyes almost skipped over them, but then the blond boy screeched, loud enough to catch his attention, “How could this be?!”

Hizashi’s gaze narrowed in on the two, calculating whether he would need to step in between some sort of a fight.

“This is positively devastating!” the blond continued, clutching a hand to his chest, “My friend, we must not let this sever our friendship!”

Okay, now Hizashi was ninety percent sure he was just being overly dramatic on purpose.

“Woe is me!”

The boy’s loud declarations had drawn eyes. A couple students giggled to each other, but that did nothing to stop the blond kid—if anything, Hizashi knew it would just encourage types like him.

“What say you, my friend? Do you not also feel the crushing weight of our impending future?”

The purple-haired boy sighed and face-palmed. He dragged his hand down his face, his resigned expression identical to the one Shouta wore whenever he was dragged into one of Hizashi’s ploys. But then he said, voice loud enough to hear despite its monotonous nature, “Alas, this is where we must part ways—though I am unimpressed by your shock. We’ve known this was to come for, let me see…” he brings a finger to his chin in mock consideration, “literal months.” 

The other boy’s jaw dropped, an over-exaggerated appalled look appearing on his face.

“We have chosen different paths in life, and must accept the consequences.”

The blond boy let out an affronted gasp. “How could you?! Accepting our fate without fighting?! What about prevailing?!”

“One can still prevail without fighting meaningless battles,” the purple-haired kid said without missing a beat.

Hizashi watched on, intrigued. The kids weren’t causing any problems yet, and they were definitely lightening up the severely tense atmosphere UA had on entrance exam days.

“Oh, betrayal!” the blond kid wailed, staggering backwards a few steps before turning on his heel and disappearing into the crowded rightward hall.

Hizashi looked between the hallway where the blond boy had disappeared and the purple-haired boy. The latter face-palmed again, and then started down the left hall, an extremely exasperated look on his face as he determinedly refused to acknowledge any member of the crowd that had gathered to watch their performance.

Hizashi thought he might’ve just spotted a few of what Shouta would call ‘problem children’.

Neito was neither late nor notably early to the written portion of the exam, just like he wanted. He’d have enough time to relax and mentally prepare himself for the test without the wait stressing him out. 

He was ready. He and Hitoshi had been studying nonstop for these exams, and they were going to ace them. 

…Or, just, like, pass. There wasn’t really much difference once the threshold was met, anyway.

After no time at all, a staff member called them all to attention. The exam was about to begin.

Kaminari Denki was floundering a little. 

Okay, that was a lie. There was nothing little about it. He really hoped he would do well on the practical exam. 

Someone called out the time. Ten minutes remained.

Denki really, really, really hoped he would do well on the practical exam.

When the buzzer for the written exam went off, Hitoshi immediately set down his pencil. Thankfully, he had finished a safe amount of time before the end, and had only been going through his answers.

A blond kid a few rows in front of him whimpered and let his head fall onto the table as soon as his test was collected. Hitoshi winced in sympathy. The test had been hard. Even without knowing his score, there were a few questions Hitoshi was positive he had flunked—not to mention the absolute monster of a long answer section at the end. UA was not messing around with their entrance exam tests.

It only made him more wary of the practical.

Hitoshi had been right: UA was not messing around. 

Robots. Massive, deadly robots.

Hitoshi had to actively calm himself down so he didn’t get so pissed off that the next person who bumped into him got a One for All-powered fist to the face.

Motherfucking robots.

How, just how, was anyone with a mental quirk supposed to do jack shit to robots when they had zero training?! Hitoshi would very much like to know where Principle Nezu’s supposed genius intellect had wandered off to when this exam was being designed. Perhaps it had eloped with his policy of nondiscrimination.

Of course, Hitoshi would never dare say that to his face, but the sentiment remained. 

Robots.

Hitoshi was distracted, just a bit, from his seething when a tall kid with glasses pointed out some boy who was mumbling in front of the entire crowd. Hitoshi winced in sympathy.

Then, the tall boy criticised Present Mic for not mentioning the Zero-Pointers ( more robots?!), arms moving like he was trying to chop the air into slices.

Hitoshi heard the person beside him huff in annoyance. 

He hoped Neito was having a better time than him.

Neito stared at the paper in front of him.

You are tasked with designing a support item for a pro hero with a quirk that makes them resistant to extreme temperatures. They are only resistant to the temperature aspect of many disasters, so your job is to come up with one support item that will help maximize both their effectiveness and safety.

You have three hours to come up with a basic draft for a support item for this pro hero, along with the start of a prototype for the item. You may choose which aspect of your project to focus more on. Note that you may be asked to justify why you allocated your time as you did.

You are not expected to have a complete or final support item by the end of this exam. Your process, explanation, knowledge, and ideas are weighed more heavily than the technical quality of your draft and prototype.

 At the end of the allocated time, you will have ten minutes to present your draft and prototype to a panel of judges for grading. Good luck. 

A vague problem, a vague description, and explicit permission to make whatever he wanted.

Neito grinned. This was going to be awesome.

Hitoshi got an instant reminder of something he had already established as soon as he laid his eyes on the testing grounds: UA was not messing around.

The cityscape was incredible. It was massive, and so detailed that Hitoshi would've thought they had just blocked off a part of the city for the entrance exams if he didn’t know it was a replica. 

And thank fuck it was, because the combination of those robots and a bunch of kids going apeshit with their quirks wasn’t going to lead to anything but utter chaos and destruction. 

Of course, Hitoshi planned to be one of the kids causing most of the destruction. He had to make it into UA, after all.

“Hey, are you the person who was talking with that blonde guy all loud before the exams started?” someone asked from behind him. 

Hitoshi ignored them. If he ignored them, they didn’t exist, and neither did Neito’s harebrained plot to make him more approachable. 

He knew Neito. He knew what sort of plans he carried out. Hell, he was part of a bunch of them. All of that was to say: he should’ve known Neito would pull something like he did. And yes, Hitoshi went along with it, but what else was he supposed to do when so many people (including Present Mic! ) were all watching him expectantly.

Neito was wrong. Hitoshi wasn’t here to make friends—especially when he wouldn’t see ninety-nine percent of the people at the entrance exams ever again.

The person walked around to face him properly. Hitoshi turned the other way, hoping that’d discourage them.

It didn’t work.

“Did you hear me? Are you the same person?” they asked, coming up in front of him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hitoshi said.

“No, you totally are! Your hair’s very recognizable, man!” 

Hitoshi raised an eyebrow at the boy’s obnoxiously bright spiky red hair. “Says you.”

Spiky-hair laughed. “Guess you’re right. My name’s Kirishima Eijirou. It’s nice to meet you, man! What’s your name?”

Hitoshi blinked at him. Kirishima smiled encouragingly.

“Shinsou Hitoshi,” he finally said, reluctantly.

“Thirty seconds to the exam, listeners! Get in your ready positions!” Present Mic’s voice said through the speakers.

Kirishima hit his fists together. “Good luck, Shinsou! Maybe we’ll see each other in class!”

Hitoshi grunted. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t. He put it out of his mind. It was time to go beat up some robots.

Shouta stared at the screens in the observation room with dead eyes. 

At every exam site, robots were being attacked and demolished. It was chaos, as the kids tried to use their quirks to their full potential for the first time in their lives. It was just like every other year—

Except that it wasn’t. Not even close.

There were at least thirty students, spread randomly throughout the exam sites, that were exceptional. Or, at least, their quirks were exceptional. 

He side-eyed All Might. 

All Might was looking at the screens nervously. Good. At least he wasn’t dense enough not to see what was right in front of them.

Those students had the same mutation as Shouta and the rest of those heroes. Civilians had it. And civilian children, at that.

All for One wasn’t just targeting adult heroes anymore (if he had ever been doing that in the first place—wasn’t that a thought). Who knew how many other civilians and children were victims of All for One’s villainous plot…

Shouta watched as an examinee detached one of her hands and flew it at a two-pointer, breaking it to pieces in an incredible show of strength. 

“What are they feeding kids these days?!” Nemuri gaped, standing up and leaning closer to the screens as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. 

With great trepidation, Shouta glanced at Nezu. He was eying the screens intently, with a glint in his eye that made Shouta feel some sort of primal fear. 

He shivered. This year was going to be interesting.

Hitoshi dodged out of the way of a laser, briefly panicking about whether he could've just died (surely not; this was just an exam, right? Right?!), before he refocused on the fight. 

He sent another quirk-powered kick at the robot, knocking it down a final time.

Shrapnel went flying. A piece rocketed towards another examinee, but Hitoshi jumped into action and pulled them out of the way before they could get hit. He didn’t wait around to be thanked.

Hitoshi took down a few more robots before a flurry of explosions came from Hitoshi’s right. The body of a half-exploded, smoking One-Pointer was soaring towards him.

“Watch out!” called a voice Hitoshi vaguely recognised. The spiky-haired boy that had introduced himself to Hitoshi—Kirishima, he thought his name was—jumped in front of him, his skin turning to some sort of stone seconds before the robot made contact.

In a whirl of screeching metal, Kirishima braced against the force of the robot and stopped it in its tracks.

Hitoshi panted, adrenaline rushing through his veins from the fighting and multiple near-death experiences he’d had in the last few minutes. UA’s entrance exams were insane! This had to be against some sort of regulation!

“Thanks,” he said between breaths.

“No problem, man!”

Whenever Uraraka Ochako saw one of UA’s robots get stabbed, exploded, shocked, or dropped from high heights (courtesy of herself, more often than not), she felt a pang deep in her chest. The sights sparked visions of piles of money bursting into flame or scattering into the wind, never to be seen again.

It wasn’t enough to stop her, though. Once she was a big-shot hero, the destruction of some puny robots wouldn’t even phase her. She’d have enough money to buy her own robots and destroy them on a whim—though of course, that wasn’t her goal.

Ochako was going to be a hero to make money. It sounded… really self-centred whenever she said it out loud, but it really wasn’t! At the root of it, she wanted to help her family. So, if the first step in her plan was setting fire to millions of yen—uh, wrecking millions of yen worth of robots, she meant—then so be it.

It was fine. She could still float robots to their deaths when she was crying a little inside. 

Izuku couldn’t figure out how to activate One for All. He had helped a few other examinees destroy some robots, and grabbed a pipe-like piece of scrap metal that he could theoretically use to attack the robots, but time was running out. He didn’t have nearly enough points to get into UA. 

All Might would be disappointed in him. All Might! Izuku couldn’t bear to disappoint his hero! 

There had to be something he could do. The people around him were incredibly strong and powerful, and they all knew how to use their quirks perfectly—

Wait. Wait! A lightbulb appeared above Izuku’s head. CopyCat2615’s friend had problems with an enhancer quirk, and while One for All wasn’t the same as that, it was similar enough that his own advice probably applied to this situation…

He’d had trouble controlling the output—drawing on too much energy when he used it—whereas Izuku couldn’t make the output high enough. Or, really, any higher than nothing.

Izuku tried looking at his problem like he would if he was someone on SupportSupport he was giving advice to. Resolutely ignoring the impending end of the exam, Izuku concentrated on his analysis.

He could do this. He’d make All Might proud.

A girl a few stations behind Neito cackled, and two seconds later, something exploded. Neito barely noticed, too focused on his blueprint. 

He was making a multi-function mask for the exam, with materials that would protect both the hero’s skin and lungs from a wide range of chemicals and gases. He had trouble figuring out how to incorporate situations where the hero’s resistance to cold came into play, but ultimately decided that as long as the mask didn’t become brittle in extreme cold, then the same functions he had originally intended for fires or explosions would also come in handy.

Neito was proud of his design. It was simple: white in the middle, blended into a stylized flame on the upper right side of the face, and then morphed into what looked like dripping water on the bottom left of the mask. The mask retracted to just cover the eye area—like the masks of heroes from old comics—when full coverage wasn’t necessary, so that the hero’s face and associated brand wouldn’t be diminished. 

Another explosion came from behind him. Someone shrieked. The girl responsible just cackled.

When Izuku saw lightning spark up his arms, a grin threatened to split his face in two. 

He’d done it! He was using One for All!

There was a moment of silence after a girl with a frog mutation grabbed the last robot with her tongue, lightning sparking around her, and threw it into oblivion.

Hizashi gaped at the screens. All around him, his coworkers were freaking out.

Yeah, there were a few in this batch of kiddos that were surprisingly— shockingly —powerful, but for one of the exam sites to run out of Nezu’s infamous robots?! Ask Hizashi at any point in his life, and he wouldn’t hesitate to say that was impossible!

Except, it clearly wasn’t.

And it had only been seven minutes! Seven minutes for all the robots in Exam Site C to be destroyed!

HIzashi watched as a few spare robots from other… less active sites streamed into Exam Site C.

Nezu clicked away at the controls. “Well, well, well. That was unexpected.”

He sounded more intrigued than annoyed. Hizashi made eye contact with Shouta, and saw the same nervous tension he felt in his husband’s eyes.

A sadistic smile formed on Nezu’s face as he watched the examinees attack the newly deployed robots. 

“I suppose I’ll have to release the Zero-Pointers a bit early this time.” He slammed his paw down on a bright red button, and the ground rumbled.

Izuku gaped up at the sky, where a massive robot towered over the cityscape. People were running for their lives all around him, screaming and tripping over one another to get away.

He almost turned and left with them, when he saw a girl trapped underneath some rubble. She was directly in the path of the Zero-Pointer.

Izuku ran towards her, unable to even consider leaving her behind. As he got closer, he recognised her as the person who had stopped him from falling on his face on the front steps of UA.

“A—Are you okay?” he asked once he was close to her. Immediately, he winced. Of course she wasn’t okay. Stupid Izuku.

“My leg’s stuck under the cement, and I can’t float it off of me because I’ve overused my quirk,” she said, face pale and faintly green, “I don’t think I’ll be able to run if I get free, anyway—I think my leg’s broken.” 

“I—I’ll try to lift it. Then you can pull your leg out and—and we can get out of here?”

“It’s worth a try,” she said, a determined expression forming on her face despite her obvious queasiness.

No matter how much Izuku strained, trying to get a good grip on the rubble, he couldn’t manage to lift it. It was too big and he couldn’t get a good grip on it in time. 

The Zero-Pointer was getting increasingly closer, each of its steps shaking the ground.

Izuku came to a conclusion: if he couldn’t move her out of the way, he’d have to stop the Zero-Pointer in its path.

He gulped, glancing up at the massive robot.

He looked back at the girl. She was staring at the robot, too, dread covering her features. Surely UA wouldn't let anyone die in an exam. 

Right?

Regardless, Izuku wouldn’t— couldn’t —take that chance.

“I’m going to try something,” Izuku said to the girl, backing up. He’d need all the momentum he could get.

Without stopping to think, he sprinted forward, activating One for All like he’d taught himself just minutes earlier. His blood thrummed in his veins as he jumped, power surging through his legs and propelling him into the air.

He hadn’t used this much power before. He felt something crack in his legs, but ignored it, reeling back his fist. 

Energy rushed around inside him: gathering, sparking, burning.

It must’ve only been a second, but it felt like ages before he finally slammed his fist into the Zero-Pointer’s face, calling out, “SMASH!”

The Zero-Pointer was decimated.

And Izuku was falling.

Ochako gawked at the scene before her.

When she saw the Zero-Pointer, her first thought had been ‘oh shit, that’s a lot of money,’ and her second had been ‘oh shit, that’s a lot of money that’s about to kill me’.

The boy she had helped before the exam had come to her aid, or had tried to, and through her nauseous haze she’d been grateful that he’d at least done that much—which was more than she could say about anyone else. 

Ochako certainly hadn’t expected him to jump fifty metres into the air and punch the Zero-Pointer hard enough for it to not only smash to pieces but go flying into the buildings behind it.

When the boy began to fall, limbs looking scarily broken, Ochako knew she had to do something.

Unfortunately, that something ended up being slapping him in the face so she could activate her quirk.

Oh well. It worked, and that’s all that really mattered…

Hitoshi was still reeling from the shit show that had been the appearance of the Zero-Pointer when Recovery Girl made it around to him and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and a packet of gummies. Absent-mindedly, he thanked her.

That thing would be in his nightmares for days.

He wished Neito was there, if only so he could see his face when he spotted the Zero-Pointer. He probably would’ve freaked out—though, to be fair, Hitoshi had done the same thing.

Neito would’ve loved to meet Recovery Girl, too, since she was such a great hero—

Recovery Girl! How had they not thought of giving Recovery Girl One for All yet?!

He’d have to tell Neito as soon as the support exams were over, and they could add her name to their unofficial and unwritten list of people who were going to get One for All.

Hopefully, both Hitoshi and Neito would be students at UA soon, which would give them plenty of opportunities to interact with Recovery Girl. They could fake injuries, or just give her the quirk if they got injured (who was he kidding, it was more likely when they got injured, not if)...

Neito had truly corrupted him, huh. 

“—and that’s how the mask will be able to retract,” Neito said, holding up his prototype and pointing to an image of his blueprint that was projected on the wall, “The hero can use it for protection without undermining their already established brand. This would also have implications for even more new merch than a regular mask, including more expensive merch with reversible or somehow transformative aspects. Which, of course, could increase both the hero’s and related parties’ profits.”

A few of the judges nodded, noting down details Neito mentioned. The presentation had been going on for a few minutes already, but Neito’s palms still felt clammy. He’d gotten more confident, though, as his presentation continued.

One of the judges, a hero Neito didn’t recognise, asked, “Why didn’t you put more time into your prototype? Right now it’s just the basic shape of the mask, with spaces for each component. Most students would have tried to flesh out the components, or add the design elements you drew to it.”

Neito nodded along to their question. He was expecting someone to ask that. “I knew I could have done all the things you talked about if I put a bit more time into the prototype, but I figured the prototype isn’t the end goal for the project.”

“Oh?” The judges looked intrigued.

“The instructions made it clear that the prototype didn’t need to be completed, and that my ideas matter more than whatever execution I could make of them in the limited time we were given. If I had put more time into physically making the mask, I wouldn’t have been able to flesh out the details of it. For example, I may not have had the time to design and analyse the filter, and then I would have had to just label it as a filter, which wouldn't have shown that I had actually thought about the necessary shape, weight distribution, and consequences of having a filter where I put it.

“I think having a more basic and incomplete prototype with a detailed and well-developed blueprint shows more of what I know.”

The judge who asked the question nodded, jotting something down. “Good. Now, about that filter you mentioned…”

There was a cat in his lap. A cat sleeping on his lap. Hitoshi wasn’t going to defy one of the fundamental laws of the universe by getting up, no matter how insistent Neito was that he do so. 

Beans and Friends had good coffee. And good cats. Just because Neito didn’t want to ever step foot in the building again didn’t mean Hitoshi would stop going there.

After the stress of the UA entrance exam, he deserved to relax with a bunch of cats for a few hours. Yes, he had literally been there for hours, since Neito had been occupied with the much longer support exam until now, but moving when a cat was asleep on his lap would be a crime.

Admittedly, Neito didn’t know his predicament.

coffee_cat

[image attached]

CopyCat

…

Fair enough.

Ten minutes? I’ll be at the bench nearby

coffee_cat

sure

but only if the cats up by then

Ten minutes later, the cat had woken up and left Hitoshi’s lap. He was both sad that she had left and glad that he wouldn’t have to disappoint Neito by staying at Beans and Friends for another couple hours.

He grabbed his long-empty disposable coffee cup and headed for the exit, throwing out the cup on the way. The barista smiled at him when he left, and Hitoshi bobbed his head in thanks. It was the same barista that Neito was avoiding like the plague—thankfully, the barista hadn’t made any indication that he remembered Hitoshi’s connection to Neito’s scheme, so Hitoshi was free to keep going to the café without concern. Not that that would’ve stopped him from going, anyway. It was his favourite café for a reason.

When Hitoshi arrived at the designated bench, the only person there was a teenager with long pink hair obscuring their face. He almost pulled out his phone to chastise Neito for being all petty and making him wait for him as well, but then he stopped. That backpack was familiar… and they had the same uniform…

“...Neito?” he asked.

The person with pink hair whipped around to look at him, flipping their hair over their shoulder dramatically like they were in a low-budget two-in-one shampoo and conditioner commercial. Yep, that was Neito. He didn’t even need to see his face to be sure.

“Hitoshi!” Neito jumped up from the bench. “How’d your exams go?”

“Why are you wearing a wig? You didn’t even go inside Beans and Friends. Where did you even get it? Didn’t you come directly from UA?”

“I’m not going to risk looking like myself when I’m so close to that barista. He could see me if he went outside!” Neito waved his hand in the air. “And don’t worry about the rest of that stuff.”

Hitoshi raised an eyebrow.

“Let’s head back to my apartment. I’m sure my mom has something nice planned for dinner!” Neito said, resolutely ignoring Hitoshi’s judgemental expression. He continued on, faux oblivious expression firmly in place, “So? How did the exams go?”

Hitoshi thought back to his first impression of the exam. A fire lit inside his soul. “They made us fight robots —”

Nezu stared at his computer screen, a map of Japan pulled up. It was littered with little red dots representing each person whose quirk had mutated in that specific way that was reminiscent of One for All. He had added new dots for the examinees who had the mutation, and was in the process of seeing if any other current or potential students of other hero schools had it as well. So far, only a select few did—and they were all originally from the Musutafu area.

A pattern was emerging. It was an obvious one, far too unsubtle to be a mistake on All for One’s part.

The dots were concentrated around Musutafu.

Clearly, he was trying to send some sort of a message. Maybe he was trying to pull all their resources and focus to one area as a distraction, or maybe he wanted them to think it was a distraction and not send more resources to Musutafu, so they wouldn’t be prepared when he attacked there. Or maybe he had accounted for even that, and thought that they would keep an extra eye on Mustafu, when it was actually just a distraction.

With what little information he had, there was no good move for Nezu to make, and he knew that All for One was fully aware of that fact.

But, All for One should never have underestimated him. Nezu welcomed challenges, and if All for One thought a little reverse psychology would trip him up, he was about to be in for a surprise.

Chapter Text

“Are you ready to go, boys?” Shiori called, pulling her shoes on.

“Almost!” Neito’s yell was followed by a thump and a crash. “We’re okay!”

Shiori laughed. 

Soon, Neito came skidding out of the hallway, sliding on his socks. Hitoshi was close behind, though he was walking normally. They were both wearing button-down shirts—Neito’s had an orange pattern on it, whereas Hitoshi’s was black—and nice slacks, even though she had told them they didn’t need to dress up when they went to her performance. Community theatre was generally casual, but it was nice to see they cared. Plus, she couldn’t blame them for wanting to make Hitoshi’s first time seeing a play even more special by dressing up. Hitoshi had even made an attempt to wrestle his hair into something neater than its usual mess. 

“Oh, you boys look so nice!” Shiori praised, patting them each on the head. Hitoshi had shot up like a sprout over the last few months and was now far taller than her, so he had to lower his head for her.

“Come on, Mom! Let’s go,” Neito was standing in the apartment building’s hallway, holding the door open for them. “You can’t be late!”

Shiori smiled. “Yes, let’s go!”

The venue was beautiful. 

It was also very fun to explore, Neito decided, even after a security guard had grabbed him and Hitoshi by the scruff of their necks and dragged them back to Neito’s mom. She managed to convince the security guard not to kick them out of the building, so long as they behaved; so, really, it all turned out in the end. 

This meant that Neito and Hitoshi actually had to behave. It was easier said than done, since behaving meant sitting in the lobby until the guests would be let into the theatre, with the security guard glaring at them periodically.

At least they got a window seat, so they could people-watch to pass the time.

“Ooh, I bet that person with the neon blue bag is going to the ballet studio on the other side of the street!” Neito whisper-yelled to Hitoshi.

Hitoshi squinted out the window. “No, they’re totally going to the gym over there. See the logo on the bag?”

“Hmm, maybe—Oh. Yeah, there they go. Shit.” 

Hitoshi smirked.

“She has cool hair,” Hitoshi commented after a pause, gesturing towards someone with a complicated braided updo. 

Neito nodded. Then, he perked up. “Oh, look at her! The woman with the rabbit ears and white hair! She looks kinda like Mirko, even with that ball cap and sunglasses on.”

“Huh, you’re right. She’d be able to do an awesome Mirko cosplay.”

Neito looked closer, angling his head to avoid the reflections in the window. “Wait, that might actually be Mirko!”

“Hmm… Yeah, the resemblance is uncanny.”

“I wonder where she’s going.” Neito smushed his face against the window. 

Mirko crossed the street, getting closer to them.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if she was coming to the theatre?” Neito joked.

Hitoshi huffed out a laugh. They kept watching her, until she paused, almost in front of them.

“Why didn’t she go past the doors?” Neito asked, “She’s opening the door? Oh, shit, she is coming here! Quick, act natural!”

He pulled away from the window and sprawled out on the bench, with one foot up on the bench, leg bent and his elbow resting on it. He stroked his chin like he was thinking, and pointedly stared at Hitoshi instead of the doorway—even when he heard it close behind Mirko and desperately wanted to know where she’d gone.

They stared unblinkingly at each other. Neito’s eyes began to burn; he forced them to stay wide open.

For an agonisingly long minute, Hitoshi matched his gaze. Then, he looked away, blinking furiously.

“Hah! I win!” 

Hitoshi scoffed. “That’s just because I wasn’t prepared.”

“ Sure .”

Neito heard the doors open again, and, to his dismay, his head instantly whipped around to see if Mirko was leaving. Spoiler alert: she wasn’t. It was just a few more people coming into the theatre.

“Hey, Neito,” Hitoshi whispered, “Isn’t she on your list?”

“Her?” he responded quietly, glancing towards Mirko, “...Yeah, she is.” 

Hitoshi nodded absently, face contorting into what Neito knew to be his thinking face.

“We’re pretty close to that park by the police station, right?”

The park All Might and Tsukauchi usually went to for lunch? Neito’s eyes widened. A grin slowly took over his face. “And intermission’s right about the time they’ll be there for lunch. I like what you’re thinking.”

The problem with being a famous pro hero is that you’re recognised wherever you go—especially when you have a notable mutation.

Usagiyama Rumi usually didn’t mind people noticing her on the street. It was an inevitability, being the number five hero, Mirko. It wasn’t like she chose her career with the goal of never having to interact with people! But, sometimes, she just wanted to be a normal, anonymous person when she walked down the street. She had her disguise down, and usually people didn’t scrutinise her closely enough to notice who she was.

However, there were times when Rumi’s disguise failed. 

Like now.

There were two boys sitting in the corner of the theatre’s lobby, talking about her. They kept discreetly glancing at her, but unlike most people who weren’t quite confident that they were actually looking at Mirko and not some look-alike, they looked completely sure of themselves.

Usually, people at that stage would come up to Rumi and ask her for an autograph. Usually, she’d grin and sign whatever they gave her, knowing that she was then going to be bombarded with other civilians who heard someone talking about Mirko being there. But this was not a usual situation.

She’d like to think that the boys were just very aware that revealing her identity in a rapidly filling lobby was a rude thing to do, but even after establishing she was Mirko, they hadn’t stopped whispering. Rumi’s rabbit quirk gave her better hearing than most people, so she could hear snippets of their conversation despite the distance between them and the noise of the crowd.

It was a bit concerning.

“And then I’ll sneak up behind—” the blond one said, voice quieting at the end of his sentence.

“—we’ll have to be fast, or—” the taller kid responded.

They mumbled incoherently to each other for a while. Then, the blond kid scoffed. “It’s not stealing! Rude!”

“Well, technically—”

“Moving on! So, I can’t just give her my water bottle, so I was thinking—” He continued too quietly for Rumi to hear. 

Whatever he said must’ve been good, because it left the taller boy nodding thoughtfully.

“That might just work. Mirko would never—”

An especially loud group of theatre-goers entered the building, drowning out the rest of his sentence. 

“—to suspect—”

“—generally a bad—”

“—time limit—”

Needless to say, Rumi was confused and mildly concerned.

She didn’t have a lot more time to think about it, though, since the doors to the auditorium opened the next moment.

After the curtains closed and the lights brightened to signal the beginning of the twenty minute intermission, Neito and Hitoshi speed walked out of the theatre.

They were the first ones out the door, and definitely the first ones—if not the only ones—to leave the building. The security guard’s gaze burned (thankfully metaphorical) holes in their backs as they left.

Once they were outside, they started to jog towards the park.

“What do you think is gonna happen to Tomoe?” Hitoshi said between breaths, “She knows way too much.”

“Oh, she’s totally going to die.”

“You think her uncle will do it?”

Neito nodded furiously. “Yeah, definitely.”

Naomasa walked alongside Toshinori down a path in the park on their way to lunch. They were walking so close that their shoulders bumped. Their arms brushed again, and Toshinori took his hand. Naomasa glanced at him, meeting his eyes with a small smile.

Suddenly, a blond kid, looking around fifteen years old and vaguely familiar, sprinted down the path towards them. He wasn’t slowing down, and at this rate he’d collide with both Naomasa and Toshinori.

Naomasa tugged Toshinori to the right, hoping for the kid to get the hint and go around them, but he just realigned himself so he would still hit them both. They moved left, and the kid followed. He was only a few metres away, now. 

The kid sprinted directly between them, forcing them to let go of each other’s hands and stumble apart.

“Sorry!” the kid called.

Naomasa’s quirk identified it as a lie. 

What was that? Just… What?

Was that kid homophobic?!

Neito’s face was grim when he slowed to a stop in front of Hitoshi. Hitoshi swallowed back the sarcastic comment he was going to make about how Neito crashed into All Might and Tsukauchi. “What’s wrong?”

Neito rested his hand on his knees to catch his breath. He looked up at Hitoshi with a serious expression. “He doesn’t have One for All.”

Shit. That was a problem.

“We need to figure out who his successor is. If only I had written down his name when All Might mentioned him on that phone call so long ago…”

“Do you remember anything at all?”

Neito’s eyebrows scrunched up. “It had ‘midori’ in it somewhere… Or maybe I’m thinking that because he had green hair. Or was he wearing green?” Neito shook his head. “Ugh, whatever. It might’ve been Midorikawa? Maybe Midomaru? Midomaru Izuro? Hmm. Isami? Ichio? Zenji?”

“So, we’re pretty much starting from scratch.”

“Yeah.” Neito sighed. “At least we might be able to figure it out by just following All Might around a lot for a while.”

Hitoshi grimaced.

“Wait! All Might’s quirkl—mrph!” 

Hitoshi slammed a hand over Neito’s mouth. He glanced around conspicuously. “Shh!”

Neito shoved his hand off him. He whispered, “All Might’s quirkless!”

Hitoshi’s eyes widened. That meant—

“That hypocrite!” Neito whisper-yelled, “He was so rude to his successor about being quirkless when he himself is quirkless?! And then he gave him his quirk—oh, that’s kinda weird, isn’t it?”

Hitoshi frowned.

“Maybe the person who had it before him did the same thing? I wonder…” Neito trailed off. 

Suddenly, Hitoshi remembered what they were in the middle of. He pulled out his phone and checked the time. “Shit—we've gotta go!”

He grabbed Neito’s arm and dragged him back towards the theatre.

Neito’s mom posed on the stage, standing with her sword ‘impaling’ another actor. “You lived far too long, Uncle,” she said to him. 

Neito leaned forward in his seat.

“How could you be so cold, Tomoe?! We’re family!” the man spluttered.

She ripped the sword out of his chest, and he fell to his knees, clutching uselessly at his wound. 

“You had no qualms about killing your family, so I’m not going to extend that courtesy to you.”

Ominous music began to play, smoke spilling onto the stage. Out of the fog came the actors of all the uncle’s murder victims. 

“You killed us,” a chorus of ghostly whispers accused.

“They’ll deal with you once you join them. I’m just letting them have their revenge.”

The ghosts stepped closer to the uncle, and echoed, “Join us.”

“No! Stop, don’t—” Tomoe’s uncle trembled in fear, begging the ghosts for mercy as they approached. “Please—!”

The ghosts surrounded him, the music swelling and drowning out his voice as the stage grew darker. The curtains drew shut.

Immediately, Neito started clapping vigorously, along with the rest of the audience. Smiling widely and practically vibrating in his seat, he glanced at Hitoshi, and saw him sitting slack-jawed with awe, eyes fixed on the stage’s closed curtains.

Hitoshi had a look in his eyes that Neito recognised from years ago, when his mom and grandma had taken him to his first play. His dad had been there as well, but he wasn’t important—all he’d done was distract Neito by commenting on how the villains could have done better. At least he hadn’t wrecked the whole experience. 

Neito remembered feeling such an incredible, overwhelming sense of wonder when he watched the actors move across the stage, somehow immersing him entirely in their world. 

After the last scene of the play—the exact moment Hitoshi was currently experiencing for the first time, where the curtains closed for a split second between the final scene and the actors’ bows—Neito had been so excited he started to look towards his grandma. But, before he could see her face, she had captured his head in between her hands, holding him so his gaze was fixed on the stage. “Don’t look away so soon,” she had whispered in his ear, “Remember this feeling. It’s the point of theatre—it’s the thing you’re trying to make people feel when you get up on a stage.”

Neito had never forgotten it, and he hoped Hitoshi wouldn’t, either.

“That was awesome!” 

“That plot twist—”

Neito cut Hitoshi off, eyes sparkling, “Tomoe killed her uncle?! I totally thought the opposite was going to happen!”

Hitoshi nodded vigorously. “How did you do it? Hide it from us, I mean?”

“Yeah, it’s been months and we never had a clue!”

Shiori smiled smugly. “I’m just that good of an actor, I suppose.” 

“Really, mom?” Neito groaned.

Hitoshi cocked an eyebrow at her, unimpressed. 

“Seriously. I don’t know what you were expecting me to say.” She raised an eyebrow right back at him, laughing a little. “We got the script, and a couple of the other actors and I were talking, and we decided to surprise our families. Renho’s been boasting that her husband thinks the play’s a comedy, since she’s been practising only specific parts of the script when he’s around to hear it. He’s going to freak out when he sees it tomorrow.”

Neito snickered. “I wish I could see that.”

“I’ll make sure to tell you guys all about it.” Shiori winked conspiratorially. Then she eyed the boys, turning on her certified Mom Voice. “Though, it’s probably a good thing you’re not coming any of the other nights. I’m not sure I trust you two to stay out of trouble after that stunt you pulled today.”

Neito sulked, while Hitoshi tensed. Her face softened. 

“Nothing really bad happened, so it’s alright—this time.” Shiori ruffled Hitoshi’s hair, sighing fondly. “There are right ways to go about things. I can excuse this behaviour the first time, but you really should know the right way to sneak around places you're not supposed to be by now! Neito, did you not learn anything from your grandma? Getting caught by a security guard is such a rookie mistake!”

“I know, mom.” Neito hung his head. 

“Even your father could’ve done better than that, and he’s practically eight feet tall!”

Hitoshi stopped trying to make himself look smaller in favour of staring back and forth between Shiori and Neito, evidently baffled. Ah, perhaps he was confused about the reference to a man whom he’d never met.

Meanwhile, Neito’s face had taken on the tension it always did when Atomu came up. 

Hastily, she tried to lighten the mood. “Enough with that! So, Hitoshi, have you decided to change your mind and try your hand at acting?”

Hitoshi’s face paled abruptly.

“Do you think she’s asleep yet?” Hitoshi whispered.

“Probably? I mean, it is almost midnight, and she has a shift and then another performance tomorrow.” Neito responded, pressing some buttons on his controller. On the TV screen, his avatar walked into the wall right next to a door. 

Hitoshi snickered at him. “Why am I better at this when you’re the one that owns the game?”

“ Moving on —”

Hitoshi huffed. 

“—we should talk about what we’re going to do about our plan, now that we don’t know who has One for All. The obvious solution is to follow All Might some more and figure out who his successor is from that. The problem is—”

“We’re busy.” 

They both sigh. 

The end of middle school was no joke. Final exams were coming up quickly, and they were still anxiously waiting for their letters from UA. That didn’t leave them with a lot of time to spend stalking All Might. Plus, if they hadn’t yet been able to catch All Might meeting with his successor in all the times they’d been able to find him outside of school hours, it wasn’t likely they'd suddenly be successful now. 

“It’s too bad you can’t just copy it from me. That would’ve made this whole thing a lot simpler from the start…”

Neito nodded. It had been an exciting thought, back when he first gave Hitoshi One for All. They’d tried it out almost immediately, but were ultimately disappointed. Whenever Neito copied Hitoshi’s quirk, he only got the enhancement part of it, not the ability to pass it on to people through DNA. He had a theory that only the original One for All had both aspects—it almost made it seem like there was something special to the original one, like some sort of ghost was haunting it and giving its users the power to pass it on.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t disappointing, especially now that they didn’t know who had the original One for All.

“We might just have to take a break for now,” Neito said.

Hitoshi nodded. “We’ll see All Might more often if we get into UA, so we can just figure it out then. It might be nice to have a break.”

Neito grimaced. “The only problem is my list.”

He pushed some buttons on his controller, moving his avatar into a corner near Hitoshi’s. “Don’t let anyone kill me. I need to go grab my notebook!”

He shuffled out of their makeshift blanket nest, nearly tripping over a bowl of chips he’d forgotten about. 

Neito was only gone for a moment, but when he returned to the living room with his notebook and pen in hand, his half of the TV screen had a red filter over it and Hitoshi was mumbling a steady stream of, “Shit, shit, shit—”

Hitoshi’s avatar was sprinting down a hallway, taking damage even as he ran. 

Neito bolted back to the blanket nest, tossed his notebook on the ground, and quickly used his last respawn on himself. He frantically pressed buttons on his controller as he ran to help Hitoshi. “Seriously?!”

“It’s not my fault!” Hitoshi cried, “He must’ve noticed you stopped moving and decided to come for us!”

“ He? ” Neito glanced at the map in the corner of his half of the screen. He was coming up behind Hitoshi’s pursuer quickly. “Are you saying it’s—”

Hitoshi’s part of the screen turned red. 

“DustyFingers118,” they said at the same time, glowering at the familiar white-haired avatar in front of them.

DustyFingers118 turned around, and Neito panicked, clicking a bunch of random buttons in his attempt to attack him. He bolted behind a pole. “What do I do?! He’s gonna kill me!”

“Gimme your remote,” Hitoshi said, staring at the screen calculatingly, “I’m out of lives for this round.”

Neito shoved it at him. Hitoshi immediately began sprinting his avatar down a series of complicated hallways. “If I can just get a bit ahead of him, then there’s this hallway that loops around where I bet I can get behind him and get him.”

Neito leaned forward, watching the TV intently. 

DustyFingers118 shot at them, but it wasn’t enough to kill Neito’s avatar.

“Almost there…” Hitoshi whispered.

Neito grabbed the bowl of chips and started eating them as fast as he could, as if that would help his video game character move faster.

Hitoshi’s eyes were locked on the screen. Neito glanced back and forth between him and the TV. 

“So close…” Hitoshi said, “And—”

The screen turned red. 

‘Game Over,’ the words on the TV proclaimed.

They both stared at the screen in silence for a solid minute.

Hitoshi groaned and flopped backwards onto a pile of pillows he’d hogged. “I was so close.”

Neito flopped down next to him. “What was that? The fifteenth time he’s beaten us in the past month?”

“More like the twentieth.”

They sighed.

After a moment, Neito closed his eyes.

“Weren’t you saying something about your notebook before that whole thing?” Hitoshi asked.

“Right.” He shuffled around, finding it shoved off to the side. He flipped it open to the first page, which was technically a page somewhere between the tenth and twentieth, since he kept ripping pages out and destroying them once he was done using them. It wasn’t the best system.

The most recent page had Recovery Girl’s name written on it in Neito’s homemade cypher, along with a few other heroes’ names and some details about them.

Neito tried to take very minimal notes, so most of the information on the page were one or two word reminders to help him recall something he’d researched or thought of before. It worked, for the most part. Again, it wasn’t the best system.

Hitoshi propped himself up with an elbow. “What’s wrong with your notebook?”

“I think I’m going to start forgetting important things soon.” Neito grimaced. “If I can’t clear anyone off my list, then it’s going to build up. But writing much more than this down here is a bad idea, since someone could find and decode it at any time when I’m not here to protect it.”

Hitoshi hummed. “What if you just make a list that’s always with you? Just keep it in your pocket, and then you can write more than you would in your notebook, since no one’ll be able to get to it without you knowing.”

“That’s not a bad idea…” Writing all the names he wanted on a list sounded really nice. He didn’t like the idea of accidentally giving the wrong person One for All because he misremembered something. “It’s smaller than a notebook, too, so if I drop it, it might just get thrown out instead of read,” he thought aloud, “Especially since it’d look like gibberish to someone who doesn’t care enough to try to decode it.”

Neito tore the first page out of his notebook. He scribbled Mirko’s name under the others’ and then folded it up and put it in the pocket of his pyjama pants. “There! I’ll add more stuff to it later.”

Hitoshi nodding, yawning. “Sounds like a plan.”

Neito yawned as well. “Should we—”

The TV pinged. They both looked at the screen, which had gone back to the minigame menu while they were distracted.

A notification had popped up near the bottom of the screen.

Hitoshi squinted at it. “DustyFingers118 wants to do a two v one battle?”

“Sleep is for the weak! Let’s do this! This time we’ll beat him for sure, since he won’t be sneaking up on us!”

They did not.

“Two v one matches are so unfair!”

“KATSUKI!”

“WHAT, HAG?!”

“YOU’VE GOT MAIL!”

Katsuki slammed his textbook shut and went downstairs, definitely acting very suave and not at all like an excited child.

He snatched the letter out of the old hag’s hand.

He wasn’t nervous. Obviously, he got first place; there was no doubt about it.

A disk fell out of the envelope when he ripped it open. A hologram flickered to life and All Might appeared in front of him, smiling while he welcomed Katsuki into UA’s hero course. Katsuki grinned viciously.

Then, the rankings for the practical exam appeared. His grin turned into a snarl and a vein on his forehead popped.

Deku got in?! And not only that, but that stupid fucking Deku got first place?!

It had to be a fluke. He must’ve stolen someone’s points, or—or—

The hologram scrolled down to show Katsuki’s rank.

That’s right: scrolled down .

His blood ran cold. 

“THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN FOURTEENTH PLACE?!”

“Boys! You’ve got mail!”

Hitoshi and Neito took one glance at each other, and then they were instantly at the front door. Neito reached for the letters.

Neito’s mom held them away from him. “Nuh-uh. Help with the groceries first.” She handed Neito a bag. 

Hitoshi grabbed one from her as well and bolted after Neito to the kitchen. The groceries were put away in record time, though somewhat haphazardly.

Neito's mom leaned against the kitchen counter, holding out two letters with UA’s seal on them. 

“Let’s open them at the same time!” Neito said, grabbing his.

Hitoshi agreed, reverently taking the envelope addressed to him.

“Thanks again for letting me use your mailing address,” Hitoshi told Neito’s mom. 

“No problem!” She patted him on the head, and then whispered, “Let me know if you need anything else, alright?”

Hitoshi nodded sheepishly. He felt like he was lying a bit, telling her he wanted to use her address because it was more convenient. It wasn’t technically a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either. He mostly just didn’t want his fosters to be the ones getting his mail from UA. He didn’t trust them. They were… okay, compared to some he’d had, but that wasn’t a high bar.

“You ready?” Neito asked.

Hitoshi stared at the letter. The fate of his future relied on it, and all that jazz. Best to get it over with quickly, right? “Yeah. On three?”

“One,” Neito started, “two… and three!”

They tore open the envelopes. A little metal disk fell out of each of them. When they landed on the countertop, two holograms flickered to life. All Might appeared above Hitoshi’s disk, and Power Loader appeared above Neito’s.

“Congratulations, Monoma Neito!” Power Loader said, not quite in unison with All Might’s, “Congratulations, Shinsou Hitoshi!”

“You passed the written exam—” All Might said.

Power Loader’s voice overlapped with his, telling Neito, “—with flying colours!”

“You got thirty-nine villain—”

 “—you scored—”

“That’s not all there is to the hero exam!”

“—the judges decided that—”

“—rescue points!”

“—they liked your rationale, and—”

“—so, you got—”

“Congratulations—”

“—graulations, this is your—”

“—support—”

“—hero academia!”

The holograms faded away.

Hitoshi and Neito looked at each other.

“We got in?” Hitoshi said.

“We got in!” Neito confirmed.

“You got in!” Neito’s mom squealed, clapping her hands.

Hitoshi looked over at her, grinning, only to come face to face with All Might. He shrieked, jumping backward.

Neito glanced at them, and jumped when he saw his mom.

“Congratulations!” she said, her voice her own, but her face looking exactly like All Might’s, down to the hair tufts. 

“Mom!”

“Ah, that never gets old!” she said, morphing her face back into her own. “You should’ve seen your faces!”

Neito groaned.

Hitoshi huffed a laugh.

“Wait.” Neito put his hands on Hitoshi’s shoulders. “We got into UA!”

Hitoshi nodded slowly. It still didn’t feel quite real. “We did!”

“Hitoshi, we got into UA! ”

“We did!”

“We—”

“I’m going to stop you right there.” Neito’s mom had a smile on her face. “Come on, let’s go get ice cream!”

“Hmm. Points taken off for explosions? Shouldn’t that be points added for explosions?”

Hatsume Mei stared at the hologram floating above her workbench with a hand on her hip. In her other hand, she held an empty envelope with UA’s name on it, though the characters were so covered in grease they were hardly legible. 

Power Loader finished his spiel, ending with, “Congratulations, this is your support academia!”

Mei took a moment to celebrate. She clapped her hands and did a little twirl. “I did it!”

Then, her eyes locked on the disk that the hologram came from. She grabbed a screwdriver and snatched it off the workbench. “Now, how does this thing work…”

Shouta and Hizashi had put a nightlight in Eri’s room as soon as they learned she didn’t like the dark. That first night at their house, she stayed in their room because she was too scared of being alone in the dark. It reminded her too much of her old room.

But now it was dark again.

It was making her wonder if it had all just been a dream, and she had never actually become Yamazawa Eri.

Tears welled up in her eyes. She clutched the blanket close to her, gaze darting around the room, catching on shadowy silhouettes that looked like monsters.

“Don’t be scared.”

Eri froze. Her eyes locked on the spot where she heard the voice come from. There, in the darkness, was the silhouette of a towering man. She opened her mouth to scream or call for help, but no sound came out. Eri began to tremble.

“What did I just say? I’m not going to hurt you, so don’t be scared. You’re not with Overhaul.”

Eri didn’t recognise his voice, but the disgust in it when he talked about… about that man made her relax. Maybe he was telling the truth. “Why’s the light gone?” she asked in a small, shaky voice.

“I didn’t want you to be scared of me, but I suppose I failed at that.” The voice chuckled. “My face… I have an injury that isn’t pleasant to look at.”

“Who are you?” She didn’t ask why he was there, even though she wanted to, since she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to already know that. If he was in Shouta and Hizashi’s apartment, then he must be allowed to be there. And only nice people were allowed in Shouta and Hizashi’s apartment.

“You may call me Sensei.”

“Sensei? Are you going to teach me something?”

Sensei chuckled again. “Yes, little Eri.”

“Eraser—I mean Shouta?”

Shouta glanced away from the list of students he was looking over, face softening. “Yes, Eri?”

She looked up at him innocently. “When’s Sensei going to come back?”

He frowned. “Sensei? Did Nezu tell you to call him that?” 

He was going to have words with the rat if that was the case. His daughter wasn’t old enough to be corrupted by him! And she’d never be old enough, if Shouta had a say in it.

“No. Sensei ,” Eri emphasised, like Shouta should know what she was talking about.

Dread began to well up inside Shouta. “Can you tell me more about this Sensei person?”

Eri huffed. “He came to teach me about my cur—my quirk. And he got me to use it on him, but he said it wouldn't hurt him because he’s really old. And it didn’t make him disappear! Sensei even said it made his injury go away, so now he’s better and can go see his family again!”

Shouta’s face went blank. 

Fuck .

Neito smiled evilly at the cards in his hands. Three bricks and three wood; the perfect cards.

It was his turn. Neito rolled the dice. A six. He collected an ore card and two more wood cards.

“Your hand’s getting pretty full there, Neito,” Hitoshi said, eying his fan of cards. 

He was right. Neito was over the seven card limit, so if someone rolled a seven and unleashed the robber, he was screwed.

Or so they thought.

Neito’s smile sharpened. Slowly, he placed each pair of bricks and wood on the table in front of him.

“No,” his mom whispered, “No!”

Neito put the final pair down with a flourish.

He grabbed three road pieces and placed them down on the Catan game board. The move simultaneously blocked Hitoshi from getting to the other side of the board and made his trail of road pieces longer than his mom’s.

Hitoshi let his head fall on the table in despair, no doubt devastated that he would never be able to access the best parts of the board. Neito’s mom clasped the longest road achievement card to her chest disbelievingly. “NOOOO!”

Neito cackled.

“I’m sure you already know this, but your home isn’t safe anymore,” Naomasa said grimly, “Not for Eri, and not for you two, either. Even though he targeted you months ago, Aizawa, he may still have plans he hasn’t yet executed.”

Aizawa and Yamada’s expressions hardened.

Nezu hopped up onto the kitchen counter. “Luckily, I have a solution! UA has state-of-the-art security, and an entire building with residences for staff.” Nezu glanced around the kitchen and into the living room. “I daresay the apartment you would move into would be bigger than this one, as well, and would have three bedrooms instead of just two.”

Aizawa and Yamada looked at each other. They seemed to be having an entire conversation with their eyes, like married couples sometimes did. Naomasa was lost after the first three seconds. 

He directed his attention towards the living room, where Eri was playing with Toshinori. He watched as Toshinori crouched down and helped her climb onto his shoulders. When he stood up, her eyes widened with wonder, and she pointed at everything like it was the first time she’d seen it. Toshinori’s face was light, the tension gone from his shoulders.

How could All for One use a sweet child like her for his villainous plans? He even manipulated her into taking pity on him by making up a story about a family he couldn’t visit because of his injury! What bullshit. 

“Fine,” Aizawa finally said.

Yamada’s eyes lit up. 

They looked at Nezu, and Yamada said, “We’ll take it!”

“Wonderful!” Nezu chirped.

“But,” Aizawa interjected, “Before we agree to anything officially, you’re showing us the whole contract we’d be signing.”

He was probably scared Nezu would sneak in a clause that forced him to stay a teacher at UA for another ten years or so. Aizawa was paranoid like that—though it was well founded, since Naomasa wouldn’t put anything past Nezu.

A small, sly smile formed on Nezu’s face. “Of course.”

Naomasa pitied the poor souls that would have to read that contract. 

Izuku sat cross legged a few metres away from the shoreline of Dagobah Beach. The water lapped up against the sand rhythmically. He stared at it, calming himself and practicing circulating One for All through his body.

He was going to UA.

The sun’s first rays reflected against the water. The beach was spotless; it was practically impossible to tell what it had looked like a year ago. Izuku felt pride well up in him.

He was going to UA, and he was going to be a hero!

Chapter Text

Izuku’s All Might alarm blared at him to wake up. Luckily for Izuku, he didn’t have to experience being jolted from sleep by an alarm! …Because he had laid awake most of the night, stomach swirling with anxiety. Okay, maybe that wasn’t something to brag about, but Izuku had decided to look on the positive side! He was going to his dream school, in his dream program, where his childhood friend-turned-bully was also going, where he might get kicked out as soon as they saw how incompetent he was—

His alarm went off again. Izuku slammed the off button. 

Shoji Mezo’s phone vibrated itself off his bedside table while he laid in bed and stared up at the ceiling. He listened to the tune of his alarm play on repeat. 

Today was the day—his first day at UA.

A knock on the door woke Fukidashi Manga up, just minutes before his alarm. He almost started grumbling about losing sleep, but then he remembered—

Classical music drifted towards her, and though Momo was already out of bed and had started getting ready for the day, she took a moment to listen to the—

—would like to say that she wasn’t nervous, but despite that claim, Itsuka had still set five alarms just in case—

Aizawa woke to the smell of coffee—

The start of school would be a battle, but he would sparkle through it all! Positivity always won—nothing could take that away from him, not even All—

—he was going to need a lot of coffee to put up with new first years again—

—and Hakagure Toru jolted awake, face lighting up when she remembered—

It was the first day of high school!

Neito hopped out of bed as soon as his alarm went off, tripping over Hitoshi’s legs as he scrambled to get up and pull the blinds open with a flourish. 

“Rise and shine, Hitoshi! It’s the first day of school!”

Hitoshi groaned, covering his eyes with his blanket. “Ow, what was that for? You kick me and then blind me?! What a way to wake up.”

“Sorry! And you’re on the floor, it’s hard not to kick you.”

Hitoshi uncovered his face just to give Neito a look. “I always sleep on the floor when I stay over. You’d think you’d be better at this than you are.”

Neito sputtered. “Well, I’m not the one going into heroics—support students don’t need to be graceful!”

“ Sure,” Hitoshi drawled.

Neito gave him a gentle kick on the leg to spite him. “Come on, let’s get ready—Mom said if we’re up early, she’ll make crepes!”

Stomachs full of slightly burnt crepes, Neito and Hitoshi began their commute to UA. The train was busy that early in the morning, and Neito could see a few other teenagers in UA uniforms nearby, fiddling nervously with one of their backpack straps or playing around on their phones.

Ah, right! Neito’s hand went to his pocket, slipping out his phone. A piece of paper almost fell on the floor of the train when he did so, and he scrambled to catch it without bumping into too many people. He put it back in his other pocket instead, so it wouldn’t fall out again. The List (with a capital L), as he had dubbed it, was far too precious to be put at that sort of risk. Even though he had encoded the names of all the people he wanted to give One for All to, it still wasn’t something that should fall into anyone else’s hands. Not to mention, there was no guarantee Neito would remember everyone’s names if he did somehow lose it! He was still getting used to having it in his pocket all the time, but he was already a hundred times better at keeping it there than he had been when he first started carrying it around.

When the List was safely tucked away, Neito turned on his phone. He had seen a notification on SupportSupport earlier that morning, which he had almost forgotten about in his haste to get out the door in time.

SmallMight

good luck today! plus ultra!

CopyCat2615

Thanks, you too!

SmallMight had gotten into the heroics department at UA, and Neito felt both anxious and excited when he realised for the first time a few weeks ago that they might meet each other in person. Of course, they probably wouldn’t know each others’ identities (at least not at first), but maybe they’d end up as friends! It was like all the different parts of his life were colliding at once.

Regardless of whether or not he met SmallMight at UA, he was certain that his life was about to get a whole lot more interesting.

Campus felt busier than the train station. Neito had insisted they leave extra early to counteract any potential mishaps with the train and to give them enough time to walk calmly and slowly to their respective classes. Hitoshi was secretly grateful for it, even though it meant he had to wake up far earlier than anyone should ever have to wake up. Though, to be fair, his insomnia wouldn’t have let him get all that much sleep anyway.

When they tearfully (in Neito’s case, but Hitoshi knew he was just being dramatic) parted ways, Hitoshi made his way to class 1-A’s homeroom. He kept his face carefully neutral and posture relaxed, despite his rapidly beating heart, and opened the massive door.

Not a lot of students were there yet—maybe less than a quarter of the class. There was one girl with long back hair in a high ponytail ruffling around in her backpack, and a boy with red and white hair sitting in the far back on his phone. A few others were milling about, making conversation. Hitoshi found his assigned desk—near the middle of the room, but by the wall with windows—and settled down to wait for the start of class.

A few minutes later, the door slammed open, and a student with spiky blond hair and an angry expression stormed in. He sat down, and Hitoshi went back to his phone, aww-ing internally at the cute cat that had popped up on his feed.

“Hey, Shinsou?”

Hitoshi looked up. Kirishima, from the entrance exam, was grinning back at him. “Hi.”

“I knew it was you! Congrats on making it into 1-A! You pulled some really manly moves during the exam!”

Hitoshi grunted. “You, too.”

“Aw, thanks!” Kirishima grinned. He opened his mouth to say something else, but before he could, the angry kid and another one of his classmates started arguing very loudly.

1-H was easy enough to find. Once he asked for directions from a third year, that was. Otherwise, Neito would probably still be wandering the halls like a spectre. Maybe the ghost of a long-lost first year student haunting the halls would be the thing that finally convinced UA to put up some better signage, but it wasn’t like Neito was volunteering.

The classroom didn’t look like a classroom so much as a workshop badly masquerading as one, which had Neito internally squealing with excitement. The teacher’s desk was at the front of the room, along with some incredibly cool-looking (and presumably dangerous) equipment. Though every student had a massive desk-workspace to themselves—complete with their own set of tools and a rolling chair—the desks were pushed up against another person’s, so that each student had what Neito assumed to be some sort of lab partner. A few people had already found their way to the classroom, and the sound of quiet conversation filled the room.

Neito scanned the nameplates on the front of the desks, landing on the one that proclaimed his own name. His eyes gleamed as he took in the space that was his for the next year, and he rubbed his hands together with anticipation, already imagining what he might build.

A series of metallic clangs from beside him interrupted his plotting. Neito whipped his head to the side, only just noticing that his desk partner was already in her seat. She was fiddling with a pair of pliers and a hunk of metal, wires poking out of it at odd angles. Her deskspace was a mess, and the first day of school hadn’t even begun!

Neito’s eyes narrowed. Her project looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t pinpoint why.

“What are you making?”

The girl looked up abruptly, goggle-covered eyes boring into him. Then, she pulled the goggles off, letting them sit on her forehead. Faint soot circles were left on her face. How had that even happened?! It wasn’t even nine in the morning!

Oblivious to Neito’s inner turmoil, she smiled widely and dove into an explanation, “This is for my newest baby—it’ll stabilise it when it flies, since the whole jetpack design is very off balance right now. And prone to exploding, but that’s another thing entirely—”

Baby?! Neito gaped at her. Why was a baby flying?!

Wait; an exploding jetpack, a ‘baby’. That sounded awfully familiar…

“—because my baby will fly so good once I add this piece, and then—-”

Neito cut her off. “You’re mei_explode from SupportSupport, aren’t you?”

His desk partner blinked. He noticed the crosshairs in her eyes zoom in on him and then back out. Then a huge grin took over her face once more, and she stood up, bowing to him. “That’s me! Hatsume Mei, future CEO of Hatsume Industries. And who might you be?”

Neito bowed back with a flourish, matching her slightly feral smile. “A pleasure. Monoma Neito—or, as you might know me better, CopyCat2615—at your service.”

From the front of the classroom, Neito thought he heard a whisper of something like, “oh no, there’s two of them, ” but before he had time to think twice, their teacher called for the class’ attention.

Their teacher, who was Power Loader.

And Power Loader had a copy of One for All—a copy which Neito himself had given him, in a scheme that he didn’t entirely remember. It might’ve been the one where he and Hitoshi helped run an auntie’s food truck? Or maybe another with coffee (there were a lot of those), or with another drink, or even the mini reverse-heist idea Hitoshi and Neito had planned out at two in the morning.

Well, here’s to hoping the forgetfulness went both ways.

Hitoshi’s homeroom teacher was Eraserhead! Eraserhead—no, he was supposed to call him Aizawa-sensei. Aizawa-sensei! This was the best day of his life! He was going to be taught by the Eraserhead—his favourite hero—the one he and Neito had given—

Hitoshi froze.

Oh fuck, his homeroom teacher was Eraserhead.

“—but since you’ll be choosing your support concentration in second year, you’ll start more specialised courses then. For now, everyone will be taking the same general high school courses, as well as a few support courses to introduce you to the different paths you can take.” Power Loader held up a stack of papers. “Today, I would like you to fill out this short questionnaire to see which areas of support you’re already leaning towards and to help me get to know you better. It’s useful for me to see where the class is at, but it’s also to get you thinking about what you might be interested in doing in the future. You’ll complete a similar quiz near the end of the year to see how your interests and abilities have evolved.”

Power Loader passed the papers around. Neito pulled out a pencil and started on the first question: What drew you to support?

Hitoshi rushed to change into his gym uniform. Eraser—Aizawa-sensei had told them to be fast, and Hitoshi was certain he wasn’t one to say things like that lightly. There was already the chance that if Aizawa-sensei paid too much attention to him on the first few days of school—before Hitoshi was firmly categorised as only a student in his mind—he might recognise him from Beans and Friends. Hitoshi wasn’t going to risk being late and drawing Aizawa-sensei’s attention to himself.

Plus, he didn’t want to disappoint his hero. Admittedly, that was most of what was fuelling his uncharacteristic speed.

Hitoshi exited the change room before most of the other boys. In fact, only a few other people were in the field besides Aizawa-sensei. One of them was the boy with red and white split hair; Hitoshi went to stand semi-nearby him, nodding once in greeting, both of them content to leave each other alone.

Once all the students had joined them, Aizawa-sensei glowered disapprovingly at the small crowd. “You’re all late. Don’t do that again.”

Then, Aizawa-sensei announced what they were there for: a quirk assessment test. It was just like the physical assessments they had done previously in school, except they were allowed, and encouraged, to use their quirks.

“What about the opening ceremony?!” A girl with a brown bob asked.

“There’s no time to waste on stuff like that in the hero course.”

The girl gaped at AIzawa-sensei.

“Now, let’s begin. Midoriya Izuku, where are you?” Aizawa-sensei’s eyes scanned the students until they landed on a boy who had shakily raised his hand. He had green hair and freckles, and his eyes were blown wide with fear, which Hitoshi could understand, since literally everyone was staring at him.

Midoriya… Hitoshi frowned, scrutinising the boy. For some reason his name sounded familiar.

Aizawa stared Midoriya down. “Midoriya Izuku, you got first place in the entrance exams. What was your high score on the ball toss in middle school?”

Midori-ya? What was it about ‘Midori’ that—

“What the hell? Deku?! This has to be some sick joke…” muttered the angry blond from before, fury practically radiating off him. Midoriya flinched.

“F-forty-four metres, sensei,” Midoriya stuttered out, looking even more terrified than before.

AIzawa held up a softball and gestured to a circle drawn on the grass. “Stand in the circle and throw this using your quirk.”

Midoriya took the ball, visibly steeling himself. His face took on a serious expression as he stepped into the circle.

Then he wound up his arm, green lighting arcing around his body, and threw.

“Seven hundred and five point three metres,” Aizawa announced.

Excited murmurs erupted throughout the class. “Wow, this is gonna be so awesome!” someone said. 

Hitoshi’s face went slack. That lightning was familiar—something he recognised regardless of the colour being green rather than his own purple. It was a product of One for All.

One for All— Midoriya. Midoriya Izuku. Neito had mentioned something about thinking ‘Midori’ might be in the name of All MIght’s successor! This kid even had green hair! Hioshi’s mind was running a mile a minute. He’d have to point him out to Neito—

“WHAT THE FUCK?! EXPLAIN YOURSELF, DEKU!”

The angry blond boy launched himself at Midoriya—quite literally, since explosions erupted under his palms, propelling him forward. Moments before he made contact, his explosions suddenly disappeared and a grey cloth sprang out and wrapped around the angry boy’s torso.

“What the hell is this?!” he spat, struggling against it.

“My capture weapon,” Aizawa said dryly, eyes glowing red and hair floating behind him, “And my quirk, Erasure. Don’t try to attack a classmate again—I expelled my entire class last year and I won’t hesitate to expel you, too.” Suddenly, Aizawa turned to the rest of the class. “That goes for the rest of you, too.”

Everyone froze.

Aizawa smiled, a terrifying thing. “Don’t think I didn’t hear you muttering about how fun this was going to be. Whoever ends up in last place over all eight tests will be expelled.

“Now, let’s begin.”

Hitoshi gulped.

“What concentration are you the most interested in?” Neito asked Hatsume, still reviewing his own results.

She held up her paper, a big red circle drawn around the words ‘Support Equipment Concentration’. “I already know what I’m doing—I’ve known ever since I heard of it! I know which university’s program I want to get into, too, since they have the best workshop in the country.” Hatsume’s face took on a dreamy look.

Neito blinked. “Impressive.”

“Thanks! What about you?”

Neito slid his paper over to where their desks met. “I’m probably leaning the most towards the costume design concentration. I think I like it, but it’s not like I need to decide anything today.”

“Iida Tenya, three point zero four seconds on the fifty-metre dash,” Aizawa announced.

Ingenium’s brother, Iida Tenya, looked devastated. Asui Tsuyu had beaten him soundly. He stared down at his hands with a haunted look on his face. “I’m… that much slower? But… I—I’m fast… my quirk is Engine, I—!”

Shouta was tired. When did this become his life? 

“Don’t take the results of a single test so seriously,” he said, patting Iida’s shoulder once. Tensei would be disappointed if he didn’t prevent his brother from having a mental breakdown on the first day of classes.

“Asui, are you alright?!” someone—Uraraka, he guessed—called out.

Shouta whipped his head around, only to see Uraraka running towards a small crater in the ground of the training field. That hadn’t been there last he checked.

“I’m okay, kero,” a voice responded from the crater. Asui sat up, holding a hand to her head. “I didn’t think I would go that far.”

Shouta sighed a world-weary sigh. “Don’t experiment with your quirks outside of the tests today.”

A girl with pink skin—Ashido Mina—froze conspicuously. Shouta turned a quirked glare on her, seeing that the grass underneath her feet had begun hissing and was turning an odd colour.

“Uraraka, take Asui to the infirmary—actually, I’ll just call Recovery Girl here.” Shouta had a feeling they’d need her a lot today. He sent out a message as quickly as he could and then turned back to the fifty-metre dash. “The next pair is Bakugou Katsuki and Midoriya Izuku.”

Bakugou’s face morphed into a competitive snarl. Midoriya squeaked.

Shouta wanted a raise. No, scratch that, he wanted a whole lot more than a raise if he was going to have to deal with this class for the whole year.

Neito sat with the rest of class 1-H in the auditorium. He scanned the crowd for any sign of Hitoshi, but couldn't spot him anywhere.

“Hey, look at that!” Kanbayashi said, “There’s a whole section that’s empty over there.”

Another one of Neito’s classmates craned her neck to see. “That’s for 1-A, isn’t it?”

“I heard 1-A’s teacher is super harsh and never brings his class to the opening ceremony!” a different 1-H student added. Neito thinks their name might begin with a W.

“No way!”

“Is that even allowed?”

“Actually,” Kanbayashi said, “The teachers here have a lot of freedom—”

1-A, huh? Neito glanced over at the empty seats. What could Hitoshi’s class possibly be doing?

School at UA wasn’t like anything Izuku had expected. Admittedly, his only reference was elementary and middle school as a quirkless kid, so it probably wasn’t the best comparison.

But there was one constant it seemed he could never escape: Bakugou Katsuki.

As he lined up next to Kacchan at the starting point for the fifty-metre dash, Izuku felt adrenaline pumping through his veins.

The thing was, he wanted to win. Kacchan had won everything since they’d first gotten their quirks (or hadn't, in his case), and Izuku had loved the feeling of scoring higher than him (and everyone else, apparently) on the practical entrance exam.

It was amazing to finally beat someone he had been told was better than him practically his entire life.

Everyone here was strong and powerful, to a far greater degree than Izuku had been expecting. Izuku wanted to prove he belonged, even if he didn’t always feel that way himself.

“Start!”

Izuku didn’t spare a glance at the explosions going off beside him, focusing all his energy into channelling One for All, making his legs go faster and faster and faster. 

In his peripheral vision, he could see Kacchan. They were nearly parallel figures, blazing through the air like rockets, until Izuku took a leap, and shot ahead.

The fifty metre line passed under his feet.

Izuku’s face split into a grin, and he almost started to slow down.

“DEKU!” He heard Kacchan roar from just behind him, and suddenly he was running for a whole different reason, Kacchan hot on his heels. In his panic, he redirected more energy into his legs, feeling a burning pain for a moment before he slammed into the dirt, unconscious.

Shouta could hardly believe his eyes. Midoriya had just run so fast he knocked himself out. Bakugou had been chasing him, but gave up soon enough, so at least he had some slight semblance of self-awareness.

There was another crater in the field. Why were there so many craters?!

At least Recovery Girl had just arrived.

That was about the only positive thing Shouta could say about the day so far.

Todoroki Shouto had thought he was prepared for anything. 

Making it into UA wasn’t an accomplishment to him—it was merely the expected result of Endeavor’s ‘training’. He expected UA to be exactly what it claimed to be: a school for heroes. Shouto knew what training to be a hero consisted of. Needless to say, he wasn’t looking forward to it. However, he had been prepared for it all: the brutal, the unjust, and the boring.

Yet, he was still surprised. 

When Aizawa-sensei announced the quirk assessment test, he had taken it in stride. Endeavor had never been one for wasting time, either.

But the actual event? It was chaos. Pure, unadulterated chaos, barely held together by the collective efforts of Aizawa-sensei and Recovery Girl.

Shouto was thrilled.

Even though his classmates were far more powerful than he had expected (making Endeavor’s inevitable disappointment even more inevitable), they were also inexperienced. Almost comically so.

And the entire class was rich with conspiracies. 

Midoriya and Bakugou—there was clearly something going on between them, some sort of history that Shouto already had twelve working theories on. They might be estranged childhood friends, or maybe one of them was the bastard child half-sibling of the other (he had yet to decide who was more likely to be who), or, Shouto’s personal favourite, they had been a part of the yakuza together but Bakugou had left when he thought Midoriya had died, only to come face to face with him now. He had yet to work out all the details, but Bakugou’s impulsiveness and the scars he’d seen on Midoriya out of the corner of his eye in the changing room were ample evidence.

Aizawa-sensei was also trying to pretend his son wasn’t in his class, but it was so obvious if you paid attention to them—they had the same eyebags and posture, and Aizawa’s son always got an adoring look in his eyes when Aizawa-sensei did anything cool. Shouto would be keeping an eye out for the other parent—unless it was a one night stand, and then a baby was dropped on his doorstep nine months later… He’d have to get Natsuo’s opinion on that…

Shouto was brought out of his theorising by Aizawa-sensei announcing the end of the quirk assessment.

“But I didn’t even get to unleash my best move!” lamented a boy Shouto had seen wielding electricity during the grip strength test.

“You’ll have plenty of time to work on your quirks later. You all certainly need it,” Aizawa-sensei said dryly, “Moving along. Here are your results.” 

Aizawa-sensei pressed a button on the device in his hand and a holographic image appeared in the air.

A second of tense silence passed, while everyone found their names. Then, the class breathed a collective sigh of relief. 

Or, rather, everyone did except the boy who could be none other than the Aoyama Yuuga named at the bottom of the list.

Against the backdrop of students cheering and weeping tears of joy, Aoyama’s face transformed into a black hole of pure misery. His hair swoop drooped and his sparkles dimmed. His lips began trembling and tears welled up in his eyes, looking like his entire life was over because of his inevitable expulsion.

Shouto watched on neutrally. He was safe in fourth place. 

“Also, I was lying about expelling the person in last place,” Aizawa-sensei added offhandedly, as if he hadn’t just shattered everyone’s expectations, “That was a logical ruse, meant to bring out the best in you.”

Shouto’s classmates’ jaws dropped. 

Aoyama looked like he had just seen the sun after years of constant thundering storms.

“Go change and take a look at the curriculum and papers on your desks,” Aizawa-sensei said, sounding incredibly tired, “Don’t expect tomorrow to be any easier than today.”

With that, Aizawa-sensei turned and walked away, leaving everyone in stunned silence.

Shouto glanced at Aizawa-sensei’s son out of the corner of his eyes. Instead of his usual neutrally bored expression, his lips had parted slightly in surprise as he looked on in baffled respect.

Ah, so Aizawa-sensei hadn’t even told his son about the ‘logical ruse’.

Hitoshi headed to the change rooms with the rest of his classmates, still reeling. That had been one of the most stressful tests he’d ever taken—no one had been giving anything less than their best. Hitoshi had been terrified at the thought of losing his chance to become a hero just as he thought he’d secured it.

Hitoshi had never felt so incompetent, yet so amazed with his abilities. Every result he got was notably better than his middle school scores. He could tell he was in the same league as his classmates for once, which felt incredible.

The test had been chaotic. Hitoshi didn’t know what to think, and neither did anyone else, if their dazed looks said anything. Hitoshi couldn’t imagine what the rest of the year would be like if the first day had ended with so many injuries and mental breakdowns. 

He had ended with a safe middling score, which practically made him want to weep for joy. 

And then Aizawa-sensei had blindsided them all. He had played them like fools. 

Hitoshi couldn’t even be mad about it, since he knew he wouldn’t have tried as hard as he had if AIzawa-sensei hadn’t tricked them. Sure, he was turning out to be a somewhat harsh teacher, but so far everything he did had only served to make Hitoshi admire him more.

“Wow, you look exhausted,” blurted Neito as soon as he saw Hitoshi.

“Not even a hi?” Hitoshi drawled.

“Hi,” Neito said sarcastically, “Sounds like your first day was more exciting than mine—1-A wasn’t even at the opening ceremony! What were you doing? Is your teacher as harsh as everyone says? Did anyone get expelled?”

“No one got expelled, but one—two people, actually, almost did. Apparently sensei expelled his entire class last year. He definitely wasn’t going easy on us. I kind of doubt that’s even a phrase in his vocabulary.”

Neito mentally flipped through what he could remember of a bunch of heroes’ profiles. Harsh, but a good teacher. Hmm…

“We did a quirk assessment test,” Hitoshi lamented, “I think I saw at least five people have a full mental breakdown after some of the tests. And for the side step test, one girl used her quirk to push herself back and forth with sound vibrations so fast that she went flying once Eras—sensei called time! Recovery Girl was already there, thankfully. And good thing she was, since another person electrocuted himself a second later! Aiz—uh, our sensei had to—”

“Okay, now I’m sure you’re doing this on purpose,” Neito cut him off, stopping in place. “Who’s your teacher?!”

“Ah, I guess you got me. My teacher…” Hitoshi used the few inches he had on Neito to loom over him, grinning creepily. “Is Eraserhead.”

Neito gaped at him. “Seriously?!”

“Yep.”

“ Eraserhead ?”

Hitoshi nodded. “Eraserhead. But we’re supposed to call him AIzawa-sensei, of course.”

“My teacher’s Power Loader—Maijima-sensei.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t do some sort of a support assessment test today?”

Neito snorted. “Not quite, but we did fill out a form so we’d start thinking about which concentration we want to go into.”

Hitoshi hummed. “And?”

Neito shrugged. “Probably something costume focused for me. That was what got me into support, unlike Hatsume—Oh! I almost forgot to tell you! Guess who I met today?”

“All Might.” Hitoshi responded dryly.

“Nope! I met mei_explode from SupportSupport; we’re desk partners!”

“The one with the babies?”

“Yeah, she even calls them that out loud. It was kind of jarring at first.”

“I bet—” Hitoshi suddenly cut himself off, eyes focusing on something over Neito’s shoulder.

“What are you looking at?” Neito asked, looking behind himself.

“Come here, I have to tell you something about you-know-what.” 

Neito turned back around and leaned forward.

Hitoshi whispered in his ear, “I think All Might’s successor might be in my class! His name’s Midoriya Izuku”—he stressed the ‘Midori’ part of the name—“and he has One for All, and it didn’t seem like he had any other quirk. He’s right behind you, with another boy and a girl with brown hair.”

Neito’s eyes widened, and he began glancing around again, straining to find the mysterious Midoriya Izuku somewhere on the grounds. “Oh! I think I see them! Is he the tall one with blue hair and glasses?”

“No, that’s someone else. Iida, I think? He has an engine quirk.”

“The green-haired one, then.”

“Yeah—he’s stronger than he looks.”

Neito squinted at the group. They were still a bit far away, but he thought Midoriya looked a bit familiar…

“Oh. No, sorry, Midoriya isn’t all Might’s successor. He has One for All because I gave it to him—the name must just be a coincidence.”

Hitoshi sighed. “That’s a shame. Would’ve made everything a whole lot easier.”

Neito nodded, somewhat disheartened after getting his hopes up. “Let’s go home. We can see if DustyFingers118 is online, if you want to.”

“Yeah, might as well.”

Izuku felt eyes on the back of his head. He subtly looked around, but he couldn’t spot anyone looking at him. He was getting more nervous by the second. What if Kacchan was lying in wait for him? What if—

His eyes caught on a familiar face. It was the support student he had met (and become friends with?) just before the entrance exam!

“Oh, do you want to go talk to Shinsou? You’re looking at him.” Uraraka asked him.

Izuku blinked at her. Apparently he wasn’t being as subtle as he thought he was. He glanced over at the boy again; Shinsou was walking with him and nodding along to something he had said. “Oh, um, no…”

“Ah, do you know his friend, then?”

“Sort of?”

“We should go talk to them!” Iida announced, “Is he in the hero course, as well?”

“No, he’s in support. But I-I don’t know him very well…” Izuku was getting nervous just thinking about approaching them. Shinsou was intimidating—he was so similar to Aizawa-sensei—and he didn’t want to intrude.

“Oh, it looks like they’re leaving,” Uraraka noted, “We shouldn’t bother them, they’re probably tired.”

Yes! He finally agreed with her!

“We’ll find them tomorrow at lunch, instead!” Uraraka finished.

He took it back!

“Yes, making friends in other departments is crucial!” Iida said, moving his arms in chopping motions.

“Don’t worry, Mido, we’ll make sure you have a chance to talk to Shinsou and his friend!”

Izuku groaned inwardly. He couldn't help but look on the downside of this, but maybe it was a good thing they knew? He had meant to introduce himself properly to the support student if he saw him at UA, after all. Ugh. Even if it ended up turning out well, it still meant he had one more reason to be nervous about tomorrow…

“Aizawa!”

Shouta grunted. “All M—Yagi.”

“Your students seem quite impressive this year!”

So he had been watching them. At one point in the chaos, Shouta had thought he’d caught a glimpse of him in his skeletal form.

“You know why that is,” Shouta responded dryly.

“Ah, yes…” Yagi coughed sheepishly into a handkerchief. “But they’re still impressive. What did you think about Midoriya?”

“Your successor? Have you trained him at all? Because he desperately needs quirk training. As does everyone else,” Shouta muttered the last sentence to himself.

“But he’s quite bright, don’t you think?”

“I couldn’t say. Anything I might’ve thought about him was overridden when he knocked himself out and broke both his legs. Again.”

Yagi winced.

“Speaking of, what’s your lesson plan for tomorrow?”

“Oh! Battle trials!” Yagi brightened up. “That way, they can get a taste of working in teams with their classmates, and—”

“No way is that happening,” Shouta interrupted. “I don’t know how long you were watching the class, but I don’t want those kids anywhere near a combat situation when they did that much accidental damage just doing a quirk assessment.”

“Ugh, those brats want to play again?!” Tomura Shigaraki tsked, the glow of the TV screen illuminating his face. He grabbed his controller, pinkies stuck up in the air. “I’ll show them not to mess with me!”

Chapter Text

“HEYYYYY LISTENERS!” Hizashi shouted. “Welcome to English class!”

A few students gave half-hearted cheers of his hero name, while others groaned, anticipating the worst. The lack of enthusiasm was disappointing, but expected, especially in a support class where the students wanted to start working on their projects rather than suffer through regular high school classes.

“Alright, everyone! I know you’re all excited for your first workshop today, but right now I’m going to have to ask you to put away your tools!”

He looked pointedly at a girl with pink hair, who was tinkering away at… some sort of… machine… thing. The boy next to her, a vaguely familiar blond kid, elbowed her and she reluctantly pushed her invention to the side of her desk.

“English is an important skill for people in support to have!” Hizashi said, channelling his best Present Mic enthusiasm. “If you want to be successful in international markets, you’ll want to have a good grasp on as many languages as you can!”

Now that got most people’s attention.

“Let’s start by going around the room and introducing ourselves—” 

The students slumped in their seats.

“—in English!”

Their faces fell even further. Hizashi grinned. “I’ll go first!”

…Maybe he’d absorbed a bit of sadism from his husband.

Hitoshi stared at the review worksheet. He had already filled out half of the questions, and he was making decent progress on the rest. He desperately didn’t want homework on the first day of classes, especially since Neito wouldn’t be much help with any questions he had about math.

“Hey,” someone a few seats away whispered to a girl with pink skin. “Did you get fifteen on question four?”

“No, I got twelve,” she whispered back.

The boy nodded, literal sparks crackling in his hair. He scribbled something onto his paper. “Ooh, yeah, you’re so right. Thanks!”

Hitoshi looked at question four on his paper. His answer was three hundred point one. He checked over his work, but couldn’t find anything even close to twelve or fifteen in it. But it was none of his business how they’d both managed to get it so wrong. He opted to stay silent.

Soon, the lunch bell rang.

“Good work, everyone!” Ectoplasm said as they began packing up their things. “Please finish those review worksheets before next week.”

Hitoshi tucked his paper away in his backpack and stood up.

Before he could make it any further, three students descended on him like vultures.

“Shinsou!” a girl with a brown bob said. 

He tried to pass her, but she side-stepped into the middle of the aisle between the rows of desks, blocking his way. Midoriya and the uptight boy that hung around with the two of them blocked the side of the aisle. Midoriya looked nervous, half hiding behind the other guy.

Hitoshi’s eyes narrowed. They were blocking both direct paths out of the classroom. He began analysing the situation—would potentially getting in trouble for vaulting over a desk or two be worth it to get out of there as fast as possible? They didn’t appear overtly malicious, but what good reason could they have to corner him like this—

“We saw you walking with a support student yesterday, and Mido here is friends with him, too, though he doesn’t know where to find him! Are you meeting him for lunch today?”

…Huh?

Oh. “Yeah.”

“Can we come with you? We promise not to get in your way!”

Shinsou grunted something vaguely resembling an affirmation.

“Great! Thanks for helping us out, Shinsou!”

She finally moved out of the way, and Shinsou immediately walked past her. He heard three sets of footsteps following him, despite his fast pace, and his eye twitched.

“Oh, by the way, I’m Uraraka Ochako, and this is Iida—”

“Ah, my poor babies! Left all alone—”

“You’re just going to lunch, Hatsume,” Maijima-sensei sighed. “Please go to lunch. You’re already the last ones here.”

Neito grabbed Hatsume’s arm and pulled her away from her workstation. “Power—I mean, Maijima-sensei’s right, we should go to lunch. You can work on your babies after you eat, during our workshop!”

Hatsume made puppy-dog eyes. Completely unaffected, Maijima-sensei kicked them out of the classroom and locked the door behind them.

“Don’t look so down! At lunch I can introduce you to Hitoshi, and I’m sure he’ll have lots of ideas for inventions we can make since he’s in the hero course! Think of the opportunities!”

Hatsume’s eyes lit up. “I bet I can recruit him to test my jetpack!”

Neito mentally apologised to Hitoshi.

By the time they got to the cafeteria, it was packed. People were everywhere, standing in line for food and looking for people to sit with. Neito began scanning the room for a purple head of hair as he and Hastume got their lunches. It took nearly their entire wait to find him, especially since Neito had been looking more at the people sitting by themselves, rather than in groups. 

Neito was well aware that Hitoshi claimed he wasn’t looking for friends, so it was a bit of a shock to see him sitting at a table with three other students. Neito was proud of him, in a smug sort of way. He knew he’d make friends.

They weaved their way between other students to get to Hitoshi’s table, and then Neito plopped his tray down next to his friend’s. Hatsume sat across from him.

“Hey, Hitoshi.” Neito grinned. “Made some friends?”

Hitoshi glowered at him. “No. They’re here for you.”

The girl looked a bit taken aback by Hitoshi’s bluntness.

Neito blinked. He gave them a once-over.

On second thought, the three of them were familiar; they were the ones Hitoshi had pointed out the day before, since Neito had given that Midoriya kid One for All.

Speaking of, Midoriya was looking at him nervously and fidgeting with his hands.

“I suppose introductions are in order,” Neito said. “I’m Monoma Neito, from class 1-H. It’s nice to meet you.”

“We are all in class 1-A!” the boy with glasses announced. “I am Iida Tenya. It is good to meet you as well!”

“I’m Uraraka Ochako!”

“M-Midoriya Izuku.”

“Hatsume Mei, future CEO of Hatsume Industries!” Hatsume said, before zeroing in on Hitoshi. “And you must be Shinsou Hitoshi?”

Hitoshi grunted.

Hatsume stood up and slammed her hands on the table in excitement, leaning towards Hitoshi. “You have got to help me make my baby—I’ve heard your quirk’s really powerful, and my baby already has some incredible capability as-is, but I bet you’d be able to make it go so much higher—”

Neito muffled a laugh, watching how the hero students’ faces contorted strangely at Hatsume’s words.

“H-Hatsume, I’m going to have to ask you not to talk about such inappropriate subject matter at lunch!” Iida declared, awkwardly chopping his arms in the air. Neito reckoned he could see steam coming from his ears from how embarrassed he looked. “And at school in general!”

Uraraka and Midoriya weren't doing much better, having averted their eyes and turned as red as tomatoes. Shinsou had managed to keep a straight face, probably because of Neito’s warnings about Hatsume’s ‘babies,’ but the tips of his ears were still red.

“Huh?” Hatsume said. “What do you mean?”

“Y-you’re talking about—about—!”

“About what?” Hatsume still sounded confused, though something in the glint of her eye made Neito doubt she was being genuine.

Hitoshi sighed. “I’ll help you with your invention, Hatsume.”

“Invention?!” Uraraka exclaimed.

“O-oh, so that’s what she meant by ‘baby’...” Midoriya muttered.

Toshinori sat in the break room, wringing his hands. He had his first heroics lesson after lunch—though he wouldn’t be teaching solo, as the original plan had been. He would be co-teaching class 1-A with Aizawa. In a way, it made him more nervous to have Aizawa there, judging his teaching, but he was also glad he wouldn’t be alone in such a new role.

The Hero Commission had pushed for him to start teaching as soon as possible—even though he was only part way through his online teaching course—to distract the world from how he was doing less and less traditional hero work each day. Toshinori knew how important teaching the younger generation was, and that being skilled in heroics didn’t necessarily mean he would be a good teacher. 

Yes, he was fully aware of his own inadequacies. 

And they were all making themselves very present right now. He only had a couple dozen minutes until 1-A’s heroics class started and he had hardly managed to eat any food at all. He was terrified he’d let everyone down.

A buzzing sound jarred him out of his thoughts. Toshinori picked up his phone, answering the call without checking the caller ID.

“Hi, Toshinori.”

“Naomasa?” Toshinori said. Was something wrong? Why was he calling in the middle of the day—

“You're overthinking things, aren’t you? About your class?”

“Yes—” Toshinori coughed nervously into a handkerchief. The words spilled out. “I’m not even a teacher and yet I’m going to be teaching these impressionable young students, and I’m terrified I’m going to mess up or even reveal my secrets. And now I haven’t eaten and everything just feels like it’s falling apart.”

They both sat in stunned silence for a moment.

“Ah.”

“I’m so sorry, I keep forgetting I can’t ask people questions without—” 

Toshinori could practically see Naomasa’s mouth flatten in regret. “It’s okay.”

Naomasa sighed on the other end of the line. “I know you haven’t forgotten my quirk, Toshinori. The original part of it, I mean.”

“...You’re right. It feels… odd when you do that. But, if nothing else, I’m glad it’s you who has your quirk, because I know I’d have told you those things eventually,” Toshinori smiled, a bit ashamed. “Though maybe not in so many words.”

Naomasa was silent for a moment. “I’m glad you don’t hate me for it.” He sighed. “Anyway, I called because I know you’re having your lunch break right now, and if you’re too anxious to eat, you won’t be able to do your best today.”

“Oh…” Toshinori’s face softened. He was lucky to have Naomasa by his side. “Thank you, Naomasa.”

Naomasa huffed a laugh. “No need to sound so surprised. Now, I can either tell you about the mischief some of the interns have been getting up to while you eat, or we can talk about why you’re worrying when we both know you’re going to do great. You’ve done everything you can to prepare, Toshinori. Do you remember what we—” He cleared his throat. “I mean, I hope you remember what we talked about last night.”

“Yes, you’re right. It’s hard to quell the anxiety, though.” 

Naomasa hummed in understanding.

Toshinori smiled faintly. “Tell me about the interns?”

“Of course.”

“—And to test that…” Hatsume stroked her chin, tapping her fingers on the cafeteria table. “Ah ha! Monoma, you’ll have to copy Shinsou’s quirk and use it to push back when Shinsou launches my baby, to see if it can withstand the opposing force I hypothesized it would… We can do that this Friday. Add it to your schedules!” Hatsume had pulled a planner out of nowhere and was quickly marking down days.

Neito nodded, dutifully tapping away on his phone. He watched Hitoshi’s face go through the five stages of grief before he reluctantly followed suit. He should’ve known better than to agree to help a support student test their invention without asking more questions first.

“You have a copy quirk?” Midoriya asked suddenly, sounding more excited than Neito had ever heard before. He was practically vibrating in his seat, stars in his eyes.

“Yeah,” Neito said.

“That’s so cool! I know someone else with one of those! Does it have a time limit? Oh, or can you copy more than one? Both a time and quirk limit could make sense, too… Can you copy mutation-type quirks? Transformations? What if something in a quirk-user’s biology helps them survive with their quirk, like making acid—will you gain that trait when you copy their quirk? What about skill level—and do you know how to use the quirks right away? Oh, do you even know what the quirk is when you copy it? That’d have so many implications…” Midoriya trailed off and started muttering under his breath.

Neito blinked at him, not knowing where to start. And… the word dump was strangely familiar, though Neito couldn’t quite place it. “I do have a time and quirk limit, though I’m not telling you what they are yet”—and he was nearly positive that his time limit had gone up a bit since he’d been using his quirk so often, but he hadn’t had time to remeasure it yet—“and no, I don’t know what a quirk is until I’ve copied it.” Unless he had One for All, of course. “I have to analyse how to use them, too, though most quirks I’ve come across have similar activations to other quirks in the same category.” Neito paused. “If you want answers to any other questions you’re going to have to repeat them. And slower, or I won’t catch it all.”

Midoriya was writing furiously in a notebook. Neito had no idea where he’d gotten it. He saw a sketch of himself in the corner of the page, and, for a split second, he felt a wave of dread. If Midoriya was writing down the details of his quirk, someone else could read it and connect him to the One for All copies appearing around the city. Not to mention all the potential listening ears in the busy cafeteria.

It was a good thing he hadn’t shared too much yet. Maybe if he said a few things to throw him off…

“What about quirks with secondary quirk traits? Would you copy both?”

This was his chance! “Well, no—it depends what their quirk is, but I can’t use multiple aspects of someone’s quirk. Usually I’d just get one trait from a more complicated quirk. Say, for a stren—” Neito sweatdropped. Maybe he shouldn’t be quite so obvious. “For a speed quirk with a side trait of, I don’t know, something like momentum transfer, it would probably be treated as just a speed quirk if I copied it.”

Hitoshi slowly turned to look at him, eyebrows scrunched up slightly. Neito casually glanced towards where Midoriya was scribbling in his notebook. Hitoshi’s eyes widened minutely in understanding.

“Midoriya, if you’re so interested in quirks, why didn’t you decide to go into support?” Iida asked.

Midoriya looked up from his notes. “O-oh… It’s just always been my dream to be like All Might—saving people with a smile, you know?”

“That’s a good dream…” Uraraka pondered, sounding a little guilty. “I chose heroics because I want to make a lot of money for my family. It’s not very heroic, I know.”

Neito scoffed. Uraraka looked at him with a hurt expression. 

Neito raised his eyebrows. “Why wouldn't that be heroic? Wanting to be a hero to help your family is a noble goal. How is it any less heroic than wanting to save a bunch of faceless civilians?”

Uraraka stared at him in shock. “I guess… When I think of heroes, I think of people like All Might first. People who are entirely selfless and—”

“Perfect?”

Uraraka wilts. “Yeah…” 

“Not every hero is like that!” Midoriya declared. Everyone turned to look at him. “T-there are plenty of heroes that went into the industry for reasons other than saving people. They’re still doing good things like saving and protecting people, regardless of their exact motivation!”

“Yes, exactly! I went into heroics partly because I admire my brother, Ingenium,” Iida added.

“I know, but it's still a little hard to believe it when you’re like that, Midoriya… Your mindset is so ‘Plus Ultra!’” Uraraka pumped a fist in the air. “Just like All Might! All about saving people over yourself.”

Midoyia blushed.

“Say, Midoriya, your quirk’s actually pretty similar to All Might’s, too!”

The colour rapidly drained from Midoriya’s face.

Neito felt his own face follow suit. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, despite the fact he was still just sitting in the cafeteria. 

“Why do you both look like you’ve just seen a ghost?” Hatsume asked, pointing at them.

Midoriya and Neito looked at each other instinctively, suddenly bound in confused solidarity.

“Uh… I just remembered it was my grandma’s birthday yesterday and I forgot to call her,” Neito bullshitted.

“Same!” Midoriya piped up. Then he froze awkwardly, making a valiant but ultimately useless attempt to keep a straight face.

Everyone at the table looked at them strangely.

“...Sure,” Uraraka said.

When the lunch bell rang, Neito and Midoriya were once again in deep conversation about quirks. Thankfully, they had moved on from discussing Neito’s quirk.

“We should talk more about this soon!” Neito said. The conversation had been surprisingly engaging—he hadn’t realised how nice it was to talk to someone about quirks. He did a lot of random quirk analysis in his life, both to learn what he needed to know to use a copied quirk and to speculate about what a cool quirk would be like to copy. (Not to mention everything that was going on with One for All and All for One.) Neito had never had a chance to talk to someone as interested in quirks as he was.

In person, that was. SmallMight on SupportSupport was surprisingly similar to Midoriya, but it was totally different to talk to someone face-to-face. 

“R-really? You’d want to?” Midoriya sounded hesitant and a little scared, like he’d been turned down in the past.

“Of course! Here, give me your number.” Neito passed Midoriya his phone.

Once Midoriya handed it back, Neito sent him a text.

Monoma Neito

Hi! This is Monoma Neito

When Midoriya’s phone pinged, Neito grinned at him and then headed off towards 1-H’s classroom. 

“See you!” he called over his shoulder.

It was time for their first workshop!

Toshinori took a deep breath. It was like Naomasa had said: he was going to do fine. The students weren’t going to be disappointed in him, they would be thrilled to see him! He just had to keep reminding himself of that.

He was human, too—he was allowed to make mistakes. Sometimes… sometimes it just felt like he couldn’t, since everyone looked up to him as All Might, a flawlessly heroic figure. But he was just a person like the rest of them. A person who was going to try his very best, but a person nonetheless.

Toshinori took another deep breath. Just then, he heard Aizawa say his cue. He opened the door.

“I AM… WALKING THROUGH THE DOOR LIKE A NORMAL PERSON!”

“All Might?!” a bunch of kids cried, in varying states of disbelief.

The class straightened in their seats. A few students even stood up, starry-eyed.

He found Midoriya in the crowd, and briefly met his eyes. Midoriya gave him a wide smile and an encouraging thumbs up.

Surrounded by such palpable enthusiasm, Toshinori had a hard time holding onto his worries. Maybe everyone was right—maybe Toshinori’s efforts would be enough.

“I know you’re all very excited for your workshops this year, and you’ll have plenty of time to play around with your ideas and the tools we have here… later.” Maijima-sensei clicked a button on a small remote and the projector revealed—

Well.

This was disappointing.

It said, in boring black text, Workshop Safety.

Hitoshi stood in the change room, staring at the case holding his hero costume. He was half giddy and half terrified. It was the moment of truth. What if they’d decided someone with his quirk wasn’t suited to be a hero, and he’d open his case and see nothing at all inside? Or what if they’d changed his and Neito’s design entirely, and he’d still have to put it on and go to class?

He gripped the side of the case with white knuckles. Waiting wasn’t doing him any good—better to rip off the bandaid.

The latch clicked open, and Hitoshi tentatively opened the case, as if something was going to pop out and bite him. 

Nothing did. He still felt the air leave his lungs, though it was out of awe rather than disappointment.

The costume Hitoshi and Neito had put their all into designing was right in front of him. It was like a dream come true. He reached out a finger to touch the fabric, and only then did he jolt into awareness of his surroundings.

Aizawa-sensei was waiting for him— All Might was, too—and nearly everyone else had already finished changing. 

Shaking off some of the awe, Hitoshi changed as quickly as he could, barely getting a chance to glance in the mirror—was that really himself staring back?!—before he was in the training field. 

Soon after Hitoshi arrived, All Might began explaining what the day's heroics class would look like. They’d be testing out their new gear and costumes—making sure they were comfortable and properly compatible with their quirks. It was largely self-led, since each of them knew their quirks better than the teachers did, with stations similar to the quirk assessment tests set up all over the field. There were some other set ups, too, to help students test their gear and quirks. All Might laid out some safety guidelines as well, and told them they’d each have to write a short reflection reviewing their costumes for homework. By that point, most of the class was visibly itching to get out there.

“Aizawa-sensei and I will be coming around to talk to each of you and give you some tailored advice. But don’t hesitate to ask for help any time you need it!” All Might gave them a blinding smile. “Now, off you go! Plus Ultra!”

With an echo of the school’s motto, Hitoshi and his peers scattered around the training field.

“Baku-bro!” Shitty Hair called. “What are you going to do first?”

“None of your business,” Katsuki grumbled, stomping towards an area with two tall cement walls and a cement floor. 

He released a blast at one of the walls. Shitty Hair made an awed sound behind him. Katsuki grit his teeth and let off a few more explosions. 

Then, he pulled the pin on one of his gauntlets and aimed. The explosion was incrementally bigger than the other ones.

Tch. He hadn’t worked up enough of a sweat yet.

Turning away from the walls, he caught sight of Shitty Hair kicking one of many punching bags set up nearby.

“Hey, Shitty Hair!” Katsuki called. “Fight me!”

Shitty Hair turned his way, grinning widely as he steadied the punching bag. 

They moved to an empty area, and turned to face each other. Sparks crackled on Katsuki’s palms. Shitty Hair hit his fists together, his skin turning jagged like rock.

“Bring it on, man!”

Katsuki launched himself toward him, a manic smile on his face.

Jirou Kyoka plugged her earphone jacks into the Amplifier Jacks on her forearms. She then wound her fist back and hit the punching bag with all her might, the vibration from her heartbeat making it fly away from her. She dodged out of the way when it returned, watching as it continued to shake violently with vibrations, swinging back and forth.

Kyoka looked at her Amplifier Jacks in awe. 

The aftereffects soon became too much for the punching bag and it fell apart, sand dumping onto the ground.

She grinned. That was epic.

Momo appeared next to her, looking at the destroyed punching bag in consideration. Kyoka blushed. It was only because she was embarrassed to have destroyed it, she told herself, though she still averted her eyes from Momo’s… costume.

“Need another one of those?” Momo asked, and Kyoka could already tell calculations were running through her mind. “Something that can withstand strong vibrations…”

Ice covered his surroundings, spikes shooting up high enough to block his view of the other students. Shouto sent up another wall of it, his breath clouding in front of him. He could feel the heater built into his suit working overtime, struggling to keep him warm. 

It wasn’t enough.

His left hand was going numb. He clenched it into a fist. He had to be better, without his father’s fire.

Shouto stomped on the ground, feeling dizzy. Another layer of ice coated the glacier he’d created. 

Hitoshi fiddled with the buttons on his costume, figuring out how to turn the lights on and off. He’d gone with Neito’s idea to have the stripes on his costume light up on command, and he already knew they’d come in handy. He had some small gadgets attached to his costume as well, like a grappling hook he was frankly a bit scared to try out on his own, and a few emergency first aid supplies.

But there was one thing he hadn’t been brave enough to put on his request form: a capture weapon. He wanted one like Eraserhead’s—one that would help him become an underground hero like him. His capture weapon was versatile, portable, and covert. It was something he’d wanted as part of his hero costume ever since he’d learned about Eraserhead and had been inspired to become a hero. Now that Eraserhead was his teacher, maybe…

A wave of cold air hit him, and he shivered violently. Hitoshi scowled. He could practically feel frost forming on his eyelashes.

He glared at the pillars of ice to his left. Another icy structure shot into the air, glistening in the sun. 

Todoroki Shouto. Hitoshi knew about him—Endeavor’s son, the dual ice and fire wielder. If he didn’t know better, he’d think Todoroki just had an ice quirk. But he did know better.

And that made him angry.

Todoroki was handed what were essentially two ridiculously powerful quirks squished together into one, both respected and valued by society, and he refused to use half of his power. Hitoshi couldn’t care less about why. If there was a reasonable explanation, he’d take back his words, but Todoroki was clearly suffering from his choice. It was a petty decision made by a powerful, privileged kid.

With a clenched jaw, Hitoshi watched Todoroki stumble out of his palace of ice, fingers and lips tinted blue.

Todoroki didn’t know what it meant to not be able to use his quirk. He didn’t know what it meant to be forced to shove down and hide away a part of himself because everyone thought it was dangerous and unnatural. He didn't know what it meant to wish he didn’t have a quirk—because then at least he would be allowed to talk, to call for help.

Todoroki was willingly putting himself at a disadvantage because he was completely ignorant of situations where people actually had problems.

Without One for All, Hitoshi probably wouldn’t be here. He’d be stuck in Gen Ed, or at some other school altogether. Todoroki got into UA’s hero course using only half his quirk.

So, yeah, maybe Hitoshi was a bit angry. Maybe the whole thing made him seethe a little, made his fists clench and his blood boil.

But that wasn’t anything new. 

He’d just keep on trying his hardest, and maybe, someday, Todoroki would realise how stupid he was being.

Izuku watched in awe as Shinsou broke a cement block in half with his bare hands, glaring unwaveringly in Todoroki’s direction all the while. Everyone in his class was so strong! 

Todoroki was practically building an entirely new biome in the middle of the training field. Kacchan was beating up Kirishima a ways away, which wasn’t out of character—what surprised Izuku was that Kirishima looked alive and (mostly) well whenever the smoke parted. Uraraka was floating concrete blocks in the air, while Iida looked like he was flying around with how fast he was moving. The invisible girl—Hagakure, he thought—was reflecting beams of light around her, and Izuku desperately wanted to go talk to her and ask—

“Young Midoriya!”

Izuku’s gaze snapped back to All Might—the All Might! (His mentor and his teacher!!!)

“How have you been finding your costume?”

Izuku put aside all the questions he wanted to ask his classmates. He’d have plenty of time for that later; right now, he had to focus on himself. He wasn’t just an observer, he was a hero student!

Toshinori listened in earnest as Midorya told him about his costume and quirk training. He felt like the class was going well; he’d had a chance to talk to most students already, and he was starting to get a feel for his new job. 

Endeavor’s boy was working himself very hard. It was admirable, but Toshinori would need to keep an eye out to make sure he didn’t overwork himself.  Ojiro had a great handle on his quirk, and it was clear he had a lot of experience with martial arts. Asui had a very heroic spirit, Toshinori could tell, and she was a very dedicated person. Tokoyami and Dark Shadow… were a strange pair, but they would be unstoppable once Tokoyami learned to better control his quirk. 

Every one of the students were very impressive; they made Toshinori hopeful about the next generation of heroes.

These would be the people replacing All Might; they needed to be able to fill his shoes. Toshinori could already tell that they would do so spectacularly.

Shouta flashed his quirk at Bakugou and Kirishima, ignoring the way his eyes burned from the smoke. As the boys flailed, he grabbed them with his capture weapon and pulled them apart.

“What do you think you’re doing? You haven’t been assessed enough for it to be safe for you to spar.”

Kirishima stared at the ground sheepishly. Bakugou crossed his arms as well as he could with Shouta’s capture weapon around him and looked petulantly to the side.

“This is your first and only warning,” Shouta growled, hair floating around him like a demonic aura. “If you continue this type of behaviour, I’ll expel you.”

First he had a kid on the brink of hypothermia, and then this. This class was a mess.

He released them, sighing deeply. 

SmallMight

everyone in my class is so cool!! their quirks are so powerful!!! 

i didnt realise how strong ppl would be! like i know it’s UA, but still!!! when they tested our quirks yesterday i was already surprised but today everyone was really giving it their all \ (^o^) /

i’ve made SO many notes in my head. i need to write them all down asap

i’ll send you a few things once i'm done. i cant tell u a lot of details thru text (bc privacy reasons) but there were a few vague enough things i found really cool! 

(and maybe i can tell you more when we meet in person like we were talking about)

CopyCat2615

Sounds like the hero students’ quirks live up to the hype! You’ll have to tell me some stuff about the costumes if you can!

I’ll grill my friend about his class when I have the chance, too

Midoriya Izuku

hi, i don’t know when you were thinking that we could hang out and talk about quirks, but in our heroics class today i got a lot of really cool things to talk about! the class was also about our costumes so i think it’d be really fun to talk about support things too

there’s this one cafe i’ve heard of that we could go to? would tomorrow after school work, or is that too soon?

Monoma Neito

That sounds awesome! Hitoshi’s not going to be around tomorrow night, so that works perfectly for me

Let’s meet up after class tomorrow and we can walk there together!

Midoriya Izuku

great, see you then!

All for One gazed at the photo adoringly. It was a candid shot of two people, taken from halfway behind a tree, if the blurry leaves were any indication. A mother and son. All for One dragged a finger over the woman’s silhouette, sighing forlornly. 

Photos were haphazardly strewn across his desk, all featuring the same two people. They were shown walking to work or school, with their friends, in security footage from a mall, and in professional headshots. 

All for One picked up another photo featuring the two of them, back from when the boy was much younger. He smiled sadly at their happy faces.

Soon.

Tomura’s plans were in place, and were proceeding as planned. It was the perfect time to take some time off. For now, All for One was satisfied to be an observer and distant mentor, watching from the sidelines. He’d keep an eye out, but nothing too unexpected should catch them off guard.

All for One had long since known about the strange mutations that were popping up in heroes—mutations that reminded him enough of One for All to make his hackles raise—but he wasn’t nervous about that.

It was obvious what was happening: the HPSC was so scared that their precious All Might was failing that they were trying to replace him. All for One scoffed. Ridiculous. They would never be able to make some artificial One for All. It was obvious these ‘mutations’ must be faulty and weak and would eventually turn their perfect heroes into mindless noumu. The doctor would be thrilled by the prospect. Perhaps All for One would let him play around with one someday.

But not right now. He had to make sure his business was settled, so nothing would interfere with his plans—so he could reunite with the only people he actually cared about.

All for One picked up a recent school photo of the boy, all blinding smiles and blond hair. 

Soon.

Chapter Text

“You’re a first year student at UA?” the reporter asked, shoving a microphone in Neito’s face.

Neito brushed a hand through his hair dramatically, fixing any pieces that might have been blown out of place by the wind, and grinned at the reporter. “Indeed I am!”

The reporter eagerly waved over a man holding a camera on his shoulder. When the man saw Neito, a student that wasn’t covering their face from the cameras and trying to escape the cluster of reporters, his face lit up and he turned the camera towards him.

“What’s it like having All Might as a teacher?” The reporter asked.

Neito stopped trying to pose for the camera. “Oh, I’m in the support course. I haven’t had All Might as a teacher and I never will.”

Both the reporter and cameraman visibly deflated.

“What are you doing, then, kid?” the cameraman said, lowering the camera, “Go get to class.”

Neito sulked as he walked though UA’s front gate, catching up with Hitoshi, who had left him behind when he started talking to the reporter.

“They didn’t want to talk to me,” Neito lamented, draping himself dramatically over Hitoshi’s shoulders.

“Hm. I’m so surprised,” Hitoshi said in a perfectly flat voice.

“So mean! I’m going to go hang out with my real friends!” Neito declared, righting himself and waltzing off towards 1-H.

He heard Hitoshi sigh behind him.

Hitoshi sighed, shaking his head fondly.

“Are you okay, man? Your friend didn’t sound too happy…”

Hitoshi grunted. “He’s fine.” 

Kirishima frowned, and Hitoshi got the urge to sigh once again. He could explain that that was just how Neito acted—that he’d often pull something like that when they were heading in different directions—but he frankly didn’t care enough to say anything. Hitoshi continued into the classroom. Kirishima followed closely on his heels.

“Are you sure?”

Hitoshi grunted the affirmative, slouching down in his seat.

“If you’re sure…”

When he trailed off, Hitoshi started to notice that the loud chatter of the class had suddenly grown quiet. Kirishima glanced around, starting to look panicked, and made a mad dash for his seat.

Aizawa had come out of his cocoon.

“Better than yesterday,” Aizawa said after he’d yawned a few times. “But only barely.”

The class gulped in unison.

Aizawa shuffled through some papers on the podium.

“Oh, right. Today I have an announcement,” Aizawa started.

A wave of anxiety spread over the class.

“You’ll be—”

“—choosing class representatives. A class president and vice president,” Maijima-sensei told 1-H.

Neito nearly jumped out of his seat to raise his hand.

“Settle down.” Maijima-sensei sighed. “We’re going to decide this with a vote, like I do every year. Each person who wants to be considered for president or vice president will have ten minutes to put together a short—and I mean short; no more than two minutes—presentation about why the class should vote for them. We’ll run through the presentations after that, and then everyone will write their vote on a slip of paper and I’ll count the results. Got it?”

“Yes, Maijima-sensei!” the class chorused.

Everyone rushed into action. Well, about half the class rushed into action; the rest, like Hasume, immediately turned back to whatever they had been doing before the announcement.

Neito frantically pulled out his laptop and began formatting a slideshow presentation to his liking. Positive qualities? Too many to mention! Skills? Planning, creative thinking, and problem-solving, just to name a few! Experience? …Well, technically none, but he was good at planning and organising things. He was also pretty successful at manipulating people (such as All Might) to be where he wanted them to be, too, so that had to count for something. And he was practically an expert at tracking people down, at this point!

…Though it wasn’t like he could put that part in the presentation.

Someone rushed by his desk with a huge poster board covered in construction paper and some glitter glue. Someone else was making themselves a banner that said “Vote Wakatori for Class President!” in shiny pink letters.

Neito’s presentation was definitely missing something…

“Hey Hatsume!” Neito said, tapping her on the shoulder. “Do you have anything,” he struggled to find the word, “blingy that could spice up my presentation?”

Hatsume glanced up, contemplative, and then a wide grin spread across her face. “I have just the thing!” 

She started rummaging around the pile of parts on top of and surrounding her workspace. She pulled out a small device that almost looked like a flare.

“When you’re done presenting, aim this at the ceiling and press the button to light it.” She pointed to the side of the stick-like device, where there was a little button. “This baby is my twelfth version—new and improved!”

Neito took it gratefully, mirroring her grin.

A few minutes later, Maijima-sensei announced, “Time’s up!”

Neito frantically finished the last tweaks to his slideshow.

The presentations were entertaining, if nothing else. Each candidate had taken a very different approach: some aimed to stun people with their brilliance in building or designing, others listed off previous leadership experiences, and some relied entirely on charisma.

Then, it was Neito’s turn.

His presentation went amazingly, if anyone asked. He was completely in his element, wowing the class with dramatic hand gestures, smiles, and bows. Soon, Maijima-sensei was telling him to finish up, and Neito pulled out Hatsume’s invention.

“And that is why you should all vote for Monoma Neito!” Neito declared, pointing the device to the ceiling and pressing the button.

For a second, nothing happened. Neito made eye contact with Maijima-sensei, seeing the tension on his face. 

Then, the device began making a whirring sound, like a motor speeding up rapidly. Neito glanced at it nervously. Before he could say anything, fireworks started popping out of its top, zooming up a few metres before fizzling out. But the lightshow didn’t stop there, it kept getting brighter and brighter, little fireworks of all colours exploding out of the device. 

It heated rapidly. Neito yelped and dropped it on the ground, where it spun in circles, shooting fireworks all the while, until it fully lit on fire. Neito heard Hatsume cackling in the background.

A puff of foam covered the flames. Maijima-sensei held a fire-extinguisher aloft, a disapproving look on his face.

“...Oops?”

“Midoriya wins with four votes!”

Izuku jolted in his seat. Sweat formed on his face. People voted for him?! “Why did so many people vote for me?”

“You’re always so positive!” Uraraka exclaimed.

“It helps that you got first place on the practical entrance exam, too!”

In front of Izuku, Kacchan twitched violently.

Izuku gulped. “C-can I abstain—?”

“Congratulations, Midoriya! I’m sure you’ll do a great job!” someone said.

A chorus of agreements rang out.

“But—”

“Yaoyorozu will be the vice president!” Iida announced, rifling through the ballots.

“Then it's decided?” Aizawa-sensei asked.

“Yes, sensei!” Iida said. 

Midoriya opened his mouth to object, but Aizawa had moved on already. A swirling anxiety formed in his stomach.

After cleaning up most of Neito’s mess (it wasn’t technically all his fault… Hatsume hadn’t told him that her ‘baby’ was incredibly prone to lighting on fire), the class moved on to the last presentation.

The candidate was Matsumoto Aiko. She had been the leader of her middle school’s robotics club, and had made a lot of impressive designs for useful, everyday inventions. She was charismatic, too. Overall, Matsumoto was a balanced leader. 

(Plus, the streamers she released at the end of her presentation were very easy to clean up and caused no damage to the floors or desks whatsoever.)

So, it was no surprise when Matsumoto won the election. Even though Neito was sad he wasn’t chosen (not even for vice president! Ridiculous!), he was glad she was the one representing their class. He could even understand why the vice president, Kanbayashi Kin, was chosen for the role instead of him, though it still made him sulk.

“Why does no one like me?” Neito lamented to Hatsume during the short break before their first class. She was still fully absorbed in her tinkering.

“It’s not that no one likes you. You’re just irresponsible,” Kanbayashi, who sat at the desk behind him, said bluntly.

Neito turned around in his seat, mock offended (and just a little bit hurt). “Excuse me?”

“Ah,” Kanbayashi scratched the back of their head awkwardly. “I don’t mean it in a bad way. You just… give off that impression, a bit. Plus there was the whole thing with the flaming fireworks…”

Neito tilted his head, considering. Yeah, that was fair. He nodded. “Well, you’d better do a good job in my place!”

“You didn’t even come in third place…” Kanbayashi said.

Neito waved them off. “I’ll take this one for the team, Kanbayashi.”

Neito and Hatsume were late for lunch again, though this time it was because Maijima-sensei made them stay behind to scrub the soot off the floors and legs of the desks. He’d refused to let Hatsume use the motorized mop she’d built, which would’ve made the process go a lot faster… that was, if it didn’t catch on fire itself.

About halfway to the cafeteria, an alarm started blaring loudly. Hatsume covered her ears, cringing at the sound; Neito followed suit. He didn’t know what the alarm was for or what they were meant to do. Maybe it was a fire alarm? But everyone around them seemed too panicked for that—from his experience, people tended to find fire alarm drills mundane enough that they’d leave the building in a somewhat orderly fashion.

“Come on, let’s try to evacuate!” Neito shouted over the noise. Hatsume nodded, hands firmly over her ears.

They made it down a few twisting hallways before they came across another person. Their back was to them and they weren’t wearing a UA uniform—they appeared to be in a hoodie and sweatpants, which was definitely against the rules. 

“Hey, you should evacuate, too! There might be a fire!” Neito called to them.

The figure turned minutely towards them, not enough to show their face, and then walked through a nearby door. 

Neito was confused, but let them go. It wasn’t his responsibility to chase after some random delinquent student.

The cafeteria was full of panicking students. People were rushing around in every direction, shoving past each other harshly enough that Izuku was nervous someone would get trampled. 

He’d long lost track of Iida and Uraraka, and was now just trying to stay afloat in the mess.

Then, suddenly, he saw Iida literally float above the crowd, with a megaphone in hand. 

“DO NOT PANIC! THERE IS NO INTRUDER!” he yelled. “IT’S JUST THE MEDIA!”

Izuku felt a rush of relief when everyone slowed their pace. 

By the time Neito and Hatsume found their way back to the cafeteria—having gotten thoroughly lost by the time the all-clear announcement was made over the loudspeakers—lunch was almost over. Luckily, they managed to snag some food and find their friends’ table.

Neito collapsed into the chair next to Hitoshi. He was sitting on the outside of the group, looking more haggard than usual. “So, I’m guessing that alarm thing didn’t go any better for you than us?”

Uraraka shook her head. “It was complete chaos. But Iida and Yaomomo came up with a plan super fast and calmed everyone down!”

“You were fundamental to that plan, too, Uraraka! We couldn’t have done it without you,” Iida added.

Neito nodded approvingly. “Impressive!”

It really was impressive—Neito could only imagine the chaos the crowded cafeteria had turned into once the alarm started blaring. He’d known Yaoyorozu had a genuine heroic spirit when he’d given her One for All, but he was glad to find that many others in the hero course were the same.

Neito’s eyes widened. He glanced around the table. He’d given One for All to three people there, but Uraraka and Iida were also trying to become heroes, and truly wanted to help people. Why shouldn’t they get One for All?

(…He didn’t think Hatsume needed One for All. She caused enough chaos already.)

Neito resolved to add their names to the List once he had the chance, and then rejoined the conversation.

Kanbayashi Kin was starting to get nervous. When they first got back from lunch (a few minutes early, so they’d have some time to relax at their desk before class started), Hatsume and Monoma were both working at their desks. That was a regular occurrence. But they didn’t usually act like this. Kin was confused, concerned, and perhaps a little scared.

Monoma was whispering under his breath, and writing on a little sheet of paper Kin could just barely make out over his hunched shoulders. His disposition was nothing like it usually was—there was no humour in his posture, nor was he projecting his voice loud enough for the entire class to hear. He was tense and sounded entirely serious.

He was writing on a list, that much Kin could see, but it must’ve been written in some sort of code, because Kin couldn’t read any of the writing they managed to glimpse.

They could understand what he was mumbling, though. At least enough to know it was names.  

The red pen didn’t inspire confidence.

Neither did the ominously scribbled out bullet points at the top of the list, nor Monoma’s mutters about needing to cross something-araka’s name off the list soon.

Kin could feel cold sweat drip down their spine. It was obvious what it was—Kin just didn’t know what to do with the implications of it.

Monoma Neito had a hit list.

“U-um!” Izuku said, standing up at his desk before Aizawa-sensei could dismiss the class. “I-I have something to say!”

Heads turned to look at him. He hunched his shoulders and avoided eye contact.

“What is it?” Aizawa-sensei asked.

“I d-don’t feel like I should be the class president,” Izuku started, fighting through his nerves. “During the alarm at lunch, Yaoyorozu and Iida handled the situation really well, while I didn’t know what to do. I-I’d like to step down and have Yaoyorozu become president instead, with Iida as vice president. If, if that’s, uh, okay?”

Aizawa grunted. “Does anyone object?”

No one stood up.

“Then that’s that. Yaoyorozu, Iida, congratulations. Class dismissed."

“Are you sure you need to go back to your foster home today? It’s not like they usually mind if you stay at my place—”

“Yeah, but I haven’t been back to do my chores for a while,” Shinsou said, face expressionless.

Izuku watched Monoma deflate. He was a very expressive person, which made his interactions with Shinsou seem a bit strange sometimes. Though, Shinsou seemed a bit… off right now. Izuku didn’t know what made him think that, but something made it feel like Shinsou was putting up a front. More than usual, anyway.

“I guess that makes sense.” Monoma sulked. Then he brightened up a bit. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then? We can do something fun after school!”

Izuku’s eyes caught on one of Shinsou’s hands. It was balled into a fist, knuckles bone-white. He abruptly hid his hand in his pocket. Izuku glanced up at his face, but Shinsou wasn’t looking at him. His expression was exactly the same as it had been for the entire conversation.

“Yeah. Sure.” Shinsou turned on his heel and walked away from them, one arm up in a wave. A sinking feeling made itself known in his stomach. 

He didn't know the whole situation, but there was something wrong with Shinsou’s foster family.

Midoriya and Neito walked in silence for the first few minutes of their trip. Neito followed Midoriya, who was alternating between gazing intently at the map on his phone and the concrete path. He had an intense look on his face, his eyebrows scrunched up in concentration.

Neito wondered what Midoriya was thinking about, if he was also thinking about Hitoshi. 

Hitoshi got like that, sometimes—closed off and… weird. Neito hadn’t noticed it at first, since Hitoshi usually kept his face pretty blank, but there was something different about it at times like that. 

He looked hollow; vacant. 

It scared Neito, because he didn’t know what it meant. Hitoshi never mentioned it, and Neito hadn’t either, since he didn’t think Hitoshi wanted him to. But sometimes, he wondered. And sometimes, he worried that the real reason he hadn’t brought it up with Hitoshi was because he was scared to learn something bad was going on—had been going on, this whole time—that he didn’t know about.

Neito cleared his throat. “So, where exactly are we going? I don’t think you ever said.”

Midoriya startled, looking up at Neito from his phone, and stumbled over a crack in the pavement. “O-oh, it’s this café I saw an ad for a while ago. It’s a funny story—I was watching one of All Might’s fights, between him and Illusi-Bender. It was really cool, since Illusi-Bender had this mental-based illusion quirk, and so All Might had to fight these illusions no one else could see before he could get close enough to take down the villain without hurting bystanders! And—” Izuku ducked his head and cleared his throat. “S-sorry, I got a bit carried away.” He scratched his head sheepishly. “Anyway, after All Might won, a whole bunch of flyers for this café rained down like confetti, and one flew right into my face. I haven’t actually gone there yet, but I’ve been meaning to for months… They have cats, according to the ad. I remembered it recently because I saw they posted something about having a quirked cat! And—oh,” Midoriya’s eyes widened. “Y-you’re not allergic, right? I totally forgot to ask—!”

“No, I’m not,” Neito said, laughing it off. Internally, though, he was crying. Beans and Friends?! It had to be Beans and Friends that he was talking about. What other cat café had flyers flying around during All Might’s fights?!

He felt so betrayed. Who knew that his actions would come back to bite him like this?

But there was no good way to tell Midoriya they shouldn’t go there. Neito swore internally—if only he had had the foresight to lie about having an allergy! It was too late for that plan, though. And, sadly, he couldn’t just say, ‘Oh, sorry, I shouldn’t go there because if this one barista there recognises me, I’m screwed.’ 

Neito slung his backpack off one of his shoulders so he could open it while walking. If he had to enter enemy territory, he was going to do so prepared.

Izuku watched, confused, as Monoma unzipped his backpack and reached his arm inside, rummaging around.

Finally, Monoma made an “ah ha!” sound, and pulled something out triumphantly.

It was… a wig? Monoma expertly brushed his blond hair out of his face and pulled the black wig over top of it. 

“How’s it look?” he asked, as if what he had just done was a totally normal thing to do.

“Good?” Izuku responded. Monoma had done a good job—which was impressive for someone who was walking and holding his backpack with one arm at the same time.

Monoma went back to searching around in his bag. He pulled out a red baseball cap and put it on, and then fished out a slightly crumpled medical mask. Then, he zipped up his backpack and put it back on properly.

He pulled on the mask, and adjusted his wig minutely.

“...What are you doing?” Izuku finally asked.

Monoma looked at him, as if surprised he was asking. Then his expression morphed into a wide smile that could be seen beneath his mask.

“Oh, sometimes it’s just fun to dress up when you’re going somewhere!” he said, and then he mumbled something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, “And so certain baristas don’t recognise you…”

Izuku thought Monoma had a very different idea than him of what dressing up meant.

“Oh, look! We’re here.” Monoma pointed to a store’s window, which had Beans and Friends printed on it, along with little pictures of cartoon cats. The café’s logo was on the front of the door, a cat’s paw print with coffee beans where the toe beans went.

Izuku was pretty sure he hadn’t said the name of the café. “How did you—”

“Oh, shit—close the door! CARAMEL, NO—!” someone yelled.

Monoma and Izuku rushed the rest of the way inside, slamming the door shut behind them. A blur of a golden-brown cat headed straight towards the gap between the door frame and door, but it was a second too late. It hit the door head-on. A man wearing an apron dove after it, scooping it up while it was still dazed.

“I’m so sorry about that.” The employee bowed in apology, holding the unruly cat in his arms. He remained unflinching, even as it flailed around, clawing at him. “Caramel’s new. She still tries to bolt out the door when we aren’t paying attention.”

“I-it’s no problem,” Izuku stammered, heart still beating wildly.

“Y-yeah,” Monoma agreed. His voice sounded a bit odd—higher than usual. He must have been shocked by the situation as well.

Izuku glanced over at him. He looked a bit stiff, eyes fixed on the barista. Oh. Oh. Monoma was scared of cats! That explained his odd behaviour—he wasn’t allergic to cats, but he was scared of them. He must not want Izuku to think less of him. Maybe he was scared of catching a disease from a cat, and that was what the mask was for…? If it made Monoma feel better, then Izuku wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. (Izuku still didn’t know what to think about the wig, though…)

They ordered some food and then chose a table. Izuku made sure to pick one as far away from the various cat trees and items as possible, which meant they were near the back of the café. 

Monoma relaxed a bit once they sat down.

“You said your class yesterday was about your costumes?” Monoma asked. “Did you design your own? I helped Hitoshi with his, and he showed me pictures last night—it was amazing! I can’t wait to see it in person!”

Izuku beamed. “Yeah, I designed mine myself. My mom made part of it for me, and UA got a support company to make the rest.”

“—and fire quirks are a bit overrated as heroic quirks.”

That sounded a lot like something SmallMight had said before—one of their conversations had gone off on a big tangent about fire quirks when they’d been discussing Endeavor. What a coincidence!

“Oh, that reminds me of a conversation I had with Sm—” Wait, Izuku didn’t know SmallMight. Neito corrected himself, “A conversation I had with a friend of mine. We were saying that the industry really prioritizes flashy quirks, when fire quirks could be so much more useful in other situations, especially ones that aren’t in the middle of very flammable neighbourhoods.”

Midoriya nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, exactly! Though, really, a big part of it is that people don’t think enough about their quirks. They just go with what the mainstream is—what the most general and, well, boring application of their quirk is. There are so many better ways to use a fire quirk, with just a bit more precision…”

“I heard of someone who trained theirs so they could use it for welding!”

Midoriya was practically vibrating in his seat. “Yes! Do you have a video?”

Neito pulled out his phone and showed him one—it was a short demonstration.

“I’ll send you another—it’s a longer explanation about how he trained his quirk. But the gist of it is that he started off with a quirk where he could shoot a stream of fire out of his hand, and then he practiced a ton until he could control the size of the stream. I forget what he said about the heat factor, but I’m sure it's in the video.”

“Please!” Midoriya said. “That training aspect is so important. I’ve heard of fire dancers with fire quirks, and I feel like there’s a lot of potential for something graceful and precise like that in heroism—rather than a huge blast of fire, a more controlled use of it could be much safer for civilians, while also stopping villains!”

“I guess a lot of people only use their quirk one way, and then they feel like it can’t change—but so often it can. And it gets stronger with use, I think. Or maybe it’s just age. I just know the time limit for my quirk has been increasing since I’ve been using it so much.”

“Really?” Midoriya’s eyes shone. “How much did it change? Did you time it? How much have you been using it?”

Neito felt a bead of sweat travel down his neck. “Oh… I’m not sure how much, but I’ve definitely been using it a lot more than I used to because I’ve been training with Hitoshi”—and stealing quirks… It's mostly from stealing quirks—“There used to be a ten minute limit, which is really annoying when you’re trying to st—” Neito stopped himself from saying ‘stealing quirks.’ No, he was (un)fairly and (dis)honestly duplicating quirks, not stealing them. Though Midoriya didn’t need to know any of that, regardless. “Uh, when you’re trying to copy quirks.” There. A perfectly vague and unsuspicious statement. “My limit’s about twelve minutes now, though I haven’t checked in a while.”

“Do you want to check right now?  I could let you copy my quirk—just make sure not to activate very much of it. Can you tell when you have a quirk without using it? That might actually be best… I’ve broken my bones from it before…”

“Yeah, I can,” Neito said. And good thing he could… A bone-breakingly strong quirk, huh? That’s the sort of ridiculously powerful thing you’d expect from a top hero like All Might. No wonder Midoriya got into UA. “Just let me pull up a timer and—”

Suddenly, a cat jumped up on the table in between them. Neito startled violently, nearly bumping his mug over. The cat meowed loudly at him, turning its head in his direction. Neito startled again. The cat had eight eyes. Eight bright red eyes.

Across the table, Midoriya started to look anxious. He reached out for the cat, guiding it to his side of the table. The cat looked at him.

“Oh! This must be the quirked cat I heard about! It has so many eyes, like a spider… I wonder if it has a spider-type mutation, or something different. There’s no extra legs, but maybe…” Midoriya trailed off into mumbles.

He picked up one of the cat’s paws, and examined it, mumbling something about its toe beans. Neito leaned to the side to get a better view. Indeed, the cat had a lot more toes than the average cat.

Out of the corner of his eye, Neito saw the barista start walking their way. He flinched back, half-covering his face, just as the cat let out a loud mewl in the barista’s direction.

Izuku looked up from the cat’s paw at the loud sound the cat made, and caught a glance of Monoma’s tense posture. Izuku cursed in his head. The cat’s quirk had totally distracted him from getting the cat away from Monoma! How bad of a friend could he be?!

He put down its paw and started to slide the cat along the table towards himself once more. The cat remained utterly unhelpful, sitting and licking its leg while Izuku struggled to move him.

“I see you’ve met Spider!” 

Izuku froze at the sound of the barista’s voice. He sheepishly stopped sliding the cat down the table.

“He’s a very special cat here at Beans and Friends! As you can tell, he’s one of the few animals with a quirk. Some people think he looks a little scary, but he’s a total sweetheart!” The barista set a pamphlet down on the table. “The cats here are all up for adoption, as part of our animal rescue initiative, so if you’re interested in adoption, you can find more information here or on our website. This pamphlet also has descriptions of each of the cats, including their names, genders, likes, and dislikes!”

Izuku glanced through the pamphlet until he found Spider. Likes: scrambled eggs. Dislikes: spiders. Izuku cracked a smile. How ironic.

“Would you like to hold him?” the barista asked Monoma. Spider was sitting in his arms, batting at his white hair.

Monoma slinked back in his seat, half-covering his face and avoiding the barista’s gaze. Izuku’s eyes widened in alarm.

“I—I would!” He said without thinking. The barista turned his way. Monoma instantly relaxed.

Then, there was a cat in Izuku’s arms, eight eyes and all. Spider squirmed around, reorienting himself until he was resting half against Izuku’s shoulder, and then he looked up at Izuku and meowed. Izuku instantly melted. “You’re so cute!”

That night—really, more like early morning—Neito woke up in a cold sweat.

Midoriya Izuku… It was obvious. Obvious!

His obsession with quirks, his argument about fire quirks—even his knowledge of quirk training was familiar!

He also said he knew someone with a copy quirk! Copy quirks weren’t common. The closest Neito himself had gotten to even hearing about someone else with a copy quirk was someone who could copy people’s behaviours and mannerisms. How had Neito overlooked something so obvious?!

Midoriya Izuku was SmallMight!

Later in the morning, at a reasonable time, Neito walked determinedly towards 1-A’s classroom. The students in the hallways parted when they saw his face.

He slammed the classroom doors open. Multiple people jumped in their seats. Hitoshi looked up from his phone from where he was sitting in his chair, precariously tipped back onto two legs. But, for once, Neito didn’t make a beeline to him. 

Instead, he stopped at the desk a row before Hitoshi’s and slammed his hands down on it. Midoriya flinched, looking up from his notebook nervously.

“Kaccha— Wait, M-Monoma?”

“Midoriya! I figured something out!” Neito declared triumphantly.

“H-huh?”

“I feel like it’s so obvious in hindsight, but— No, I’m getting ahead of myself.” Neito shook his head, some of his hair falling into his eyes. He brushed it aside and made eye contact with Midoriya. “You’re SmallMight!”

“W-what?”

Neito deflated. “You aren’t? I was so sure, you’re a lot like him—”

“No, I am,” Midoryia said, fidgeting with his pencil.

“Yes! Hitoshi, I was right!”

Hitoshi grunted. Neito beamed.

Midoriya pursed his lips. “...How do you know about that? Are you on SupportSupport?”

“I’m CopyCat! CopyCat2615.” 

Midoriya’s eyes bugged out of his head. “CopyCat?!”

“Yeah!”

Midoriya stared at Neito hard, like he was concentrating on reading his thoughts or something. 

“I think you broke him,” Hitoshi said after a while, leaning over to wave a hand in front of Midoriya’s face. He didn’t flinch.

Neito chuckled nervously. Just as he was about to say something, Midoriya snapped out of his daze.

“That makes so much sense! Your quirk, and your friend’s quirk, and how you’re going into support, and—just everything!”

Neito grinned. Then he checked the time, and his smile faltered. “I should probably be going before Maijima-sensei gets too mad. See you later! We have so much to talk about!”

“So, you’re SmallMight, huh.” Hitoshi had heard of him plenty from Neito, enough to know that he was probably Neito’s second closest friend. It made him look at Midoriya in a new light.

“Y-yeah. And you’re the friend CopyCat—uh, Monoma always talks about.” 

Hitoshi hummed his assent.

They were left in an awkward silence. Hitoshi would normally leave it be and go back to his phone, but if Midoriya was now going to be pulled into Neito’s growing friend group, he should try to make a bit of an effort.

“So, where did you both go yesterday after school?”

Izuku grasped onto the thread of conversation, relieved to break the silence. “O-oh, it was this place I’d heard of. A… cat café,” he finished hesitantly, remembering his disastrous decision. They’d had a good time, overall, but he still felt awful for choosing a cat café without realizing Monoma was scared of cats.

Shinsou’s eyebrows raised.

Midoriya cringed. He must think Midoriya was so clueless, taking Monoma to a cat café.

“Which one?”

“Beans and Friends, I think.”

Shinsou’s lips twitched.  “I’ve been there before.”

“R-really? I didn’t think…”

“That I’d like something like that? I like cats.”

“O-oh, that's nice!” He must go there without Monoma sometimes. 

Aizawa slunk out of his sleeping bag to start the class, and their conversation abruptly ended.

Hitoshi was a bit glad, because he was having trouble keeping himself from laughing.

Neito always got incredibly weird about Beans and Friends—for good reason, to a certain extent. Hitoshi nearly snickered aloud thinking of what shit Neito must’ve pulled to have actually gone inside the café.

Hitoshi’s humour abruptly died as his leg throbbed. He winced.

Neito and Midoriya were engrossed in talking about quirks again—this time about Best Jeanist’s quirk. They were lively, talking more animatedly than anyone else in the cafeteria. Hitoshi practically had to squint to look at their faces, they were so bright.

Neito and Midoriya had a lot of interests that aligned, and had been talking online for months. It was similar with Neito and Hatsume—they had a shared passion for support that drew them together.

Hitoshi felt… something about that. He couldn’t quite place it. He knew Neito was going to make new friends when they went to UA, and he’d been prepared for that, but this was a different feeling.

It was almost like a twinge of desire. Of want. Something almost nearing envy. 

But Hitoshi wasn’t here to make friends. He came into this knowing that, and he wasn’t going to change his mind just because the sight of Neito making friends made him feel a bit of unexpected jealousy.

Hitoshi felt a flash of pain in his leg and grit his teeth. Well, it wasn’t like friends were the biggest thing he had to worry about.

“Hitoshi!” Neito said. “Which one of us is right?”

Hitoshi blinked, pushing down the thoughts of yesterday. “Huh?”

“In a fight between Best Jeanist and Rock Lock, who would win?” Midoriya asked, looking as impassioned as Hitoshi had ever seen him.

Hitoshi hesitated. Rock Lock had his quirk, but Best Jeanist’s fabric fibres might be small enough that Rock Lock couldn’t stop them all from moving at once… “Best Jeanist, probably?”

Neito slapped the table in triumph. “Hah! I told you! Obviously Best Jeanist would win, he’s the fourth ranking hero—”

“He only said that because he spends so much time around you that he’s absorbed your biases!” Midoriya interjected.

“Does it really count as being biased when I’m right?”

“Of course it does,” Midoriya replied. “And you’re not right! You’re not thinking about the applications of their quirks enough! With one well placed touch, Rock Lock could use his quirk to stop Best Jeanist from doing anything, since fabric fibres are nonliving things! He could lock Best Jeanist’s costume into place, and then the entire fight would be over!”

“That’s assuming that Best Jeanist is slower than Rock Lock, and that jeans aren’t living things—”

“What? Jeans aren’t alive.”

“Who’s to say the fabric doesn’t gain life once Best Jeanist starts manipulating it?”

“That doesn’t make any sense! Denim fibres aren’t alive, whether someone’s manipulating them or not! Best Jeanist just moves them, he doesn’t— They aren’t— How—” Midoriya splutters indignantly.

“But they could be. Quirks are mysterious things. You don’t have any proof—”

“Jeans are not living things—!”

Hitoshi hid a smile behind his hand. 

Maybe it wasn’t so bad to have new people in his circle. It was only by proxy, since they were Neito’s friends, of course. 

They weren’t his friends. Definitely not.

The only good thing about living on UA’s campus was that Shouta could easily go home for lunch whenever he wanted to, which meant seeing Eri.

He had a weird schedule, what with being a teacher and an underground hero, so he took advantage of all the time he could get to bond with her. Hizashi did the same, though their schedules often didn’t line up well. Luckily, they had a few trusted people that could babysit Eri whenever they weren’t around. Once she was older and more comfortable around new people, they would think about bringing her to the staff room or sending her to school. But that was a long way out.

Today, after eating lunch, Eri had joined him for a nap. He had hardly realised it, until he’d felt the couch dip when she climbed up by his feet. He was thrilled that she felt so comfortable around him, when it had been such a process to get there.

But that had been lunch.

Now he was back in the classroom, with a bunch of unruly teenagers eagerly awaiting his words.

Shouta pulled open a small drawer underneath his podium and rifled around his stack of custom printed cue cards—with words like ‘heroics,’ ‘ethics,’ and ‘sports festival’ in fancy print—until he found the one reading ‘rescue.’ They had been a gag gift from Hizashi, but Shouta found no sense in throwing out perfectly good cards. They were useful words—showing them spared him from having to say them.

Shouta held the rescue cue card up for the class to see. “For your heroics class today, you’ll be preparing for all types of disaster relief.”

“Rescue training?!” A few students exclaimed.

“Yes,” Shouta said. “You can choose whether to wear your costumes or gym uniforms today. We’ll be taking a bus to the training site. That’s all. Go get ready.”

He slunk back into his sleeping bag as his students began rushing around excitedly. Teenagers sure were loud. 

Hopefully he could get a few minutes of rest before they headed off to the USJ.

Shiori watched the popcorn bag spin in the microwave. The popping kernels and hum of the microwave soothed something within her. It had been ages since she’d given herself a day to relax without any responsibilities. 

Once the popcorn was ready, she transferred it to a big bowl, and settled down on the couch among her fluffiest blankets. She pulled up a horror movie she’d been wanting to watch for a few months now, but hadn’t seen with the boys. She knew Neito was scared of horror movies, even though he’d never admit it. It was a mother’s intuition—that, and he still needed more practice in hiding his tells.

Only a few minutes into the movie, right after the first person had died, a knock came at the door. Shiori paused the TV, sighing. Hopefully it would be quick. She reluctantly got up from the couch, shedding her blankets but not bothering to put down the popcorn bowl.

She unlocked the deadbolt, cracked the door open, and froze. Shiori felt the popcorn bowl slip out of her arms, spilling popcorn everywhere. The clang of the metal bowl on hardwood snapped her out of her stupor. She quickly shut the door, leaning against it. What the fuck?! She turned and opened the door once again. He was still there. He smiled, eyes crinkling.

What the fuck, indeed.

She slammed the door shut.