Probably the most chat heavy chapter in the story. SORRY.
(***)
Mr. Principal: I believe that all of us should be in possession of the comm-item, so I'll take this occasion to make an announcement.
Mr. Principal: The acquaintance with quirk-detecting quirk has finished his inspection of the UA.
Mr. Principal: He found signs of an active quirk in my office, in the teacher's lounge and in the Recovery Girl's office.
Mr. Principal: I desire murder.
SuperPunch: Oh. Now that's unexpected.
TruthDetector: To quote someone we all know, "Oh dear".
DeadpanStalker: First of all, it's regrettable to see my suspicions confirmed. Second of all, why aren't we simply using our names and who thought that it was a good idea to name me DeadpanStalker?
CatsCoffeeNap: Yeah, I wonder about that myself.
Tintin: Tintin?
RoadRunner: If it's your idea, Toshinori, you are dead.
SuperPunch: IT'S NOT MY IDEA I SWEAR!
Mr. Principal: I regret to inform you that due to Power Loader wanting to make this line super secure, changing anything once it was set up is impossible.
DeadpanStalker: And it's a coincidence that your name happens to be your hero name, as the only one of us all?
RecoveryGirl: Not quite.
CatsCoffeeNap: why is her nickname normal too
Tintin: Can someone explain my nickname to me, please? I think I'm missing a joke.
DeadpanStalker: I'll do that after this talk, Mirio.
Mr. Principal: Shame that the mess with the nicknames happened, I'll find the person responsible for it.
CatsCoffeeNap: I'm in front of your office right now, I can hear your sadistic, maniacal laughter from here, Nedzu.
Mr. Principal: Well, I said I'll find the person responsible. I didn't say that said person isn't me, or that I'll do anything about the issue.
CatsCoffeeNap: You know what, I don't care.
CatsCoffeeNap: The entire computer system of the UA working for a 1000 years would still fail to calculate just how much I don't care.
CatsCoffeeNap: Now, what do we do about the spy issue?
Mr. Principal: You'll be crucial in untangling that mystery, Aizawa.
CatsCoffeeNap: are you going to pay me extra for this
Mr. Principal: The budget doesn't allow it.
CatsCoffeeNap: You use godzilla-sized combat robots for an entrance exam and you tell me that you can't pay me for working overtime?
Mr. Principal: Yes.
CatsCoffeeNap: Do you think that League of Villains is open for recruitment? They have a large budget AND I have experience in dealing with kids who are slowly but surely killing me. Also Mindscrew looks like my mood kindred.
Mr. Principal: Alright, no need to get that far! I'm sure we can come to an accomodation.
SuperPunch: If I still had a stomach, I'd run to the nearest shop and grab some popcorn.
Tintin: I'd join the effort, if I'm to be honest.
RoadRunner: sometimes even you get a good idea, toshinori
Mr. Principal: We'll start by excluding the teachers from the list of the suspects. I'll have them gathered soon and have Aizawa use his quirk on them while my quirk-detecting friend will be with me in my office. If the surveillance quirk vanishes, we'll know that it's one of them.
DeadpanStalker: It's impractical to try that with the students, however. And I'm almost certain it's one of them.
SuperPunch: Why?
DeadpanStalker: All for One has already tried infiltrating the faculty. Multiple times. Even so many years after his death, Nedzu's background checks are stuff of a legend. But - only for the faculty.
Mr. Principal: It is regrettable, but I have to agree with Sir Nighteye. I'm going to background check every single student right now (I already started). We can't have Eraserhead test every student. If we do it by class, we'll only know which class the spy is in. If we do it one by one, our chances of catching the spy BEFORE he catches the wind of what is happening and vanishes, or worse, on us, are minimal.
TruthDetector: What's worse?
Mr. Principal: Murder someone before vanishing, plant a bomb in the school, unleash some dangerous intel upon the world?
TruthDetector: I shouldn't have asked.
DeadpanStalker: No one with appropriate quirk within the student list?
Mr. Principal: No. Which carries some worrying implications.
SuperPunch: Like?
Mr. Principal: Like one of the students managing to hide a re-awakening of their quirk or some special, surveillance-oriented ability from us.
Mr. Principal: Or one of them having two quirks.
RoadRunner: no just no
TruthDetector: I agree that chances of this are… minuscule.
DeadpanStalker: yes
Mr. Principal: Not as minuscule as I'd like to admit.
SuperPunch: Nedzu. Talk to us. Now.
Mr. Principal: It's not confirmed evidence. But I had someone trustworthy analyze bits of Legion's blood that we found in Hosu.
DeadpanStalker: And?
Mr. Principal: It was heavily degraded and polluted, but my contact found genetic markers and certain blood anomalies indicating the presence of multiple quirks. He estimates that he is something about 70% certain that the results are correct.
RoadRunner: Fuck.
TruthDetector: Just don't tell me that All for One is alive. Please. I had enough of him for a lifetime.
SuperPunch: Are you saying that Legion HAS that man's quirk?!
TruthDetector: Marginally less horrible prospect.
Mr. Principal: As I said, the samples were heavily degraded. It is not confirmed knowledge. The analysis of the leftover blood of the noumus (both Hellhound and the ones in Hosu) confirmed the existence of multiple quirks in them as well.
Mr. Principal: One of them was cut rather nasty and a local hero gathered a sample of its blood for an analysis BEFORE QLF attack. So it was cleaner than the rest. I confirmed the presence of four different quirks, but not any form or variant of All for One.
Mr. Principal: The noumu in question appears to have been originally a dog. Using animals for quirk implantation is something new, and certainly not AlO's modus operandi. Besides, we now know of at least a single person capable of bestowing quirks other than AlO (namely, Overhaul). And we don't know how to discern their methods through laboratory analysis yet.
Mr. Principal: There is also a very high chance that AlO granted quirks to Legion before his demise. We all know that giving quirks to quirkless family members as a form of control is something with a precedence in his case, and he could get particularly charitable with a quirkless child who loved quirks so much. Legion might, so to say, be liquidating remaining assets from his father's time (namely, the noumus).
Mr. Principal: I have actually looked back to certain archived police data and I've located symptoms of multiple quirk implantations in a villain connected to the Villain Factory case. B-Rank Villain known only as "Hooded Man', not heard about since then. It was two years before All for One's death, if he was some early noumu then we can be certain that AlO was working on them for at least several more years before his demise.
Mr. Principal: If AlO worked on finding a way to install multiple quirks in others (hence, noumus), there is a chance that whoever is the spy within UA is a carrier of multiple quirks as well.
DeadpanStalker: I can find a few issues with your theories.
DeadpanStalker: The most glaring is the chronology. If the Hooded Man was 'merely' a B-Rank in terms of strength, then how likely is it that the All for One jumped from him to Hellhound in two years only? How much more sense would it make if someone continued working on noumus? Additional six years of experimentation make things way more sensible.
Mr. Principal: You are unfortunately correct. Which would indicate that League has access to someone with ability to transfer quirks.
RoadRunner: So… Legion HAS AlO or not? And is that man alive or not?
DeadpanStalker: We don't know. It is possible that being a son of AlO simply imparted Legion with greater resistance to the (almost certain) side-effects of multiple quirk implantations (we know AlO tried that in the past and the result was turning victims brain-dead from the strain) even without the quirk itself, just like children of flame-quirk users are often quite heat-resistant.
Mr. Principal: Then it makes perfect sense for AlO to stuff his son with all the quirks he can handle - something that was certainly painful and might explain the subsequent rebellion. But it still doesn't explain the noumus.
Tintin: What if they do not belong to the League?
DeadpanStalker: Explain?
Tintin: They weren't housed in the League's base. And I did get a feeling that despite all that camaraderie and genuine friendship, even League members didn't know a lot about them.
Tintin: This implies that the noumus aren't a product of League and Legion, but of some unspecified third party, that lends them to the League when needed. If Legion truly is AlO's successor, or at least some form of heir apparent, it makes sense for him to have contacts with some other remnant groups of AlO's empire, yes?
Mr. Principal: Oh. So another group altogether, with an ability to bestow quirks and produce the noumus, who is using the League of Villains as a distraction? Some form of post-Villain Factory?
DeadpanStalker: Interesting idea. What are the chances that said group IS the AlO himself?
Tintin: You told me a lot about him. He doesn't strike me as a person who would use quirked animals for experiments instead of much more available humans (like that Hooded Man).
Mr. Principal: Oh dear.
SuperPunch: Oh no, not one of those
Mr. Principal: There is a recently emergent supervillain known only as Nine that, now that I think about it, might be involved.
SuperPunch: why?
Mr. Principal: Because I watched a recording of his fight with some heroes. It didn't occur to me back then, but now I'm something like 50% sure that he might be a multiple quirk user too. But he focused on one quirk. Might have slipped in one moment. I think he was wounded in that battle, I'll have someone analyze his blood for quirk markers.
Mr. Principal: I'll focus on that AND on subtle background checks of the students. Aizawa, get ready for inspection of the faculty in 30 minutes.
TruthDetector: This investigation is a nightmare and I just can't wake up from it.
(***)
Frankly speaking, the week after Izuku's birthday was a boring one. If you exclude blowing up a factory (and causing massive property damage), nothing interesting happened. Then again, everyone probably needed this.
Izuku was busy. His day was mostly composed of looking for wherever Overhaul holed himself in AND helping Blueberry set up the QEM's organizational framework and train her quirk. When he had some remaining free time, he visited his family, played video games with Tenko or went on their equivalent of dates with Himiko.
He managed to confirm that her quirk makes her stronger, faster, but way less sane (and easier to exhaust) while blood starved. They didn't go far with that, but it was still an interesting and potentially useful thing to know.
He noticed something was amiss during one of the evenings. He tended to spend those with Himiko, in their room, typically watching films. About heroes and villains if he was the one to choose, or about vampires, generalized fantasy and romance when Himiko did.
That one evening was one of hers. He tried his best to not look bored, but he did jump into the Villain Network when she paused the film and went out to use the toilet. He moved around at random, trying to not doze off. When she returned, he had lots of questions.
"Himi. We need to talk." She froze in the middle of the room, while he stared at her from bed. "As a leader of your villainous team I have access to the list and general stats of the chatrooms you are in. Can you tell me why there are so many new messages and one more member in that harem chat?" 347 new messages in a chatroom within twenty-hour hours by only THREE users? That was worrying.
"Errr…" Himiko acts like a deer caught in the car's headlights. "It's… uhm… think of this as your personal fanclub, of sorts? Just a girls-only one." She is doing her best, but the car's still going at her.
"Fanclub?" He is afraid to ask. "Really?" She nods furiously. "Who is the new member?"
"Blueberry!" She replies.
Of course it's Blueberry, Izuku thinks. He noticed the stares.
"Himi, please stop with the teasing, alright?" Midoriya Izuku is tired of it. Like, really tired. He does get the fact that he has an actual fanclub out there (most of the members appear to be some really weird people that he certainly DOESN'T want to meet), but this is getting frankly disturbing.
"What teasing?" She tilts her head a bit and eyes him curiously.
"You know what teasing." He is doing his best to NOT be angry. "The harem thing. I get it that I stopped responding as well to your standard teasing, mostly by the virtue of getting used to it. But please stop with the group teasing stuff."
She chuckles a bit, crosses the distance between them in like two seconds (the bed shakes a bit when she lands on it) and hugs him. He is just slightly confused (he still didn't figure out the whole relationship thing, although he does his best). Then their eyes met from up close.
"But it's not teasing, silly!" She gives him a wide smile. "You are so wonderful that I can't just hog you all to myself, yes?"
He is a supervillain for several months. Villain for several years. Son of All for One for his entire life. He has (almost) enough willpower to not react to that announcement with a visible shock.
Almost.
So he stares at her in silence. Himiko, of course, takes the 'oh my god what did you just say' silence for 'please continue' silence and keeps talking .
"You are super smart, you are super dangerous, and you are also the kindest and nicest person I have ever met!" She lists with a cheerful smile. "You are absolutely the best boyfriend I could imagine. So when I see a girl I like being alone and sad, how can I keep you all to myself?"
He really doesn't want to unpack what he just heard. But he realizes he probably has to because he ignored an issue and let it grow due to thinking it was just her idea of a joke. Wonderful.
"So I got Mei and Blueberry together." Himiko continues. "We talk about how awesome you are. We try to make you take the hint, which is honestly hard because you are kinda a dummy in those things. I'm also writing a story about you and Blueberry is making drawings of you!" He really, REALLY hopes that clothes are actually involved in those drawings. "Mei also did something but we promised to never speak of it again. So I won't."
Now if that isn't scary.
Izuku fights the urge to jump off the bed and knock himself unconscious by trying to destroy the nearest wall with his head. Somehow he wins.
Why can't he have an actually NORMAL friend for once? He likes League members and he would probably give his life for them if needed, but he is acutely aware that they aren't 'normal'. More like a family of societal outcasts that have more mental disorders and daddy (or mommy or parental in general) issues that he likes to admit.
He and Kurogiri are the only even remotely functional people in that group. And as much as he hates to admit it, he is the more important one of the two. Izuku still remembers what sort of state the League was in when he returned from that one-month trip overseas with his family a year ago.
It was the first time he saw Kurogiri cry. In relief, when he saw that Izuku was back. Like whatever Mei did, the details of the incident were consigned into oblivion by acclamation.
Ironically enough, the closest thing Izuku has to a 'normal' friend is probably Lemillion. And he would still punch Legion in the face if he saw him, due to the whole hero/villain dichotomy.
Izuku spends a few seconds considering the idea of making a false internet account to befriend Lemillion on some social media and ask him for relationship tips. The fact that the heir of All for One considers doing that with a heir of All Might is probably the best image of just how incredibly lost and confused Izuku is right now.
The fact that he decides to do that in the end just makes it sad.
"So… you say that those two are, uhm, actually interested?" He decides to gather some additional information. He isn't sure why Blueberry's even there, and Mei has probably just got roped into it by Himiko.
"Yep yep!" Himiko is incredibly cheerful and probably deeply happy by The Talk happening and Izuku finally getting the hint. "Mei said that she is interested in making a sapient and organic baby for once, and that you would be a source of high quality material for it! And then you blew up a Detnerat factory for her. She thinks it was the bestest thing ever!"
Izuku finds the 'sapient organic baby' bit extremely disturbing to say the least. But it also looks like Hatsume Mei, the resident mad scientist, was awoken to the concepts of sex and relationships. He can scarcely believe it.
"And Blueberry thinks that you are cute, awesome because you gave her a quirk, smart, and, to quote, "friend told me that the shyest people are always the wildest'." Izuku isn't going to ask. "Also when I found out how many things she crammed into her timetable, I asked her, to quote, 'when did you sleep' to which she answered that the real question is how did she sleep, and the answer to that is 'alone, unfortunately', so… I think she's in too?"
Izuku is slowly approaching the dreadful realization that they might actually mean it all.
His life as a supervillain (and, earlier, supervillain-to-be) didn't prepare him to deal with bullshit of this magnitude.
He didn't know how to deal with Himiko alone. Getting to deal with what sounds like three Himikos at once sounds like the worst idea ever.
Sure, he is a teenager. Sure, hormones are a pain to deal with. But he is also an intelligent person. Part of him might be happily supporting the idea, but he knows better. He has to end this burning mess right now. Himiko might be crazy (a bit, and in a way that keeps her functional), but she will understand the straight 'no', right?
"I... " He says confidently. "...need to think about that."
He screams internally. At himself.
(***)
Mirio Togata: No way.
Akatani Mikumo: Sorry.
Mirio Togata: Why are you messaging me?
Mirio Togata: also you do realize that I'm going to have to report that to Sir Nighteye and All Might, yes?
Akatani Mikumo: I'd prefer to avoid it, it's not really… business stuff? Something private.
Mirio Togata: …
Mirio Togata: You are the absolutely weirdest villain I ever met, you know that?
Akatani Mikumo: Was that a compliment?
Mirio Togata: No.
Akatani Mikumo: Awww.
Mirio Togata: Okay, you know what, alright.
Mirio Togata: I'm going to tell them anything that I think might be useful in catching you or taking down the League, but nothing other than that. Nor the existence of this talk, if I can avoid it in any reasonable way.
Mirio Togata: Consider this a payback for saving me, Ingenium and Gran Torino from Eclipse. I do not like being in debt to a villain in any way, shape and form.
Akatani Mikumo: Awesome!
Akatani Mikumo: I have a problem. Heart problem.
Mirio Togata: Shouldn't you talk about that with a doctor?
Akatani Mikumo: Not that type of heart problem, dammit, why is this so damn complicated
Mirio Togata: … are you asking me for advice on relationships?
Akatani Mikumo: Yes!
Mirio Togata: You. A supervillain. Are asking me. All Might's successor. For relationship advice.
Akatani Mikumo: Yes?
Mirio Togata: …
Mirio Togata: What's the problem? I thought you were doing alright with Vampire?
Akatani Mikumo: I'm doing too well with Vampire.
Mirio Togata: What?
Akatani Mikumo: She decided that I'm too perfect to monopolize, and is in the process of trying to organize me a harem of beautiful and deadly female villains. She already has two members in, and they are apparently writing stories about me and making drawings of me while talking about how awesome I am.
Mirio Togata: …
Akatani Mikumo: I don't know how to deal with it. And I'm too afraid to ask about details of the stories and drawings.
Mirio Togata: Shouldn't I be the one to ask YOU about tips on relationships?
Akatani Mikumo: Shit not you too
Akatani Mikumo: I asked my mom for help and she made a weird face and said something like 'ah to be young again'
Akatani Mikumo: I'm too terrified of the implications to try digging into that
Mirio Togata: I think I can understand why.
Akatani Mikumo: And I literally have no one else even relatively sane & adult around me [other than Kurogiri, but he is a father figure to ⅔ of the girls involved and is already passive-aggressive about me not marrying Vampire yet]
Akatani Mikumo: help
Mirio Togata: Literally no one else?
Akatani Mikumo: Lemillion, 16-20 years old kids don't turn into villainy and don't storm the newspaper headlines like that without serious issues
Akatani Mikumo: I sometimes feel like I'm running a kindergarten for mentally challenged psychopaths
Akatani Mikumo: I'm not even trying to count how many of us ended up killing one or more members of their families on either an accident or after snapping under the abuse
Akatani Mikumo: I had to bribe Decay with videogames to go to a therapy so that he would stop wearing severed and preserved hands of his family members as a part of his villain outfit ffs
Mirio Togata: …
Akatani Mikumo: He was actually talking to them. Their presence consoled him. He got regular panic attacks when he wasn't wearing at least one at any given moment. Creepy af.
Mirio Togata: I don't even know how to answer that.
Akatani Mikumo: You don't turn a hundred cultists into dust while screaming stuff like 'give me the sweet exp, you low level trash' without having serious mental problems.
Mirio Togata: Please stop telling me things I don't want to know and move over to the main subject.
Akatani Mikumo: So I made a list of people that I know (even passingly), and I know them to be normal and reasonably… reasonable, and it's literally just your name on an otherwise empty page
Mirio Togata: I'm so confused and part of me suspects that I'm dreaming.
Akatani Mikumo: Welcome to my world.
Mirio Togata: Also you do realize that I'm legally obligated to tell you to go after all three of them will all your might, so that you have much less time left to villainy and will be too focused on pursuing the relationship to focus on your goals, thus making you commit mistake and eventually get caught?
Akatani Mikumo: yes?
Mirio Togata: Okay, so with that done, let's talk.
(***)
Mr. Principal: I have the results of the analysis. Nine carries no less than four quirks, including what appears to be All for One.
SuperPunch: Well, shit.
RoadRunner: Looks like something we can agree on
Mr. Principal: Good news is that it's not 'THE' All for One. And by AlO I mean the quirk.
DeadpanStalker: What?
Mr. Principal: It appears to be a massively inferior form of the genuine article. It's hard to say how exactly AlO did it, but he managed to impart some form of a 'copy' of his quirk to that individual.
Mr. Principal: The blood is also 'weird'. Nine isn't fully human - he carries signs of extensive genetic and biological modifications, but we cannot tell how extensive without actually getting to examine his body.
DeadpanStalker: So he can transfer quirks in order to produce the noumus, but can't possibly reach the power level of true All for One. How many quirks can he keep active at once?
Mr. Principal: Either one or two but they get weaker when used simultaneously. And since he has only a handful of quirks, there is probably also a storage limit.
Mr. Principal: Nine himself isn't an existential threat, the real problems are Noumus and whoever is making them.
Mr. Principal: Either Overhaul was in bed with All for One in the past (unlikely considering the age difference) and inherited his noumu project or we have another mad scientist out there. One to match Overhaul in morals and knowledge. Nine is probably helping whoever that is with the quirk transfer.
DeadpanStalker: What's with all the mad scientists popping up in Japan recently? First Overhaul, now our mysterious second person, and after having a talk with Power Loader about it, I'm starting to suspect that Gremlin is approaching similar status.
CatsCoffeeNap: What did he say?
DeadpanStalker: That even after analyzing all the recordings, he still has no idea of how she created a portable railgun capable of packing this degree of punch. I think I'm going to bring that to David Shield tomorrow.
CatsCoffeeNap: If I officially give up on overtime pay and bonuses from now onwards, will you, my dearest and most beloved Principal, prepare us all a secret fund to organize our escape from the country when things (inevitably) go to Hell?
TruthDetector: You speaking like that is the most unholy thing I ever saw, Eraserhead.
RecoveryGirl: Never do it again.
SuperPunch: I agree.
Mr. Principal: I would have never done such a thing! And I certainly didn't do it already. On an unrelated note, how large do you want that tropical island to be?
SuperPunch: Knowing your funding and approach to spending the money, you probably made the entire school capable of going airborne and flying to America when no one was looking.
Mr. Principal: Now that's a brilliant idea! Why didn't you tell me that earlier?
SuperPunch: I will not dignify that with an answer.
DeadpanStalker: How's the search for the spy going, by the way?
Mr. Principal: Teachers are clear. But I've made a vow to start doing PROPER background checks on ALL first year students. From now on.
DeadpanStalker: … that bad?
Mr. Principal: I already found seven first year students with some degree of potential contact with various subversive (if not villainous) groups out there. Nothing warranting expulsion, for the record - it's all relatively minor things. For example Ibara Shiozaki of class 1-B has a cousin who is on the watchlist over suspected connections with some minor Christian terror group. He is apparently estranged, but I think that it's a ruse. In fact, I suspect that she might be a part of it together with him.
DeadpanStalker: Being a part of a terror group doesn't warrant expulsion? Is this a part of some long-term plan to get Legion to join the UA?
Mr. Principal: I might not be sharing their beliefs, but I'm not entirely adverse to the operations of the group in question. And I certainly question their status as 'a terror group'.
Mr. Principal: They bombed out (empty) governmental office due to its head using their position to steal property from a peaceful religious group, which resulted in said group having their place of worship and cemetery levelled down. And replaced them with an apartment building, whose owner almost certainly bribed the official I mentioned to achieve it. Naturally, he managed to avoid responsibility (at least until the religious group turned non-peaceful and the bomb exploded).
Mr. Principal: Disagree with me all you want, but I would still let her join as a student even if I knew about it beforehand. I consider UA to be something more than a hero factory. Our job is to take children with dreams and means to strive towards them (through intellect or quirks) and make sure that they achieve those dreams without turning to villainy. Ibara Shiozaki is a one-time vigilante at worst, in my opinion. She needs guidance, not expulsion.
Mr. Principal: This doesn't change the fact that people like her should be noticed earlier and properly observed. So from now on, I'm doing proper background checks of all students.
Mr. Principal: But this also means that narrowing down the list of potential spies will be… less successful than I thought.
Mr. Principal: On a sidenote, from next year onwards, UA is going to have three hero classes. The third one will be a rehabilitation class for young vigilantes and small-time villains who appear to have both potential to be something more and a potential to be reformed into proper members of the society. I also think it might be a good idea to leave one or two slots in our hero course exclusive to the quirkless.
CatsCoffeeNap: What about NOT using robots during the entrance exam to give people with non-flashy quirks a fighting chance?
Mr. Principal: If we are going to make reforms, we could as well make them wholeheartedly. So yes, there will be changes to that as well.
CatsCoffeeNap: Great. What about giving teachers a raise once you no longer have to spend money on giant death robots?
CatsCoffeeNap: Of course he went offline at the mention eh