On Monday, class resumed for the General Studies students. The Hero kids went off to their internships instead, leaving UA short thirty-nine vibrant goofballs and a Bakugō. From what Iida and Uraraka said, the kids were going to end up all over Japan for the week. Uraraka was going to visit Gunhead and learn martial arts, while Midoriya was bound for the care of an older hero called Gran Torino. Iida was sticking with his brother's Team Idaten agency, and they'd heard whispers that Todoroki chose his father's agency and Bakugō was off to Best Jeanist's base of operations.

Kei was just glad it seemed like it was going to be a quiet week for once.

You have just jinxed yourself in a spectacular fashion.

How disaster-prone can this damn school be?

…Were you not hired for the express purpose of dealing with its known disaster-attracting properties?

Kei tried not to think about that most of the time. She did a fairly good job of not thinking about a whole lot when at school. It was a cultivated talent by this point. Aside from Kayama-sensei and Present Mic, most teachers' voices just blended together.

And then something happened that hadn't since the first week of school:

"Oh, did you need something?" Cementoss asked the student who poked his head into the classroom.

"Gekkō-san, uh, could you come with me? A teacher wants to speak to you."

Welp. Kei got to her feet and trudged out of the room after the messenger, who eventually led her to the faculty offices again. It'd been a couple days since she'd last visited, which was probably a record if she disregarded the lead-up to the Sports Festival. Sensei would've been so proud if Kei was actually giving him daily updates. If nothing else, he'd laugh at her situation once Obito told him about it.

The messenger left immediately, and Kei faced down the office door with the vague feeling of unease that might've been actual nervousness in someone else. As it was, she was just tired of being jerked around when there were better things to do.

Kei was counting "attending Modern Lit" in that category now. School had lowered her standards.

She headed through the door.

Kei somehow wasn't surprised to find Aizawa-sensei and Vlad King were the only two teachers in the faculty office. Their classes were both off to different cities for the rest of the week for their internships. The shocker was that, wonder of wonders, Aizawa-sensei was actually awake.

"I was just leaving," said Vlad King, and Kei scooted out of the doorway to let 1-B's homeroom teacher pass.

On a personal level, she actually liked him more than Aizawa-sensei solely because she'd found a post online featuring him out of costume with his pet bulldog. On the other hand, Kei had no idea what he thought of her in return. Maybe it was best just to stay out of his way where possible. It wasn't like she thought of his class as anything more than a mission footnote under normal circumstances.

Ah, well. Every new experience came with a few missed opportunities left by the side of the road.

"What are you waiting for?" Aizawa-sensei asked, and that was Kei's prompt to sit down in an abandoned office chair across from him. She supposed it wasn't much of a mystery who'd called her here.

"Aizawa-sensei," Kei said with a little bow, which was about what he'd ever get from her. She didn't actually dislike Aizawa-sensei—that would've implied that they had more contact than they did—but she did respect his morals and his methods to a degree. Ambush fighting was pragmatic to a fault. He'd push himself past his limit to protect his students, and Kei got that.

Kei was also sure the respect wasn't mutual. She knew plenty of people on both sides of the world divide considered her more of a walking weapon than a person.

"What have you been teaching Shinsō?" Aizawa-sensei asked, getting directly to the point with no fanfare. Typical of the other times she'd talked to him. He sounded just as tired, too.

"Basic self-defense," Kei replied, just as blunt. She tried to respond in kind as she ticked off on her fingers, "Along with some general fitness exercises, because he needed them to compete successfully in the Sports Festival. No Quirk training. Limited strategy brainstorming." She put her hand down. "Shinsō-kun did the rest on his own."

Aizawa-sensei didn't blink. Knowing his Quirk, that probably would've been more intimidating if Kei actually had one to cancel. And if the guy didn't always look like he was in dire need of eyedrops.

Kei crossed her arms. "You're interested in Shinsō-kun."

It was not remotely a question, and Aizawa-sensei didn't answer.

Kei considered her options. Though, yes, it wasn't really her business what Aizawa-sensei did or didn't do, she'd never been entirely capable of letting mysteries lie. Sometime the answers were worse than the curiosity, but knowing things was how she'd managed to live past thirteen.

Fifteen years and counting.

Hell yeah.

She'd need to throw Aizawa-sensei a bone to get anything in return. Probably hard enough to concuss him.

Nah.

"Shinsō-kun wants to be a hero more than anything. If you give him a chance, he'll grab it with both hands," Kei said after a while. While back-sassing you the entire time, because he's good at it. She bowed again, to exactly the same angle she had before. "If that's all, I'll need a note back to class."

"Not yet," Aizawa-sensei said.

Kei settled back into place.

She didn't ask if her association with Shinsō was taking a toll on his chances to become a hero. While she and Aizawa-sensei didn't like each other much, Kei knew enough about him from observation to dismiss the idea that he'd let his bias affect how he dealt with Shinsō's prospects. Aizawa-sensei had been the one to speak up during the Sports Festival on behalf of everyone without a physical Quirk, even obliquely praising them while dismissing Kei's cover persona. If he actually did succumb to the pitfalls of Quirk profiling, she'd be disappointed. Even if it wasn't her call.

But Aizawa-sensei didn't seem interested in continuing that line of thought. "You changed your methods after your first brush with combat. Why?"

Kei thought back, looking up at the ceiling tiles. She had fought in a mode visually similar to a primal fury during the USJ incident, but Kei hadn't been the central figure in the following confrontation with Stain. Other than clobbering people's spirits during the Sports Festival, she'd been kept on the sidelines. It wasn't like she was actually going to take the figurative gloves off around a bunch of kids. That would've been completely unwarranted overkill.

"At the time, I was busier trying to keep a tough enemy occupied," Kei said, while leaving aside the little detail that she hadn't known that Nōmu could regenerate prior to ripping its limbs off its body. Or his. She hadn't gotten any updates regarding what the hell went into making Chickenface McMurder. "And then there was the other guy. I modified my response based on what I thought the enemy could take from me and survive. I went overboard and was already disciplined for my tunnel vision."

By being punched out of the building. One could argue that was almost justice, if they had a mind to.

Aizawa just kept staring.

This was probably what it felt like to deal with Batman, but with a superpower. Except that his superpower was basically to knock somebody else down to standard human strength, so maybe that made him what Batman wanted to be when he grew up.

"As for the incident I missed," said Kei, as Isobu was already thinking of ways to counter Stain's Quirk in the event she ran into him without her boys, "I went over the likeliest scenarios with them ahead of time, so we could even work separately under the proper rules of engagement. It was a success." She sat back, finally meeting Aizawa's gaze again. "But there's something that's been bothering me ever since I started living in Musutafu."

A spark of interest flickered in Aizawa-sensei's gaze, but it was smothered by affected apathy before Kei could pounce. "And what does your outsider's perspective have to tell us? You've had time to observe the world."

The thought had bubbled up from the depths of superhero fiction from ages past, but Kei could still remember the gist. She dug into her memory, and Isobu's, and found the relevant quote under a Russian accent and two layers of method acting.

"If you could make God bleed, people will cease to believe in him. I just have to sit here and watch as the world consumes you."

Tony Stark wasn't Yagi-sensei-slash-All-Might, but sometimes plot points and destinies had a way of repeating themselves. Kei didn't understand the mechanism by which All Might assumed his emaciated form, but someone had clearly already put the first nail in his coffin. Healthy people didn't look like that. This world relied so heavily on their faith in heroes—and All Might more than all other candidates by far—that the peace was straining to its breaking point.

The USJ incident might not have been the dinner bell, but the vultures were circling already. Kei didn't want to see how many more blows the system could take before the entire beast collapsed.

"The peace we're experiencing has a single point of failure," Kei said, as though expecting the walls to grow ears, "and that's…worrying." Which was a severe understatement. At Aizawa-sensei's minute nod, she explained quietly, "The World Symbol of Peace is powerful, genuine, and I like him just fine, but I didn't grow up thinking 'wow, All Might will always save the day!' And everyone here seems to just take it for granted."

"If All Might died tomorrow—though I hope he's secretly immortal—then people would lose faith in heroes like they never have before. It's just not sustainable to keep putting everyone's hopes for societal safety on one person." Kei rested her chin against her knuckles as she felt around the problem and wondered how to put it into words a way that would be compelling, even if Aizawa-sensei didn't like her.

If Kei knew her luck, and if she could make a prediction about how worlds with superheroes tended to work, then the decades of peace would present their bill soon. Principal Nezu may not have explained the shape of the threat to Kei or to Sensei, but Kei didn't need to be a literature major to know that there was a lot coming down the pipeline. It was a feeling based on genre convention and gut feeling, but it was there. Kei's record of surviving past Naruto being born was down to following that instinct like a compass.

She wasn't afraid for her safety this time. She was worried about the thousand-odd kids who attended UA at this exact moment.

Kei supposed it was another reason Sensei had chosen her for this mission. Though she often came off as unapproachable, she could grow to care for people quicker than many of her yearmates while not giving up any other advantages of her background. Not that she'd tell Aizawa-sensei about that.

The ability to delegate was what made a change sustainable in the end. Sensei handed work off to subordinates when he knew their skills outmatched his in a given specialty. Here, Kei's knowledge was worth her weight in gold.

"There are thousands of heroes across the world who owe their current drive to being inspired by All Might and people like him," Aizawa-sensei explained in a low voice. Kei didn't ask if Aizawa-sensei was one of them, because she really had no idea how to ask how old everyone was while still saying polite. "Including not a few of our students."

Kei nodded slowly. The First Hokage and his spotty legacy sprang to mind, though Kei's reasons for considering Senju Hashirama a lousy role model had more to do with his lack of foresight than anything. "We have —had— a few people like him. Not nearly as important in the end."

And a fair chunk of them were dead.

"But fame means enemies, like we've seen. Once might be happenstance," Kei said, closing her eyes as she listened to the murmur of Isobu's thoughts. "Twice might be coincidence if there is a second encounter with villains. But three is a pattern, and every incident could be an escalation."

Aizawa-sensei was silent for a long time. Long enough that, if he was a guest in her home, Kei might've offered tea. Or—if he wasn't a guest and was hanging out like Batman waiting to ambush her instead—she might've literally booted him out of her building and fifth floor balconies be damned. He was a bit catlike, so he'd probably manage to land on his feet.

"Gekkō," Aizawa-sensei said finally.

Kei eyed him.

"You've said your piece, and you're reaching conclusions that others might not. Keep those observational skills sharp." He was already digging the yellow sleeping bag out from under his desk. With his other hand, Aizawa-sensei flicked a signed paper pass so that it neatly landed in Kei's open hand. "You're burning class time now."

She got to her feet, tucking the pass into a pocket. "Have a nice nap, Aizawa-sensei."

"Get out already," was his grumpy reply. Someone had missed his naptime.

Kei waited until Aizawa-sensei disappeared under his desk to pull a face because—unlike some people she could name—he didn't have a literal superpower for detecting sass. Thanks to her status as a jinchūriki, she'd had to interact with more than a few people who didn't like her for reasons outside of her control, but dealing with heroes who did it always seemed to set her teeth on edge.

We should—

No.

Kei got to her feet with the pass in hand, but ended up holding the door open for someone else to enter. It was the polite thing to do. Vlad King, now carrying a pile of paperwork that might've come from the administration center, nodded to her as he passed and slammed the entire stack down on a desk decorated with Present Mic memorabilia. Ah, he'd been tapped as office gofer, then. Always such an honor.

"Thank you—" and Vlad King cut himself off once he got a good look at her face, glancing immediately for Aizawa-sensei's yellow cocoon. "Ah. Head back to class, all right?"

"Yes, sir," Kei replied, and once again skittered out of the faculty room. She did not go quite so quickly that she missed the exchange that followed.

"I didn't know you had a kid, Eraser." Vlad King laughed.

"I don't."

"You sure?"

"I don't, so leave me alone already."

"Like hell! I'm gonna go find Mic—"

Kei headed back to Modern Literature without waiting for the rest of that conversation.

Once there, she made an addition to her half-finished sketch of Isobu adorably chewing on a jellyfish. After a few careful pencil strokes, her best brain buddy was gnawing on a wild-haired Eraserhead scribble.

I like the look.

So do I, Kei thought as she added cross-hatching.

If you want to make it more accurate… Isobu trailed off, as though realizing for once that he could be a bit demanding.

Hit me.

"Are you even paying attention?" Shinsō hissed from his diagonal desk.

"Absolutely," Kei lied, and added a few extra horns because Isobu wanted them.

"Then what was the answer to the last question, Gekkō-kun?" asked Cementoss from the front.

Kei didn't know. Checking with Isobu yielded no answers, either, because he was far more interested in his doodle likeness inflicting pain on another doodle subject. Therefore, all she said was, "Military expansionism."

"No," Cementoss said, as the class tittered.

Kei shrugged and set her art-hijacked notebook aside, putting on an air of polite disinterest for the remainder of class time. She didn't get hit with chalk or questioned again, but staring into space just above Cementoss's head had a way of making the rest of the period pass uncannily quickly. It was why she'd developed the slacker persona in the first place. As with all acting, it was easier to pull off if the mask fit.

After class, Shinsō attempted to soften the trainwreck that Modern Lit always was by helping her study with him in the library before training. It helped exactly as much as it always did—barely at all—but at least he tried. Getting the coursework through Kei's head was an effort akin to trying to drill through a mountain with his bare hands, but Shinsō wouldn't have come to UA if he didn't have the drive to face challenges. Even if he was also getting out of attempting a five-kilometer run at the same time.

In return, Kei held off from telling him about her theory regarding Aizawa's interest, because she didn't want to jinx the possibility by speaking it aloud.