Japanese high schools apparently had a thing for non-academic days.

Kei's first day in the UA school uniform involved waking up on a Sunday on the day before term started, walking to the train station after burning breakfast, and jogging to the campus in time to meet the homeroom teacher for class 1-C. There wasn't enough time to get through class introductions, and Kei couldn't recall any familiar faces because she definitely hadn't actually been paying attention during the entrance exams two months back.

So, whoops. Double whoops for failing to realize ahead of time that Kayama-sensei (the R-18 Hero Midnight) definitely wore her hero outfit to work and being caught with a "what the fuck" expression on her face.

Isobu spent the trip through the crowded halls asking questions Kei would prefer not to answer. Is that what you call a dominatrix?

Pretty sure, yeah. Kei could see the spikes of blue-black hair as Kayama-sensei led her homeroom through the halls, after the principal's Mickey Mouse voice informed everyone that it was time to assemble.

The entire first-year class assembled in the auditorium, with one notable exception.

"Eraser's doing his thing, I see," said Kayama-sensei to cockatoo-head from the entrance exams. "Mic, did you already place your bet?"

"Yep. Someone has to be the optimist around here. Maybe he won't expel half his homeroom class on day one."

"Banking on day two?"

"…Maybe."

Oh, so that was Present Mic. Weird how some teachers seemed to prefer going by their hero names. Maybe locals just knew them better that way? Kei tried to imagine calling Sensei "Yellow Flash" just to get through the day, and immediately failed.

And that intrusive thought stuck with her for the next hour, because the principal proceeded to talk like he was being paid per word. It really looked like the principal had an invisibility Quirk, because someone seemed to have forgotten that he needed a few phonebooks to so much as see over it. Kei had no idea what the other students were making of the apparent disembodied voice.

While Kei played mental Tic-Tac-Toe with Isobu (which eventually became a matter of "best out of fifty"), she scanned the incoming class for any standouts. Sure, she was in the General Studies section, but there were a mess of characters from Heroics. She could see a kid who looked like Bigfoot wearing a uniform, a student with a speech bubble for a head (seriously), Vine Girl, a yellow golem, someone whose skin was literally entirely black, somebody with a praying mantis head, and a girl with giant horns and quadruped-style legs. That was pretty impressively weird, even by Kei's standards. Even if, per Midnight-sensei's commentary, there seemed to be twenty students and an extra homeroom teacher missing.

Hrm.

From her mission briefing and a fair amount of informal research, Kei knew the absent class was 1-A, run by pro hero Eraserhead. There wasn't nearly as much information on him as the rest of the staff, because apparently underground heroes were also a thing. Kind of a letdown in some ways.

Ah, well. Kayama-sensei at least seemed nice.

What exactly do we think the General Studies department does? Isobu wondered aloud, tails curling curiously. Unless I miss my mark, no one in this assigned area will become a hero. We are only using this as a cover.

I kind of assumed it's like normal high school, but taught by heroes. Kei shrugged, because there wasn't much else to do while the principal rambled on. It'll…be interesting.

That is what you say when you are being diplomatic.

I try, okay?

Eventually the lot of them were freed from the tyrannical monologue and allowed to head back to their homerooms.

"Not you," said a voice by Kei's knee, and she looked down to find Principal Nezu's snout pointed squarely in her direction. "If you could come to the staff room instead, Gekkō-kun, it would be appreciated."

As long as I get a pass to class, Kei thought, before wordlessly following Nezu through the school.

And the staff room, perhaps owing to Nezu's rodent physique, didn't bother with ladders or anything. He clambered gamely up onto a shelf and started making tea, ordering Kei to sit on the lone chair opposite the couch.

"Are you wondering why I asked you to come here?" Nezu asked, and Kei hadn't quite finished nodding before he went on, "Of course you are. Gekkō-kun, how have you been adapting to this city? To the school?"

Hard to tell, given that I'm missing homeroom. "There are still gaps in my education, but I know UA will fill them."

"Ah, spoken like a student. Well done for getting into your role." Nezu placed tea in front of her, then hopped up onto the couch without spilling a drop of his own. "Your teacher has told me that I should expect to see a young man with a warp not-Quirk around you with some frequency. Uchiha Obito, I believe."

"He's my contact." Obito didn't make much of a "handler," seeing as he had a documented tendency to launch himself right into any situation that could conceivably require his assistance. Cats in trees included. "He can find anyone he cares about and warp right to them, and the same goes for locations."

Nezu took a long sip of tea. "Only those he cares about?"

Well, there's me and there's the other guy with half his original eyeballs. Obito actually had a better targeting scheme when it came to locations than people, but he could manage. "Sometimes. It's not something we could test."

"I see. Well, Gekkō-kun, do you feel it would be useful if Uchiha-kun was on call for you?" Nezu's whiskers twitched. "Especially after meeting the Heroics students."

Oh. So Nezu wanted her to focus her efforts on the classes most likely to get into fights with villains and survive? Interesting tactic, but Kei didn't have enough information to know who would be the most at risk in those classes.

"He's already on-call for me. I'll ask if he wants to meet them outside of class, since he can't pass for a student here." Not that Obito would want to, given his thoughts on his last brush with an educational system. The problem was mainly that, at this point in the year, there was no way to squeak his paperwork past all the prying eyes focused on the top hero school in the country.

Besides that, while he was already sixteen, Obito also had an ANBU-derived disguise and a codename and wasn't going to be shy about using them to get around in Japan if he had to. Better a vigilante than a random schoolkid, in his opinion.

And Kei had, through transformation techniques and various outfits provided by Sensei or the shinobi corps, also acquired a "work" disguise. The only thing she didn't have was a vocoder that would fit inside an ANBU mask, but to hell with it. She just had to layer Isobu's resonance over her own, if it came down to it.

The lower tones, I hope.

Of course.

"That works!" The principal smiled, thankfully without showing his teeth. One of his ears twitched, and a second later Kei heard very faint footsteps coming down the hallway. Someone was very careful to step only on where nailheads would be, it seemed. Principal Nezu continued cheerily, "Now, Gekkō-kun, regarding behavior expectations at this school—"

The staff room door slid open, admitting a scruffy-looking man in a black jumpsuit. He looked like he hadn't slept in about a year and had a scowl to match. If Kei squinted and turned her brain about ninety degrees, she could recognize…

"You wanted to see me?" the guy said, without preamble or honorifics beyond the bare minimum.

Yep. Definitely the missing homeroom teacher.

"You can go now, Gekkō-kun," the principal said. As though anyone would believe that someone with a super intelligence Quirk would forget the daily schedule. Kei didn't know if the principal planned on informing his staff, but that was his decision. She'd be informed later.

Freaking outside contracts.

Kei stopped long enough to get a hall pass, then skittered back to 1-C. She arrived, after knocking, just in time for introductions.

Hooray.

Hush, you.

Well, the tail end thereof. The purple-haired kid with eyebags almost as bad as hers had left his name on the board (it read, Shinsō Hitoshi) and was in the process of actually sitting back down, so that was easy enough to figure out. Once Kayama-sensei got the hall pass and promptly turned the whole class's attention to her, well…

Kei sighed inwardly and wrote Gekkō Keisuke on the board. Probably the easiest cover name to remember in the history of infiltration missions.

Isobu rolled his eye. Inventive.

I don't exactly have a reputation to protect here. Not like anyone will call me "Keisuke" here without notarized permission. That was another thing Konoha didn't quite have: people addressing each other by family names by default. Amazing what a few centuries of continuous clan warfare would do to a society.

"Please take care of me." Kei bowed, and any whispers from the class were cut off as Kayama-sensei snapped her flogging whip down on the desk. Kei flinched mostly for effect.

"Do you want to share your Quirk?" Kayama-sensei asked, once the excitement was over.

"Oh!" Kei made a show of thinking about it. "My Quirk is called Tsunami. I can create and control huge amounts of water."

Which anybody who'd been in her exam arena would know all too well, unfortunately for them. All Might's condolence video had made a point of mentioning that she was one of a select few students to beat the practical and enroll entirely on "villain points" from destroyed robots. It certainly hadn't been Kei's written scores that did the trick.

"Very good. Now, get to your seat." Kayama-sensei pointed out a desk by a window—Convenient, Kei thought—before returning to the demo desk at the front of the room to hand out curriculum packets and class schedules.

It seemed that homeroom took the place of what Kei knew better as "study hall" or whatever the hell it was called in schools in America. There was one teacher who met the same group of twenty students every day, class competitions and assembly spaces were organized by homeroom, and teachers themselves rotated in and out of the various classrooms. While Midnight would be back to teach Modern Hero Art History (which Kei was going to fail), teachers like Present Mic and Cementoss taught English (which Kei planned to pass) and Modern Literature (also a total wash).

Kei rested her head on her upraised fist.

Here we go, then.

Tomorrow.