There was a note on Katsuki's desk after lunch. Not one of the sort that the extras at Aldera buzzed about all the time, which was actually sort of nice for a change. If he had to read one more note from someone who was convinced they were in love with them, he was going to track down whoever left it there and make them watch as he exploded it unopened. The notes usually all amounted to the same thing. Someone was watching him from a distance and decided leaving a note was better than talking to his face.

This note was from Aizawa-sensei telling him to stay after class at the end of the day. Growling, he shoved it into his pocket before anyone else could see it and ask about it. He didn't know anyone in the class all that well except for Deku, but he could already tell that some people didn't bother to mind their own business. Like that pink chick with the horns and weird eyes. She was a bit like Fingers back at Aldera, always had to be involved in every conversation, even if it didn't have anything to do with her.

Then there was the dumbass with the stupid hair that he intentionally made look shitty. The guy kept looking at him and Katsuki couldn't figure out why. It was starting to get on his nerves because it looked like another one of those notes in the making.

At least Deku had never left him any fucking desk notes. He was one of the few people to get that Katsuki preferred if people talked to him to his face or not at all. Although Deku was a whole issue on his own, so that didn't make it much better.

Like when the fuck did he develop a quirk? Deku never could shut up about how amazing he thought quirks were, so it would have made sense if he started mumbling about his own once it came in. But he hadn't. He hadn't said a damn thing, and everyone got to find out when he grabbed his stupid notebook out of the air, then threw himself out the window to get away.

He had practiced with it—a lot to have been able to do what he did—and he hadn't said a fucking word about any of it.

Katsuki hadn't known what to do about that. When he was honest with himself, he still didn't know what to do with it, so he was ignoring the issue wherever possible. Then the battle trial happened and ignoring him wasn't something he could do anymore, which left him right back where he started only twice as angry. Probably more than that because he didn't even get to fight. The whole point of the battle trial was the battle, wasn't it? But Deku and the round-faced girl decide to skip over him entirely, act like he wasn't even part of the exercise at all and go for the discount mecha robot masquerading as a human being.

It was some sneaky bullshit, and they shouldn't have won, but they did and he hated it. That ponytail girl that got voted as class rep even said it was all Deku's plan all along. He just wanted a proper fight. Deku wouldn't win, of course, but he needed to prove it because that stupid voice in his head kept telling him that Deku has been holding back on him their whole lives.

What if he'd never really been quirkless after all? What if this was part of some long con to make Katsuki look like a fool in front of everyone? Every time he thought he could dismiss the possibility, it came back into his brain, taunting him. Because what if it was right? What if Deku was trying to sabotage his chances to be a hero? What if everyone was laughing behind his back?

He hadn't dared do anything about it because Deku would find some way to make everything Katsuki's fault, and then he'd get kicked out of UA for nothing. For Deku.

The note felt like it was a burning weight in his pocket. A big part of him wanted to make half of that true.

He waited after class as everyone left the room. Shitty hair stopped and looked back at him and for a moment Katsuki wondered if now would be when he tried to speak to him, but then he was gone. Katsuki wasn't sure why a tiny part of him was upset by that. They hadn't spoken once.

"Bakugou," Aizawa said as soon as the last of the people were out of earshot. "Thank you for staying."

"You say that like I gotta choice in the matter."

"Somehow I doubt that any force of nature exists to keep you somewhere you don't want to be without the threat of serious repercussions, such as death or dismemberment." Aizawa sighed. "Neither of which are punishments UA employs." He stood. "I think this is a conversation we should have somewhere more private than across a classroom."

Katsuki stood and grabbed his things, already regretting having stayed. Sure, death and dismemberment may have been off the table in terms of punishments for walking out, but Aizawa had threatened the entire class with expulsion on the first day, and that wasn't above anyone at the school. What was more, they probably wouldn't even question it if he were expelled for not following a teacher's directions. Katsuki was willing to risk a lot of things, but his future wasn't one of them.

He followed behind Aizawa until they got to a part of the school he'd never been before. The administration halls, if he had to guess, which was a teachers-only zone. He wondered if Deku had already said something. They couldn't have any proof of anything, but the teachers at Aldera hadn't done much when they had seen something. It wasn't too much of a stretch to think that the teachers here would believe the words of one of the students without too much to back it up. At least enough to drag Katsuki into a meeting like this where it would be Deku's word against his with nothing to back up either of them.

In which case, it would come down to which of them the teachers liked more. At Aldera, the answer would have been him every time, mostly because all the teachers wanted the bragging rights to say that they taught the future Number One hero when he was still in middle school and milk that for their fifteen minutes of fame. Here, though, they were probably leaning toward Deku because he actually acted like he cared about things. Katsuki cared about things too, but his goal was set so far in the future he didn't really want to worry about anything in the moment other than proving himself capable of being a hero, and his training. Other people were a distraction he didn't need.

Like Deku. Deku was just a distraction, a pebble in his path that had suddenly transformed into an obstacle he hadn't seen coming. The fucker was probably laughing his ass off about it whenever Katsuki wasn't around to see it.

"Please sit," Aizawa said, leading him into a room off one of the hallways and gesturing to a chair at the table.

This was a setup of some kind. He could see his and Deku's folders already sitting on the table waiting for them, which meant Aizawa always intended to bring him here. It also confirmed that Deku had something to do with this.

Katsuki clenched his fists to keep from letting off tiny explosions in front of his teacher. That probably wouldn't help his case here, and he needed whatever goodwill he could muster to stay in UA and become a hero. Moving around the table, he dropped unceremoniously into the chair across from the files.

"I'm assuming you already have some idea what I want to talk to you about," Aizawa remarked, taking his own seat in front of those files. "At the very least, you think you know what's going on here. Am I right?"

"Deku said some shit and now I'm here talking to you. Doesn't take a genius to figure that out." Katsuki refused to look Aizawa in the eye, refused to let himself be that exposed because he knew he wouldn't be able to hide the rage or the desperation he was barely managing to choke down. This was his dream. He wanted to be a hero, he wanted to prove that he was the best, that his confidence and his quirk were worth something. He had wanted to be the only person from their shitty school to make it into UA, and then Deku had managed to scrape by somehow. He had gotten into the same class as Katsuki again and now everything that had worked so well before was falling apart around him.

"Deku?"

"Midoriya. Izuku can be read as Deku." He still refused to raise his head because he wasn't sure what he would find if he looked into his teacher's eyes right now and he was a little worried to find out. "Been calling him that since we were kids."

"And it has nothing to do with the fact that he was considered quirkless for a long time and 'deku' happens to mean 'useless'?"

Even Katsuki could tell that his silence was damning, but he couldn't really think of a response that would help the matter. It certainly hadn't started out that way. He'd called Izuku Deku when they were little, before quirks came into things, mostly because his mom thought it was cute that he tried to read Izuku's name and gotten it wrong. It just sort of stuck, and then all the extras at preschool picked it up after their teacher told them Deku was quirkless. Then Deku had meant useless and everyone was using it, even some of the teachers.

Given Aizawa's reaction to the name, they probably shouldn't have been. What was so different between those teachers and the ones they had here that this was the first time it was coming up? Was it just because everyone teaching at UA was a pro-hero?

"First of all, I have spoken to Midoriya, but you didn't really come up in that conversation. I think that's something we might touch on as there is definitely some history between you given the name, but I want to cover what I originally asked you here for." Aizawa shifted the files until Katsuki's was on top and open on the table between them. "In reviewing both of your files, I noted a number of disturbing discrepancies in them. Your file isn't particularly concerning on the surface, but it seemed like whoever compiled it never actually met you."

Katsuki dared to look up then and caught the weird smirk on Aizawa's face. His eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

Aizawa chuckled and it made him want to snatch the folder away and find out what was so fucking funny. "I think it would make more sense if I read one of the examples." He turned to a specific page in the file. "'Katsuki is a delight to have in the classroom. He is respectful and attentive. In group activities, he shows all the qualities of a good leader and coordinates well with other members of his group.'"

"What the fuck?" Without thinking, Katsuki tore the file away from him, half convinced this had to be someone's stupid idea of a joke because while the teachers at Aldera had favored him more than anyone else, he couldn't say any of them would have called him a fucking 'delight'.

That wasn't even the worst bit of it. It continued on for a couple of pages, his former teachers signing their names to lies so saccharine they were making him gag. They kept going on and on about how great he was like they always had. Even after he left the school behind, they were still trying to kiss his ass for bragging rights or some shit.

"Nice to see you're as concerned about this as I am," Aizawa said, and Katsuki winced, pushing the file back across the table.

"That's the biggest pile of bullshit I've ever seen." Even though he'd given it back, he stared at the file, hoping it would spontaneously catch fire and destroy the evidence of it ever existing. "They knew I was going to get into UA, and they all wanted to be able to say they helped me get here, but they didn't do shit for me. Everything I did to get in, I did without their help."

"Yes, well, the word I have used for this is 'sterilized'."

Katsuki's blood suddenly ran cold.

"Tell me, what do you know of the bullying that was going on at Aldera?" Aizawa closed the file and rested his elbows on the table. "Considering you were in a lot of the same classes as Midoriya growing up, I assume you had to have seen something."

He opened his mouth to answer, but his mind was reeling. Had Deku really said nothing about what Katsuki had done to him over the years or was this just another one of their teacher's tricks to make him out himself? What if it was both? He wouldn't put it past Deku to have kept his mouth shut about a lot of things where he was concerned because he was a fucking pushover who never stood up for himself.

Except that one time when you found out he did have a quirk, his mind whispered. He ran, but he acted first.

"The teachers looked the other way for a lot of shit. And when they couldn't, they made out that that was what everything was like in the real world and they were just preparing us for it early by letting whoever wanted to run the show." His palms were sweaty, but it was cold, and he wiped them on his pants before he gave into the urge to set off the explosion.

"And most of the time that was you, wasn't it?" Aizawa asked.

Katsuki stayed silent which, again, was answer enough.

"And the teachers didn't do anything about that?"

"Fuck no. They looked at Deku—at Midoriya—and thought he wasn't going to amount to much, so they didn't care what happened to him. And me..." He scowled at the folder again. "They wanted to say they taught a future hero, probably lie and say they were my favorite teacher. But most of the time they just didn't care. Kirigawa-sensei didn't do anything about me or De-Midoriya until he showed up with a quirk one day. He let people use their quirks in class, say whatever the fuck we wanted, and ignored everything else, even if it happened right in front of him."

It was only now, facing Aizawa, that Katsuki could even think of how bad that was. People weren't supposed to use their quirks in public technically speaking unless they had a hero license or had a special permit for it. He doubted a school like Aldera had a permit to let students use their quirks, but they ignored it anyway. It was technically a private school, so most people just looked the other way where quirks were concerned. And he hadn't cared about that before. It had never been even a shadow in his mind.

"You know that UA has a zero-tolerance policy regarding bullying, right?" Aizawa asked. "This is something included in every information packet about the school, it's in the student handbook. We don't want anyone to be able to say they didn't know."

"Aldera said that too," he blurted out. "Didn't stop anything there."

He had seen the policy written out in the information packet every time he went through it, and it didn't matter to him because he was told that bullies were just weak people trying to pretend that they were strong. What did that make him? Everyone had told him he was strong, that his quirk was perfectly suited to heroics. It was! But if he was actually strong, why did that make him a bully?

A horrible realization struck him. He thought he had made it into UA on his own, that he didn't owe anything to any of the teachers who wrote that shit in his file, but if they had actually put down some of the things he had done, if that shit had been in his file instead, he wouldn't have been allowed to take the entrance exam. He wouldn't have been allowed through the gate.

"So, what the fuck is supposed to happen now?" he demanded. "Are you going to expel me?"

"That is the question, isn't it?" Aizawa muttered, and it made Katsuki want to explode something again. The urge was getting harder to shove down. "As it stands, I would be well within my rights to do so since you have more or less admitted to being a bully. However, I'm not convinced you would learn much from simply being expelled. All of the behaviors you brought in here, you learned them out there, after all."

"And?" Katsuki hissed.

"I think sending you back out into that would be detrimental to you and to everyone around you, so therapy is the next best thing in this case."

"What?" He didn't care that it came out as a roar. He didn't care that Aizawa had his future by the balls. All he could hear was that his teacher thought there was something wrong with his fucking head and thought going to some shrink was going to fix it. The sweat that had been collecting in his hands detonated with a sudden and violent POP that shook the table, and he didn't care that his self-control had gone out the window this room didn't have.

Aizawa stared him down. "Bakugou, I cannot in good conscience sit back and let you try to become a hero the way you are. People will die, and it may or may not be you who dies first. You don't place any value on anyone other than yourself, you don't listen when you are given instructions or advice, and from the Battle Trial, it doesn't look like you understand the concept of reasonable response to a threat or how to lose graciously."

Katsuki felt every point like a personal attack. Heroics was all about the fights! Everyone knew that! The fights were why people bothered to pay attention to heroes, and he was the best fighter in the class. Heroes fight and everybody else is supposed to stay out of the way.

It only occurred to him then that Aizawa wasn't a fighter anyone saw on TV. Aizawa's experience with heroics was probably different, so he wouldn't see it the same way.

Aizawa straightened and Katsuki could feel real fear trickling down his spine as the atmosphere around them turned thick and focused. "My job as your teacher is to ensure that when you become a hero, you know how to adapt to a situation, to limit casualties, to work with other heroes to ensure that the villains of the hour don't get away and don't hurt people. As it stands, you are well on your way to being branded a villain yourself because you don't appear to care about any of the collateral damage, which is why I say people will die. Not everyone is as resilient to explosions as you, so it takes far less to hurt them than it takes to hurt you." He grabbed a blank piece of paper from under the files and started writing something down on it. "If therapy is what it takes for you to understand that other people in the world exist and matter, then you will go to therapy."

"I don't need a fucking shrink!"

"Then you don't need to be a hero, and your journey through the hero course ends here."

Katsuki reeled back, feeling as though he'd just been slapped. "B-but—"

"No," Aizawa said. "If you don't want to see a therapist, you clearly don't want to change your behavior, and that means I can't allow you to be a hero."

"I want to be a hero. I'm going to be the best hero! I'm going to be number one!" His palms popped and sizzled under the table and the smell of singed wood permeated the air. He refused to admit to the desperation welling up inside him. "There's nothing fucking wrong with me. I'm not fucking broken."

Aizawa blinked. "I wasn't saying you were. Therapy isn't about being broken most of the time. It's about perspective, something which I think all heroes and hero-hopefuls need. The reason I am saying this to you right now is because your perspective of how the world works has been warped by a school that built you up with an inflated image of who you are and what you could be. It's hurting your future because you don't seem to be able to work with anyone, and it's hurting any relationships you have or might have in the future. I'd like to think you're starting to see that."

"But therapy?" Katsuki frowned. "Isn't that for people who are too weak to get their shit together on their own?"

"I'm not sure I would call anyone who knows when to ask for help weak. I know people say you can't save anyone if you can't save yourself, but you don't need to do that on your own. And honestly, take it from someone who's been there, it's better to have people you can fall back on, who can support you when you can't support yourself. That's what my therapist is for me."

"What?" The tension in the atmosphere suddenly softened and Katsuki didn't know what to do with it. It felt like half the air had been evacuated from the room, like an earthquake had knocked everything off balance.

"I have a therapist and have been going to him for almost four years now. I don't meet with him as frequently as I did in the beginning, but I do meet with him regularly."

"Why?" He was fairly certain Aizawa wasn't going to say they were the same or some shit like that because they weren't. He wasn't even sure what Aizawa's quirk was supposed to be.

"Because I lost a friend a while ago and that screwed me up. I wasn't taking care of myself and it was hurting me and everyone around me. I got so stuck in my misery that going out and being a hero was going to get me killed in the end. I had someone I trust tell me that I needed to get some help, and that was my wake-up call."

Katsuki stared at him. No one he knew had ever admitted to going to a therapist. It was the sort of thing those extras in school whispered about behind their hands like it was a dirty secret. If he was supposed to be a teacher, why was Aizawa admitting to that kind of weakness?

"I'm still working on it, as you can probably tell. This..." He tapped the note he was sending home with Katsuki. "This isn't a punishment, as much as it might feel like it. The person who pushed me towards therapy framed it as a sort of ultimatum, so I know how it can feel like being told you aren't enough. That's not what I'm trying to say. As of right now, you have potential. You have drive and determination, and that's a good thing. I wouldn't have you in my class if you didn't. You show a lot of promise in combat, but that's not all there is to heroism. I need a different kind of effort from you moving forward. I need you to prove to me that you can be better than what your previous experiences have shaped you into. We forget that sometimes the first person we need to save is ourselves. So, let me be your wake-up call here."

Katsuki reached across the table for the note Aizawa had written, skimming over it. It didn't say that he was a failure. It didn't say that he needed to go to therapy or he would be kicked out of the hero program. It just said that therapy was highly recommended and gave a couple of numbers to call about that shit.

"I want you to give that to your parents this evening," Aizawa continued. "I can't force you, but I want you to try and convince them to do this for you because it can make a world of difference in the sort of person you are in three years."

"Therapy." He let every bit of doubt he was still feeling bleed into his tone.

"Yes."

Katsuki grimaced at the note. The terms of his refusal were already laid out in front of him. He had to do this or he would get kicked out. So it was a matter of convincing whatever fucking shrink the hag sent him to that he was fine and then Aizawa would leave him alone.

The thought of it still made him sick, though. He didn't do talking, didn't do any of that feelings crap. That's what therapists were all about, wasn't it? But for his future, for his dream of being the number one hero, he'd do it for as long as it took.

Shoving the note into his bag, he took the non-dismissal for what it was and left, trying not to think about how close everything was teetering to the edge, and all because of fucking Deku.

Nezu was not happy about the security breach. Although, being entirely serious, he wasn't aware of anyone who would be thrilled by the words 'security breach' that didn't have something to gain from a lack of security. UA had nothing to gain from their security being compromised and quite a bit to lose.

On the surface it wasn't horrible. Officially and most obviously, the media at the gates were responsible for the incident. Unofficially, however, no one at the gates had a registered quirk capable of the level of destruction caused. It was a wonder none of the reporters stopped to think about why the gate suddenly disintegrated. But it wasn't as though any of the 'vultures', as Aizawa called them, came from a truly reputable news outlet. Tabloid reporters to the last, with quirks that specialized mostly in information gathering or tracking down their latest scandal.

Fortunately, none of the reporters particularly enjoyed being the scandal they were reporting on, so the incident at the gates and the subsequent level three security breach they were all involved in would not be making the news. Editorials, perhaps, but not the news.

He wished that the incident was the only thing he was dealing with, but there were a number of other matters demanding his attention, official cases or not. All Might and the issue of his successor—as yet undecided—was one matter that stole a portion of his time without existing in any official sphere. The man had yet to decide on his successor and time was running rather short—in more ways than one. He was down to a mere three hours in his empowered form, and a good portion of that time was required for class. That didn't stop him from intervening when there was trouble, however, and Nezu knew that would cause moments of conflict with Aizawa, who took his duties as a teacher very seriously.

Beyond that, there was the matter of Aldera Middle School to deal with. Aizawa was gathering information on the situation from Bakugou and Midoriya, but there were avenues of information available to Nezu as both the principal of UA and a recognized information-gathering hero. His expertise was greatly sought after for a number of reasons, and so he held a special dispensation to investigate where and when he pleased. His efforts looking into Aldera was yielding a lot of information, most of it concerning.

It's said that nothing is ever truly deleted, which isn't entirely true. Yes, there are usually traces to find, but the information can be so thoroughly corrupted as to be unusable. Aldera didn't have someone on staff capable of such a feat, which meant that the originals of both Bakugou's and Midoriya's unaltered files were hidden away deep in the systems for Nezu to pluck like the rotten fruit it was. Interestingly, Bakugou's original file was nearly the same as his current file. The only missing pieces were incident reports written up by the janitor for attacking students in the hallways. That janitor was summarily fired sometime after the fourth reported incident and replaced with someone who didn't make any reports about anyone.

Nezu made a note to look into the current employment of Hamano Ryushi and extend a job offer if he was currently without work. His integrity and diligence should not have been so callously cast aside and Nezu was more than willing to help sue on his behalf.

Midoriya's file, on the other hand, was almost the opposite of Bakugou's in that it held practically none of the pieces that were in the file UA received. Truly, putting together Midoriya's file was the greatest work of fiction compiled by the people in charge of Aldera, made in a mad scramble for the glory of having a second alumnus of their school. The incidents Hamano reported involving Bakugou listed Midoriya as the student being attacked in every case, but these were edited after Hamano's firing to list Midoriya as the aggressor. In the other listed incidents, all of which ascribed blame to Midoriya rather than whoever it was truly causing the disturbance, the teachers did note that the boy often inserted himself into situations that didn't concern him. The way they noted it implied that he was asking for the abuse, but Nezu wasn't seeing the masochist they were making him out to be. Instead, he saw the beginnings of the sort of heroic instincts Yagi believed in: the willingness to meddle in affairs he had no stake in to save someone else.

Nezu made a note to mention this to Yagi during one of their next meetings.

The remarks on Midoriya's classroom habits were interesting as well. One teacher bothered to note, rather disparagingly Nezu thought, that the name on Midoriya's personal project was 'Hero Analysis'. Clearly more accurate information was needed on that front. There were also several accusations of cheating from students and teachers regarding Midoriya's work, but nothing that could be proven in any way. There was always a noticeable dip in Midoriya's grades after these accusations, which the teachers probably took as confirmation, but there were a number of anti-cheat methods in the academic half of the entrance exam and Midoriya had passed with a score within the top 5 percent of candidates. Such a performance would seem to indicate that the boy was exactly as intelligent as he seemed to be.

What was most disturbing to Nezu was the fact that he could pinpoint the exact day that all opinion of Midoriya changed. He had been half expecting it, given what Aizawa had told him about his interview with the boy, but seeing it confirm concretely in the records he examined was damning for the school and everyone in charge. The day Midoriya presented a quirk, suddenly the school became more accommodating and open to him. Previous incidents on his record disappeared into this hidden file, all suggestions of cheating were dropped—if Midoriya was as intelligent as his academic and heroics performances indicated, he couldn't miss the underlying message those so-called educators were planting in his head: he didn't have any value whatsoever unless he had a quirk. If the boy had any less strength of character than he did, Nezu shuddered to think how easily Aldera would have created a terrifying villain out of him.

Moving on from the boys' files, he started delving deeper into the school itself. While the most horrifying of their crimes was how they treated a quirkless student, that wasn't the end of it. Any teacher who attempted to police quirk use on campus was fired under dubious circumstances, often replaced with someone who had ties—however distant—to the Meta Liberation Army. This connection wasn't listed obviously, but it was present as he dug deeper into their individual files. The way they handled quirk use on campus, largely by ignoring it or blaming the person with the weaker quirk for causing the issue, was the best indication of where their loyalties truly lie. Considering how deeply the rot was in the school, it would probably be easier to inform other schools in the area to be prepared to accept the students once Nezu destroyed it.

It was only while looking through Aldera's records that he realized there was another connection to another one of his cases. Tsubasa Tanjiro had been reported missing by his parents. There was no evidence that he'd run away, as all of his things had been left behind; he simply disappeared without a trace, like a number of others across Japan. No one Nezu had spoken to thought the disappearances were connected to each other as they were spread across the country with no other connection than the overwhelming lack of evidence regarding their whereabouts, but High Specs was a quirk capable of recognizing even the most tenuous of patterns. Every one of the missing people had disappeared sometime after they entered a dead zone from which they never emerged. Most of the time, these dead zones were along their normal routes, but they simply didn't come out the other side of it one day.

Nezu wished someone would take him seriously when it came to the disappearances, but they looked at the lack of connection between the vanished people, the wide-spread and seemingly random pattern of disappearances, and simply chose to believe that it was mere coincidence. Seventy cases across the whole of Japan, and they called it coincidence. While he was willing to admit he didn't have all of the information he needed, he hated having his observations dismissed out of hand. Especially when his observations turned out to be correct more often than not.

Observations like the odd decrease in petty crime in recent months. The media attributed it to the presence of All Might in the area, but the true start of these lack of incidents was at least three months after All Might's first capture in the Musutafu area, not immediately. And while larger, more organized crime would attempt to virtually disappear, petty criminals possess a sort of hubris, seeing themselves as small-time enough not to draw the attention and ire of the Number One Hero in Japan. The vanishing of such criminals smacks closer to enemy action and potential organization than the boosted efficiency of patrolling heroes. Nezu didn't doubt that they would reappear soon as part of some grand action, but he was having trouble tracking any known or expected quantities on that front.

The robbery case he was collaborating with the police on was almost mundane by comparison to the rest of the things demanding his attention. It wasn't without intellectual merit, especially as there was little to no evidence of registered quirk use in the situations—and little enough evidence at all—but it didn't have the same depth of potential that Aldera, the disappearances, and the future of All Might promised. As a rule, Nezu didn't rank any of the things he worked on by any importance other than urgency, and only for the purposes of determining how soon each needed to be completed. The robberies, as they weren't a violent or particularly damaging crime, slipped down the list of priorities, but he was still looking forward to the quirk or quirks masterminding such interesting heists. At the moment, he was assuming there was an intelligence or stealth quirk involved, perhaps a disruption quirk since none of the security footage in the vicinity of the robbery was salvageable.

It really was a shame such useful quirks were underrated in the heroics community. Nezu was crafting yet another proposal for the Hero Public Safety Commission to allow for an alternative heroics course for those interested in the underground heroics scene. The current and long-standing bias towards physically powerful quirks had led to both the entrance exams for the Hero Courses and the Provisional Licensing Exam to be heavily biased towards obvious and marketable quirks. With such examples as Aizawa and himself, others were obviously capable of succeeding, but many students who were perfectly talented were left behind. Or placed at a disadvantage because the use of their quirk during the UA Sports Festival broadcast their ability to the world. The influence the Commission had over UA prevented Nezu from simply adding an underground course populated with students whose quirks didn't fit the parameters of the Entrance Exam but showed enough dedication and ingenuity to attempt something so against their nature anyway.

At this point, if they turned down his proposal for the seventh time, he was going to convert one of the General Education classes into that course and shuffle students accordingly. Humans had a wonderful phrase about forgiveness and permission after all, and Nezu was provably the most intelligent creature in the room every time. As the Commission was attempting to filibuster him into compliance, he would feel no remorse whatsoever doing the same to them while they attempted to prove that he had worked around them to create exactly the sort of course they wouldn't let him make.

For an organization that was purportedly most concerned with the safety of the public, it was interesting that they worked against the public good so often. Politics was a game that Nezu could and would play, and it didn't matter if he were going up against career politicians, corrupt feeder schools, or the entirety of daylight heroics—he would win.

First, though, UA's security was going to be tightened and Aldera Middle School was going to burn.

I am sorry for how long it's been since my last update. NaNoWriMo ate my life, and this story wasn't my main focus for it. I hope you have enjoyed reading this latest addition (and that it's about 2k words longer than my normal chapters)!