32

Chapter 32: Ogentroost

A scruffy, black-haired man in his early 20s took a puff of his cigarette as he meandered down the dark alleyway. He hated taking this shortcut home, especially with that lunatic with the blue fire going on a rampage lately, but it shaved 20 minutes off his trip, and he had a knife and some trigger to defend himself if he really needed to. Kicking a few loose stones under a dumpster, he walked right past the large receptacle, failing to notice the pair of golden eyes observing him closely from within the darkness of the dumpster. As he strolled further into the void, messy, matted blonde hair in two buns rose from within.

Himiko Toga's slitted pupils narrowed even more as she hungrily watched the man. Her fingers were wrapped so tightly around the edge of the dumpster that they dented and crumpled the metal within her grasp, but she wasn't concerned about that at all. Before her was a perfect opportunity to satiate her thirst and satisfy her carnal desires. She could kill him right now; it would be so easy. She wanted so desperately to jump him, slash his throat, and plunge her knife into him until she was bathing in his blood, then she could drink as much as she wanted and feel so warm and safe and whole-

No, no, no, no; she refused to give in. She wouldn't hurt anyone anymore. She was broken, and she needed to be fixed. If she couldn't be fixed, then she needed to be killed. There was no in-between.

But fighting herself just to come to that thought alone was strenuous enough. Every single day was a constant struggle to maintain control of her faculties and battle through the withdrawals. Every single second, her brain would demand blood; her heart would demand blood; her own body would demand that she spill such beautiful, precious blood. Every fiber of her being was screaming at her to unleash unholy slaughter and paint the city red.

But she wouldn't. She couldn't. She made her choice in Kamino; she wouldn't give in to the urges, regardless of how badly she hungered. She held out hope that he'd come back and save her, pulling her out of the cracks she had fallen so far into. He'd be her guiding light back to sanity…

Or he'd put her out of her misery. Either one was preferable to this existence.

Slowly, she retreated into the dumpster, stirring some of the trash that lay underneath as she settled in for another unrestful night. Moments later, the head of a black cat emerged from the shadows beside the dumpster, and another set of slitted eyes scanned the area, this pair being a dull yellow. Those eyes landed on the back of the man nearing the end of the alleyway, completely oblivious to being observed by more than one person on his trek. The owner of the eyes inspected him intently, but when she determined that he wasn't the person she was looking for, she sighed.

"Kuroneko, you all good over there?" came the voice of an older woman in her earpiece.

"Yeah, just…" she hesitated. "I thought I spotted him. This area's clear, too. He must've slipped away again."

"Damn it. Well, let's rendezvous back on the main road."

"Copy, Ms. Joke. I'm on my way over."

Vanta did a final sweep of the alley before literally sinking back into the shadows.

If it wasn't one thing, it was another. That had been the story of Nezu's life over the course of the academic year. If he wasn't engaging in a cold war with the HPSC and several proxy wars with the MLA, he was overseeing the education of hundreds of incredibly unique and interesting adolescent humans, each with their own individual backgrounds, hobbies, troubles, and connections with any and every given person. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for a plentiful number of them to go through some sort of strife, some of which could even be horrendously complex and delicate situations. He'd expect that, such was the nature of sonder.

So, naturally, it was only fitting that the bulk of the strife and craziness he had to deal with as principal centered around one particular group of students. Class 1-A of the hero course has had an absurdly memorable first semester (for all the wrong reasons). If Nezu didn't have explicit confirmation from his fantastic protégé that deities did, in fact, exist, then he would scoff at the notion that some high power was leveling 1-A with as much terrible fortune as cosmically possible. Given his protégé's description of the deity that inhabits his quirk's general disposition, Nezu could not rule out the possibility that the same being was pulling strings beyond their mortal understanding, and wasn't that just a wonderfully terrifying thought?

Terrifying or not, it would be a welcome distraction from dealing with the latest predicament regarding 1-A. The Aoyama family had been attacked at some point between the training camp raid and Aizawa and Inko's visit to their home. The two adults were dead, and their son was missing without a trace. The state of their burned, mangled corpses suggested that they both died in an explosion, but given that they were in entirely different places of the house, they clearly perished in separate explosions. That did not tell him where their son was, however. He would continue scouring any camera feed he could acquire a backdoor into (legally or not) and investigate any possible leads that he came across as much as he could, but he would unfortunately have to leave the rest to the police.

Then, there was the matter of Mashirao Ojiro; quite an interesting case, indeed. The fact that a spy infiltrated his institution was both a grievous insult and a monumental failure on his part, one that he would see to never happening again while he was still breathing. He would be conducting very, very thorough (read: highly invasive and ostensibly illegal) background checks on every single student, teacher, TA, staff member, and business affiliate of UA High School.

In the meantime, he had to investigate a little further into the suspicious circumstances surrounding the deaths of the Ojiro family. The official story was that, overcome with the grief and shame of their son being a spy for villains, the two parents took their own lives. Humans were strange creatures, and Nezu had not yet figured them out entirely, but he was certainly aware of their propensity to behave erratically when under extreme emotional duress. If not for Ojiro's sudden death while in custody, he would not have felt the need to look any further into the tragedy. However, the two Ojiro parents taking their lives within 48 hours of their son suddenly and inexplicably dying in his cell was a very big coincidence.

Nezu did not believe in coincidences.

He suspected that Ojiro was a loose end that needed to be tied up, which would make the suddenness of his death in a place he could not possibly escape from make sense. Now, where did his parents come in? Were they potentially aware of more than they were letting on before their deaths? Had they become liabilities to whoever Ojiro was spying for? Who was Ojiro working for, specifically? There were many possible destinations at the end of this rabbit hole that all had their own potential offshoot tunnels, so cracking this case was going to be a challenge.

It was a good thing that Nezu always loved a challenge.

The entire press room waited with baited breath for the impending arrival of the nation's top hero. After the bombshell that was Endeavor's press conference, the idea of All Might having something to say in an address to the public made a lot of people understandably nervous. It was completely unfathomable that the Symbol of Peace would have skeletons in his closet. He was the embodiment of justice and virtue; he'd have absolutely nothing to hide from the public, right?

Then again, it was also unfathomable that Endeavor would have been an abusive husband and father as well as a eugenicist. That took the nation completely by surprise, as not even the most jaded of villains could have anticipated that he'd come out and say that.

So, it was completely reasonable for every member of the press in the room to be trepidatious about what was to come, and that was the scene that Japan's top hero arrived at. Well, it would be more accurate to say that he crashed through the ceiling of the room (heroically, of course) and struck a pose with his beaming smile for all present.

"I AM HERE!" All Might triumphantly announced, jolting the assembled press out of their shock from his bombastic entrance. The room immediately set their undivided attention on the No. 1 Hero clad in a yellow, pinstripe suit as he stepped up to the podium, happily ignoring the massive hole he left in the ceiling.

"To announce my retirement!" All Might finished, his smile still firmly in place amidst the looks of re-emerging shock from the assembled press.

"…Excuse me?" One reporter found her voice enough to speak up. "What do you mean 'announce your retirement'?"

The most astute of reporters present noticed All Might's smile somewhat dim. "For the last several decades, I have defended the nation from all evil that lurks in the darkness with my life. I have toppled criminal organizations, leaped into action during disasters, and done my very best to ensure the health and safety of all who call this beautiful nation home. I have acted as our society's Symbol of Peace, and nothing has ever given me greater joy."

The man sighed, and the room full of reporters were hanging on his every word. "However, even I must acknowledge that there is one foe that I cannot defeat, no matter how long and how valiantly I do battle with him: Father Time. Many of you have probably noticed that I have been much less visible in recent years. My time spent on patrol and actively defending the safety of the public has been slowly diminishing as the years go on, but I stubbornly tried to persevere and continue doing my duty."

His ever-present smile continued to dim further and further until it was a ghost of the familiar, comfort-bringing grin that they were all accustomed to. Despite the sea of concerns, questions, and remarks flooding their minds, not one person dared interrupt him.

"It was finally during the battle in Kamino that it all caught up with me," All Might solemnly continued. "I pulled every ounce of strength from within me to end that horrible monster's reign of terror for good. It may have appeared that my close comrades, Gran Torino and Verdant, and I had the situation safely under our control, and that was largely true. However, in that battle, I could feel it. I was running purely on the willpower necessary to protect you all with my dying breath and not on any particular strength of body."

All Might somehow stared the entirety of the room in the eye, meeting each individual person's gaze to speak to them directly. "My worst fears have come to pass: I can no longer adequately defend the people of Japan to my own standards. My body will just not allow it anymore."

Amidst the boxes littered around the soon-to-be former Midoriya household was Izuku, Inko, and Eri planted on the couch in front of the TV. Izuku's eyes were bulging out of his skull, and his jaw had taken up residence on the floor beside his feet. Inko was similarly thunderstruck; of all things that All Might could have decided to announce after defeating his nemesis, officially riding off into the sunset was not anywhere on the list.

Eri, meanwhile, looked between the two in mild confusion. She didn't quite understand what was going on that had them so shaken, but she couldn't fight the giggle fit that escaped her at Izuku's cartoonish reaction.

Mitsuki Bakugo was worried. She figured something big was going to come from All Might making an announcement so soon after Endeavor's own reveal, and news of an apparent retirement certainly fit the bill of being big news. That wasn't what had her worried, though.

Her son was dead silent. Not a peep, growl, or even the most minute of crackling from his palms could be heard. He just stared at the screen wearing the most vacant expression she had seen on him since she gave him a heavily redacted recount of why Inko retired from heroics. She understood why; All Might had been such a fundamental piece of his raison d'être. Watching him admit to the slightest bit of humanity was jarring even for her, so she could only imagine what was storming through the mind of her son.

She knew that he would be okay after it was all said and done, but she sincerely hoped that the path to get there wasn't too tumultuous.

Once the reporters were able to collect themselves, the room flew into a frenzy. Questions were shouted left and right, all furiously trying to figure out what the nation's No. 1 Hero for the last several decades could possibly mean by saying that he couldn't defend them any longer.

"All Might, you're not seriously retiring, are you?" one reporter managed to call out over the ruckus. "You aren't just the Symbol of Peace. You are our peace!"

For the first time since he arrived, All Might visibly frowned, silencing the room once more. It wasn't an angry frown or one of consternation; rather, it was a thoughtful frown that was born of the man having wrestled with that very sentiment and its present and future consequences.

"Perhaps 'retirement' was too strong of a word," All Might mused, considering the question. "If a great evil threatens the safety of Japan, her people, and her peace, then I will step in and defend our society in the only way I know how."

He could see many faces in the sea of press that were eased by the statement at least somewhat, but many were still unsettled, so he continued. "I promise that you all have absolutely nothing to fear. I am not leaving society behind empty-handed by any means. Over the past few months, I have become intimately aware of the fantastic capabilities of the current generation and boundless potential of the future generation of heroes. Believe me when I say that young heroes will rise and take this world by storm in only a matter of time, and they will protect and defend society far better than I ever possibly could."

More and more reporters were cowed by his assurances, though many were expectedly skeptical. One woman stood out to him, however. A woman with blue skin and lilac hair with an almost unnerving smile on her face had been rather composed for the duration of the press conference. She looked familiar to him, but he couldn't place where he had seen her before.

The woman in question ended up speaking up amidst the low muttering and garnering All Might's direct attention. "By future generation, are you referring to Izuku Midoriya, perhaps? You mentioned at the UA Sports Festival that he would be a fantastic symbol one day, even if he doesn't explicitly want to succeed you. Even still, are you grooming him to take up the mantle of society's protector?"

"No," was All Might's succinct response, and that caught most of the room off guard. It only made sense that a powerful hero-to-be that received glowing endorsements from both the Symbol of Peace and the Hero Killer would be forced into being All Might's protégé (if for no other reason than to prevent him from falling down the latter path) regardless of his specific desires for his hero career.

"Young Midoriya is a bright, young hero with an even brighter future," All Might continued, recapturing the rapt attention of the room. "I have nothing but the purest of faith that he will be a beacon all his own and guide society into a bright future with or without my guidance. He is an unstoppable force for justice and a bringer of hope for all in society, regardless of your status, background, or history."

"Oh my god, he's making me sound like a cult leader!" Izuku frantically whined while Eri continued giggling at him, occasionally patting him on the back to help assuage his dismay.

"Considering what you can inspire people to do, you're already well on your way," Inko spoke up, having joined Eri in reveling in her son's comical downward spiral. "Before you know it, you'll have the entire nation wearing replicas of that lovely scarf Ochako got you."

"It is a fabulous scarf," Izuku lowly conceded with a sigh. He took a few more moments of sulking at the added attention this would inevitably bring him until he felt a small hand tug at his sleeve. When he looked over, he saw Eri looking up at him with big eyes brimming with curiosity.

"Who's Ochako?" she asked him, and he couldn't help but smile.

"You'll meet her when we move into UA tomorrow," he answered and lightly ruffled her hair, eliciting even further giggling from her. He adored how quickly she was breaking out of the shell that she was locked in when they found her. She clearly trusted them, and it warmed his newly enlarged and dense heart to see her be able to relax, ask questions, and just be a child.

On the flip side, he was also worried about how quickly she was breaking out of her shell because she was anything but a cinnamon role when left to her own devices. She was a sponge that absorbed and processed information much too quickly for any child her age, and like any child, she was always observing. She watched his routine, how he organized things, how long it took him to walk to the bathroom from the kitchen and back, where he stashed his snacks, the first places he'd look if something was missing and all the places he wouldn't look, etc.

There was a missing box of rakugan that he'd been pulling his hair out over for the last few days. She knew that he knew that she knew where it was, but she also knew that he wouldn't ask because his pride would not allow him to be outwitted by a 6-year-old.

He'd find that damn thing if it was the last thing he did, and then he wouldn't share any of it with her (he totally would).

Tomura yawned as he trudged down the hallway towards the living room of the apartment that they stole- er, borrowed from its newly deceased owner. It wasn't anything special, nor was it particularly big like their previous hideout (before it was burned to ashes by Dabi), but it would have to do for the time being. On the plus side, the place had cable and decent wifi, so operating there wouldn't be a total slog until Kurogiri and Giran could find them better digs.

"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!"

Tomura was nearly jolted awake at the unexpected shouting from the living room. He really wasn't in the mood to deal with a ruckus so early in the morn- afternoon after a long night of gaming. When he turned the corner into the living room, he set his tires glare on his reptilian comrade sitting on the couch sporting a look of horror. Beside him on the couch was Twice filling out a crossword puzzle with help from… well, himself. Mr. Compress sat off to the side tinkering with his new prosthetic (he really needed to hunt that fuckhead Overhaul down and murder him for that), and Kurogiri stood in the adjoining kitchen, wiping already spotless glass cups that he almost certainly pulled out of the cupboard.

"The hell are you screaming about, Spinner?" Tomura groaned after completing his observation of the scene.

"ALL MIGHT IS RETIRING!" Spinner shouted, pointing at the buffoon in the stupid, yellow suit on screen.

It took Tomura a few moments to fully process what had just been screamed at him, but when he did, his eyes went wide.

"…Say fucking what?" Tomura disbelievingly questioned.

"It's true," Mr. Compress spoke up. "According to him, his body has been in decline for the last few years, and his showdown with your former benefactor at Kamino was the last straw. He insists that he just cannot go any longer."

"Bullshit," Tomura responded. "He didn't seem any different from the USJ at Kamino. He was leveling the terrain with Sen- with All For One just fine."

"Do you believe that there is something more to his sudden retirement?" Kurogiri posed from the kitchen counter, ignoring the brief slip of the tongue from Tomura.

"There has to be," Tomura nodded before turning back to Mr. Compress. "What else did he say?"

"Well, he did mention his desire to let the current and future generations take up the mantle of societal pillars in his stead," Mr. Compress mused with a stroke of the base of his mask.

Tomura sat on that bit of information for a long minute. While Spinner was coming down from his crisis and Twice was continuing on with his puzzle, Tomura mulled over the thought of All Might throwing in the towel and leaving it to the future generations. Frankly, it sounded absurd; there was no reason for All Might to take a step back, even with All For One's death. He was still the most powerful person in this hemisphere, and that had been the case for the past 5 years when he was supposed to have been gravely injured by All For One. He'd only take a step back if he absolutely had to, and nothing would keep him on the sidelines barring losing his quirk-

"That son of a bitch…" Tomura muttered, believing he had potentially come to the correct conclusion.

"What is it, Tomura?" Kurogiri inquired, placing the glass down and giving the man his full attention.

"He passed on his quirk," Tomura assuredly stated. "He passed on One for All."

Now, he had the attention of everyone in the room. Even Twice had stopped scribbling in his crossword to face Tomura, though he refused to look him in the eye after being the impetus for the Overhaul fiasco that resulted in Magne's death.

"All Might has a successor?" Spinner asked, his tone filled with an unstable blend of curiosity, excitement, confusion, and dread.

"More than likely," Tomura confirmed.

"Do you think it's Midoriya?" Mr. Compress posed the idea.

Tomura shook his head. "Wouldn't be him. Unless All Might forced it into him, I strongly doubt that he would accept it in the first place. I got a pretty good read on him from our few conversations. It's not him."

"So, if not him, then who else could possibly be worthy of succeeding All Might?" Spinner wracked his brain. The only other possible candidate in his opinion would be the other half of the Worthy Duo, Endeavor's son.

"No fuckin' idea," Tomura shrugged. "Guess we'll have to find out for ourselves."

"And how do we do that?" Spinner asked, almost frantically.

Tomura noticed that Spinner had seemed particularly on edge, even beyond hearing the news of All Might's retirement. Before he could address it, though, Spinner stood up and spoke again. "And while we're at it, what are we even doing? What's our goal, Tomura?"

"Where the hell is all this coming from?" Tomura asked with a bit of irritation.

"At Kamino, you killed All For One," Spinner began, his tone growing steady and clearer. "I stood behind you because I follow and believe in you and your dreams, not the dreams of some ancient madman. But if there was one thing that we had with All For One, it was focus. We were focused; we had clear goals, clear ambitions, and a clear path to achieve them. We don't have that anymore. Things feel so aimless now!"

Spinner took a breath and gathered his thoughts, and the rest of the room remained silent as he did so. "We've been losing people left and right. We lost people at the camp raid, we lost Toga at Kamino, Dabi blew his top and no one has seen him since, we just lost Magne to those Yakuza bastards, and Kusari is off doing who knows what in who knows where."

"Kusari said that he had something important to take care of and that he'd have to lay low for a while," Twice supplied. "I don't trust him as far as I can throw him. He seems like a pretty upfront guy!"

"My point is that we feel lost right now," Spinner continued. "It's like we're just waiting for something to happen. What is it that you want to accomplish, Tomura?"

The pale-haired young adult silently considered everything Spinner had said to him. The idea of what he himself wanted to accomplish threw him right back to the initial meeting with Stain where he was confronted with figuring out who he was and what he wanted to represent. He had spent so long under All For One's thumb internalizing all of All For One's ambitions, and now that he had freed himself, he found that he couldn't differentiate what he desired and what All For One wanted him to desire. He knew that society was broken and needed to be fixed, but he didn't know if the hatred and bitterness that festered into desire for wonton destruction was entirely his own.

"I want…" Tomura trailed off, tasting the words on his own tongue as if trying out the idea of personal agency for the first actual time. "I want change."

The other men stared at Tomura quizzically and with mild incredulity.

"Is… is that it?" Spinner asked. "Change?"

"Our society is broken," Tomura continued, and he motioned to everyone in the room. "We all exist because society is fundamentally broken in so many ways. Compress, you want to expose corruption in the government and hero society. Spinner, you want to purge the world of all the false heroes that help to maintain the status quo that abuses people like you. Twice, you want to be able to exist without judgement among those who will see you as an actual person since hero society was never there for you, especially when you needed it."

He took a long look around the room, meeting everyone's eyes with his increasingly focused gazed. "Society has made each of us and so many others into the irredeemable monsters we are. With that said, burning it down and building a new one won't automatically fix those issues, it'll just kick the can down the road or create newer issues to take their places."

"So, what do we do about them, then?" Spinner spoke up once more. "What's left to do if not a revolution?"

A manic grin found purchase on Tomura's face. "We may not be able to go the route of revolution just yet, but we can go the route of brutal reform. We expose the corruption in the government and in heroics. We hold heroes accountable for the damage they often carelessly do. We take people and their bigoted, prejudiced ideas to task head-on. We eliminate the bad actors that make our society what it is, and then we reinforce the remaining structure into the society we all deserve, one we can all feel free to simply exist in without any worries!"

The others in the room were struck silent. None of them had ever really known Tomura to be capable of this level of insight, nor did they expect him to be able to formulate and articulate his new mission statement on the fly and do so clearly.

"We don't have to burn society down wholesale in order to break down the parts that caused all of our suffering," Tomura continued on, his grin becoming menacing as his thoughts fell into place like a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. "We just have to expose and destroy what taints it, then we'll be on the path to utopia. Then, we seize the means of production and-"

"Tomura," Kurogiri halted the young man with a wispy hand. "That is beyond the scope."

"No, no, you're right," Tomura conceded after taking a deep breath. "I got a little carried away. We start small, then we work our way up."

"Hold on, so we're fighting corruption, quirkism, and the falsehoods of heroics?" Mr. Compress asked for clarification.

"Among other things, but yeah, pretty much," Tomura confirmed.

"I have to say, that's quite a pivot from the criminal enterprise I initially thought we'd work towards," Mr. Compress noted with a thoughtful tone. "I do find the new direction fascinating."

"I'm in, too," Spinner excitedly declared. "We'd be like chaotic neutral mercenaries. That sounds badass."

Tomura nodded, and he looked to the third, awfully silent man. "Twice?"

Twice pensively clutched his hands, still unable to meet Tomura's gaze. "I'm in, if you'll have me. No way!"

"Why wouldn't we?" Tomura asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Because I'm a screwup!" he finally let out. I'm the one who brought Overhaul into the fold to begin with! If it weren't for me, Big Sis Mag would still be here, and Compress would still have his arm! How can I be good for anything if all I do is put the people I care about in danger?!"

Tomura stared blankly at the raving man. He didn't know the first fucking thing about consoling people; his default thought was to dust him and go back to bed, but that wouldn't be terribly productive. He needed to think. How the hell was he going to get Twice's head on straight when he knew fuck all about emotional intelligence?

Looking to Kurogiri, the man's glowing, yellow eyes momentarily met his before darting away, and he internally cursed. Obviously, Kurogiri wasn't going to be any fucking help, so he had to try a different tact. Who or what could he possibly draw from in this situation?

Then, it finally hit him: his cousin! He'd definitely know what to do in this situation, the thoughtful, little shit. So, the one question he needed to answer was "what would Midoriya do?"

Back at the Midoriya household, Izuku sneezed while packing away his analysis notebooks, spraying the top of the stack with a small quantity of spittle.

"Goddamnit," Izuku grumbled, forgetting that Eri was drawing in the corner of his room but still keeping her ears open. It appeared that she learned a new word.

"It's not your fault," Tomura finally said, earning Twice's attention.

"What do you mean?" Twice asked in confusion. How wasn't it his fault?

"It could have been any of us in that position; it just happened to be you. That asshole was gonna try to kill us anyway, and it sucks that we lost Magne, but she'd want us to get the fuck back up and keep going. We won't let her death be in vain. We'll fix this fucked up society together."

He stepped toward Twice and put his hand out, tucking his pinky on instinct to avoid disintegrating him. "So, are you in?"

Twice stared at the offered hand, and then he finally brought his eyes up to meet Tomura's before nodding and enthusiastically shaking the hand. "I'm in."

"Bitchin'," Tomura grinned.

"We need a new name, then!" Spinner excitedly declared. "How about the League of Anti-Villains?"

"…We'll workshop it."

The day to return to UA was upon them before everyone knew it. 1-A was standing outside of their new living situation for the foreseeable future in awe and excitement. As their homeroom teacher briefed them on their new digs, responsibilities, and expectations, they were all just glad to have been past their harrowing ordeal safe, sound, and all together.

Well, mostly together.

"Um, Mr. Aizawa?" Mina raised her hand after the man had finished his spiel. "Where are Ojiro and Aoyama? Did they not get permission to move in with the rest of us?"

The man sighed, dreading this question but expecting it, nonetheless. "I'll explain later tonight after you are all settled in. For right now, though…"

His voice developed a darker edge, placing everyone on their guard. "Jiro, Hagakure, Mineta, and Midoriya, you four are dismissed. The rest of you, stay behind."

The four confusedly looked around and amongst each other while the rest of the class (save for a few) went pale at the realization of what was happening. Izuku quickly picked up on what their teacher was planning, and he shot the other three named students quick but meaningful glances.

"No, I don't think I will," Izuku said to his teacher, taking both him and the others aback. "I have a feeling I know exactly what this is about, so I think I'm gonna stick around."

The blunt declaration from their class rep emboldened the others to follow suit. Mineta scooted closer to Izuku's left side in solidarity while Toru did the same on his right, and Jiro got even closer to the rest of her class to drive the point home. Aizawa sighed and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and index finger before activating his quirk and glaring at the 18 students.

"Give me one good reason I shouldn't expel the 14 of you right now," he asked in a dark, angry tone.

He was met with a very loud silence from his class. They all knew that this was coming; Aizawa wasn't just going to not address his entire class illegally storming a battlefield to rescue a captured classmate. Regardless of their intentions or the results, what they did was blatant vigilantism, and they all knew and accepted that. It did nothing to make their teacher's glare any less imposing, though.

No one was speaking up, and Izuku could feel the nervous tension taking root amongst them. He was preparing to open his mouth and address his teacher, but, surprisingly, Tsu beat him to it. She decided to take the heat and answer the question in the only way Tsu knew how:

"Because you went to the trouble of going to all of our homes and asking our parents for permission for us to move in?"

Unfettered bluntness with a sarcastic tinge, an art that Tsu had more than perfected. Her face was as dry and non-emotive as it typically was, though Aizawa could tell that she was actively trying to keep her face as blank as possible.

Still, Aizawa was silent at the answer, and that silence carried on for another half-minute. The class of nervously sweating students were left to either wilt or do their best to weather their teacher's heated, glowing glare for the duration of the silence.

"…Give me two good reasons," Aizawa finally spoke, and the tension suffocating the class was smashed with a sledgehammer.

"We just did what any hero would do," Kirishima opted to speak up now that most of them were much more at ease thanks to Tsu.

"And that's the problem, you aren't heroes yet," Aizawa reprimanded. "You all are still unlicensed students. You could've gotten yourselves killed. You could've gotten Midoriya killed. You could've gotten any of the pros on scene or any civilians in the vicinity killed. Did any of you think about any of that before you embarked on your idiotic expedition?"

If any of the students were going to reply, Aizawa didn't give them the chance. "You all aren't heroes; not yet, anyway. You're prohibited from publicly using your quirks and doing hero work without at least a license, which is what you all are working towards in the first place. Try not to mess that up before you even take the test, got it?"

"Yes, sir!" 1-A dutifully replied, mostly out of habit.

"Good," he sighed and turned to leave. "Go in and unpack, then get settled. We get back to work tomorrow morning."

Melissa absentmindedly went through the motions of unpacking her things. To say her mind was elsewhere would be an understatement; her mind was far beyond the reaches of the Kuiper Belt at this point. It was the occasional stinging pain shooting up her bandaged hands that brought her back from the cosmos to her completely topsy-turvy reality, and they acted as an ever-present reminder of possibly the biggest change in her life thus far.

Reaching for one of the remaining boxes and opening it up, she froze when she was met with the sight of her smashed picture frame that was sloppily pieced back together with duct tape and superglue. Within the patchwork frame was a photo of herself and her dad; it was the one she brought with her from her lab.

She stared blankly at the picture as it stared back at her. Her father's smiling face bore a hole through her gut and pumped her with lead, slowly dragging her down to her knees as she warred with herself to choke the bubbling emotions back down. The more she stared at the photo and the more her father's smile laughed right in her face, the harder it was to maintain her composure. Her bandaged hands were clamping down on either side of the box like a vice, and she felt the unmistakable sensation of power coursing through her. She was shaking.

She needed to calm down.

She needed to calm down.

She needed to calm down.

In an instant, the power surged and exploded out of her, causing her to crush the edges of the box in her hand as a brief flicker of staticky, black tendrils manifested around her. The mini explosion sent her unfinished room into disarray, knocking down the few things she had put up and even pushing some of the furniture askew. Just as quickly as it began, though, it was over, and she was left heaving on the floor as the pain started to seep back in.

"God damnit," she gritted out, and the tears were not far behind. "You're such an idiot."

She couldn't fight the sobs any longer, and she broke down. The well of turmoil churning within her gut was finally spilling out, and she didn't even attempt to choke back her sobbing. She simply grabbed the shoddily repaired frame and hugged it tightly to her bosom.

"I miss you, Papa."

As her tears began to run dry, she felt like she had aged a few decades in only a few minutes. Sitting up against the side of her bed, she sighed and silently lamented what her life had become at the hands of that fucking redheaded bastar-

She cut her train of thought off right there, refusing to allow herself to grant him any further power over her than he had already. She wouldn't allow that. She couldn't allow that. She would persevere.

"You aren't alone, Ninth."

Her head snapped up at the soft, almost ghostly feminine voice traveling through her ears. She looked around her room, but no one was in the room with her.

"Is someone there?" she called out, wondering if someone might have heard the noise or her crying and called out from behind the door. However, no response came.

That was odd. She wanted to chalk it up to a stress-induced auditory hallucination and move on, but it wasn't the only strange occurrence to come about in recent weeks. She had been having strange dreams, usually involving herself floating in a dark, wispy void, and she could just barely make out several glowing silhouettes in the distance, but she could never make it far enough to properly investigate them.

Maybe it was all related to receiving Uncle Might's quirk? She'd have to find him and ask him about it first thing in the morning. Until then, though, she really needed to clean up and finish unpacking.

Eri clutched Izuku's hand tightly as the two made their way down the stairs. After her big brother (that was still so weird to think about) had unpacked all of his things, he and her new mom (that was even stranger) helped her settle into her very own room. It was the first time she had ever had something like it that wasn't just a cold, beige chamber for her to sit and wait for Overhaul to come in and snatch her away. At the apartment, she slept in Izuku's room because she didn't want to be alone, and he could soothe her with his warm, orange blankets when her curse started to act up.

Oh, that was another thing. Her big brother didn't like it when she called her power a curse. He didn't believe that it was a curse at all, and he said that all abilities had their advantages and disadvantages (she thinks she got that word right). She wasn't so sure, but he said that he'd help her train her power to be able to control it and never have to worry about it again, and that made her really happy.

After all of that, though, Izuku wanted to introduce her to his class. She wasn't so certain about meeting so many new people at once, but he was really excited about it, so she nervously went along with the idea. Clutching onto his hand and leaning into his leg, they descended the final flight of stairs and slowly approached the entrance to the common area.

"You ready, Eri?" Izuku asked with a kind smile.

She did her best to put on a brave face and nodded, and Izuku gently ruffled her hair, putting her slightly at ease. Following behind him as he entered the open room, she tried not to fade into invisibility behind Izuku's legs once his friends noticed him and their eyes inevitably landed on her.

"Oh my god, who is this adorable, little thing?" Toru gushed over the small girl as she quickly approached. However, a gentle sign from Izuku indicated to her that Eri was still wary around people and to not crowd her.

"This is Eri," Izuku introduced, gently nudging her to poke her head around his legs. "She adopted us, so she'll be living up here, too."

"Uh, don't you mean that you adopted her?" Kaminari confusedly questioned his choice of words.

"Nope," Izuku said with a smile and did not elaborate further.

Eri, of course, soon became the center of attention, but everyone had the wherewithal to give her a comfortable amount of space. She liked most of them, though she was really wary of Tokoyami given his bird head was too reminiscent of Overhaul and his men. However, it was surprisingly Dark Shadow that was able to smooth things over and endear the two of them to the girl.

She honestly didn't know how she ended up separated from the group and watching anime with the pink girl, Mina, on the couch. She was really bubbly, though, and she said that they were horn buddies now, which sounded cool, so she'd stick around with Mina whenever possible.

There was one thing that stuck out to her about the teenage girl, though. Her appearance was odd, even for their world's standards. It wasn't like Eri had seen a lot of people in her life, but she did at least know that many were strange looking by nature. Still, there was something so… different about Mina that Eri couldn't quite place.

So, after a few minutes of curiously and blatantly staring at her while Mina did her best to ignore it without bursting into a laughing fit, Eri finally voiced her question. "Are you an alien?"

Mina's eyes briefly widened, and her head snapped down to look at the little girl. Then, she looked around to see if anyone was paying attention. "Can you keep a secret?"

When Eri excitedly nodded, Mina took one last look around to ensure they wouldn't be heard before giving Eri a serious look. "I'm not from this part of the galaxy. I'm a refugee that escaped from an evil space emperor that conquered and sold my home planet into slavery, and I came to Earth because it's one of the few places that isn't on the empire's radar."

Eri looked on in shock and awe. She was in the presence of an actual alien, but what's more was that she was in trouble and hiding from a mean space emper… imperial… emporium…

She was hiding from a space jerk.

"I'll protect you," Eri declared, and she meant it. She'd protect her from the space jerk like her new mom protected her from Overhaul and her big brother was protecting her from her curse and the jerks in suits that they talked about when they thought she wasn't listening.

One day, they would learn that she was always listening.

Just then, Izuku floated above the two on couch with Ochako, who was also floating, throttling him as Iida tried desperately to calm the girl down.

"How could you not tell me that you added this little munchkin to the family? That is a huge development!" Ochako scolded while clamping down on his neck and shaking him. If it weren't for the fact that she could barely make a dent in his ridiculously sturdy exterior, he might have actually been concerned for his health.

"It never came up," Izuku struggled to answer. He'd been having this same conversation a lot lately given his mother's newfound celebrity status.

"Never came up?!" Ochako fumed before pausing and taking a deep breath. "How did you come across her?"

It was Eri who spoke up this time, knowing exactly how to answer that question. "The scary bird man tried to kidnap me from my mommy and big brother!"

A beat of confusion rested amongst the present students, and Izuku sighed. "Eri, that cover story doesn't work with people who already know that we aren't actually related."

Eri huffed and pouted upon realizing that she used her story incorrectly. "Goddamnit."

Most of the surrounding students who heard that fell into aghast laughter, with the exception of Iida, who was just aghast.

"Midoriya! Are you teaching this little girl foul language?!" Iida reprimanded.

"Yes, Izuku, are you?" an older, feminine voice addressed from the elevator, making the green head's blood run cold. Izuku turned his attention to the elevator to see his mother with her eyes narrowed at him beside a positively exhausted-looking Aizawa.

"…Hi, mom," Izuku warily greeted, turning his head to look in her direction while Ochako let go of him to do the same.

"Hi, Sensei!" Ochako happily greeted with a wave. "Your son's being a doofus."

"He makes a habit of it," Inko sighed with an understanding nod, smirking at the affronted squawk from her son. "Come on, Eri, let's get something to eat."

Immediately popping up at the promise of food, the little one waved goodbye to everyone before bounding over to Inko and following her back into the elevator. Beside the elevator, Aizawa sighed his life away, not looking forward to the discussion he was about to have with his class. He corralled the 18 students into a single area to break the news.

"Earlier today, you asked where Ojiro and Aoyama were," he began, and everyone grew a bit apprehensive at the forlorn disposition he sported. He idly noticed both Shoji and Mineta in particular stiffen at the mention of Ojiro.

"Well, one of those is easier to answer than the other," Aizawa continued. "Ojiro was revealed at training camp to be a spy for the villains."

"WHAT?!" the class shouted in disbelief, which Aizawa expected. He activated his quirk and glared at them before they could get going, silencing them so that he could continue.

"It was difficult to wrap my head around, too; that is until we caught him in the act shortly after the attack, and he was arrested."

1-A was stunned silent. Reactions ranged from disbelief to overt dismay to crackling rage, and all were marinating in a budding inkling of distrust amongst the class. If one of them was a spy all along and fed the villains who knows how many secrets about them, who's to say that no one else in the class was a spy, too?

Aizawa had to nip this in the bud right now.

"Do not let this tear you all apart after everything you've endured together," Aizawa commanded in a tone that smashed through any sparking unease amongst them. "With everything going on in the country and in your direct future, this is not the time for infighting. All Might said in his speech that he had faith in the future generations to take up his mantle in his absence, and that means you all. It's time for you all to step up and become the true heroes you're training to be."

Seeing that he was reaching them, he went ahead with a final assurance. "Ojiro was and is still the only one to our knowledge, and we can thank Mineta for exposing him."

"And Aoyama?" Izuku questioned.

Aizawa sighed. "That's… difficult. We currently don't know where he is."

"Wait, he's missing?" Kirishima sputtered.

"Yes," the man solemnly confirmed. "He and his family were attacked in their home sometime during or shortly after the Kamino Incident, and we haven't been able to find any trace of him since."

A dreary atmosphere settled in amongst the class. One of their classmates and friends was a spy and the other had gone missing after an attack. There was so much to process in such a minuscule amount of time, and they were still expected to persevere and carry on like normal. How possible was that going to be?

Aizawa broke them from their thoughts with his final words. "The search will continue, and we will find him. Until then, you will all work your asses off to become the best heroes you can in his honor. Then, if necessary, you can all join the search effort to finally recover him. Understood?"

"Yes, sir!" the class answered with a growing resolve.

"Good. You're dismissed. Try not to burn the dorm down, or you're expelled."

Madame President of the Hero Public Safety Commission's frigid gaze was locked onto the screen in front of her that was broadcasting another replay of All Might's shocking press conference. So soon after Endeavor shocked the nation with his exposé, All Might stunned the world by announcing his semi-retirement from heroics in lieu of allowing the next generation to build themselves up. She should have been rattled by this development given its thunderous ramifications, but she wasn't. In fact, she was pleased.

All Might himself was difficult to control. His absurd power made it all but impossible to threaten him, and his lack of familial ties afforded them no one to leverage over him. It was only his nature of being heroic to a fault that prevented him from becoming their most dangerous adversary; at the very least, he could he reasoned with in his pursuit of ensuring the safety of the public. After all, compromise was often necessary.

However, the retirement of the Symbol of Peace was a blessing in disguise, as it was one crucial roadblock out of the way of steamrolling Nezu. Though All Might's loyalties to UA and Nezu weren't inherent, there was enough smoke for there to be fire, and she would see that any fires be swiftly put out. With one of Nezu's potentially most powerful and influential pieces no longer on the board, their game was substantially more winnable. It was all about the bigger picture.

"Should we move ahead with the Paragon Initiative, Madame President?" one of her aids to her side spoke up as she ended the transmission.

"No, that is not yet necessary," she denied with a shake of her head, closing her eyes. "We can position Hawks to be the Number One for the foreseeable future without having to resort to extreme measures. We will revisit the subject should things grow to be too complicated in the future."

She reopened her eyes, and her steely grey gaze froze the others in the room with her in place despite not being focused on them whatsoever. "Until that time, we keep our focus on UA, Nezu, and Izuku Midoriya. By the end of things, they will all either have fallen in line or have simply fallen."

I love the idea of Tomura being a tsundere and Spinner being his dumbass best friend. Expect more of this dynamic from them.

Is Mina actually an alien? Was she just messing around with a 6-year old's imagination? Was that scene just a shameless way to leave the door open for potential interstellar expansion of this AU? Who can say…