Great Teacher Yagi
As he stood outside the door of his classroom, All Might couldn't help but feel a tad hypocritical. He had just told Midoriya that he didn't need to be so nervous, yet here he was, having trouble to brace himself for his first homeroom class. The irony of it all.
Come on, Toshinori, show a little more courage, already! All Might told himself. So what if this is the first time you've ever been asked to impart knowledge onto young and impressionable minds? So what if doing a poor job here could potentially scar these children for life and ruin their futures? So what if you're now responsible for making sure that all of these kids don't end up throwing their lives away into a meaningless void of nothingness? That doesn't matter! Well, it does matter, but you've got to put it on the back burner! Forget about your lack of experience, forget about your inability to construct a lesson plan, forget about your lack of understanding of PowerPoint and Excel! You just need to go in there and give them the same energy you use to punch bad guys in the face!
With renewed resolve, All Might threw the door open and charged in, taking the metaphorical bull by the metaphorical horns.
"I am… here to start homeroom!" All Might shouted. The proud students exploded with glee as they watched him march in with his Silver Age costume, whistling the tune of a Hoyt S. Curtin song all the while.
"Holy shit, it's All Might!" one student shouted.
"All Might's really our homeroom teacher!" another student shouted.
"This is the best day ever! I love you!" a third student shouted.
"I love you, too, random student!" All Might said. "You all must think it's an honor to have me standing in front of you, but if you ask me, you've got that backwards. Starting today, you're all seniors at this school, and there's nothing I'd enjoy more than being the one to guide you through the final steps of maturity. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all for bestowing such an honor upon me!"
More cheering came out of the students, and All Might smiled. It seemed like he was worrying over nothing. After all, if he could fend off Libra while simultaneously rescuing dozens of people from a burning building, he could teach a class of seventeen kids, no problem.
"Hang on a minute. Seventeen? What's with those empty desks? Don't tell me I've got three kids playing hooky on the first day of class."
"Probably just those guys. Leave it to them to be late on the first day of school," one student said while rolling his eyes.
Looks like I've got some troublemakers in my class. No matter. I'll just act like a good teacher and whip their delinquent butts into shape, All Might thought to himself.
At that moment, with a very comedic sense of timing, a large naked man jumped through the wall on All Might's left and tumble into the wall on his right, the man shouting "POWER" in English all the while. All Might, for more than one reason, didn't know what to say.
"I made it!" the naked man shouted with a smile.
"You're late," one student said.
"Oh no!" the naked man shouted, still smiling.
The class started laughing at the naked man's folly. All Might watched it all in stunned silence. As he did, the door opened up, and in walked two more people, clearly the last of his missing students.
"Did you really have to do this on the first day?" asked one of the pair, a dark-haired boy with pointed ears and a nervous expression on his face. Folded up neatly in his hands was a pile of clothes that All Might assumed belonged to the naked man.
"Well, if he starts getting it out of his system now, it might not happen-hi, Yuyu! We're in the same class, again! Yay!" said the other half of the pair, a girl with long, twisting blue hair who, after talking to Yuyu, spent the next ten seconds bouncing across the room to have small conversations with everyone else in class.
"Oh, hey! All Might's our homeroom teacher! Hey guys, look, look! It's All Might!" the girl shouted.
"How are you only now noticing that?" the boy with pointed ears asked as he handed the naked man his clothes.
"It's really All Might?!" the naked man shouted as he threw on all his clothes. "Man, I can't believe this! This is incredible! I'm really sorry we're late. We missed the first train to school because someone thought it'd be a good idea to sleep in."
""That was you,"" the boy with the pointed ears and the girl with the twisting hair said in unison.
"Hey, you don't have to tell him that. Anyway, I'm really sorry you had to see all of that. Eraserhead or Power Loader would be one thing, but I didn't want All Might of all people to take a gander at Little Mirio, first thing in the morning!"
"I-It's fine. Just… Just take your seat. That goes for your friends, too," All Might said.
The formerly naked man marched into his seat with a bright smile. The boy with pointed ears slowly walked into the seat behind him with a mopey expression, and the girl with the twisting hair skipped into the seat behind him with an excited look on her face.
"A-Anyway, it's time to start class introductions. They're the last ones you'll ever make, so make them count!" All Might shouted with fake enthusiasm. At the very least, he paid attention to the names that were being said, but everything else went in one ear and out the other. Except, of course, when it came time for the three latecomers to speak.
The boy with the pointed ears was named Tamaki Amajiki. The girl with the twisting hair was named Nejire Hadou. The naked man with the blonde cowlick and eyes that looked straight out of an old school American cartoon was named Mirio Togata. All Might already knew that, though. He knew that because well before the start of the school year, Nedzu and another associate of his informed him that Mirio Togata was the one student at U.A. most worthy of inheriting One for All.
"SHIT," was all All Might could think in response to such a situation.
The Daily Struggles of U.A. High School Janitor Hana Aoi, Age 32, Blood Type O, Three Sizes Moderately Satisfying, Part 1
After thirty minutes of hard work, determination, and masterful utilization of a Sixth Metal plunger, Hana Aoi finished clearing the literal explosive diarrhea. The first day of school, and she already wanted to punch someone's parents in their faces.
No, no, don't do that. Only Villains do that, Aoi told herself. Heaving a heavy sigh, she entered the custodians' office and plopped down on the couch, ready for a few minutes of peace and quiet.
"Aoi, get off your ass! You've got work to do!" Her brief respite was made even briefer thanks to the hardened voice of her supervisor.
"Come on, Mitsuhide-san! I just spent half an hour cleaning literal explosive diarrhea! Doesn't that earn even me five minutes to myself?!" Aoi cried.
"You know what? Maybe it should… for people who don't go chatting up the brats who infect this school like a plague!"
"Wha-"
"I saw you talking to that Hero Course kid with the spitcurl! Getting cozy with those kinds of people is bad enough, but getting buddy-buddy with their top dog is something I won't stand for! Understand?!"
"Yes, sir," Aoi sighed as she got off the couch. As she walked over to Mitsuhide's desk, she couldn't help but notice her fellow janitors laughing at her and whispering about how "Miichi" really laid into her. The nerve of all of them. Surely Aoi didn't deserve to be punished just for having a ten-second conversation with someone, right? At any other school, the answer would be a resounding "Yes", but not at U.A. Not when the head janitor was Josefumi Mitsuhide, a man with an inexplicable hatred of Heroes and all things related to Heroes.
Just her luck.
As it turned out, the job was assisting the new hire with retrieving something for her class. Aoi figured that it being a teacher must have been why Mitsuhide was so adamant about it; the man hated having to clean up after the Hero Course kids, but what he hated even more than that was having to clean up after the Hero Course teachers, people who, according to him, should have enough competency to handle their own problems.
Mitsuhide was really fun at parties.
Moving on from that, Aoi walked to the Hero Course faculty lounge. Waiting outside the door was a masked woman with hair as dark as the leather pants and jacket she was wearing. Her chest was wrapped in a sarashi, her midriff was completely exposed, and two katanas were hanging at her hip. As far as Aoi was concerned, she was a quintessential samurai biker babe, which made it even weirder when she jumped back a few centimeters after a simple greeting.
"Um, you're the new teaching assistant, Tatsu Yamashiro-san, yes?" Aoi asked. The woman nodded her head and confirmed what Aoi already knew. "Nice to meet you. What seems to be the problem?"
"I'm supposed to be giving snacks to my students, but I can't seem to find them," Yamashiro said.
"Well, they wouldn't be in the teachers lounge. Any and all food items not being eaten in the cafeteria are stored in the kitchen until a teacher comes to pick them up."
"I see. Thank you." Aoi started to take a step away from Yamashiro, only to stop herself when she noticed that Yamashiro wasn't moving, at all.
"You don't know where the kitchen is, do you?" Yamashiro slowly nodded her head. For a second, Aoi found herself understanding Mitsuhide's feelings about the Hero Course. "Alright, follow me. It's just a quick walk from here, and this way, you'll know for next time."
"Thank you. Sorry for the trouble."
"Don't mention it. Supporting people who keep the world spinning is what makes janitors janitors, after all."
With that being said, Aoi began to lead Yamashiro to the kitchen. The two didn't talk about much of anything, partly because it really was a quick walk, partly because Yamashiro seemed too nervous to speak. That was fine, though. They'd be done with this relatively soon, so it wasn't as if a lot could happen between the two of them.
As soon as the thought finished playing through Aoi's head, the door to the cafeteria, which they had only just then come to, exploded.
"What the hell?!" Aoi shouted.
"Ahhhh! Someone! Help!" The voice that shouted that was robotic and came from the cafeteria. The owner had to be U.A.'s robot chef, the C00K H3R0, Lunch Rush, and he was in some kind of danger.
"Let's go," Yamashiro said as she ran to the hole in the wall.
"What?! Me, too?!" Aoi asked.
"I still need help with the snacks. ...No, that's stupid. Forget I said anything and-"
"No way! This is the kind of stuff a girl like me looks forward to!" Aoi said with a smile that would have made All Might proud. Yamashiro gave an "OK", and the two ran into the cafeteria. Aoi didn't know what they were in for, but she was confident they could handle it.
Upon entering the cafeteria, that confidence didn't completely vanish, but Aoi had to admit that it had taken a significant hit. Not because what they were dealing with was terrifying so much as it was because what they were dealing with, a giant robotic gorilla with eight tentacles coming out of its back, was just incredibly weird.
"What the hell?!" Aoi asked. The robotic monstrosity let out a primal roar as it swung its arms and tentacles about. As it did, Aoi saw that one of its tentacles had itself wrapped around Lunch Rush.
"Somebody help me!" Lunch Rush cried.
"Yamashiro-san, I think that's-" Before Aoi could finish talking, Yamashiro had dashed off towards the robot. Faster than Aoi could blink, she drew her twin swords and sliced off the tentacle Lunch Rush was wrapped in. Lunch Rush squeezed himself out of the tentacle, and barely a second later, the severed end stretched out until it reconnected with the main body. An impressive action that was immediately followed up by the robot firing a laser from its mouth at Yamashiro. She was able to dodge it, but it kept firing more shots at her.
"Are you all right, Lunch Rush?" Aoi asked.
"I'm fine," Lunch Rush said. "More importantly, that thing is-"
"Really giving Yamashiro-san a hard time, I know."
"No, that's not what-"
"Yamashiro-san's swords clearly aren't for show, but that robot's one tough customer, especially with that regeneration ability. How can a robot even do something like that?"
"It's simple, really. The Robo-Octo-Ape is constructed from a living metal of my own design, allowing it to perform self-healing whenever its limbs are detached! Impressive, right?"
"I think it'd be more impressive if it wasn't trying to kill us-wait, who's talking?"
"Up here!" Aoi turned her head towards the ceiling and saw that she was standing directly underneath the body of a female student from the shoulders down. Normally, this kind of view would give someone in Aoi's position a view of a pair of panties, but all Aoi saw were legs with a metallic smoothness to them. She didn't know if that was actually more comfortable.
"You! Why are you still here?!" Lunch Rush shouted.
"That's kind of obvious, isn't it?" the girl with the Barbie doll anatomy asked. "Luckily, I just spat out an acidic compound that will make the size of this hole large enough for me to calmly slip through-"
The hole above her shoulders widened to ten meters in diameter and she quickly fell to the ground with a large crash. Aoi could now see that the girl with the Barbie doll anatomy had metallic fingers broken up into segments, yellow eyes with crosshair-shaped pupils that appeared to be bulging out of her head, and pink dreadlocks that were dyed at the tip to resemble light bulbs. When she got off the ground, she could also see that English letters were written across all of her locks that, when put together, read "Elapsam semel occasionem non ipse potest Iuppiter reprehendere".
"Hey, wait! I know you! You're the girl who set half of the gymnasium on fire when they were testing people for the Support Department!" Aoi shouted. It was one of the worst cleanups she was ever forced to do, and the fact that this girl still got accepted retroactively made it worse.
"Mei Hatsume, nice to meet ya!" Hatsume said, extending a hand as her fingers snapped back together and her eyes fully went back into their sockets.
"Where the hell do you get off acting so friendly?! You should be expelled for all of this!" Lunch Rush shouted.
"For what?! My baby is totally harmless!" The Robo-Octo-Ape fired another laser that Yamashiro narrowly avoided. "Totally harmless!"
"Wait, you made that thing?! I guess that explains why no one sounded an alarm for an invading Villain, but again, you made that thing?!" Aoi shouted.
"Don't call him a 'thing'; he has a name! Baby #689: Robo-Octo-Ape! A combat mech of my own design that's one part robot, one part octopus, and one part gorilla! It's the ultimate weapon for dealing out justice!"
"Then why did it eat all of my food?!" Lunch Rush shouted.
"That's what this is about?!" Aoi shouted.
"Yeah, there's admittedly a tiny bug in my Ultimate Justice Weapon," Hatsume said. "When I was constructing the Robo-Octo-Ape, I naturally built him with a tremendous appetite for the carnage of his enemies, but his AI was partially constructed using old recordings of Cultivating Mass with Fat Gum, and that overrode his programming to just give him a regular tremendous appetite. I've been trying to shut him down, but we all know how hard it is to put a baby down for a nap."
Are you serious?! Aoi screamed in her head. I know that the Support Department is allowed to make whatever they want, but this overdoing it, isn't it?! And cooking videos? You had its AI run on cooking videos?! Mitsuhide-san, I think you're hating on the wrong department!
As the irritation flooded through Aoi's head, Yamashiro's body suddenly went flying through the air, a dangerous crash only avoided by jamming her swords into the ceiling to halt her flight. The Robo-Octo-Ape let out another primal roar as it stretched its tentacles into the kitchen. It pulled them back out after a few seconds to reveal that they were now holding a tray of cookies and several large bottles of soda.
"Everyone's… snacks!" Yamashiro said.
"I guess it didn't eat them before, but it's going to do that now, if we don't stop it," Aoi said.
"Are you serious?!" Lunch Rush shouted. "Isn't there more important stuff going on than-"
"Hatsume, you said that the limbs automatically reconnect after they're severed, right?" Aoi said, cutting Lunch Rush off. Hatsume quickly let out a confirmation. "Does that only work if it registers the limbs as severed?"
"Theoretically, yes. Oh, do you have a plan?!" Hatsume asked.
"I think so. The first thing we need to do is-"
"I've had enough of this! You hear me! Enough!" Lunch Rush, in a turn of events, was the one to interrupt someone. He pointed his hand towards the Robo-Octo-Ape and it transformed into what appeared to be a giant, metallic turkey baster. "Go retire to the scrap heap! Gravy Shooting!"
Brown liquid shot out of the turkey baster and blasted the Robo-Octo-Ape in the face, causing it to stumble and toss the pilfered items into the air. Coincidentally, Aoi had actually wanted something like that to happen.
"Yamashiro-san, cut off its tentacles and toss them towards me!"
"Okay," Yamashiro said, dislodging herself from the ceiling.
"What should I do?" Hatsume asked.
"Absolutely nothing," Aoi said.
"Roger roger!" Hatsume said with a salute. The second Yamashiro hit the ground and ran towards the Robo-Octo-Ape, Aoi ran towards where all the items were going to fall. She first caught the tray with the precision and skill of a young Victor Stone, though hardly anyone still remembered his achievements from before he became Cyborg, followed by the third Robotman. Moving on from that, as each cookie fell, Aoi caught them perfectly on the tray, not spilling a single crumb onto the floor, and the top of each bottle of soda was caught perfectly between her fingers. She was no Princess Shazam, but she still considered herself pretty graceful.
Hopefully Yamashiro-san's doing her part, Aoi thought to herself. Turning back towards the rest of the action, Aoi immediately got confirmation of that. Yamashiro was a blur of sword strokes and dynamic cutting motions. Now that she was under the impression that she could freely attack without worrying about regeneration, the Robo-Octo-Ape couldn't even touch her. When Aoi first turned in their direction, six tentacles were severed, but just a few seconds later, the last two tentacles had also been removed. The Robo-Octo-Ape let out a mighty roar, and as it did, the severed ends of its tentacles started stretching outwards.
"Not! On! My! Watch!" Aoi put the snacks down on a table and made a dash for the tentacles. She ran past each and every one of them, slapping their severed ends as she kept running before tripping over a loose floor tile. With her luck, she'd end up being the one to fix that.
"What kind of plan is this supposed to be?" Lunch Rush asked.
"A great one!" Aoi said, standing up with a bloody nose.
"All I see is-"
"Oh! Look!" Hatsume cut in. "My baby's tentacles! They're all smooth at the ends and they're not re-attaching themselves!"
It was just as Hatsume said. The end of each severed tentacle had changed from jagged messes to smooth, rounded nubs. Any signs of damage on the tentacles were gone, and even though over a minute had gone by, they hadn't moved a single centimeter. Just like Hatsume told Aoi, this meant that the Robo-Octo-Ape's living metal wouldn't register the tentacles as being severed.
This was why you didn't underestimate a janitor's Cleaning Power.
"Hatsume, apologies in advance, but I'm going to kill your beast, now," Yamashiro said, pointing her swords at the Robo-Octo-Ape's neck.
"No! Don't kill my baby!" Hatsume cried.
Yamashiro clearly ignored her unjustified crying as she leapt into the air towards her opponent. She put her two swords together in the shape of an "X", and when she was close enough, she broke up the formation by swinging her arms at a high enough speed to create a powerful slashing attack that cut the Robo-Octo-Ape's head clean off.
At least, that was the plan. It was a good plan, one that certainly would have worked if the Robo-Octo-Ape didn't suddenly dodge by dropping down on all fours. Yamashiro softly landed on the floor, and as she did, the tentacle stubs shot out of the Robo-Octo-Ape's body alongside a ball of chrome liquid that quickly morphed into a metallic octopus, the top of its head stylized like the bonito flakes of a takoyaki. Another ball of chrome liquid shot out of its back, that one morphing into a humanoid robot with an ovular head a single, glowing eye in the center of its face.
"What the hell?!" Aoi shouted.
"Oh, right, I forgot to mention that my baby is a combining mecha," Hatsume said.
"Seriously?!"
"I know, right?! Part robot octopus, part robot gorilla, part robot… robot! Pretty cool, right?!"
"No! Not cool! And that last part is just redundant!"
"Crazy robots like you give us hard-working robots a bad name!" Lunch Rush shouted.
"How can I do that when I'm a cyborg?" Hatsume asked.
"Let's worry about that later, please!" Aoi cried. The three robots started charging laser beams from various parts of their bodies as they faced Aoi and company. With Hatsume still forbidden from contributing anything, it was three-on-three, but that didn't mean the fight would an even one. Even still, Aoi was going to do whatever she could to help end this as soon as she could.
Two seconds after the thought left her head, all three of the robots lost the light in their eyes and fell flat on their faces, completely motionless.
"My baby!" Hatsume cried. Lunch Rush yelled at her again, but no one seemed to care.
"It's over?" Aoi asked.
"It appears so," Yamashiro said. "How peculiar that they all shut down like that. Another defect?"
"No, it didn't look like it was caused by anything internal; the collapse probably would have been more dramatic if that were the case. It almost looked like some sort of remote hacking."
"My, my, for a mere custodian, you have quite a good head on your shoulders."
"Hey, are you complimenting me or-" The remaining words turned to ash in Aoi's mouth when she saw who had entered the scene. This was her first time experiencing it, but it seemed like it really was hard to come up with something to say when talking with a Luthor.
"You should be happy I said anything that can even be interpreted as positive," Alexis Luthor said, the girl holding some kind of tablet.
"Oh, Alexis-san! Hi!" Hatsume said while waving her hands.
"Y-You know her?" Aoi stammered out.
"We're in the same class!"
"And you're happy about that?"
"She better be, considering that that's what led to me coming to your aid," Alexis said. "When ten minutes had gone by without Mei coming back from the lab, Misutah Power Loader got concerned for the safety of the school and decided to have someone go look for her. Still doesn't make sense that he chose me, though. He said it was because I was goofing off on my phone, but I clearly explained to him that I was typing out an essay on Reddit detailing how the Danganronpa franchise turned to utter horseshit after Absolute Despair Girls. If that's goofing off, then I don't want to know what counts as being serious."
Aoi didn't understand a single word she just said.
"I must say, Mei, you've got some impressive machinery here. It was easy for me to remotely hack into and shut down, but not as much of a walk in the park as I expected it to be. Not everyone can build something that takes ten seconds for me to dismantle."
"Cool!" Hatsume said.
"I overheard a bit of why this happened. Did you have the AI put into a gyrating system to spread the processing power around?"
"Yeah, even based it on Mister Terrific's T-Sphere, yet this still happened."
"Personally, I would have gone with Mister Terrible's T-Squares for inspiration. They don't have the same amount of processing power, but that's because their AI is more specifically designed for combat, not data manipulation."
"And that kind of system wouldn't conflict with any aggressive programming I put in! I could put in any subroutine I want!"
"You might even be able to alter the sensitivity of the liquid metal so it doesn't get so easily fooled."
Aoi still had no idea what they were talking about.
"Well, let's get you back to class, then," Alexis said.
"Roger roger!" Hatsume said, grabbing Alexis' hand and running out of the cafeteria.
"I see that you're touching me, for some reason." Hatsume immediately let go, and the two engaged in a slow walk.
"Of course she just leaves my domain a complete mess. The nerve of some kids," Lunch Rush said.
"I should get back to mine. Thank you for you help," Yamashiro said to Aoi.
"Don't worry about it," Aoi said. "Just doing my job, you know?" Yamashiro gave her a quick bow before picking up the snacks and exiting the cafeteria.
"Sorry about all of… this," Aoi said to Lunch Rush as she gestured to the entire room.
"Yeah, it's a real pain in the ass, but I guess you helped make it better than it could have been," Lunch Rush said. "That Luthor girl was right; you've got a lot more skill than most people would think."
"Ahahaha, well, you know-"
"Hope you still have your custodial skills, though."
"Actually, it's time for my union mandated break."
"Of course it is."
In spite of the union mandated break, Mitsuhide still got on Aoi's case for leaving the cafeteria in such a state of decay, even though it wasn't her fault. Probably because Alexis Luthor got involved, and according to him, she was one of the two worst things to be happening to U.A. this year. She didn't bother to ask what the other one was.
Either way, the rest of the day proceeded as normal, and when the sun finally set, Aoi was done for the day. She was able to return to her apartment, change out of her work clothes, and plop down on her couch with a cold beer to unwind before going to bed.
That was the plan, anyway. A plan that was quickly interrupted by her phone ringing.
"Hello? ...What, really? ...Yeah, I'll-I'll be there. ...No, no, I'm game. Just tired. You would not believe the day I had today. I'll tell you about it when I get there. See you in ten." Aoi hung up her phone and sighed.
"And I just took my wig off, too," she said, brushing a finger through a white lock. "Oh well, what can you do?"
Aoi got off the couch, walked into the kitchen, crouched behind the island, and pressed a small button disguised as the top of a door handle. That would put all of the hidden cameras on a continuous loop for twelve hours. After double-checking that it worked, she opened up a window and quietly crawled out the fire escape.
She felt bad about tricking the government like this, but Kaori Kagayaki had work that needed to get done.
The Mysterious Mister Mxyzptlk!
Midoriya woke up with one thought on his mind: today was going to be a good day. Even though he'd still be dealing with things like Todoroki having an unwarranted rivalry with him and Bakugou being Bakugou, there were a number of things to even that out. The seating formation had him right next to Kendou and right near Yaoyorozu and Iida, so that was a positive (thinking about that made him remember how unfortunate it was that Uraraka was so far removed from the rest of the Monstars). It was also the first official day of class, and since it was Monday, that meant he'd be starting the year off by having class with All Might. He couldn't imagine having anything better happen to him.
"You sure seem excited for someone who just got out of bed," Inko said. "Since you're feeling so energetic, how about you help me make breakfast?"
"No problem," Midoriya said. As his mother started setting silverware down on the table, Midoriya opened up the fridge and got out a carton of eggs.
"Today's your first day of Hero Training, right? Make sure to ask Momo to give you a picture of her in her costume. I want to make sure the company that made it got all the details right."
"Will do," Midoriya said as he got a large bowl.
"I still wish I could have found the time to make it myself, but working on yours took longer than I thought. I knew it had been a while since I took up any big jobs, but I didn't think I was that out of practice."
"It's fine, Yaoyorozu-san's not upset. But if it bothers you that much, then 'practice makes perfect', right?" Midoriya asked as he pulled an egg out of the carton.
"You want me to go back to designing, full-time? I don't know…"
"Why not? You're still really good at it, Mom! Plus, I'm probably going to spend even less time at home now that I'm at U.A., so it wouldn't be the worst idea in the world for you to have something other than housework to keep yourself busy," Midoriya said as he cracked an egg into the bowl. "Not that I'm saying that isn't a demanding job, or anything, I just mean-"
"I know what you're trying to say. After Momo hired me, your father and I did actually talk about it for a little while. Maybe I could give it a little more thought, Izuku. Izuku? Izuku, are you listening?"
Technically, he was. The words were, indeed, being registered by his ear drums, but his attention was somewhere else. Namely towards the bowl in front that, rather than an egg yolk, contained a small snake with a clown nose on its face and a trumpet in place of a tail.
What kind of eggs did Mom buy?! Midoriya screamed in his head. No, that can't be the problem. These are the same "Chang Tzu Farms" eggs that Mom always buys from the grocery store, but nothing like this has ever happened before. That means she didn't buy the wrong kind of eggs. Were they somehow tampered with after the fact? How? Why? And again, what the hell?!
"Izuku, is everything alright?"
"Y-Yeah! Everything's-"
A loud trumpet sound came out of the snake's mouth.
"What was that?"
"N-N-Nothing! I'm just watching something on my phone while I cook, that's all!"
"Really? You don't usually do that." The same trumpet sound repeated itself. "And something about the quality of the sound seems off for something on your phone."
"O-Oh, that? Th-That's something K.E.L.E.X. did, yeah! He messed around with my phone a bit to improve the sound quality! I think he got inspired to do it after seeing the stuff you did with my costume-"
The trumpet sound was repeated at an even greater volume, this time with legitimate rhythm.
"That's way too loud, Izuku! What are you even watching?" Inko asked. The snake kept playing its song as she stepped away from the table and started walking over towards him.
"W-Wait! Hold on! Don't come over here!" Despite Midoriya's wish to not get his mother involved, it would take some manner of divine intervention to stop her from coming over.
That was the thought that was running through Midoriya's head, but he never expected it to actually happen. He especially didn't expect for it to happen in the form of his mother spontaneously transforming into a green puppy.
"Mom!" The puppy barked at him. "My mom! She-She's been turned into a dog!"
"Well, aren't my friends the quick learner?" a nasally voice asked from nowhere. Midoriya wanted to waste no time asking "Who's there?!", but before he could, a zipper appeared in the air in front of him. The zipper ran up in a straight line, went down towards the floor at an angle, went up again at a different angle, then moved around until it had created an utterly incomprehensible shape. After that happened, the shape exploded, revealing a completely white space in the air.
Midoriya wasted no time in setting up a defensive stance. Whatever was coming out of that hole, he'd be ready for it.
"My friends' arms are a little crooked. Straighten them up for a tighter defense."
"Really? Thanks for the adviYAAAAAAAH!" Startled by the sudden conversation, Midoriya accidentally flew off the ground and cracked the ceiling with his head.
"Geez, Louise! My friends doesn't have any guts, at all! It's so pathetic! Not so pathetic that it can't be fun, however." It was the same nasally voice from before. Midoriya was now able to see that it belonged to a bald, diminutive man in a purple suit with a tiny bowler hat and beady black eyes.
Midoriya knew that there was something strange about him, but that didn't stop him from shooting down back to the ground so hard he almost broke the floor beneath his feet.
"What did you do to my mom?!" Midoriya shouted.
"Exactly what my friends said: I turned her into a dog. She just kept barking and barking and whatnot, so it seemed appropriate. What, did my friends want me to turn her into something else? Maybe something from my friends' home planet?"
That final question pushed Midoriya's rage past its peak. He picked the diminutive man up by his collar, no idea what he would do, but absolutely certain that it would hurt. The sudden burst of fury, however, quickly fell apart when Midoriya saw that he had somehow been replaced with a doll bearing a henohenomoheji. The real person was floating next to Midoriya's head, eating the snake from earlier like a hot dog.
"Want some? It's not a real snake."
"Will you just-What are you?!" As Midoriya tried to yell at him, his phone suddenly went off.
"No, no, answer it. I'm in no rush. Might actually do my friends some good." The diminutive man turned the snake into a bowl of ramen and started slurping the noodles in a manner that suggested there was no end to them.
Midoriya really didn't feel like answering it, but for all he knew, it was connected to whatever was going on, so it wouldn't do him any extra harm. The point became even more apparent when he saw that it was a notification from K.E.L.E.X.
"YOU ARE IN DANGER, KAL-EL," K.E.L.E.X. said.
"I'm well aware of that," Midoriya said.
"THE DANGER IS FAR GREATER THAN ANYTHING YOU COULD IMAGINE. AS SOON AS THE REPTILIAN BEING APPEARED IN FRONT OF YOU, I BEGAN TO SCAN THE ENVIRONMENT FOR ABNORMALITIES, AND THE RESULTS WERE UNSETTLING."
"If that's coming from you, it must be true. Do you know what this guy is, then?"
"AFFIRMATIVE. WHEN JOR-EL WAS STILL ALIVE, HE DEVOTED MUCH OF HIS TIME TO RESEARCHING PLANES OF REALITY EXISTING PARALLEL TO OUR OWN. WHILE IN THE MIDST OF THAT RESEARCH, HE DISCOVERED WHAT CAN ONLY BE DESCRIBED AS A 'FIFTH DIMENSION' INHABITED SOLELY BY BEINGS WITH THE POWER OF ALTERING REALITY WITH INCREDIBLE EASE. THE BEING WHO SITS BEFORE YOU IS ONE OF THOSE FIFTH DIMENSIONAL BEINGS."
"Righty-O! Hit the nail on the head with that, but I think it's time to shut HAL down," the fifth dimensional being said. With a snap of his fingers, the phone in Midoriya's hands suddenly transformed into a head of lettuce that Midoriya immediately dropped to the floor.
"Enough games! Tell me who you are, already!"
"Well, I can't do the first thing, since that's the whole reason I'm here, but I'd be happy to assist my friends with the second thing. My name is Mister Mxyzptlk, and just like my friends' little Game Boy said, I'm a being from the Fifth Dimension, the greatest of all dimensions! Or at least it would be, if it wasn't so booooring!"
"Why are you here, Mister… Miikepokuli?"
"Mxyzptlk."
"Machupikachu?"
"Mxyzptlk."
"Mobusaikoko?"
"No!" Mister Mxyzptlk shouted, steam shooting out of his ears. "It ain't that hard, kid! 'Mix'-" his head turned into a blender in the midst of making a frosty chocolate milkshake, "'Yes'-" his head went back to normal, and out of nowhere, a few chords of Roundabout started playing, "'Spit-'" Midoriya was suddenly spat on, "'Lick'!" the spit was cleaned off of his face by a floating tongue.
"I'm going to ask you again: what are you doing here… you!"
"Okay, brains clearly aren't my friends' specialty," Mister Mxyzptlk said.
"Sh-Shut up! Just tell me what you're doing here!"
"It's like I said before: I'm here to play games." Mister Mxyzptlk started walking across the air, the sound of feet against wood somehow echoing with every step. "My friends' primitive Third Dimension has attracted my people since the day it was born, which was about when I finished high school and was getting ready to take a year off before starting college. So many dumb-dumbs just sitting around waiting to be messed around with; it was absolutely impossible for us to pass up the chance for some entertainment!"
Where is he going with all of this? Midoriya asked himself, trying his hardest to come up with some kind of way of attacking him.
"My people and I have been doing this for millions, billions, maybe even jillions of years, who can remember? Either way, whenever my friends hear about weird little guys running about, we were the ones who got the ball rolling on it. Leprechauns, imps, yokai-some of them, anyway-even… what's that word, again? Oh, yeah! Even… Genies!"
It took a second for Midoriya to register whatever point Mister Mxyzptlk was trying to make, but once he got it, he was surprised that he didn't vomit on the spot.
"Yz the Thunderbolt! Dark Shadow! T-They're the same as you, and the reason you know I'm an alien is because Dark Shadow was somehow able to figure it out!"
"Ding ding ding! My friends finally got something right! Don't worry about my friends' secret getting out; my bird brain didn't tell my friends' bird brain a thing about my friends. No, he only told us cool kids in the Fifth Dimension that, all of a sudden, there's a little green man walking around!"
At the end of his sentence, Midoriya found himself suddenly wearing his costume.
"What does me being an alien have to do with anything?"
"It has everything to do with everything! Do my friends wanna know why I said that living in the Fifth Dimension is boring? Because when everyone and their grandmas can break reality with a fart, trying to mess with someone is impossible! The whole reason we started coming to the Third Dimension was because there was no one who could do the stuff we can do, but after a few billion years, even that got boring. There was a bit of a resurgence when everyone started getting superpowers all of a sudden, but even that ran its course. Bat-Mite stopped messing around with Batman after he settled down, Qwsp didn't feel right about bothering Fishboy after he got his Quirk, and the rest of us, well, I guess we were just sick and tired of humans.
"But aliens, now that was a market with untapped potential! Aliens could do so much more than humans could ever dream of, so messing around with them would be way more fun! Of course, that ended up running its course, too. The Lantern War made basically all the aliens hightail it outta here so no one could bother them; it even made Zook's buddy vanish, and they got along so well! It looked like we'd never find anyone worth having fun with again, but then my friends showed up!"
"Me?"
"Who else? The last survivor of his species, gifted with power that makes him one of the strongest people on the little dirtball he calls home! My friends would be the ultimate challenge for a guy like me!"
"No," Midoriya quickly refused.
"Hey, at least think about-"
"No!"
"Yeah, well, my friends doesn't exactly have a choice in the matter. I already decided to play my games with you, and I'm gonna do it!"
"You call this a game? You're just doing whatever you want to me, and I can't do a single thing to stop you! What kind of game isn't fair for everyone?!"
"Hmmm…" Mister Mxyzptlk hummed. A white beard grew on his face as he rubbed his chin, the beard staying there for a few seconds before an electric razor appeared out of thin air and cut it off.
"My friends have a point, so I'll make things just a little bit more even. If my friends want to get rid of me, all my friends have to do is get me to say my name backwards. Do that, and not only will I get poofed back to Zrfff, but I won't be able to bother my friends again for three months. Okay? Okay! Let the games begi-"
"That's still not fair!" Midoriya cut in. Little flames appeared in Mister Mxyzptlk's beady eyes.
"What do my friends mean?! I just told my friends my ultimate weakness! That's plenty fair!"
"No, no it isn't! I can't even say your name forwards, so how am I supposed to say it backwards?!"
"How stupid are my friends?! My friends don't have to say it, I have to say it!"
"Say what?"
"'Kltpzyxm'! Now stop messing around and…" Mister Mxyzptlk trailed off into a series of stammers. He stared at Midoriya for a few seconds before snapping his fingers, saying "Aw, nuts!" and vanishing in a puff of smoke.
"H-He's gone?" Midoriya asked. Somehow, through pure ignorance, he had gotten Mister Mxyzptlk to say his name backwards.
"Who's gone, Izuku?" Midoriya turned around to see his mother standing in the kitchen, no longer a green puppy. In addition, the hole in space was completely fixed, his phone was back in his pocket, he wasn't wearing his costume, and there was an egg in a bowl. Mister Mxyzptlk being forced back to the Fifth Dimension seemed to have erased all the damage he'd done.
"N-No one! No one at all! Also, I'm suddenly not hungry, so I'm just going to go to school, okay? Okay! Love you, bye!" As Midoriya spoke, he combined his super speed and heat vision to cook his mother's portion of the egg breakfast they were originally going to have. Inko couldn't get a word in edgewise before he ran out the door to school.
Thanks to the lack of breakfast, Midoriya had arrived at U.A. well before homeroom was going to start. He figured that that meant he'd be all alone for a while, but he ran into a few more people than he thought he would, the last of whom was a sweatpants-clad Kendou.
"Kendou-san? You're here pretty early," Midoriya said as the two of them walked to the school.
"I could say the same to you," Kendou said. "Felt like getting an early start on the day?"
"Not exactly. Long story that I really don't want to get into. What about you?"
"I was just doing some jogging with an upperclassman friend. She had to run off to help a teacher, though."
"Speaking of running, I think I saw Mineta-kun running with a bunch of muscular guys. Well, trying to run, anyway."
"Same here. I think my friend said that they were the Body Improvement Club? I guess Mineta is taking Aizawa's prank a little seriously."
"Yeah, good for-" Midoriya's growling stomach suddenly intruded on the conversation.
"Skipped breakfast, I'm guessing?" Kendou asked. Midoriya meekly nodded his head. Kendou sighed, reached into her bag, and pulled out a convenience store yakisoba bun. "Not the most nutritious food in the world, but breakfast is breakfast."
"Y-You're giving me that?"
"I bought two, so it's no big deal. Can't have one of my friends starving himself 'till lunch, after all."
"Th-Thanks!"
Midoriya took the yakisoba bun from Kendou and started to unwrap it as she ran ahead of him, the girl saying that she was heading to the locker room to change. As she ran off, curiosity got the better of Midoriya, and he used his X-ray vision to peek inside of her bag. He saw a pair of Beats by Canary headphones (same model as his own), a wallet with a picture of Richard Dragon on it, three different motorcycle magazines, but no extra food.
Midoriya smiled and took a bite out of the bun. To him, it was still possible for today to be a good day.
