Chapter 99 - 25-26

Chapter 25: Truth & Consequences

Inko sat back down on her couch substantially more exhausted than she was earlier. She had finished her conversation with Nezu about her discovery of Hawks' feather, and the chimera had spent 15 minutes talking her down from hunting the Wing Hero down and liberating him of his kneecaps. They couldn't afford to be so rash; the Commission had clearly made a move against them, and they couldn't be certain as to when. They were already planning a strike against the Commission with Endeavor's situation, but as of right now, the Midoriya home was pretty much compromised.

Fortunately, Nezu already had plans for the construction of dormitories for UA students that lived too far to comfortably travel and had to move or get an apartment closer to the school. He'd have Cementoss expedite its construction in order to get the Midoriya family to a more secure environment. Meanwhile, they would continue planning, gathering allies, and putting pieces in place for the downfall of the HPSC.

Then they could liberate Hawks of his kneecaps.

For the time being, Inko was both stressed and exhausted, and she just wanted to see her son, so she opted to video call him. He picked up after a few rings, and Inko was greeted with the sight of her son's bandaged face sporting a very sheepish smile.

"Hey, Mom."

Inko was only mildly alarmed by her son's clear injuries. He was tough, and he could heal himself if necessary, but what the hell happened to put him in that state?

"Honey, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he assured. "I just got a little banged up dealing with Murphy's Law."

Her brow furrowed. "What exactly happened?"

She watched her son nervously scratch the back of his head, so she already knew that she wouldn't like the answer. "Hehe, funny story…"

"Hold that thought," she interrupted before casting her Chinese evergreen a glance and standing up from the couch. "It's a little stuffy in here, so I'm gonna step outside for some air."

She idly noticed her son giving her a curious look, and she knew that he wasn't going to like the news one bit when she told him. She wouldn't worry him while he was on his trip.

"Okay, what happened?" she asked after shutting her front door and walking away from the apartment.

"Um, well, the I-Expo was attacked by villains."

Inko stopped in her tracks and fixed her son with a look of concern. "Excuse me?"

"Some guys hijacked the island's security system and tried to hold everyone hostage while they stole some really valuable tech and research."

"Tried?"

"I, um, may have intervened…"

Inko gave him a flat look. "Izuku…"

"All of the pros were trapped and restrained, even All Might. They literally couldn't do anything without risking innocent lives. We were in a position to help without putting lives in danger, so we did that."

"'We'?"

"Me, Ochako, a few others from my class, Mei Hatsume from the sports festival, and Melissa Shield."

"In other words, no one with a license," she sighed.

"People are free to use their quirks as they please on I-Island, provided it isn't for criminal activity," Izuku responded. "From what I understand after the police spoke with me a little while ago, vigilantism isn't technically criminalized on the island, particularly since there isn't ever any crime for regular people to stop."

"So, you skidded by on a technicality once again," she chuckled.

"I suppose," her son chuckled along with her. "It helped that Mirko and Ryukyu showed up at the end for a deus ex heroine. They beat that guy into the ground."

Inko frowned. "Was that guy in question the one who did all this to you?"

"Oh, no," Izuku hastily assured. "These injuries are all self-inflicted."

Inko stared blankly at the screen, and her son began to sweat under her gaze. He coughed and cleared his throat, deciding to explain further.

"I sort of lost control of my quirk…" he muttered.

"How?" she pressed.

"A new color," Izuku answered before briefly looking away from the screen to hide his shame. "A bad one."

Inko, of course, picked up on that movement, and she frowned in concern. "Sweetie?"

"I'm okay, though!" Izuku quickly spoke up to move on from the topic. "Just need some more time with my healing flames and then I'll be good as new. What's going on back home? How's everything going?"

Inko wasn't fooled by the attempt to change the subject, and it worried her even more. However, she would let it rest for the moment and allow Izuku to enjoy the rest of his trip. She could press for more information when he got back home.

With that in mind, the answers to the questions he asked would worry him should she respond truthfully. She knew that he wouldn't react very well to the news that the HPSC was attempting to surveil them.

"Everything's fine," she finally answered. "You're okay, so I'm okay."

Inko could see in Izuku's eyes that he caught the way she dodged the question, and she internally cursed how sharp the boy was. She was relieved that he didn't press the issue either, though, and he only offered her a bandaged smile.

"What's the time difference between Japan and I-Island?" Inko asked, half in an effort to change the subject again and half out of pure curiosity.

"Honestly?" Izuku began with a hum. "No idea. I don't even know where in the Pacific we even are right now. This whole island is powered by plot. Don't think about it too hard."

"I'll try not to," she replied with a snort. "I'll leave you to get some rest. You need it."

"Okay. I love you, mom."

"I love you, too, Izuku."

"Are you serious?! I missed all of that?!"

Tensei Iida was beside himself. When the island's security protocol had lifted and foot traffic was allowed once more, Tensei considered leaving the hotel to check on his brother. However, keeping up his cover was important to keep certain bureaucrats from asking unwanted questions, so he stayed in his room and was mildly reassured by the texts he received from his brother when the island's cell reception finally returned. Only when Tenya returned and informed him of what actually happened did he understand the true enormity of the situation.

Needless to say, he was rather nettled.

"Do not despair, elder brother!" Tenya tried to placate him. "We defeated the evildoers, and everyone made it out safe and mostly unharmed."

"No, no, I figured that much," Tensei waved off. "I'm upset that I was cooped up in a hotel room with no TV or internet while there was prime villain butt to be kicked out there! Do you know how long it's been since I kicked a strong villain after a Recipro Burst?"

Tenya stood with an utterly incredulous expression before he sighed and his eye began to twitch. "As tactless as ever, elder brother."

"You know it," Tensei chuckled before sitting on the bed. "How's Midoriya?"

Tenya's expression became slightly solemn, surprising the older Iida hero. "He sustained numerous injuries in his battle with the leader of the villains. He assured us that they were self-inflicted after he lost control of his quirk and that he could heal them himself, though."

"Wow, that's rough," Tensei remarked with a frown. "He seemed to have really fine control over his fire from what I've seen. I wonder what happened to make it slip."

"I wonder that, as well," Tenya agreed. "I can't imagine what could have pushed him so far, and he was very hesitant to reveal many details."

"Well, I suppose we can just be glad that he alongside everyone else made it out alright," Tensei sighed before turning a smile back towards his younger brother. "Now, tell me about these villains and how far you kicked them."

Izuku had taken his mother's advice and gotten more rest. The burns incurred from the black flames were healing incredibly slowly, just as he expected they would, and the constant stamina drain of having his pink flames continuously active would probably kill him at some point if he didn't rest and eat intermittently. Several times he awoke to see Ochako sitting beside him, usually with food, despite his assurances that he was fine.

That final instance of him waking up wouldn't be so pleasant, however. Enough time had passed for daylight to be breaking through the window of his hospital room, so he knew that it was at least the next day and the I-Expo had officially begun. Sitting next to his bed wasn't Ochako, though; it was Mei, but she was busy napping, as well. He chuckled and snapped his fingers in front of her face to wake her, jolting her awake with all the spastic glory that only she could provide. When she finally laid eyes on him, he could see relief and genuine happiness on her face.

"Human Torch, you're awake!" she cheered.

"That's a new one," Izuku laughed. "How's the expo been?"

Mei's face quickly lost its levity, and she became pensive. "The expo is mostly proceeding on as planned with a few exceptions."

"…You're making it sound like there's a lot more to this than just the villain attack," Izuku cautiously probed.

"David Shield was arrested," Mei replied.

"WHAT?!" Izuku exclaimed, practically hopping out of his hospital bed. "Why? What the hell happened while I was out?"

"The villain attack was an inside job," Mei began to explain, and Izuku's eyes nearly shot out of his skull. "Apparently, the professor and his partner hired a squad of actors to stage a heist so that they could retrieve a powerful device and research that their bosses forced them to scrap."

"Are you serious?" Izuku asked incredulously, and she nodded. "What device could possibly be worth attempting something so comically stupid?"

"A device that amplifies quirks," Mei responded, and Izuku went pale. "It's basically trigger without any of the harmful side effects. He wanted to extend All Might's time as the Symbol of Peace. It was a whole thing."

Izuku sat back onto his bed and preemptively massaged his temples for the headache he could already feel coming. He just knew that he would be incredibly annoyed by whatever outcome resulted from this mess.

"The problem was that the actors weren't actually actors," Mei continued, and Izuku felt his headache gaining strength. "They were real villains who had every intention of stealing the invention, and they were legitimately holding the island hostage to accomplish that."

"So, Professor Shield and Mr. Abraham were arrested for conspiracy and attempted theft, then?" Izuku hazarded a guess.

"…Not exactly," Mei hesitantly denied, and Izuku did not like where this was going. "I only know because I was with Melissa when it happened, but one of the guys was only masquerading as a hired villain. I don't know if he was working alone or if he was colluding with another party, but he attacked Shield and Abraham and then left with the device."

She went silent for a long moment before she hesitantly spoke again. "…Abraham didn't make it. Shield accepted responsibility for it, as well as for the device being stolen."

"Oh… oh dear," Izuku lowly remarked. He was truly at a loss for words. The shitshow had become a shit-motion picture. "And the expo is still going on?"

Mei's face screwed into one of disgust as she nodded. "It was likely a financially motivated decision given just how many important and wealthy institutions either attend, fund, or have some sort of stake in the expo. I don't have any actual details on that, though. Again, I only know as much as I do because I was with Melissa when it all happened, and we were questioned together. I can only speculate beyond that."

"So… a man is dead," Izuku slowly uttered, "and one of the island's premier scientists and inventors is held responsible, but 'the show must go on' in spite of the scandal in the interest of not losing money?"

"Like I said, no actual details on that," Mei answered with a tired sigh. "We're pretty much on the same page, though."

The two sat in silence for a lengthy minute and marinated in the insidious implications. "Shit-motion picture" truly did not even begin to cover the situation, after all.

"…The man who did it," she quietly continued while fixing Izuku with a look of concern, "he knew my name. He knew exactly who I was."

That certainly took the boy by surprise. "What did he look like?"

"He had straight, red hair and violet eyes, and he was kind of tall, but everyone is tall to me," Mei answered.

Izuku's eyes hardened at the description. It couldn't possibly be the same person from the mall… could it? He needed to be absolutely sure.

"Did he have a lackadaisical yet entirely too threatening air about him?" Izuku pressed.

"Yes, very much so," Mei nodded.

'Shit, it is the same guy. Just who the hell is he?'

He put that out of his mind to think about later. "How's Melissa taking it?"

Mei silently mulled the question over for a moment. "She's handling it as best as anyone could in her situation. All Might has stayed by her side, so that's probably helping."

"Where is she?" he asked.

"She sequestered herself in her lab at the academy," Mei answered. "That's actually why I'm here. She gave me her ID to come in and out of the building, so I thought it would be better to come get you once you were discharged. Your interpersonal skills are substantially better than mine, so you'd be better suited for comforting duty than me."

"You give yourself too little credit, you know," Izuku remarked even though she wasn't wrong in the slightest.

Mei just shrugged. "I know where my strengths lie."

"I suppose inventing and improving support tech is easier than dealing with the inherent volatility of human emotions," the green head mused while laying back into his bed.

"That," she nodded, "and babies tend not to disappoint you. If they do, it's because you probably did something wrong. People, on the other hand, just try to make you believe that's the case."

…That was a much more cynical outlook than he would've expected from her. He considered probing further for more insight into that, but one of the doctors that was monitoring his condition entered the room. It wasn't long before he was officially discharged and on his way to the I-Island Academy to check on Melissa. When the two arrived to her personal lab, they found her hunched over her table and entrenched in one of the gauntlets of the crimson power suit she had created. She didn't look up at them when they entered, only throwing up a haphazard wave before returning to her work. Izuku idly noted that All Might wasn't in the room with her, meaning he probably left to get food or something.

When the two approached her, Izuku got a better look at the haggard girl. Her hair was a mess, and that was even discounting the few clumps of it that were strewn about the floor of the lab. Her eyes were red and had more bags than Yaoyorozu after a particularly fruitful trip to the mall, but they were still laser-focused on the gauntlet she was working on. Mei and Izuku threw a glance towards each other, and they silently sat down across from her while she worked.

Without a word, Melissa slid a set of schematics and notes over to Mei, and Izuku noticed that her knuckles were bruised. As Mei put on her goggles and grabbed the other gauntlet, Izuku looked around the room, and his eyes quickly landed on the bits of broken glass on the floor. Beside them was the smashed remains of the frame that held the photo of Melissa and David. He turned back to the blonde and noticed that every so often, her hands would twitch while she was working, and her subtle flinches whenever they did told him that she was in pain. He reached over with his palms bathed in gentle, pink fire, and he hovered them over her own.

She paused but didn't look up, allowing him to use his healing flames to mend her bruised knuckles and restore her hands to an unblemished state. When he was finished and retracted his hands, she did not return to working on the gauntlet, instead sitting in choked silence. Tears started to trail down her cheeks, but she swiftly wiped them away. She paused once again when she felt a hand on her shoulder, though, and she finally brought her watery gaze up from the table to see a kind, warm pair of green eyes staring back at her. She turned her head slightly, and Mei had removed her goggles and was also giving her a reassuring look.

Melissa gave the two a small, genuine smile, and she slid another copy of the schematics and her notes to Izuku. White flame bloomed in Izuku's hair while he looked them over, and the three silently worked on the gauntlets together. Nary a word was uttered among them, but nothing needed to be said. In that moment, a solid understanding blossomed between the three: baby-making could bring anyone together through the toughest of times.

Overhaul was a businessman, but more than that, however, he was a man of science. As such, the super-powered society entrenched in sickness that resulted from the development of quirks was inherently incongruent with how he believed the world should function. With that in mind, he could still find it in himself to do business with the diseased in the interest of practicality.

To Overhaul, the ends always justified the means. If he needed to manufacture the very compound that boosted the sickness he sought to destroy in order to artificially inflate demand for a counter to that drug, he would do so and then capitalize on that demand maliciously. If he needed to continually tear apart and reassemble a 6 year old girl in order to create that counter, he would gladly do so. It was all for a world free of the disease of quirks (ruled over by the yakuza, of course).

All of that being said, it would come as a surprise to no one that Overhaul did not take encroachments on his operations lightly, especially at a time where the development of his cure to the sickness of quirks was drawing ever so near. A group of filthy degenerates attacking one of his trigger operations was unfortunate enough, but under normal circumstances, he could just have some of his men locate them and deal swift justice without him having to spend any of his own energy on it.

This was not a normal occasion. Not only was the trigger operation attacked, but a third of the Eight Bullets were killed in the process. Finding downtrodden saps that he could manipulate into pledging loyalty to him while also being competent enough to be useful was rather annoying, but they could inevitably be replaced. However, the insult of attacking the Shie Hassaikai so brazenly could not be overlooked, and retribution would be had.

So, what was Overhaul to do? Well, on such deserving occasions, he'd opt to make an appearance among the degenerates in question himself, upon which he'd personally slaughter each and every single one of them. Then, he'd reassemble one of them to get the message across to never cross the Shie Hassaikai again, hopefully spreading the word to the rest of the roaches skittering about the criminal underworld. Let it be known that Overhaul was a firm believer in every action garnering an unequal and excessive reaction unless there was potential business to be done, but no such business would be done here.

As he calmly sat at his desk and continued comparing his findings from the newest batch of his quirk eliminator from the last one, the young man had already sent his hounds out to sniff out any and every bit of information they could find on the lead they had as to the identities of their attackers. Blue flames and dust seemed like long shots at first glance given the unfathomable quantity of quirks in Japan's monstrous population, but he wasn't the youngest yakuza boss in Japan's criminal underworld for no reason. With his very expansive network of informants (many of which would likely have to be "persuaded" to cooperate), he was certain that he could suss out a man that wielded blue flames and a man who could render entire buildings to rubble. Those quirks, repugnant infections they may have been, were exceptionally powerful, and anyone casually boasting that kind of power would not be able to hide from Overhaul forever.

No one could.

The next few days came and went, and the I-Expo reached its final day. Izuku had wanted to forgo the festivities and stay with Melissa, but she insisted that he shouldn't deprive himself of the experience for her sake. He tried to fight her on it, but she was vehement that while she greatly appreciated his concern and would consider him a great friend without question despite only meeting him that week, she wasn't a damsel in distress, nor was she a fragile, porcelain doll that needed to be handled with the utmost care. He stood his ground, though, knowing exactly the toll being alone with your thoughts could take on someone after any length of time.

Needless to say, the back-and-forth got a little heated, and tempers (mostly Melissa's given her already tenuous emotional state) flared when neither party backed down. Fortunately, cooler heads would ultimately prevail, and they eventually came to a compromise in which Izuku would split his time between the expo and hanging out with her so long as he brought her food whenever he returned. Izuku would also explain away the black eye he had by saying Mirko tagged him during another impromptu spar.

Meanwhile, David Shield's name was dragged through the mud over the course of the week. There were a litany of angles he was getting attacked from in the coverage of the scandal. In one angle, he was painted as the orchestrator of a terrorist attack with the goal of stealing dangerous technology out of anger of having his work shut down for the greater good. In another, he was displayed as a scorned, mad scientist attempting to take his ball and go home after ruining the I-Expo, and the expo continuing on in spite of his failed attempt was just a refusal to bend to villainy.

Not a lot was reported on what was actually stolen, and the reporting left it very ambiguous as to whether anything was stolen at all. It made sense to Izuku if what Mei said was true. That quirk amplifier likely wasn't ever supposed to see the light of day in the first place, and advertising that a villain was able to infiltrate and escape I-Island with it would be the worst look imaginable. Just as well, it would indubitably spur a massive manhunt for the person/group in possession of it by people on both sides of the law.

When it was time to leave the island, Izuku and Mei found themselves on All Might's private jet once again, though it was without All Might this time. He had chosen to stay behind to continue shielding Melissa from the scandal and help sort out where exactly things went from there. At least, that's what he told them he was sticking around for. Izuku had his suspicions, but he let it be, especially after the almost tearful goodbye he and Mei shared with Melissa.

The flight back home was a lot more subdued than the initial trip to I-Island. Most people would be much less excited to leave I-Island than to go, and that was partially the case for Izuku and Mei, but they were also understandably exhausted from all of the hullabaloo that they had to endure. It was certainly a trip to be remembered, both for all of the right and wrong reasons.

"Hey, Izuku?" Mei addressed him from her seat across the aisle from his own, drawing his attention from the window. "Thanks for inviting me to this trip. Venturing to I-Island was a dream come true, despite everything that happened while we were there."

"You were the first person I thought of aside from my mom," Izuku replied with a smile, and then he took on a thoughtful expression. "I don't think I've ever heard you call me by my first name, though. Makes me feel special."

"You've already been calling me Mei for a while now, so I figured I'd at least return the favor," Mei replied with a shrug and smile of her own. "I've never had many friends, and I think I can confidently say that you occupy the top spot in that regard."

That admission truly warmed the green head's heart, particularly since he knew that she didn't often get sentimental about much of anything. He was really lucky to have been able to make such great friends in his short time at UA thus far.

"Plus, I made a ton of connections with support companies the world over, and I also now have a wealth of ideas for all the super cute babies I can make!" Mei continued with a manic grin, her more familiar gremlin behavior taking over once again.

Izuku couldn't fight the fond chuckle at her antics. She really was one of a kind in so many ways. He'd make damn sure that Hatsume Industries took off by hook or by crook, and he'd have her along with him on his hero journey every step of the way.

Re-Destro stood in his office in Deika, fondly gazing out of the window at the glorious city as he was wont to do. They were inching closer towards their ultimate goal with each passing day. Recruits and sympathizers were funneling in weekly as senseless villain attacks on civilians became more prevalent, and their already established forces were growing more competent by the day under Geten's heavy-handed instruction. The inevitable liberation of society was near, and it was clearer than ever. Not since his days as a gnome in his youth had he felt such clarity.

A knock came from the other side of his door, and he smiled; that was the signal that his lieutenants had all arrived at the conference room, and the meeting he called for was finally upon him. Striding out of his office and down the hall to the room in question, he opened the door and saw his most trusted comrades sitting in their seats at the conference table. Curious, Skeptic, Trumpet, Geten, and Kusari were all in attendance, and Re-Destro took his seat at the head of the table.

"I trust you all know why this meeting was called," Re-Destro began, and each lieutenant nodded, having at the very least a rough idea of what had recently transpired at I-Island. "Excellent. Kusari, showcase the device."

The redhead complied and retrieved a large case from under the table, opening it for everyone to view. "This is David Shield's quirk amplifier that is supposedly able to massively boost the capabilities of one's meta ability without the harmful consequences usually seen in artificial enhancers, such as trigger."

"Okay, we have the device," Geten spoke up from under his hood in his soft voice that betrayed the "survival of the fittest" sigma grind-set he touted. "What exactly do we do with it?"

"What exactly can we do with it?" asked Trumpet, the MLA's inside man in the political world of Japan as the leader of the Hearts and Minds Party. "It's certainly a powerful tool, but it's only one."

"We can do nothing without the accompanying research that went into developing it," Skeptic spoke up. "Unfortunately, that research was confiscated when the project was shutdown upon pressure from several governments, Japan's included."

"So, in other words, you have it," Curious surmised with a deadpan expression, knowing how dramatic her comrade could be when flaunting his skills and intelligence.

"Of course, I do," Skeptic scoffed. "Getting into their systems and obtaining the information was only slightly more tedious than slipping past UA's numerous firewalls unnoticed."

"So, we have both the device and the instructions on how to develop it, meaning we could potentially reverse engineer this thing," Trumpet surmised.

"And mass produce it," Re-Destro finished with a dark smile.

The pieces began to fall into place for the other occupants of the table. If they were able to crack the code on a risk-free quirk amplifier, they could outfit their entire army with them and develop a nigh unstoppable legion of super soldiers. No one would be able to stand in the way of liberation; not any heroes, not any governments, and not any standing armies or self-defense forces. Hell, not even a surprise collaboration between the Symbol of Peace and the Symbol of Evil would be able to stop them.

The Liberation of society truly was near.

"Hn," came a low grunt from within the thick parka of Geten.

"Something the matter, Geten?" Re-Destro asked.

"I don't usually agree with the use of artificial enhancements on principle," Geten calmly explained. "It runs against our ideology of wielding our own power as we should and dominating with our own strength."

The room was engulfed in a thoughtful silence at the surprisingly insightful take from the hooded man. Kusari, having long since abandoned his lazy masquerade for such an important meeting, set his sharp gaze onto their Grand Commander as he mulled over Geten's thoughts. The older man's eyes were closed, and he was slowly nodding, as if he had come to a grand realization through nirvana.

"You are not incorrect in your assessment, Geten," Re-Destro began, and he had the rapt attention of his lieutenants. "The mission of our movement is the liberation of our natural gifts, and the proper cultivation of our natural gifts into powerful, efficient weapons so that we aren't reliant on filth such as trigger is one of our keystones. However, in our hands, this device is more than just a shortcut to power or a tool akin to steroids; it's a symbol."

After taking a moment to ensure that he had everyone's undivided attention, he continued. "This device is a showcase of our potential should society unleash itself of its shackles and allow its inhabitants to live freely and wield their abilities as they should, as is their right. This device will show us what society *could* be if only we would allow it to be, what it *should* be if only we are successful in our righteous endeavors. It potentially may not happen in our lifetimes, but such is the nature of revolution. Change does not happen overnight. Utopia takes time to achieve, and Utopia is exactly what we will liberate our society towards, as is Destro's will."

"Based," Geten replied with a nod, and he, alongside the other lieutenants, placed their right hands in the Liberation sign with their thumbs on their foreheads and their index finger pointed to the sky.

"Based, indeed," Re-Destro said with his dark, self-assured smile.

"How long will it take us to actually reverse engineer this?" Curious asked, living up to her codename.

"Unfortunately, it will likely take quite some time, though much less time than it would take without the accompanying research," Kusari chose to answer. "However, time is on our side in this situation."

"How so?" she questioned, and Kusari smirked.

"Let's say, hypothetically-"

"Please keep this one brief," Trumpet interrupted pleadingly, and the others all nodded alongside him.

"Whatever," Kusari huffed indignantly. "Anyway, suppose I was fingered as the guy who killed one of the developers of that device and walked away with it. The first thing they will investigate is my connection to the League of Villains, so the heat will already be directed elsewhere."

His smirk returned with an even more vindictive edge. "What's more is that they will eventually stumble upon the League's connection to All For One, assuming they haven't already. He's enough of a high priority threat as it stands, but the very idea of the Symbol of Evil hiding away in the shadows with a device that amplifies quirks is cataclysmic enough to warrant hero society mobilizing in full to eliminate him."

"All of their attention will be on ridding the world of the Quirk Thief and what remains of his empire, and none of it will be on us," Re-Destro added on to Kusari's line of thinking, and the redhead nodded. "They'll be so focused on killing each other while we're left to work in peace, and whoever comes out of that will be helpless to defend against us once we are prepared to strike."

Re-Destro let the moment breathe so that the weight of the misdirection set in for the other lieutenants, and they were all cognizant of the implications. Kusari, in particular, was very pleased with himself. Assuring a reliable red herring for the heroes while the MLA gathered their strength was a commendable feat, and he would revel in his self-congratulatory high for as far as it would take him.

Re-Destro smiled and gave his lieutenants a final look-over. "Until that time comes, everyone, continue your work," Re-Destro commanded. "We are making excellent progress towards the ideal society, and we can only go even further up from here. You all are dismissed."

A few short days of rest for both his mind and body was all Izuku was afforded before he would be back on the move. Classes 1-A and 1-B were outside of UA and weathering the last minute lectures about their training camp that Aizawa and Vlad King were giving them, respectively. When they were finished, his classmates fell into excited chatter about what their training camp would have in store for them, and he could certainly understand their anticipation, but he was content with very little excitement for the foreseeable future.

Just as that thought crossed his mind, he noticed the pair of floating arms making their way toward him in his periphery. Knowing exactly who they belonged to, he didn't feel the need to do anything to stop their advance, and the hands snapped around his neck and lightly squeezed while shaking him.

"You little bastard," the voice of his fellow green head growled from beside him, and he turned to send a smile to the floating head glaring at him. Her face then took on a very exaggerated look of hurt and betrayal.

"You met Godzillo and lorded it over me, how could you?" she asked in an equally exaggerated tone. "I thought we were the best of bosom buddies, Midoriya. Green-haired royalty is supposed to stick together, not undercut each other."

Izuku could barely fight his laughter while reaching into his bag and retrieving a notebook. He flipped to the page with Godzillo's signature on it, and he held it up for her to read. Upon seeing that it was actually an autograph made out to her specifically, her eyes widened, and her arms went slack. She slowly grasped the notebook and held it with such reverence that anyone watching would swear he had handed her the location of the Fountain of Youth.

"You are forgiven, Lord Midoriya," Tokage eventually said with her sharp-toothed grin.

"Glad to hear it, Lady Tokage," he replied with a laugh.

"That's Tyranokage to you, minion," she corrected with a playfully haughty tone.

"My mistake, Your Highness," he placated with his hands up in mock surrender.

"Come on guys, the busses are here!" Kendo shouted to her class, and Tokage took that signal to flick Izuku in the temple and fly away with the notebook in hand. Izuku amusedly shook his head and walked toward his class' bus. He did notice Mineta staring at him with the same look of reverence he had several times in the past, and he would finally admit that it was starting to weird him out a little bit.

The mind of the shorter boy, meanwhile, was in the midst of a complete whirlwind. At the center of his thoughts was his class rep, Izuku Midoriya. He would consider the absurdly powerful teen a friend, and he hoped that the feeling was mutual, but he couldn't really be sure these days. He never really could be sure with anyone, if he was being honest with himself.

Making friends wasn't as much of a struggle for him as allowing himself to believe that they were genuine and not secretly looking down on him behind his back; metaphorically speaking, of course. Everyone looked down on him physically on account of his diminutive stature. That, in and of itself, was also kind of the problem.

Sure, people were never cruel or particularly unfair to him, but they were often dismissive of his dreams of becoming a pro hero. His small size and odd mutation quirk were biological hurdles for being respected, as most would immediately write him off to be the gag character that was good for little more than comic relief and occasional slapstick humor. His admittedly overzealous appreciation for the fairer sex didn't exactly help matters, either. It hurt to see the rest of his class think less of him in real time after the locker room fiasco. He knew that he went too far; it was a gross invasion of privacy that got another classmate hurt in his stead when he should've just had some damn self-control. Now, not only was he a short, weird-looking nerd with shoddy social skills, he was a creep on top of that.

He just wanted to be cool. He wanted to be respected. He wanted people to finally look at him as anything more than a quick laugh. He wanted people to feel reassured in his presence, not repulsed or apathetic.

He wanted to be like Midoriya.

Ever since the day he met Midoriya at the entrance exam where the taller boy jumped in front of a robot attack to protect him and then collaborated with him to take down the remaining swarm, he was constantly reminded of the kind of person he wished he could be. He watched the green head practically stumble into being obliviously surrounded by female friends, the respect of his classmates and pro heroes across the nation, and even a strangely devoted following of people online that talk about him on hero forums. Mineta was even browsing through the dumb rumors about Endeavor being a bottom when people spring-boarded the conversation to Midoriya and his fire quirk.

What the hell was even the correlation there?

They weren't even halfway through their first year, and he was already everything Mineta ever wanted to be. He was strong, likable, heroic, ridiculously smart, and above all else, he was respected.

Mineta truly just wanted to be respected.

"HEY, GRAPIST! GET THE FUCK ON THE GODDAMN BUS BEFORE I SQUEEZE YOU INTO JUICE!" Bakugo shouted out of the window of his seat at the only 1-A student to have yet to board.

"Language, Bakugo!" Iida could be heard shouting from inside.

Chapter 26: The Wild, Wild Pussycats

Class 1-A exited the bus after about an hour of travel. Most had assumed that they were just making a rest stop to stretch their limbs and go to the bathroom, but upon being faced with an empty lot (save for a single black car) overlooking the wilderness and no bus carrying 1-B in sight, confusion and suspicion began to spread amongst them.

"You guys don't actually think we stopped here just for you to stretch your legs, do you?" Aizawa spoke up, gaining everyone's attention. Before anyone could respond, both the driver and front passenger doors of the black car opened, and two figures stepped out of the vehicle.

"Your feline fantasies are here! Say meow!" one figure, Mandalay, began in her red cat-meets-magical-girl-themed costume.

"Puuurrrrfectly cute and catlike girls! You can call us the…" the other figure, Pixie-Bob, continued in a blue version of the other's costume.

"Wild, Wild Pussycats!" they emphatically declared together while posing amidst a silent, mostly confused class 1-A and a young boy behind them who looked like he wanted to be literally anywhere else.

"Oh, Uravity!" Pixie-Bob called out while making her way to Ochako after spotting her. "How have ya been since the internship?

"I've been doing alright," she answered with a smile. "It's great to see you all again!"

Pixie-Bob smiled, and then she smirked and bent to whisper to Ochako conspiratorially. "So, how's the manhunt? You've got quite a few lookers in your class. Better snatch 'em up before their eyes wander to a spry, young woman such as myself."

'Young is a bit of a stretch…' Ochako mused internally, not wanting to upset the woman.

"Long time, no see, Eraser," Mandalay greeted the tired teacher with a smile.

"That it has," he nodded before addressing his class. "These are two of the pros you'll be working with at the summer training camp. Uraraka, you interned with them, so you're already familiar. The rest of you, say hello."

"We own this whole stretch of land out there," Mandalay stated after all of the pleasantries, gesturing out to the surrounding forest. "Everything the light touches is part of our kingdom. The summer camp you're staying at is way down there at the base of the mountain."

"Wait, then why did we stop all the way out here?" Toru questioned.

"I'm afraid we both know the answer to that," Tsu dryly replied.

"Nah, that can't be right," Sato nervously chuckled before looking over to Ochako. "Right, Uraraka? They're just messing around, right?"

Ochako did not respond, and she was sweating bullets from having come to the same conclusion and thinking about the week she spent in the Beast's Forest.

"Right, back on the bus then," Sero nodded, taking her silence as all the confirmation he needed to get the hell out of dodge. The rest of the class quickly followed suit and rushed back towards the bus, but Pixie-Bob landed in front of them, cutting off their salvation.

"The current time is 9:30 in the morning. If you're fast about it, you might make it there by noon," Mandalay declared with an entirely too joyful tone in the class' opinion. Just then, Pixie-Bob used her quirk to rupture the dirt they were all standing on and created a landslide down the cliff's edge.

"Kitties who don't make it there by 12:30 don't get any lunch!" Mandalay called out to the collection of dirty and rather annoyed students at the base of the cliff. "Good news, though; since this is private property, you can use your quirks however you want! You've got three full hours to make it through; it should be plenty of time, provided you can survive the Beast's Forest! Good luck!"

Mandalay turned around and strolled back towards Aizawa leaning against the bus while Pixie-Bob happily created and remotely controlled an army of dirt monsters for the class to fight through.

"Don't you think you've got them on a pretty crazy schedule, Eraser?" Mandalay asked her scraggly friend.

"Yeah, that's the idea," he nodded. "We're hoping to get an entire second semester's worth of knowledge in them here. That's going to take an intense amount of work, but the rewards will be worth it."

"I'll say," came a young voice from around the corner of the bus, catching the two pros off guard. Poking their heads around the corner to investigate showed Izuku casually leaning against the other side of the bus, and he gave them a lazy wave when he looked at them. "Sup."

"Midoriya?" Aizawa questioned in utter confusion that was shared by Mandalay. "Why aren't you with your classmates? More importantly, how did you get by me without me noticing?"

"I figured out what was up the minute we got off the bus," Izuku remarked with a shrug. "As for how I got past you, well, you know who trained me."

Mandalay wasn't sure how to react to the green-haired teen. She landed somewhere between incredulous and impressed. Aizawa, on the other hand, was just kicking himself for not expecting something along these lines from his student.

"Well, I'll be on the bus if you need me," Izuku nonchalantly informed and turned around to leave, but he quickly found himself ensnared in his teacher's capture scarf and lifted off of the ground. He could practically feel the glowing, red glare fixed onto his back to ensure he couldn't escape.

"It was worth a shot," he sighed in resignation as Aizawa carried him to the edge and yeeted him down into the woods with his classmates.

"Damn problem child," Aizawa lowly grumbled, but both Mandalay and Pixie-Bob could hear the fondness buried under the scuff.

"Who trained him?" Mandalay questioned, now incredibly curious about the boy. Pixie-Bob was also curious if for no other reason than the kid already being pretty entertaining.

"Heh, you wouldn't believe me if I told you," Aizawa answered with a smirk.

Meanwhile, Class 1-B had the luxury of riding on their bus directly to camp, completely oblivious to the hell their sibling class was enduring. The 20 students calmly and leisurely conversed amongst each other as the initial excitement for the trip died down over the hour since they left UA. One of those students was Yui Kodai, sitting silently and gazing out of the window while Tokage was beside her engaged in a rather spirited debate with their blonde friend in the seat behind them, Pony Tsunotori.

Yui was only half-listening, just following the conversation enough to know that it was about anime but not enough to jump in and contribute at all. Instead, she was content with blankly gazing out of the window and enjoying the calm of the moving landscape as they slowly made their way to their temporary home for the duration of their training camp. She loved window seats; she really loved window seats. As much as her classmates affectionately called her a kuudere, she could become a yandere in milliseconds if window seats were involved.

She was taken away from her window watching when her lizardy friend tapped her shoulder.

"Yo, Yui, settle a debate for us?" the green head asked, and Yui nodded. "Awesome. Alright, say you're fighting that old villain no one has ever been able to catch, Truck-kun, and he gets a lucky shot on you. But check this out, instead of dying, you get isekai'd into a new world, but you're no longer human. Would you rather end up as a spider or a slime?"

Yui took a moment to consider the question, and she placed her chin in her hand in a similar manner to her other green-haired friend while she thought it over.

"Spider," she answered simply, much to the chagrin of the reptile fanatic and the glee of the class weeb.

"Told you, Setsuna!" Pony said with a victorious grin.

"Ugh, why not the slime?" she groused to Yui.

"I wanna shoot webs," she replied just as simply.

"See?" Pony remarked once more to the green head. "It's exactly as I said: bitches love Spider-Man."

"Mm," Yui nodded before returning to her window watching.

Setsuna huffed but conceded nonetheless. The mention of Spider-Man brought her to another thought, though. "Yo, Pony, you've been in Japan for a few years now, right?"

When Pony nodded, she continued. "Now that you're settled in, how different is it here than in America?"

Pony hummed and thought over the question. "Well, America is definitely a lot more open about quirks and quirk use than Japan. Quirk laws are a lot more stringent here. In America, you could just use your tail or even sprout a tree root from your gut to carry your groceries, and no one would really bat an eye. That isn't the case in Japan. Over here, you need a permit to do much of anything with your quirk as well as a license for hero work."

"You don't need a license for hero work in America?" curiously questioned 1-B's mushroom girl, Kinoko Komori, sitting beside her.

"No, you do," Pony answered. "You just don't necessarily need a permit to use your quirk on the job so long as you're licensed for whatever job that is. Quirk use is kinda tied to freedom of expression in America, and that's a whole political can of worms over there. Nothing is ever agreed on when constitutional rights are brought up."

"Not gonna lie, that sounds a little freeing," Setsuna sighed.

"I guess," Pony mused. "It's not always a good thing, though. Vigilantism is a lot harder to pin down over there. Unlicensed hero work is one thing, but using your quirk in self-defense or the defense of others in public won't get you arrested or fined."

She paused, and her hand went to her chin in thought. Unbeknownst to her, several of her classmates had begun listening to the interesting conversation. "Actually, you might get a fine, but it'll probably only be for disorderly conduct if you're being reckless about it."

"Still doesn't sound so bad," Setsuna mused.

Pony shrugged. "It leads some people to do stupid and irresponsible things more often than they should that end up getting themselves and others hurt. It all just comes down to cultural differences, though."

One of the students listening intently to the conversation was the beastly intellectual, Jurota Shishida. His attention was captured when Pony explained the stark differences in philosophy regarding quirks between America and Japan, and his attention was only stoked even further when she revealed how much more laissez-faire both the law and public perception was with quirks in the West. It made him curse just how needlessly restrictive Japanese society was in many regards, quirks being chief among them. How he wished he could throw his posh, well-mannered upbringing aside and embrace his beastly urges without the sort of public scrutiny given to heroes like Hound Dog and Shishido.

'Liberation will be upon Japan soon enough,' he mused to himself.

"On the subject of cultural differences," Pony continued with a slight frown, "I've noticed that people with heteromorphic mutations are treated a bit differently here than over there."

"Personal experience?" Setsuna asked with a frown of her own.

"A little bit," she nodded in response. "It might just be because heavy mutations are a lot more visible in America. There are a ton of "mutant pride" movements that people are mostly fine with, but there isn't a lot of that over here."

While the two friends discussed the differences between Japan and America (for better and for worse), Shishida wasn't the only classmate listening. Shihai Kuroiro was conveniently seated right behind the object of his affections, Komori, so he had also caught the conversation by proximity. However, the pitch black-skinned teen was in deep thought for very different reasons than Shishida.

The portion of the conversation about mutant discrimination in Japan stuck with him. He thought about his older cousin and the tragedy that was her life (if he could indulge in being theatric for a moment). She had a hereditary mutation that was mostly independent of her quirk, but a mutation was a mutation nonetheless, especially in the rural area she lived in since those were notoriously less tolerant of mutations than urban areas. Combine that with the fact that her quirk was very similar to his own, and you get a disgruntled mutant with a "villainous quirk" fighting back against vicious bigotry.

It was only a matter of time before something really bad happened, and when it did, she ran away from home. He hadn't heard anything about her since then. His parents didn't often like to talk about her, but he refused to just forget. She was his cousin, and he had fond memories of hanging out with her when they were younger. He even chose his hero name, Vantablack, to pay homage to her memory.

He'd find her one day, wherever she was.

Many hours later, 1-B had long since made it to the camp and had gotten settled in. 1-A, however, was not so fortunate. After 8 hours of trekking through the Beast's Forest and fighting through scores of giant, ferocious dirt monsters, the absolutely haggard class dragged themselves out of the tree line and fell to the ground at the feet of Pixie-Bob, Mandalay, and Aizawa.

"That took longer than expected," Mandalay mused with a smile.

"You said it would take three hours!" Sero whined while laying bonelessly on the dirt.

"I guess I estimated it based on how long it would take us," Mandalay sheepishly (but not very apologetically) responded.

"I thought it would take even longer!" Pixie-Bob piped up in excitement. "You kids did much better against my dirt monsters than I thought you would. You guys were seriously great."

She focused her gaze on Izuku, Iida, Bakugo, and Shoto in particular and practically purred. "Especially the four of you! It seems you've had quite a bit of experience already."

She licked her lips, and Izuku felt a shiver run up his spine.

"I call dibs on these kittens! I'll groom them myself!" she called out while leaping forward to harass the boys in question.

'…You really ought to be on a list,' Aizawa internally sighed, her antics reminding him way too much of Nemuri when she was feeling especially eager to mess with her students.

Back in Musutafu, Inko felt a disturbance in the force. Her instincts were telling her that her baby was being harassed by a harlot, but when she snapped her gaze away from the cards in her hand, Midnight was still sitting to her left at the table they and three others were at. She narrowed her gaze at the younger woman, and Midnight began to sweat.

"Y-you, um, you okay over there, Inko?" she hesitantly asked the woman that was bearing a threatening aura.

"Someone is getting too fresh with my son," she answered. "I can feel it."

The two other occupants of the poker table, Thirteen and Recovery Girl, both snorted in amusement. Ladies Night was already off to an entertaining start.

When Izuku had managed to free himself from Pixie-Bob's attention by ensuring Bakugo made the ultimate sacrifice in his stead (against his will, of course), he noticed the young boy who had been silently glaring at them ever since they got off the bus that morning.

"Who's that?" he asked Mandalay while pointing at the child in question.

"Oh, this little guy's my cousin's son who lives with us now," she answered. "Don't be shy, Kota, say hi to everyone. You'll be around them for the next week."

Kota remained silent and continued glaring at them all. Izuku stepped forward to the boy to greet him face to face.

"Hey there, my name is Midoriya," he kindly began while bending down and extending his hand to the younger boy. "I'm from the UA High heroics course. It's nice to meet you!"

Kota still didn't respond, and he instead winded up and threw as hard of a punch as he could to Izuku's groin. However, he was taken aback when Izuku calmly and effortlessly caught the punch with his other hand, his smile not dropping for a single moment.

"Kota!" Mandalay shouted in mortified panic, but she stopped in her tracks when Izuku spoke:

"You telegraphed your punch a little too much," Izuku commented, smile still not wavering. "The best nut-shots are like lightning, so a quick jab is the best way to go. Lemme show you."

Izuku, much to the confusion of Kota and the incredulity of everyone watching, proceeded to demonstrate several quick jabs for the boy and encouraged him to emulate the technique. Kota, not really knowing what to do, just absentmindedly acquiesced and threw several sloppy jabs at the air in front of him. Only when Izuku manually adjusted the boy's form to help him with the followthrough of the punch to avoid him hurting himself did Kota snap back to reality, and he threw a much better jab.

"There you go, just like that!" Izuku encouraged, and Kota begrudgingly accepted the praise and threw a few more jabs.

"…Is that Emi's form?" Mandalay asked Aizawa, commenting on how reminiscent Izuku's footwork and striking was of Ms. Joke.

"Yep," Aizawa dryly answered before addressing his exhausted students. "Enough playing around. Get your stuff off the bus."

Izuku nodded to his teacher and turned back to Kota. "You're starting to get the hang of it. Just keep working on it and you'll have a certifiable nutcracker in no time. When your opponent isn't expecting anything, don't give them anything to expect."

Kota turned his glare onto Izuku, but it had considerably less heat to it than it did previously. "Whatever," he muttered before walking away.

After a veritable feast for dinner since it would be the only time the students wouldn't have to cook for themselves, 1-A found themselves enjoying the hot springs afforded to them. One boy, meanwhile, wasn't enjoying the relaxing soak as much as he could have been. Mineta was stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the other side of a mere wooden wall was a glorious wonderland literally ripped from his wildest fantasies. The temptation to manifest destiny was ever so alluring…

However, a quick glance to the other side of the onsen showed the unblinking eyes of his class rep locked onto him. He nervously met the other boy's unsettling, green gaze, and the two stared at each other amidst the light chatter of their classmates. Mineta turned back towards the wall, vaguely hearing the conversations of the girls on the other side, and he turned back to look at Izuku once again, but he was gone.

Surprised, Mineta looked around for where their class rep disappeared to, but he was nowhere in sight. That was until he looked down at the water, and he clearly saw two bright, slitted eyes, one yellow and one green, piercing right through him from under the surface. He gasped and shuffled back against the wall of the pool, drawing the attention of some of the others.

"You okay, dude?" Kaminari asked him.

Mineta glanced back at the water, but the face was gone. When he looked back to the other side of the spring, Izuku was back in his original spot as if he had never moved, and no one else appeared to have noticed if he did.

"Yeah, just… thought I saw something," Mineta mumbled.

"You know," Kirishima began with a thoughtful expression, "I kinda would've expected you to have tried something stupid like climbing the wall over to the girl's side by now."

"Haha, yeah, that would be pretty on-brand for you," Sero agreed, and several others chuckled at the thought.

Mineta forced himself to chuckle along with them, but it was hollower than he would've liked. "I guess I can't exactly fault you for that."

The rest of the time in the onsen went without incident, but Mineta was silent for the majority of it. It had been abundantly clear to him that the bulk of his classmates were expecting him to misbehave in the proximity of their bathing female classmates. Even Midoriya had been silently keeping a tight watch on him the entire time, black magic fuckery and all. As much as he would concede that he deserved it, it bothered him like nobody's business. He had solidified his place as the troublesome comic relief, and that wasn't something that he was going to accept.

When everyone had left the onsen, gotten dressed, and started heading back to the cabins, Mineta made up his mind. He sought out the one person at the center of it all, marching right up to the fluffy mop of green hair before the other boy could enter the cabin.

"Midoriya, can we talk?" he asked him.

Izuku looked down at his classmate, immediately taking note of the resolute face of the shorter boy.

"Sure," he acquiesced, and the two walked a decent distance away from the cabin and out of earshot of everyone but Shoji should he be listening. When they felt they were far enough, Izuku stopped and leaned against a tree before motioning for Mineta to begin.

Mineta took a deep breath and swallowed his reservations completely. "Teach me your ways, Midoriya!"

The two stood in silence for a brief moment while Izuku confusedly regarded him with a quirked eyebrow. "What?"

"Teach me how to be cool!" he squeaked out, all of the nerve he summoned up to speak to Izuku quickly evaporating.

Izuku merely bemusedly scratched his head before chuckling. "Uh, I'm a hero nerd who mutters when he gets excited and writes down information about quirks into notebooks. I'm certain there are others you could go to for advice about being cool before me."

"You don't get it," Mineta muttered, struggling to meet Izuku's gaze. "People like you. People respect you. Our classmates look to you for guidance, even when they don't need it; they just value your opinion. Everything you say carries weight to people, not even just in our class, but in other classes, and even the general public. You had the freaking crowd in the palm of your hand more than once during the sports festival!"

Mineta was growing frustrated with himself the more he spoke. He was just gushing about Izuku in a manner that seemed like a perverse mixture of jealousy and hero worship. He violently shook his head to refocus his thoughts, all the while, Izuku meandered over to a nearby log.

"What's this really about?" Izuku asked and sat down on the log to be at eye-level with Mineta. Mineta noticed that there wasn't any derision, annoyance, or judgement in his voice, just curiosity and concern. He opened his eyes and finally met his friend's(?) gaze.

"You're strong, you're heroic, you're practically adored, and you're respected. I want to be that. I want to be like you," Mineta finally admitted. He looked away again, fully expecting laughter or contempt, but none came. When he opened his eyes again, he only saw Izuku looking back at him with the same concern but with a bit more understanding alongside it. The genuine desire to help that Mineta saw in Izuku's eyes emboldened him to speak again.

"I know I can't be strong like you, or Endeavor, or All Might. I don't want a one-to-one transformation into you, I just want to be respected. I don't want to be laughed at or be the butt of everyone's jokes. I want people to feel safe in my presence when I'm a hero like they already do in yours."

Mineta sighed, and Izuku could hear the weariness in the boy's voice. "I just want people to take my dream seriously for once."

Izuku's silence remained as Mineta finished speaking. He reached over and patted a spot next to him on the log, and Mineta hesitated a moment before sitting down.

"I'm gonna level with you," Izuku began, holding Mineta's rapt attention. "You're already working at a deficit with your stature and appearance. It's challenging to respect someone that I could probably punt 100 meters into the woods."

"Tell me how you really feel," Mineta grumbled.

"With that said," Izuku continued, "You've already carved out a decent lane for yourself as it is. Getting into UA at all is no small feat, and getting into the hero course is another thing entirely. You've managed to stick around this long throughout all the villain attacks, extra shenanigans, and threats of expulsion from Mr. Aizawa. I'd say you're doing well enough in overcoming that deficit."

"Then why is it still so hard to be taken seriously?" Mineta questioned.

"You're a pervert and a bit of a coward," Izuku bluntly answered. When Mineta's face screwed into a frown, Izuku raised an eyebrow. "Did you want me to lie to you?"

"But Kaminari's a pervert, too!" Mineta defended.

"Yeah, but he's normal-sized and conventionally attractive, despite being a bit of a dunce. He can get away with a lot more than you could, or maybe it's more accurate to say that you can get away with a lot less than he could," Izuku responded, and he placed a hand up to silence Mineta's interruption. "Yeah, I know, it isn't fair, and it sucks, but that is the reality of your situation should you choose to make being a pervert such a fundamental aspect of your personality."

Mineta looked down with a contemplative frown, knowing that Izuku wasn't wrong about anything he had said up to that point.

"The good thing is that it's the easier of the two to fix," Izuku spoke again, drawing Mineta's attention. "The other issue is a little trickier to address."

"Being a coward, huh?" Mineta sardonically mused before sighing in defeat. "You're not wrong about me being one."

"You're not always one. You've come through when it mattered most. You just need to make that more of an expectation and less of a fortunate occurrence."

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean is that if you want respect, you need to be less of this," Izuku said while broadly gesturing to Mineta with his hand, "and more of the guy I teamed up with at the entrance exam and the USJ. Be more like the guy who had my back and I had his in the life-and-death fight against the Nomu. Be more like the guy who guarded Tsu with his life when she went down."

Mineta stared at Izuku with bright eyes, soaking in everything the green head said to him. Things were beginning to click. Being respected was possible, and he was already fighting that uphill battle to do it. He had just been putting up hurdles in his path that were even taller than himself. That would change from here on out.

"I want to be respected," Mineta firmly declared. "I'm going to be respected. I'm going to be better than I am right now."

"Put your hand over your heart and say it with your chest," Izuku encouraged, and Mineta placed his right hand over a spot on the right side of his chest.

"That's… not your heart," Izuku confusedly noted.

"No, it is," Mineta replied. "I have isolated dextrocardia, so my heart faces the right side of my chest instead of the left."

"Fascinating," Izuku mumbled before shaking himself out of it and refocusing on the topic at hand. "Speak it into existence and then become it. Use this training camp to start being that goddamn hero that you've always dreamed of becoming. Be the man that's deserving of respect."

"You bet your ass I will!" he declared while popping up from the log and pumping his fist in the air. He thanked the taller boy profusely for the talk and turned to head back to the cabin, but he stopped when another thought occurred to him.

"Hey, Midoriya?" he began, turning back to face the other boy. "Are we friends?"

Izuku raised an eyebrow at the question. "Were you under the impression that we weren't?"

Mineta smiled, and it was one of the first genuine, non-lecherous or devious smiles Izuku had seen from the boy. "I'm glad to hear it."

With that, he scampered back off to the cabin, newly invigorated with singleminded determination to prove himself to be the hero he always dreamed of being. Izuku, meanwhile, exhaled and relaxed on the log until he heard the light rustle of foliage on the forest floor.

"You did a good job with that," came the gruff voice of his perpetually tired homeroom teacher as he stepped out from behind one of the trees.

"How long have you been listening?" Izuku questioned, wondering exactly when the man had popped up and why he hadn't noticed his arrival when he did.

"I heard the whole thing," he dryly answered, and he smirked at Izuku's incredulous expression. "You're good, but I'm still a pro."

"Guess we're 1 and 1, then," Izuku joked. "I wonder who will get the tiebreaker."

"Don't get cocky," the teacher warned. "You slipped by me once; it won't happen again."

"I will gladly accept the challenge."

"Good. Get to the cabin and get to sleep. Training camp starts in earnest at the crack of dawn."

Indeed, training camp did begin at the crack of dawn. 1-A sluggishly trudged to a clearing in their PE uniforms only to immediately snap to attention when Aizawa addressed them.

"Today, we begin your training to improve your strength," he began. "Our goal is to exponentially increase your skills so that you'll have no trouble receiving a provisional license when the time comes. This will allow you to face the ever-festering dangers lurking in the darkness without any legal issue."

Aizawa pulled out a softball and tossed it to Bakugo. "Give that a throw for me."

Bakugo nodded and rotated his shoulder before doing as he was instructed with a magnificent boom.

"709.6 meters," Aizawa read, and Bakugo smirked.

"…It's an improvement from the 705.2 meters you started with at the fitness test, I guess," he finished, and Bakugo's eyes went wide, as did the eyes of most of the class at the minimal improvement.

"You've had a single semester at UA, and you've all definitely improved after your experiences, but for most of you, those improvements have been limited to mental acuity and technical skill. Your quirks haven't fundamentally grown much stronger since the beginning, though."

Aizawa's eye twitched when he saw Izuku begin to raise his hand. "Like I said, most of you."

Izuku's hand fell back down, and Aizawa gave his students a positively vile grin. "We'll be training you into the ground and making your quirks as powerful as can be before the week is out. It'll be the most grueling training you've ever gone through, so you'd better hope you survive.

1-A collectively paled, and they just hoped that another bond of shared suffering could be forged from the coming torture and added to their already plentiful collection.

Izuku, Aizawa, and Pixie-Bob stood a good distance away from the others, tipping Izuku off that his training would both require a lot of space and likely get a little hectic. Seeing the mildly threatening grin Pixie-Bob was sporting only confirmed his suspicions.

"Your quirk is incredibly multifaceted, so it wouldn't be feasible nor make sense to focus on several things at once and expect to make decent progress on any one thing," Aizawa began. "With that in mind, you'll be focusing on the one aspect that I've noticed you've been neglecting the most, and that's the pyrokinetic nature of your quirk."

Izuku's eyes widened at that, but he said nothing and allowed his teacher to continue. "From what I've been able to see, you fight like an amalgamation of everyone who has trained or sparred with you in some fashion or another. Joke told me about the sparring you did with Mirko, and your mother mentioned that you gained inspiration from and sparred with Gran Torino. Is that the extent of it?"

Upon Izuku's nod of confirmation, Aizawa continued. "That's all well and good, especially when developing your own unique fighting style, but one thing stands out between all 4 of those people: none of them have fire quirks of their own, so they can't show you how to properly wield one. Hence, you've been slacking on using your base flames as the weapon they are in lieu of the other flames. Since I don't have a fire quirk and Todoroki is busy, you'll be playing around with your base flames and getting a better feel for ranged combat."

"And that's where I come in!" Pixie-Bob cheered as multiple dirt monsters of various sizes rose from the ground around them. "You'll be blasting these babies with all the firepower you've got, but you can't use anything else."

"Exactly," Aizawa confirmed. "No green, red, yellow, orange, purple, or pink. Just your Kaleidoscopic Fire."

Izuku nodded and activated his quirk, bathing himself in the colorful blaze.

"I'll leave you to it," he said before strolling away to greet the incoming 1-B.

"You ready?" Pixie-Bob asked the boy who had instinctively lowered into a fighting stance.

"Give me everything you've got," Izuku replied with a determined nod.

"You'll regret that," she purred before the dirt monsters attacked and converged onto him.

Izuku's eyes briefly glowed a bright green as the flames of his quirk flared, and he sent a wave of colorful fire at a group of the smaller, faster dirt monsters. Predictably, they quickly crumbled at the attack, but even more were nearly upon him. He swung his other arm back to send a larger wave of fire at the newest group, and he dodged to the left to avoid a hit from one of the larger monsters. They were slower than the others, but he doubted they would go down as easily.

After engulfing his hands with fire, he peppered another wave of the swarming little creatures with a spatter of fireballs before they could overwhelm him, quickly pivoting to blast an approaching giant in the face with a heavier wave of fire to subdue it. Just as he expected, it didn't go down right away, and even more giants were approaching from his flanks. He dodged another strike from the beast in front of him and quickly scaled the monster until he sat atop its head, much to the amusement of Pixie-Bob on the ground. Izuku stabbed his hands into the monster and unleashed another wave of fire directly within it, taking it down with an inhuman wail as colorful fire shot out of its mouth and eyeholes.

Izuku did not stop for a moment, though, as he launched back into the fray to tangle with the other hulking dirt monsters. He concentrated a blast of fire on his palm before igniting and shooting it out, mimicking one of Bakugo's explosions on a much weaker scale to stun the beast while he backhanded a smaller creature that tried to sneak up on him with his other arm. Returning to the stunned beast, he shoved his arms into its snout and unleashed another large wave of fire directly within the creature to disperse it.

It was at that moment with his arms outstretched that he noticed something peculiar. There was a slit going down his forearm starting a little past his wrist, and he could fairly see wisps of smoke wafting out of it. An inspection of his other arm showed an identical slit with smoke seeping out of it, as well. He really wished he had Melissa run a scan on his body when they had the chance.

"Never take your eyes off your opponent!" Pixie-Bob shouted as a swarm of smaller creatures surrounded him and made to strike.

Almost immediately, Izuku hunched and stretched his arms out to either side before spinning in place, unleashing the full breadth of his base flames all the while in a visually stunning, rotating pillar of fire that swiftly eliminated the attacking horde. When he began to slow down, he wreathed his right arm in flames and slammed it into a final giant, unleashing another explosion into it all the while before he hit it with a final wave of fire to dispel it.

"Very nicely done, kitten," Pixie-Bob commented with a small applause. "Barring that one distraction, you handled yourself really well. Now, time for the 2nd wave!"

Izuku exhaled a bit of smoke before reentering a fighting stance. "Bring it."

After a long day of grueling training, the 40 exhausted students were tasked with cooking their own dinner, to which they were given curry to make. Only Iida realized that it was another part of their training, as rescuing civilians encompassed catering to their physical and emotional needs, so cooking a decent meal from scratch while exhausted would go a long way in that regard. Izuku didn't really get the logic, but he went along with it, nonetheless.

When the food was cooked and most were scarfing it down like there was no tomorrow, Mandalay was calling out for Kota to come eat, but he was nowhere in sight. Taking notice, Izuku made a plate for him and told the pro that he'd follow the boy's footsteps and bring him the food, to which she was grateful for. It didn't take very long for Izuku to track him down, but he was curious as to why the boy came up to a cliff overlooking the forest.

"Hey, you ran off without eating," Izuku said, startling the boy. "Mandalay was worried about you."

Kota scowled at the intrusion of the hero student in his secret hideout. "Not hungry. Get lost."

As he said that, the boy's stomach growled in protest, nullifying his rebuke of the food and causing Izuku to chuckle.

"The stomach never lies," Izuku quipped, much to Kota's rising agitation. "I brought you some curry."

"I don't want it!" he refused again. "How did you even find this place?"

"Oh, um, I followed your footsteps," Izuku sheepishly admitted. "Sorry if I'm intruding on a special place you use to retreat from everything."

That took Kota off guard. His young brain thought having a special hideout was novel to him, and he didn't think others were familiar with the concept. "You have a hideout, too?"

"Well, not exactly," Izuku began with a scratch to the back of his head. "I didn't have a hideout or retreat per se, but I did have my mom to comfort me whenever I was feeling down or inadequate."

This was not the right thing to say, as Kota immediately tensed and his face twisted into one of anger. Izuku, not noticing, continued on.

"Granted, her training was often what made me feel down and inadequate, but she was still always there to-"

"SHUT UP!" Kota shouted, and Izuku was taken aback by the outburst. "First, you bunch of idiots come up here to practice with your stupid quirks for your stupid dreams! Stupid names like 'hero' or 'villain' to just show off your powers and kill each other! And now you're just here to brag about having parents to care about you! It must be freaking nice!"

Izuku was floored by the outburst, and he immediately realized that he accidentally hit a sore spot with the mention of his mother. He tried to apologize for upsetting him, but Kota was having none of it.

"GET OUT OF HERE!" the boy yelled with tears streaming down his face. "Go away with your stupid dreams and alive parents! I hope they're ready for when you die and leave them all alone!"

Izuku froze when the last sentence was uttered, and even Kota realized that he might have crossed a line, but he didn't back down and kept his furious, tearful glare on the teen. Izuku blankly looked down at the plate of curry, and he placed the plate down onto the ground in front of him.

"I'm sorry," he softly spoke before turning and vacating the area, leaving Kota alone with the plate of food.

"Ugh, I hate this. It's so not cute!" Toga whined while fitting her mask on.

"It was engineered for the black market from what I hear," the somewhat robotic voice of Mustard came from his gas mask. "You should be more concerned about whether they work, not if they look pretty."

"I've heard that Detnerat makes support equipment to sell on the black market for villains and vigilantes so that they can field test them," Spinner spoke up as he approached the convening group.

"Don't believe everything you read on the internet," was the swift rebuke of another arrival, Kusari. "How much longer are we waiting?"

"'Till everyone gets here," Dabi smoothly answered, and he saw the approaching forms of Magne, Muscular, and Moonfish. "That makes 8 of us, we're just waiting on two more and the science project."

"I can't wait to see the Worthy Duo for myself," Spinner just about gushed.

"I can't wait to kill some stuck-up UA kids," Mustard gleefully added.

"I'm with Shorty, I just wanna break someone," Muscular growled from behind his mask and cloak. "Let me loose, already! I'm already pumped up!"

"Meeeeaaaaat!" Moonfish growled in excitement.

"Shut your mouths, you murderous psychopaths," Dabi dismissed.

"Pot, meet Kettle?" Magne snorted.

"We wait until everyone gets here before we strike," Dabi continued, ignoring the jab from Magne. "Then, we rip their precious sense of peace away from them and show them whose hands their lives are truly resting within."

Toga, despite the discomfort of her new gear, was excited for the events to come. She'd get to see her Izuku again, and she could make him all cute and bloody again!

And then, he could help her, finally rescuing her from the excruciating pain of existence or killing her so that she couldn't hurt anyone else.

Wait, what? She didn't want to die.

Yes, she did.

She wanted to live freely for once. She wanted to enjoy life without restrictions or judgement. She couldn't do that if she was dead.

And that was for the best.

No, she'll find Izuku and spread her love to him, and they'll live happily ever after.

End her suffering.

The boot camp that was their training continued on through the next day, and it was just as grueling as the day prior. Izuku was again faced with taking on an army of dirt creatures using only his base flames, but he was also tasked with blasting and evading projectiles that were lobbed at him by Reiko Yanagi and her quirk. On top of that, the projectiles would periodically balloon in size just as they were about to hit him or shrink in order to pepper him with hits and distract him from defending against another attack. He knew it was courtesy of Yui, as she sent him a thumbs-up ever so often as encouragement to continue defending.

The long day eventually came to an end, and after everyone ate, the Pussycats thrusted everyone into a wondrous test of courage between the classes… well, everyone excluding those who failed their finals and required remedial lessons. The five from 1-A and Monoma were spirited away to an empty classroom to have their lessons in lieu of participating in the game.

When the rules were explained, 1-A was divided into pairs, but the odd number of students left Izuku without a partner. He didn't particularly mind, as that meant that he could spend more time brainstorming on how he would manage to sneak up on Mr. Aizawa in order to win the tiebreaker. Just as well, now that he was sitting and not preoccupied with training, he could also think about his interaction with Kota the night prior. He hadn't seen the boy all day, so he assumed that he spent it alone at his hideout. He could gather from his outburst that Kota didn't have his parents anymore, and his clear disdain for heroes and them leaving the people that care about them didn't paint a pretty picture.

He hoped the boy was okay; suffering alone wasn't healthy and could become really self-destructive if left unchecked. His mother was very clear with him about that.

He sat quietly against a tree while waiting for his turn to go, but in the distance, he noticed a plume of smoke lifting into the night sky. Pixie-Bob sniffed the air and mentioned a foul smell coming from the direction of the smoke. Some of the students were speculating about the cause of it, but their musings were cut short when Pixie-Bob emitted a pink glow and was yoinked into the tree line. Izuku's alarm grew when a figure stepped out of the trees with a large block firmly planted onto Pixie-Bob's skull.

Whatever one-liner the villain said went ignored by Izuku as he hopped to his feet, his mind only on one thing: Kota. The kid was alone somewhere in the forest, and he didn't wait for any orders or provocation to dart into the forest in search of him. Tiger and Mandalay could take on the villains, and his classmates were more than capable of handling themselves if worst came to worst. He trusted them with everything he had.

Kota, on the other hand, would not be able to defend himself against a villain attack, and he was liable to do something stupid in his state of mind. Izuku would find him; he'd make damn sure of it.

Meanwhile, Magne and Spinner theatrically stepped into the clearing to address the assembled hero students and one half of the Pussycats.

"How are you all this evening, UA High School?" Spinner began his grandiose speech to his captive audience. "We are the Vanguard Action Squad of the League of Villains!"

"How long have you been prepping this speech?" Magne joked.

"Too damn long!" Spinner cackled, then his eyes landed on Iida amongst the group of students. "You there! I recognize you! You're the one self-righteous brat that attacked Stain in Hosu! Where's the Worthy Duo?! I wanna meet them!"

The practically frothing gecko-man weirded out both the heroes present and Magne beside him.

"Enough of this!" the enraged Tiger shouted. "You criminals are just followers of a dogmatic murderer like Stain! That woman beneath you is a hero who's saved countless lives and is giving her all to push these young heroes to reach their full potential. She's looking for a mate but is otherwise content with her life."

Tiger's tone progressively transformed into a feral growl as he spoke, and it was reaching its apex. "What gives you the right to cut such a happy life short?!

"Didn't anyone ever tell you that it's not a hero's job to be happy?!" Spinner maniacally argued back. "Humanity is for civilians! Heroes are supposed to be above that!"

"This isn't some fantasy world from a comic, you maniac!" Tiger shot back. "That's not how real life works!"

"Oh, I'll show you how life really works, you fake!" Spinner spat, drawing two swords from their sheaths on his back. He had initially wanted to repair his giant sword after it was damaged against those Yakuza weirdos, but Tomura smacked him across the head and told him to stop being difficult and just use regular swords.

"Tiger, I've informed everyone of the situation," Mandalay quickly reported. "Trust the safety of the other students to Ragdoll. You and I will stay here and hold them back while the students return to camp. Class rep, you're in charge on the way there. Do NOT engage anyone, you got it?"

There was no response, and Mandalay turned her gaze back to the students in irritation, but the person she was looking for was nowhere to be found.

"Midoriya?" Iida frantically looked around for his friend and class rep. "Where did he go? Did anyone see him leave? Was he taken?"

That possibility put Mandalay even further on edge. "Shit! Iida, you're in charge, then. Get everyone back to camp!"

Iida was hesitant to leave without knowing the whereabouts of his friend, but he shakily nodded and complied, nonetheless.

Kota looked out at the scene; it wasn't pretty. Blue fires raged across the forest that was already blanketed by a strange, pink fog. Kota had no idea what was happening, but it didn't look good, and as much as he resented living with 4 pro heroes, he still couldn't help but worry about their safety, especially Mandalay's.

"Well, would you look at that," an unfamiliar voice came from behind him accompanied by heavy footsteps. Kota turned to see a massive man in a cloak and blank mask approaching him.

"I came up here to scout for a nice vantage point, and here I find someone who isn't on our list," he continued, the joy dripping from his voice in a manner that made the young boy sick. "How fantastic! I get to play around a little bit before it's back to business."

Kota was petrified in the presence of the obvious villain, and the villain seemed to realize and revel in it if his increasingly dark chuckling was any indication.

"By the way, I like that hat," the man said before lifting up his mask to expose a horrifyingly familiar face to Kota. "I'll trade you for this dumbass mask they gave me."

Standing before Kota with an insane grin and fake left eye was Muscular, the villain who slaughtered his parents. Muscle fibers began to grow en masse over his already beefy arms as he stalked toward the positively terrified boy. Kota wanted to run; he wanted so badly to get as far away from the man as possible, but he just couldn't move. His fight-or-flight response had clearly abandoned flight and opted for the third option, freezing, in its stead.

Strangely, though, fighting hadn't been abandoned completely. As Kota watched the hulking serial killer approach him, he felt palpable fear, but he also felt anger. In fact, he felt more anger in this single moment than he had ever felt in his short life. The man who took his parents away from him was standing right in front of him looking to do the same to him.

He wouldn't have that.

"You…" Kota growled through tears. "You killed my parents!"

"Hm?" Muscular stopped his advance and gazed at the boy quizzically. "You're gonna have to be a little more specific than that, kid."

"Water Hose! You killed them!" Kota shouted, now enraged that his parents were purely numbers to the man who killed them.

Muscular stood in visible thought for a moment, periodically gazing down at the boy as if he was trying to match a face. Then, a lightbulb shined above his head, and he remembered the duo. "Oh, those two! I remember, now. That was a fun day!"

He turned his gaze back to a positively apoplectic Kota and shrugged. "For what it's worth, I don't hold any hard feelings over my eye. I was doing what I wanted to by killing people, and your parents were just doing what they wanted to by trying to stop me. It just so happened that my desire was stronger than their's. It's nobody's fault."

That was Kota's breaking point, and like lightning, the boy threw a jab faster than Muscular could track. A simple jab at the air in front of him wouldn't ordinarily accomplish anything, but the jet of water that shot out of his fist and slammed into Muscular's crotch certainly did.

The wail of pain that escaped Muscular's lips was music to the boy's ears. He reveled in the agony the man was experiencing, and he capitalized on the moment by throwing more jabs with water jetting out of them, smacking into various places on the crouching Muscular and doing even more damage. Muscular, meanwhile, felt like he got shot in the dick by a beanbag gun, and then he felt like he was being pelted by them even further.

It was truly pissing him off.

"ENOUGH!" he shouted, and Kota felt all of the confidence and catharsis he had just been reveling in vanish in an instant. "I'll tear you apart you little, fucking cum rag!"

Muscular launched toward the boy, intent on pulverizing him into a fine mist, but a flash of yellow entered his vision before a foot slammed into the left side of his face. Kota was then spirited away by the yellow flash and placed on the other side of the cliff nearest to the path to take him back down the mountain. The boy looked up at the figure who saved him, and he saw Izuku standing over him in a golden blanket of fire. He didn't know if the utter contempt on the teen's face as he stared down Muscular was comforting or frightening.

"Oh, wow, ain't this convenient," Muscular mused. "Our target just shows up right in front of me."

"You piece of shit," Izuku spat, ignoring whatever the man had said. "Your voices carry on this mountain. I heard everything. You murdered this boy's parents and then have the fucking nerve to say that you hold no hard feelings and that it wasn't anyone's fault?!"

"Heh, you seem to feel pretty strongly about it," Muscular said with a vicious grin. "Tell you what, the little shit over there pissed me off, so I'm gonna go all out from the start. If you're feeling so froggy, then jump!"

He tore off his cloak as his muscles began to bulge even more, and his body eventually ballooned in musculature and burst through the tank top he was wearing. Kota was petrified at the sight once again, but Izuku's gaze only narrowed.

"Kota," he addressed the boy with steel in his voice, making the boy jump in fright. "I can't ask you to head back to camp. It'll be too dangerous with the villains running around. I need you to get a good distance away from this peak and stay out of sight, though. I'll find you when I've put him down."

"Y-you're insane!" Kota cried. "You can't fight him! You'll die!"

"It isn't a matter of whether or not I can do it," Izuku simply replied. "As a hero, it's my job to risk my life to turn promises into reality in order to help people who need saving. I'm here now, and I'm going to protect you to my dying breath if necessary. That's what heroes do."

"NO!" Kota cried, but he was quickly ensnared by a thin, purple flame and tossed away from the immediate area.

"Enough chitchat! Show me your blood!" Muscular cackled as he bounded toward Izuku with a grotesquely muscled arm ready to strike.