It had been a while since Aizawa Shouta had seen something that truly disturbed him. He was a pro-hero, an underground one no less, and his job description entailed the exposure to several 'disturbing' things that not even some of his fellow heroes would see in their lifetimes. As such, he considered himself rather hard to bother.

Which was why, when he saw the first thing in decades that could be classified under his 'really, really weirded out' list, the fact that it came from his class of aspiring young heroes was all the more cause for concern. He had been sitting with his back against the wall of the outside training area, up to his neck in his distinctive, yellow sleeping bag and with one tired, although still watchful, eye on the kids. They had been in the heat of their regular sparring matches, raining blow after quirk-charged blow on each other when they had all just – stopped.

There was no 'winding down' motion to their adrenaline-charged actions. It was just, one moment they had been flitting across the training grounds, and then the next they were just still. Aizawa himself froze, not knowing what to do. It was eerie, the class full of statues (with the exception of Midoriya, for some reason, whose head was whipping around as he gaped at his peers in alarm) and he was just about to deduce it to be a villain attack, when the students jolted abruptly into action again; although they did not return to sparring.

Instead, they were staring at their hands, their uniforms, at each other with a relieved awe shining in their eyes, their mouths fallen open in what was clear shock. It was Bakugou who broke the hush with a screech of triumph, "We fucking did it!"

Like the phrase was a battle cry, the entire class broke into whoops of laughter and exclamations of joy, tears inexplicably streaming from some happy faces as they embraced each other like comrades returned from a war. Aizawa was absolutely baffled and so he slipped away to find a fellow faculty member to witness this spectacle and assure him that he had not, in fact, gone insane.

Entirely oblivious to their instructor's departure, the teens continued to celebrate their unknown victory, before collapsing to the floor with relief, beaming at each other unreservedly and some still chuckling. Poor Midoriya was left watching over them nervously, entirely at a loss as to his class' sudden bizarre change in behaviour.

Uravity noticed his hesitation, and so she sprang up from the floor and drew him into an emotional hug that left him red-faced and breathless, "We made it Deku! I can't believe you pulled it off!" She pulled back and grinned at him brightly, admiration that she didn't try to hide painted all over her face.

"W-what?" he could only breathe in return, prompting a theatrical sigh from Ground Zero. He too got up and stomped over to the duo where, to Midoriya's absolute alarm, he slung an arm over his shoulder casually and addressed him as well, "Stop trying to act so fucking humble Deku. If it weren't for you figuring out how that kid's quirk worked, none of us would even be here!"

Midoriya repeated what the blonde had said to himself, muttering under his breath as he tried to infer any meaning from what he had just been told by his fellow students. He could hear Uraraka speaking loudly in the background, seemingly addressing everyone present, and tried to drag himself away from his thoughts. He tuned in just in time to hear, "We have a second chance! We can prevent it all! I almost can't believe it myself," she held a hand to her head as she let out a giddy chuckle that reinforced her statement before quickly sobering, "But we have to get started immediately." A round of solemn nods expressed the group's agreement.

"Deku," he squeaked when she looked back at him with a fierceness in her eyes that he had never seen before, "tell us what you have in mind."

With all those expectant eyes on him, looking at him with an insurmountable trust that he had not yet earned, all poor Izuku could do was utter a statement that had his audience's mouths go dry and made all present hearts sink into their respective stomachs.

"I – I don't know what's going on."


A distance away, pro-hero Deku awoke with a jolt. Checking his surroundings, he sagged in relief and let out a heady chuckle at the fact that no, he wasn't in the middle of a warzone with one reassuring hand on the kid who was about to send his entire graduating class back in time. Instead he was safe. Sure, he was in a dark, shuttered room that he did not recognise, on a dusty bed that he had never slept in, but he was safe (and this fact assured him that, more importantly, his friends were safe too).

Deku fell back onto the bed, laughing quietly as the sheer joy he felt at the chance to change their awful, horrible future made him feel suddenly boneless. As such, it took him a few moments to deduce that something was not entirely right with his situation. His sharp mind already grinding its gears into action, he sat up again and took in his surroundings carefully. He had certainly not been within these particular four walls in his life before, as he had marked earlier. Even less familiar was the large television in the corner of the room with an expensive gaming console sat at its feet, as well as the shuttered windows that stubbornly refused to let the light of day into the small space.

Successfully bewildered, Deku got to his feet only to be thrown off by the unfamiliar centre of gravity that threatened to introduce his face to the polished floorboards. He chose, instead, to sit down on the bed again and stared hard at the black jeans that covered too long legs. An equally black hoodie spilled into his lap where his hands were resting between his thighs, utterly devoid of the map-like pattern of scars they were supposed to have been decorated with, even when he had been merely a UA student.

With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Deku grabbed a strand of his hair (with two fingers. Only) and tugged it into his field of vision. Instead of the springy, forest green curls he should have been expecting, he was grasping a limp, blue-grey strand between his slender forefinger and thumb. There was a panic that was starting to rise in his mind that he stomped down on firmly, even as he knew for certain that something had certainly gone quite wrong in spite of the near-flawless execution of his plan, and he got up from the bed swiftly, losing his balance once more in the process.

As he stormed over to the full-length mirror he had seen in his initial sweep of the room, the number-one hero was made painfully aware of how foreign his body was. He had been regrettably short as a teenager and, when his growth spurt had finally hit with a vengeance, his build had finally seemed to catch up with his muscle mass. He was not a particularly tall adult, but he was broad thanks to his decades of strict training. The point of the matter was, he had never been this lean, and this (which no one would have ever described him as, at any point of his life) lanky, which was certainly how he would describe the body he was currently occupying as his long legs carried him across the room in three strides.

Deku still gasped, although he had begun to suspect exactly whose body he had been shoved into thanks to Class A's jaunt to the past, when he saw his reflection. The light hair he had noticed moments ago framed a pale face that was in dire need of some moisturiser, cracked lips forming an aghast 'o' as their owner gaped at his reflection. Crimson eyes that he knew far too intimately than he would ever have liked to gazed back at Deku, sharp and clearer than he had ever seen them. There was no hint of the broken mind behind them, perhaps as now that mind was simply not there, and the bloody irises displayed instead a spark of the intelligence that existed in its stead. Deku shivered, seeing Shigaraki Tomura's eyes like that was somehow even more terrifying.

Taking a deep breath and attempting to stop his new fingers from where they had begun to twitch with his agitation, Deku let his mind work. He resisted the urge to pull a worried hand down his face (he was still not sure exactly whether Shigaraki's quirk worked on himself, but he was not particularly keen to find out using this particular method) as his thoughts whirred away. The fact that he was here was proof that the young boy's quirk had worked; which meant that all of his classmates, in some form or another, were back in the past with him. The thought made a smile light up his drawn face briefly before it fell back into a contemplative frown. Were they all in different bodies? Did some of them actually end up in the correct destination? Was he the only one who had ended up as he did? If so, why?

He groaned, wincing at the pain the action brought his throat and wondered how he had not noticed it earlier. So many questions and not enough answers; or even theories. Still, there was one upside to his situation.

He was in Shigaraki Tomura's body. The successor of All for One and the scourge of the future the heroes had returned from. Deku had been placed in a position that was almost too good to be true to in order to successfully carry out their intentions. One of, if not the, biggest threats had already been eliminated. He couldn't help a hysterical giggle that escaped his scratchy throat. Maybe someone, somewhere was finally willing to give the 'problem child' a bit of a break. Goodness knows he certainly deserved it.

Deku nodded decisively and collected himself before he gripped the doorknob with the intention of opening the door. When it instead dissolved away, leaving him clutching at knob-shaped air, the pro-hero wanted to kick himself. First order of business: get a set of those artist gloves that covered only the little finger; thereafter, he could start his own reconnaissance of UA in order to find out just how many of his peers were indeed 'themselves'; all the while maintaining his "Shigaraki" cover with the League of Villains in such a way so as not to raise suspicion from any of them, All for One included. Oh, also, he had to get in contact with comrades while, in all the ways that mattered, being Shigaraki Tomura – the person that they would be the last to trust and the first to eliminate.

Piece of cake, Deku thought sarcastically, the sneer that tugged at his upper lip making him look sufficiently Shigaraki-ish to kick open the now handle-less door, time to get started. He immediately came face-to-mist-obscured face with what was a clearly disapproving Kurogiri, who had a fist raised that suggested he had been about to knock on the door when it had nearly brained him for his efforts.

He looked at the missing doorknob first, before his gaze moved pointedly to Shigaraki's exposed hands (missing the nervous sweat that had broken out at the young man's temples). His voice expressed his annoyance, "Again, master Tomura?"