Disclaimer: I do not own Hero Academia/Boku No Hero Academia, or any other property in this work that I did not make myself.

My Hero Academia: Entreri Gaiden

Chapter twenty-seven: Kijin Constitution

Over at Faerun High, the students of both Faerun and UA were gearing up for another day of their lessons. Out on the soccer field, Sekijiro and Shouta were working with the class 1-A students, of which Shouta was placed in charge (just like old times) since Kababah had been killed in the siege on UA. When all of the students had settled down, Sekijiro cleared his throat before he began speaking up.

"Today, we're going to discuss kidnappings," Sekijiro announced, "As well as how to recognize the signs of one. This is a lesson that Kababah should have not only covered but had done so early, but apparently she must have thought you kids need not have worried about the chance of any of you getting snatched away."

The UA teachers saw Shouta's godson, lil' Aizawa, raise a hand. "...Umm," Aizawa began after he was called on, "Wouldn't the lot of us be more vulnerable to, at the very least, being targeted by potential kidnappers since all of us have at least one pro hero parent each, and a kidnapper might see us as a potential paycheck by holding us for ransom?"

Shouta smirked in amusement, gave off a slight chuckle. "...That is exactly what I was thinking. You learn from me and your father quite well."

"Anyway," Sekijiro said, clapping twice to get all attention back onto him, "We're going to start with recognizing the signs of a potential kidnapping. Now for this exercise, Shouta and I got both Hizashi and Ryo to dress up to play the role of attempted kidnappers." On that cue, both Hizashi and Hound Dog came out, dressed in a stereotypical manner that one would expect out of a person attempting to kidnap a minor.

"Now, to begin this," Sekijiro said, "We'll have Hizashi try to-" Sekijiro was cut off when Hikari, who was standing next to Inko, swayed a bit before falling into her, being caught by the daughter of Dynamight and Rocketti before actually collapsing onto the ground. The sudden passing out of Hikari caught everyone else, students and staff alike, by surprise, and all of those who were present proceeded to go about helping Hikari.

"Mini Sho!" Hizashi said as he beckoned to Shouta's godson, "Fetch the school nurse! That girl needs the best medical attention that Faerun High can offer!"

"This just had to happen while we don't have access to the recovery station at UA," Shouta grumbled under his breath while his godson did as he was told by Hizashi while Sekijiro, Hound Dog and the other students began fretting over the passed out Hikari, worried for how the nerdy looking, notably slender looking horned girl was doing, or about what could have made her pass out like she had done just now.

"She's starving herself."

Shouta, Sekijiro, Hizashi and Hound Dog were all shocked to hear what the Faerun High school nurse had told them while Hikari was resting on a bed in a side room. The nurse let out a rather troubled sigh before looking up at the four UA staff members. "I had taken a quick look at Hikari's profile," the school nurse said, "And it said that Hikari's quirk, as a side effect, prevents her from suffering any sort of negative health issues."

Shouta nodded in confirmation. "Yes. Hikari's quirk is called Kijin Constitution. It grants her very notable physical strength, as well as increased resilience to various forms of damage. It also, as you said, makes Hikari impervious to various health issues."

"Previously, miss Veldora was actually obese," Hizashi said, "But thanks to her quirk, her excess weight was never going to pose any sort of harm or threat to her health." Hizashi folded his arms over his chest. "Hell, I kind of always thought that the extra weight helped her exert her notable physical strength to a degree."

"But she's been starving herself as of late clearly," the school nurse said, concern clear in his tone, "And I also saw a picture of her when she was still fat. From what I figure, the thing that had to of compelled her to starve herself skinny must have occurred prior to all of UA's students having to come here to Faerun to have their classes." Shrugging, the school nurse said, "I figure that she's acting as she is due to being traumatized by the events of the siege on UA."

Hound Dog, who had been silent the entire time, let out a troubled sigh, Inhaling and exhaling through his nose. "...Actually, I noticed miss Veldora acting a bit off a bit prior to the siege on UA. I tried suggesting to Kababah who was the 1-A homeroom teacher at the time to let me do some work with the girl, but she told me to mind my own business, saying that one of her girls was simply feeling unwell and that it was nothing to worry about in the long run."

Turning to face Sekijiro, Shouta shot him a dry look. "...And you allowed her to work at UA why?"

"Did anything occur at UA, prior to the siege, that might be a possible reason for her to act odd in some manner?" the school nurse asked in a concerned tone.

The four men looked to one another with troubled, resigned expressions. It was Sekijiro who gave the school nurse a troubled sigh. "...I expelled a student who was in the same class as miss Veldora," Sekijiro explained, "Given that he was found with evidence showing him to be a panty thief and a pervert. However, it turned out that all of said evidence had been planted in his room by a jealous classmate aiming to get him in trouble."

The school nurse nodded in understanding. "...Yes, you're talking about Deku's son, right? I had heard about it on the news, when Commissioner Naomasa's investigation exonerated Deku's son of that incident."

The UA staff members all nodded in confirmation. "Yeah," Sekijiro said, "While Fuyuki had been suspected, a lot of people thought that what he had been made to look like was factual truth. Among said persons who thought poorly of Fuyuki was Hikari." The blood hero gave a troubled sigh. "...She must be beyond guilty over having been tricked by the conspiracy that got Fuyuki expelled from UA into thinking poorly of Fuyuki."

"Wait, you're saying she's starving herself as some manner of self-imposed punishment for how she had acted?" Shouta said, looking shocked.

Shrugging, Sekijiro said, "I'm no expert at guessing at what teenage girls think, so it's just some theory that I was able to come up with based on what all we've discussed." With a somber nod, Sekijiro said, "But yes."

Shouta, as well as the other UA staff members, all turned to look in the direction of the side room in the nurse's office where Hikari was resting. All of the men had considered looks on their respective faces as they worried about the horned, nerdy girl, wondering why exactly she had been starving herself skinny over how she had acted prior to Fuyuki's exoneration. Whatever the reason had to be, they were determined to do what they could to help Hikari.

"I betrayed Fuyuki-kun. I don't deserve him."

Hikari was thinking about her past, back when she was still in her elementary school days. Back then, Hikari was still very fat, and that combined with her nerdy appearance made her a prime target for the mean kids. However, one particularly fateful day, as a trio of mean kids were trying to push Hikari around, someone ran in and stood in the way, putting themselves between the trio of mean kids and Hikari.

Fuyuki Midoriya, the son of the number one hero Deku, glared seriously at the trio of mean kids as he stood in front of them. "You three are being mean," Fuyuki said, "So stop it." Under normal circumstances, the trio of mean kids would have laughed off the challenge. But the kid who was confronting them was the son of Deku. Additionally, at that moment some friends of Fuyuki's came running over, effectively outnumbering the mean kids.

Knowing that they couldn't win, the trio of mean kids took off, allowing Fuyuki and his friends to breathe sighs of relief. They also ended up reporting the incident to some teachers who, afraid that they could get chewed out for allowing the kids of prominent pro heroes to be in danger, proceeded to make sure the trio of mean kids were properly punished. Hikari became a lot more relaxed since she now had friends who would stand up for her.

Such as Fuyuki Midoriya.

...

"Oh? You have a little crush now, Hikari?"

The plump nerdy girl blushed with embarrassment when she was picked up from school by her older sister Kolulu. The two Veldora sisters had a lot in common, even both having the exact same quirk as each other, meaning that Kolulu also had Kijin Constitution. Kolulu, when Hikari explained to her what happened and how it had been Fuyuki who came to her rescue, smiled a bit in a knowing manner, being able to tell full well that her little sister had developed a crush on the son of the number one hero.

Kolulu gently patted her little sister on the shoulder in a reassuring gesture. "There's no need to feel embarrassed, Hikari," Kolulu said reassuringly, "It's natural to have crushes at your age. As a matter of fact..." The older Veldora sister blushed a bit out of her own embarrassment. "...I have a bit of a crush myself."

Hikari was about to ask her older sister who it was that she had a crush on, but was cut off before she could get a word out when a friend of Kolulu's, Ryumaru Okami, came walking over. He wore a baggy white t-shirt under his sleeveless haori long coat, and a baggy pair of pants held up with a belt. As Hikari had gotten used to seeing, her older sister's long-haired friend was barefoot. He offered the two Veldora sisters a warm smile. Hikari and Kolulu left with Ryumaru, who helped to see the two of them home.

...

Through the passing years, Hikari's feelings for the son of Deku did not diminish in the least. On the contrary, her feelings had evolved from being a simple schoolgirl crush to sincere love for Fuyuki. And to his credit, Fuyuki despite always remaining oblivious to Hikari's feelings for him was always courteous towards her. Like father like son, as the old saying goes, Fuyuki Midoriya was a kind hearted and good person through and through.

He was the first among Hikari's classmates and peers to have offered condolences to her when her older sister Kolulu committed suicide. Fuyuki was impressed by Hikari's academic skills, as she was one of the very few who was able to go toe to toe with the likes of Fuyuki himself and his friend Tengoh Iida (even though all three of them still very much paled in comparison to the likes of Komaru Kirishima). Fuyuki saw value in Hikari while others dismissed her due to her lack of looking like she belonged to the in-crowd of the school's student body.

And how exactly did Hikari return the favor to Fuyuki? How did she thank him for all that he had shown her, had done for her over the years? She sided against him wholeheartedly when he had been outed as a panty thief and a pervert. Hikari, just like all of the other girls in UA's class 1-A, had gone and reviled the son of Deku when he was outed, had actually celebrated his expulsion from the top hero academy in the nation as a triumph of girls over perverts.

...And then a thorough, proper investigation into the matter revealed that Fuyuki was innocent, that he had in truth actually been set up by a jealous classmate. Everyone who did not believe in Fuyuki's innocence from the get-go were all shocked by the revelation, which was confirmed by Commissioner Naomasa himself. They all had punished Fuyuki, had reviled him, some had even gone so far as to celebrate his defaming, for absolutely nothing.

Hikari couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe herself. The boy who had helped her, who had been the first outside her family to see value in her, the boy who had (unknowingly) stolen her heart, she turned on the moment he was made to look like a dirty, lewd pervert. She didn't even question anything at all, just believed what she had been led into believing when she first heard Fuyuki's cousin Inko cry out about what she had suspected, which was confirmed when Fuyuki's dorm room was searched by Kababah-sensei.

Hikari hated herself for what she had allowed herself to believe, how she had allowed herself to act and think. She had betrayed the boy who she loved, now finding herself unworthy of her wish to be romantically together with Fuyuki Midoriya. It was out of that very guilt she felt that Hikari, among other things, was starving herself, hence why the nerdy girl had gone from being obese to being notably underweight. She was punishing herself for betraying Fuyuki.

For betraying her own heart.

"W-What did you just say, miss Veldora?"

It was the day after she had collapsed at Faerun High, and Hikari was now being made to have regular consoling sessions with Hound Dog. They were having their first session together, where the slender nerdy girl had recounted what she had dreamt about while she had been passed out yesterday. However, Hikari finished everything by saying something that caught Hound Dog by surprise, made him speak up in a worried, mildly heartbroken tone.

"I deserve to die, Ryo-sensei." Hikari was sitting on the padded consoler office lounge bed, her arms around her shins as her face was buried in her knees. Tears welled up in the corners of Hikari's eyes as she reflected on how she had not only betrayed the boy that she was in love with, but had done so even though it was revealed he had done nothing wrong at all. Hikari gave a gentle shake of her head before speaking up again.

"I turned on him, Ryo-sensei. I allowed a lie to paint my view on Fuyuki-kun. I thought of him as badly as whoever it was that had driven my older sister Kolulu into taking her own life. And then word gets out confirming what I should have been believing the entire time, that Fuyuki-kun had been innocent from the start. I...I betrayed Fuyuki-kun, Ryo-sensei. I deserve to die for my having betrayed him, having betrayed my feelings for him."

Right away, Hound Dog spoke up. "Hikari, no. You do NOT deserve to die." Getting up from his seat, Hound Dog went over to Hikari and put his hands on her shoulders. "Everyone was tricked by what had happened. There's no helping it. What we need to do now is try to clean up our collective mess and, when Fuyuki is found, make a proper effort to make things up to him. He'll need all of us to be there for him."

The slender nerdy girl still trembled a bit as she wallowed in her shame, her disgust with herself. She leaned her head forward so that her entire face was in her knees, with only her head horns keeping her from forcing her face into her knees any further. Hound Dog sighed as he got up, moved to sit back in his seat. "...Listen. When Fuyuki is found, you'll be playing an important role in his emotional recovery, same as everyone else. You can't play the role if you die."

"It should be given to someone else," Hikari replied sadly, her tone resigned, "Someone who has not betrayed Fuyuki-kun." Hound Dog didn't quite know what to say; out of all of the remaining students in class 1-A, Hikari is the only one who is not the child of a 'legendary year' pro hero (she wasn't the child of one period) so he didn't have much to base Hikari's profile off of. The counselor needed to speak with a few of the other UA staff members, maybe a few choice other persons as well, to get an idea on how he can help the horned girl sitting before him overcome her problems.

And so, after telling Hikari that he'll be seeing her tomorrow, Hound Dog let her go, then he promptly made moves to call for people who could help him.

"Ah yes," Shouta said when he, as well as Sekijiro and Hizashi, met with Hound Dog after school hours. Ochaco and Pony were there as well, as they were picking up Pony's daughter Inko together. The underground hero took out a folder from the filing cabinet behind him and placed it on the table in front of him and the others. "This is what all that I have on Hikari Veldora," said Shouta, "Although a lot of it is info that Kababah had, which I updated and corrected."

Hound Dog took the folder and opened it, skimming through the information. "...You made a note on Hikari's relation to that Kolulu girl who had committed suicide a few years ago," Hound Dog noted, "And how said suicide was the catalyst that had compelled Ryumaru Okami to go down the path of villainy." Both Pony and especially Ochaco perked up at the mentioning of the girl whose suicide case Izuku had personally investigated due to an exchange with Ryumaru during the siege on UA.

Shouta nodded in the affirmative. "...Yes. It had piqued my interest when it popped up during Midoriya's investigation that Hikari is the younger sister of the girl who the late Ryumaru was in love with. So I made a note of it in Hikari's profile in case it needed to come up later on down the line in a future investigation." He gave a gentle shake of his head. "...But that's besides the point right now. Right now, we need to come up with a game plan to help miss Veldora recover."

"She's hurting because, when you get right down to it, she feels she had hurt Fuyuki," Hound Dog said, "Because as it turns out, she has apparently fallen in love with him. By falling for the lie that got Fuyuki expelled from UA, Hikari feels like she had betrayed her crush, and now feels she doesn't deserve to love him, much less live."

"Yeah, put her on immediate suicide watch," Sekijiro said dryly, "That's a problem we're going to be nipping in the bud."

"But how will we help Hikari recover, Sekijiro-sensei?" Pony asked, "She's clearly hurting, and I don't think that even finding Fuyuki would do much to make her feel better since she feels that she had betrayed him."

The UA staff members all nodded in agreement. "...Being confronted by the person she feels that she had betrayed might make her feel worse right now, rather than better," Hound Dog sadly remarked, "It's best to first slowly ease her into the idea that he'd be willing to forgive her."

"It would be nice if Fuyuki was willing to forgive any of us at all," Ochaco said sadly, looking down to the floor in the room. Hikari was far from the only one feeling horrible over what they had all done towards the ultimately innocent Fuyuki. In fact, one can make the argument that, out of everyone, it was Ochaco who felt the most guilty. After all, Fuyuki is her son; she was the one who had given birth to him. And yet she didn't believe in his innocence, in him.

Ochaco wouldn't blame Fuyuki if he never forgave her.

Hikari was alone in her bedroom at her family's home, looking up at the ceiling in her bedroom as she laid on her bed. The horned girl still felt like complete and total garbage over her actions right after Fuyuki's false outing as a panty thief and a pervert. She felt as if she wanted to die, hence why she had been put on suicide watch by Principal Sekijiro. But Hikari was still hurting over how she had acted, how she had been tricked into acting.

Hikari wished that, when she, the other girls and Dynamight had seen Entreri kill Big Beef, that the assassin-style thug working for Fine Wine would have killed her as well. "...Yeah, that sounds about right," Hikari thought sadly, holding her right hand up and turning it so that she could see the palm of the hand, "Entreri killing me might have made up for how I had turned on Fuyuki-kun." The slender nerdy girl then lowered her arm back down, allowing it to flump on the bed.

"I wonder..." Hikari thought, "...What Entreri is thinking about right now. What Fuyuki-kun is thinking about right now."

...

Fuyuki was laying on his bed in the main warehouse hideout that Fine Wine used. The disguised, runaway teen was thinking about how he had encountered his now restored uncle, his cousin, Fine Wine's daughter Ichigo, and some random girl he saw with the rest of them as Akio had been moving to attack and kill Ichigo, which would have been the ultimate in really big no-nos. Fuyuki had to kill the man that Mineta put so much effort into getting out of prison.

As he was laying on his bed, Fuyuki was thinking about the random girl, the only one out of the four who he couldn't identify. She had to have been added to class 1-A sometime after the siege on UA, to try to compensate for the loss of student life in the siege. Fuyuki also thought that the new girl had something familiar about her, but he wasn't quite able to put his tongue on it. With an indifferent shrug, Fuyuki decided to drop the matter, feeling like it wasn't really worth a lot of his effort in the long run.

What mattered to Fuyuki, at least for the time being, was to continue doing what he had been doing ever since he had joined up with Mineta's gang. He would just continue doing jobs for the criminal gang lord, allow what infamy the name Entreri was accumulating to build up, and just try to live. ...Well, living may be too nice a word. It would be more like 'survive'. Yeah, that's what the runaway teen was. He was a survivor, and nothing was going to put him down.

Fuyuki decided that he would push that idea into his ultimate personal goal; survive. He wasn't going to allow the hand he had been dealt by fate to push him into one path or another. He was going to do what he can, with what he had, to defy his shunning family and continue on living. The runaway teen was going to show them, show everybody, that he wasn't going to allow even one thing to keep him down.

Because he is a survivor.

END, CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Author's notes;

This chapter focuses a lot on Hikari, the horned nerdy girl in the current class 1-A, how she is in love with Fuyuki, and how due to being tricked by the conspiracy that got Fuyuki expelled from UA she feels unworthy of trying to make a bid for him as a romantic love interest. She's also the younger sister of Kolulu, the girl who committed suicide due to Mineta driving her into it. But it's a story for a later time.