Helping Stendhal to settle down in the chair in the infirmary, Tenya found himself wincing as the Freelance Hero clearly struggled to settle himself in a nearby chair with his shattered right shoulder. It was an odd thing to think about, but that Villain who had attacked them – the man who had identified himself as Kendo Rappa – had actually seemed to be pleased at the thought of being able to fight against him and Tensei. However, as though in direct contrast to such an attitude, Rappa had not been impressed in the slightest by Stendhal when the Freelance Hero had made his appearance; it had seemed as though Rappa was disdainful of anyone who fought using anything but physical abilities.
Or, perhaps anyone who fought using anything but their Quirk; Rappa may have spoken more than Tenya had been expecting a Villain to do, but Tenya would have been the first to admit that he hadn't truly been listening.
Standing back as the medical personnel tended to Stendhal, Tenya found himself wondering just what had precipitated the attack in the first place. Yes, he was fully aware that Villains tended to be of a more capricious sort than any Hero, professional or underground, but Rappa's attack on Team Idaten's headquarters had gained him nothing aside from his own capture. Yes, the man had caused a great deal of generalized destruction to the reception area, and he had also managed to shatter Stendhal's right shoulder as well, but after Stendhal's Quirk had taken effect, all that Rappa had had to look forward to was a swift defeat and incarceration.
It didn't make any sense, as far as Tenya could see.
~MHA~
"What the hell're you doing to my hair?" Katsuki asked, trying as hard as he could to look up at where Best Jeanist was standing; hell, for a few seconds he'd found himself wishing that he could take his eyes out of his head so that he could get a look at just what in the hell the Number Four Pro was getting up to; it almost felt like the guy was putting wax in his hair.
Maybe it was just really thick hair gel, or something.
"As a Pro Hero, your conduct must be impeccable; your presence must calm those in need," Best Jeanist said, and Katsuki raised an eyebrow as he felt the man continuing to comb the wax, or the hair gel, or whatever the hell it was, into his hair as he moved around the chair where he was sitting.
Biting his tongue to keep himself from laughing, even as Best Jeanist kept talking about elegance and other shit like that, Katsuki tried as hard as he could not to fidget. When Uncle Sashi would cut his hair, he'd have to sit down and not move for awhile so he didn't end up with a bunch of weird patches missing from his hair when Uncle Sashi got done with him, so it wasn't like he didn't know what to do or anything. Continuing to watch as Best Jeanist moved around him, working away at his hair with whatever the hell that waxy shit he was putting in his hair actually ended up being, Katsuki wondered again just what in the hell he was getting himself into.
Maybe this wasn't his best idea.
~MHA~
Looking down at the pure, silver-eyed child in his arms, Hari Kurono felt a certain sense of accomplishment as he made his way back into the compound where Chisaki and the rest of the Shie Hassaikai were operating out of; the boss would be pleased to have the child in his care. Ever since he'd read Chizome Akaguro's article, detailing the way that the child's diseased parents had thrown the boy out of their home and their lives just as soon as they had been able to determine his purity, Chisaki had wanted nothing more than to take the child into their organization.
Not only for his purity, but also to protect him from a world that only saw fit to abuse him for such a quality.
Returning to the compound at last, Kurono made his way back inside once more.
"You found him," Chisaki said, making his way over to Kurono as he made his way down the corridor, the pure child still in his arms. "Were you forced to damage him?"
"No," he said, looking down at the boy as he began to stir slightly. "Though I suppose that I did startle him when I came into his room. He tried to run, so I was forced to use my Quirk on him."
Chisaki hummed thoughtfully. "I suppose there was no helping it. Give him to me; I'll see that he gets settled in."
Handing the child over, smiling softly as Chisaki brushed the side of his face with his gloved fingertips, Kurono watched as Chisaki injected him with another dose of tranquilizer as he began to stir. Kurono nodded at Chisaki, as his old friend made his way down the corridor with the pure, silver-eyed child in his arms.
~MHA~
Stroking his dear daughter's left cheek, Hisashi pressed his right palm to Bombalurina-chan's head, smiling as he found out how well the regeneration Quirk he'd given his sweet daughter was settling in. He was pleased to know that Dr. Ujiko's efforts had had such beneficial results once more; his family would remain safe and protected, so long as he and those he had taken into his service were able to act in their defense. Standing back upright, as he saw Bombalurina-chan's eyes beginning to flutter in preparation for fully awakening.
"Welcome back, baby girl," he said, smiling as he stroked the left side of Bombalurina-chan's soft, furry face.
/Papa,/ Bombalurina-chan paused for a moment, half-closing her eyes in a way that he'd long-since learned was a sign that she was thinking deeply. /Was I up before? I think I fell back to sleep./
Hisashi chuckled softly. "You were still recovering; you just needed a bit more rest," he said, stroking between her ears as Bombalurina-chan started purring.
/Oh,/ his sweet daughter said, as he reached down to help her up from the bed that she'd spent entirely too much time in. /I'm going to have a lot of homework to do after this, aren't I?/ she continued, sighing softly.
Hisashi chuckled. "Yes; Izuku was kind enough to collect what you needed from U.A.," he said, setting Bombalurina-chan back on her feet, and helping her to make her way over to where her shoes had been stored. "I'm afraid you will have a number of missed assignments to catch up on when you return to school."
/Great,/ Bombalurina-chan muttered, picking up her shoes so that she could put them back on and have some proper support while she walked.
Stroking his sweet daughter's head as she prepared to leave Dr. Ujiko's care, Hisashi found himself pleased as he observed once again how well the regeneration Quirk he'd given to Bombalurina-chan was settling in; something such as this could not be allowed to happen again.
~MHA~
Finding herself helping Ingenium and his sidekicks who had been injured in the battle with the Villain who'd attacked them, Momo wondered again just why it was that Kendo Rappa had decided to attack Team Idaten's headquarters in the first place. The only thing the Villain had ended up actually doing was getting himself paralyzed by Stendhal, captured by Ingenium, and then handed over to the police. Still, even as she continued to work to help the sidekicks who served Team Idaten, Momo couldn't quite stop herself from wondering what was going to happen next.
Using her Quirk to generate extra materials to aid with the repairs of Team Idaten's headquarters, Momo tried to put all of the other thoughts continually swirling around in her head aside; there would be time for contemplating that kind of thing later.
~MHA~
Chuckling as he continued patrolling alongside Best Jeanist, Katsuki tried as hard as he could not to roll his eyes as the Number Four Pro went on and on about how he was going to be expected to conduct himself when he'd gotten his license and become a Pro himself. The sound of a couple kids, chattering away, didn't really catch his attention until one of them mentioned his name.
"Yeah, I think that's him!" the one in the middle shouted, just before all three of the little munchkins ran up to him.
Raising an eyebrow as he stopped, Katsuki folded his arms as the three little midgets all came scampering over to him. "So, what do you kids want?"
"You were the one who came in second in the Sports Festival!" the kid in the middle said, though there was something in the way the kid was looking up at him that gave Katsuki the idea that he and his little cohorts weren't just here to pester him for autographs or something. "So, that girl you picked up after you beat her, was she your girlfriend?"
As soon as he heard that, Katsuki couldn't stop himself from bursting out laughing. "What? No. She just kind of reminded me of someone I've known for a long time," he grinned wider. "In fact, she'd probably going to end up being his girlfriend."
"Nitro," Best Jeanist called, and he turned to see the man making his way back over to where he was standing. "I'm glad you've taken my directives to heart, but we still need to finish our rounds."
"Right, moving on," he said, moving to catch up with his supervisor.
For his part, Katsuki was glad that he hadn't run into any Villains while he and Best Jeanist had been working together; after seeing how badly sis had been hurt, all Katsuki wanted was to get back to her as soon as he could.
~MHA~
Once she'd been able to go back home – Papa had insisted on her staying home for at least another day, though she had managed to talk him down from keeping her out for two – Bombalurina tried as best she could to put what she'd been through behind her. Papa had always seemed to be the fussy type, something Bombalurina knew not only from her own experience but all of the stories that Toshinori – when he wasn't away being All Might, at least – and old lady Nana had told her about him when she'd asked. It seemed like worrying more about them all than they really needed was just Papa being Papa.
All that aside, it was nice to be able to go back home again.
As soon as she'd gotten back to school, Bombalurina found that she wasn't actually the main topic of conversation, which was nice but kind of strange all the same.
"Bambaa-san, it's good to see you again," Hitoshi said, as the pair of them met up with each other in the rush and crush of their fellow students on their way to class. "You might have heard this from someone else, but there was an attack on Team Idaten's headquarters by some huge, strong Villain."
/That's awful,/ she said, as the pair of them continued on their way to homeroom. /Was anyone hurt?/
"There were a few injuries, but nothing anyone needed to call Sensei for," Hitoshi said, looking like he was at least trying to be optimistic about everything that had happened.
/That's good to know,/ she said, still not quite sure how she should feel about everything that had happened.
Papa would probably be happy that he hadn't been called out again, since according to him there were always more people who needed his help, and he did still want to have some time for himself.
~MHA~
Once enough of Team Idaten's headquarters had been repaired that their entire crew had no longer been needed, Tenya had made his way up to the dorm levels so that he could check up on Niseko Sezu. The little boy was bound to be frightened by the sounds of battle that had been happening on the ground level, since it had probably been loud enough to sound as though it was just beneath him, and Tenya knew that he would have wanted someone to come and explain what had just happened if he had been the one trapped in his room while a fight was going on below him.
When he came to the room where Sezu-chan had been staying, however, Tenya found that the door had been left open. Worse, when he made his way inside, the only thing that he actually found was the stuffed doll of Sensei that Sezu-chan had been so clearly attached to. Given even the little he actually knew about Sezu-chan, Tenya knew that something terrible had to have happened; not only because he'd been separated from something he was so obviously fond of, but simply because he was gone.
Grabbing the toy of Sensei from the floor where it had been so ominously left, Tenya hurried out of the room; if they were ever going to be able to find out where Sezu-chan had been taken, it was imperative that he first told them he was gone.
~MHA~
Panting as he woke up, Niseko looked around the room he'd found himself in. It didn't look anything like the room he'd first gone to sleep in, but he'd only really been able to hope for that as long as he'd been half-asleep. It'd probably been stupid, anyway, considering that he'd been grabbed and taken away from the place where he was staying by someone who had to have been some kind of Villain. Niseko didn't know what any Villain would have wanted with him, but the more he thought about it, the more it started to seem like that was what had happened.
"You are awake," a strange, cold voice said, drawing Niseko's attention to the man standing next to the bed he'd been dropped in; the man staring at him with yellow eyes had short, spiked brown hair, and a strange, birdlike mask covering from the bridge of his nose all the way to his chin. "That's good. I do apologize for the way my associate scared you; it wasn't my intention to cause you any distress. You name is Niseko Sezu, yes?"
He didn't answer; there was just something about the way the man was staring at him that unsettled Niseko in a way he'd never experienced before.
"I'm sorry, it was rude of me not to introduce myself first," the man standing beside his bed – the man whose cold, yellow eyes still seemed to stare right through him in a way that Tensei Iida's never had – said, reaching out to lay his right hand on top of Niseko's head. "My name is Kai Chisaki," the man continued, reaching out to force his chin back up when Niseko tried to duck his head.
Those cold, yellow eyes felt like they were piercing right through him.
"You may feel free to call me Chisaki, Niseko-chan," the man – Chisaki, but Niseko didn't think he'd ever feel right calling him that – said, and it almost seemed like he was trying to be nice.
At least, the words he was saying sounded nice, but his eyes… Niseko didn't trust the man's eyes; not at all.
"I might need you for a few tasks, Niseko-chan, but you will be well taken care of, no matter what," the man said, standing up and finally, finally leaving the room.
Shuddering, Niseko pulled the blanket up around his shoulders; he could only hope that that a Hero would come to save him, maybe even Sensei, if he was luckier than he really deserved.
~MHA~
Narrowing his eyes as he and the members of Team Idaten were all gathered in what seemed to be some kind of conference room, Chizome wondered just what discovery could have made Tenya Iida so stressed.
"Sezu-chan is gone," the boy said without preamble, as soon as the last of those who had been called to the meeting room had arrived.
Once he'd heard that name, those words that Tenya Iida had said, Chizome found that he couldn't hear anything over the roaring in his ears. It was his doing; he had been the one who revealed Niseko Sezu's location in the article that he'd written, and though his intention had simply been to reveal the suffering of a Quirkless child to those who might help him, the results had been more terrible than he could have predicted. His actions had led directly to Niseko's disappearance from the only other place that had offered him shelter.
The stuffed doll of Sensei, the one that Niseko had been so determined to keep close that it had almost seemed to define him, lay in the center of the table; as though to further remind them all of the fact that he was gone.
~MHA~
It'd been a week since they'd all been gathered together in class like this, and after spending a whole week helping Uncle Mirai and Togata-sempai with patrols and doing paperwork, Izuku had found himself all the more grateful to be back. Still, there had been an odd sort of tension lingering around Uncle Mirai, those times when they would meet up to talk about where he and Togata-sempai were going to be headed next, or what else they were going to be doing. Still, Uncle Mirai had kept the both of them busy enough that he hadn't had the chance to ask.
Finding himself working in the same building as Uncle Toshi had also given Izuku the chance to see personally just how hard Uncle Toshi drove himself, both in his guise as All Might, and when he was working as Toshinori Shimura.
The sounds of his fellow classmates discussing their own internships brought his attention back to the present before Izuku could find himself reflecting too deeply about whatever it was that had been distracting Uncle Mirai during the week that he'd been working under the man, and Izuku quickly found his seat, watching as his classmates continued talking about the things that they'd seen and done during the course of their internships.
"Seeing Stendhal in action, I fully understand how his dedication has been able to inspire so many others to work to their own fullest potential," Iida-san said, though there was a dark look in his eyes that reminded Izuku more than a little of the way Uncle Mirai had looked, those few times he'd caught him in a moment of open vulnerability.
He didn't have that much time to think about what might have been the commonality between them, because Tenko-nii came dragging Aizawa-sensei into the room so that they could all start class for the day. After the first half of the day's classes had been completed, Uncle Toshi came in to bring them all out to another of U.A.'s training grounds for another round of… well, training.
"I am Here!" Uncle Toshi announced, loud and bombastic as he ever was in his All Might persona. "Hope you're ready to return to our lessons! Today, it's Hero Basic Training! Feels like I haven't seen you in awhile; welcome back," Uncle Toshi added, almost as an aside. "Now then, listen carefully for what's in store: we're going to be conducting a little race! Take everything you've learned from your internships and apply it to this rescue training!"
"If it's rescue training, then shouldn't we be at the U.S.J. instead?" Iida-san asked, his right hand snapping into the air while Uncle Toshi had paused for breath.
"Ah, that facility specializes in disasters," Uncle Toshi said, taking up the thread of his explanation without missing a beat. "As I said earlier, this is a race."
Once Uncle Toshi had laid out the particulars of this latest training exercise of theirs, he split them up into groups of five and set them out across the length of Gym Gamma. He ended up in the first group, the way he'd kind of been expecting, alongside Ojiro-san, Iida-san, Ashido-san, and Sero-san. After he'd taken in the lay of the land, determining just what kind of Quirk would be best suited for the kind of terrain that he'd found himself confronted by, Izuku tapped the left side of his helmet and called up his copy of Bambaa-chan's Quirk.
The top of his helmet opened to accommodate the growth of his ears as they changed size, shape, and their position on his head, and Izuku shifted again to loosen the mesh that fit over his tail, even as the boots that he was wearing stretched and reconfigured to support his altered feet. Leaping out onto a nearby pipe, Izuku hopped from pipe, to rooftop, to ladder, to tower, to tank, and then back to pipe to start the whole cycle over again.
The sight of Sero-san, swinging over his head, drew his more motion-oriented eyes , and Izuku found himself purring in amusement as he continued on his way.
As fast as he'd been moving, Izuku ended up actually rolling over when he tried to stop at the point where Uncle Toshi had been sitting, tumbling head-over-tail as he tried to dig his claws into the tarmac to at least slow himself down before he could end up falling off the edge of the structure.
"Good work, young Sero!" Uncle Toshi enthused, as Izuku drew Bambaa-chan's Quirk back into the greater whole of his own All For One. "However, it's important to remember that having the speed to reach your destination isn't enough, if you end up overshooting or losing your balance and can't recover fast enough to actually help anyone."
~MHA~
Looking over at Midoriya-kun, as he suppressed the Quirk that he'd clearly copied from his adopted sister, Toshinori found the smile that he habitually wore as All Might widening as the next group of five came up to the starting area. Even though he hadn't quite managed to make it in time to be called the winner of the race, he'd still clearly learned to use his sister's Quirk better. Now, he just needed to learn to stay on his feet – or at least upright – when he came to a stop after a good burst of speed.
"Meet up with me after class," he said, making his way over to Midoriya-kun, before the boy could get lost in the rush of his classmates as they made their way out of Gym Gamma now that their training was done for the day. "There's some family business we need to discuss."
"Right," Midoriya-kun said, smiling as he turned to join the rest of his classmates on their way to the changing room. "Thanks for letting me know."
Making his own way back into the building, Toshinori found himself reflecting on the people he was going to be meeting once he made it to his office. Sir had his own ideas about who should inherit One For All, so he had sent Mirio Togata – someone Midoriya-kun had worked with more than a few times, and had probably gotten to be friends with given that the pair of them had met so early, at least in Midoriya-kun's life – to the meeting that was going to be held at the end of the day. Pushing those thoughts out of his head, Toshinori focused his attention back on the jobs he still had in front of him.
No matter what else was going on in his life, he would always have work to do.
~MHA~
Joining up with the other boys in the changing room, Izuku narrowed his eyes as he spotted Mineta-san waving him over from a spot by the far right wall.
"Midoriya, look!" the short, shamelessly perverse user of the Pop-Off Quirk called, waving him over. "Look! The previous generation gave us a gift! Someone shawshanked a hole in this wall!"
I should've known, Izuku mused, finding himself feeling a mix of annoyance and amusement. Grabbing Mineta-san's left ear, Izuku firmly yanked him away from what truly did look like a small hole that'd been drilled in the wall. "Yaoyorozu-san, if you're still in there, you should probably make some clay or something to block up this hole."
"Thank you, Midoriya-san," Yaoyorozu-san said, and Izuku acknowledged her as he turned to make his way to the door; Mineta-san had already been dressed while he was trying to spy on their female classmates, so Izuku didn't hesitate to toss him out the door by his ear, with a swift kick in the butt to get him moving. Unbelievable, Izuku mused, shaking his head as he made his way back to the changing room to he could finish dressing up.