WARNING: Shigaraki Tomura and the League of Villains.

Iida had fully stepped into his role as Class Representative.

Shoto sidestepped the boy in question as he sliced his hand through the air and enthusiastically urged everyone to step into the bus 'in an orderly fashion', and tucked his hands deeper into his pockets as he climbed up the raised step and onto the bus.

While they waited for the bus, Shoto had planted himself on a white picnic table, seeing no reason for why he should have to stand around waiting. Unfortunately, in doing so, he'd nearly brought the full-strength of Iida's self-important wrath down on his head. A verbal spar would have been satisfactory in its own way, but in the end, the bus arrived just in time to distract the boy, and Shoto was able to avoid having a whistle blown directly beside his ear.

The bus itself was typical of the public buses he saw on occasion, when his car happened to stop beside one at a stoplight. Sometimes he would look through the tinted windows of his private chauffeur and wonder what it must be like, cramming into a small, enclosed space like that, where you could overbalance at any moment and experience accidental full-body contact with a stranger.

The claustrophobic heat of such a crowded space must be hell in summer: the unwashed stink of tired businessmen; the overpowering perfume wafting off young women trying too hard, and completely unaware of the effect on their surroundings; that peculiar stink, particular to old women and men (the peculiar odour of an aging body, unpleasantly mixed with the smell of mothballs). The winter would be just as unpleasant, with the sudden change in temperature from the outside cold into suffocating warmth still lending itself to sweat and claustrophobia and bad smells.

There would noises, too, of screaming babies and their mothers trying unsuccessfully to hush them; school children, unmindful of those trying their best to drown out their surroundings, jabbering away like a murder of screeching crows; that one person who had never bothered to check the noise-cancelling quality of his headphones, and was therefore blasting unpleasantly loud heavy metal music three to four passengers down from where he stood.

Shoto imagined it would be an overwhelming, absolutely terrible experience overall, and doing that every day? It defied the imagination.

(But some days, when the light would turn green and the bus rumbled to life and continued on its slow way down the street, he would have done anything to trade places with the businessman swaying on his feet, with the oblivious student, with the frustrated mother and her crying baby. On the days when Father was in the car, Shoto would sometimes close his eyes and imagine it was actually possible.)

This bus wouldn't be anywhere near as crowded, even after the whole of the class found themselves a seat. But a very small part of him did a little wiggle of excitement at the chance to do something so normal, for once.

Only a few minutes later, Shoto deeply regretted ever having such naive thoughts.

He'd managed to snag a seat for himself (through deliberate application of a dead-eyed stare towards anyone who made a move towards the empty space next to him) and settled back with his eyes closed. It shouldn't be more than a ten-minute ride or so, which was just long enough to close his eyes and rela…

"Look, Sho-chan, see this?"

Shoto drops carelessly down onto his stomach and digs his elbows into the grass, uncaring of the moisture that immediately seeps through his sleeves. He squints in the direction the finger is indicating and immediately opens his eyes wide with delight.

"Nii-chan, is ant! Lots of ant!" he squeals, clapping his hands together in glee.

He looks up as a hand drops on his head. Toya smiles down at him with a big, gap-toothed grin, and tousles Shoto's hair with casual roughness.

"It's called an ant-hill and it's where all the ants live! There's one big mommy ant—she's called the queen—and a bunch of girl ants that go around finding food and taking care of the house and stuff!"

Shoto leans closer to the small dark hole in the ground, only noticeable by the light-colored dirt surrounding it in a small, pale mountain, and from the occasional little black ant that moves in or out of it. "No boy? What about daddy?"

There is no answer. Shoto cranes his neck behind him, confused, and sees Toya, still smiling down at him… but something isn't quite right. The sun creates a sort of halo around his full-head of crimson-red hair and puts his face in shadow, giving it a strangely dark, menacing edge.

"There is a daddy ant," he says, after a moment. He says it slowly, pensively, and Shoto feels a sudden tightening in his lungs that in context, makes absolutely no sense.

He tries moving and finds, to his building horror, that he can't move a single muscle.

"There's a daddy ant, Shoto, but… he's not a nice ant, kid. He's not nice at all. The daddy ant is born with fire and brimstone in his voice and in his hands, and all the little boys he gives birth to breathe fire, too. They're bad and dangerous, Shoto, and they don't know how to build or create or be kind; they only know how to destroy. Look, do you see?"

Toya points again, and with a deep-seated dread building up in his stomach and sending his heart-beat throbbing in his ears, Shoto looks down to see noxious black smoke come pouring out of the little hole.

"Daddy and his boys only know how to burn."

Toya smiles at him one more time. Then the flames rise in glowing carnations of red and orange and yellow, and Shoto chokes on smoke and the pain of eager flames as everything disappears in an explosive gust of fire.

Pop-pop-pop-BOOM.

"HA? What was that, you fucker? Say that to my face!"

Shoto awoke between one second and the next, breathing erratic, heartbeat running a marathon in his chest. The memory of flames licking their way up his body made his shaky hands spasm in his lap. He clenched them tightly into fists and breathed, slowly and deeply, in an attempt to bring himself down from the adrenaline.

In for seven seconds, pause for three, out for ten. In seven seconds, pause three, out ten.

"…You okay, Todoroki?" a voice asked, low and concerned.

Shoto blinked his eyes open, once, twice. Tilted his head at Tentacles who had gotten the seat behind him (because he couldn't manage eye contact right then) and gave a jerky nod.

"Yeah," he murmured in a hoarse voice. He appreciated the boy's discretion, even if Explosions's lack of volume control made it relatively unnecessary. "I… thank you. I'm alright."

"If you're sure," Tentacles replied, just as quietly. There was a thread of something like concern in his voice, which Shoto… wasn't really sure what to do with, actually, so he fell back on what he always did with things involving human interaction that he was unsure of: he ignored it.

"Do you lot ever shut up?" Aizawa-sensei called from the front of the bus. His blood-shot eyes squinted around at them as if he already knew the answer to that question… and hated it, desperately. He scrubbed a hand down his drawn face, and sighed. "Anyway, we're here, so stop fooling around. Iida, handle this."

Iida got to his feet once the bus rumbled to a stop, a deep whoosh of air escaping from the automatic doors as they swung open.

"Alright everyone, we have arrived at our destination! Please proceed to get off the bus in an orderly fashion—Sero-kun! I said in an orderly fas—Ojiro-kun! Your tail, please be mindful of where you're swinging—"

As he got up, Shoto accidentally made eye-contact with Tentacles; unable to avoid it this time without… committing some sort of social blunder that couldn't be excused away, he was sure, he nodded again, awkwardly, and was relieved when Tentacles only nodded back without further comment.

Perhaps there were students who could be trained to respond to non-verbal communication.

Shoto had already noticed the student with the craggy, dinosaur-like features had a tendency to communicate with hand signs, which made him feel optimistic. He was moderately proficient in JSL and ESL himself, out of necessity, and explaining away the need for sign language would be easier than trying to justify learning body language.

Then they were all being herded off the bus and into a large, domed building, and Shoto had no more time to think.

"Welcome to UA's largest search and rescue building off-campus! I like to call it the Unforeseen Simulation Joint, or the USJ for short!"

The Unforeseen Simulation Joint was, if the whispered conversation between Elbows and Shark Teeth was to be believed, similar to Universal Studios Japan in the way Mt. Takao (599m) was similar to Mt. Fuji (3,776m): essentially the same thing, but entirely different in what sort of experience you walked (or in one case, limped) away with.

Shoto listened with one ear to the differing opinions on the benefits of the USJ experience—

"Like, this place is ultra-cool and everything, but I could totally see a rescue operation happening if there were an earthquake at Universal Studios, you know? And that could totally work as rescue training! It's not like UA can't afford it, so they should totally, like, buy out the whole place for a day and set up some scenarios—"

"Ooooooh, wouldn't that be sick, rescuing some sweet mannequins facing an awful potential-death by upside-down roller coaster—"

"But in the event of a true catastrophe occurring, how would the faculty justify the unnecessary risk in removing such a large number of students from school grounds, at the same time, when UA is completely capable of hosting such training on its own grounds? Not to mention how unnecessarily distracting our surroundings would be—"

("..Where's All Might?"

"He ran out of time—")

"—I can see it being fun, actually! I wonder what the Water Disaster Zone is like; do you think they have water slides?"

"Eh, you think? I guess they do have slides coming down from the emergency exits in tall buildings sometimes—"

"—Tch, something actually fun had better fucking go down, cuz if not, I'm fuckin' ready to bring that shit myself—"

—While the rest of his concentration was spent on matching what he could see of his surroundings to 13-sensei's explanation of the objective of today's lesson and the different zones they would be utilizing in their training.

"As I'm sure you're aware, my quirk, Black Hole, can suck up anything it comes into contact with and turn it into dust."

His eyes spotted and mentally cataloged every visual clue he could spot: there, the Earthquake Zone; here, the Fire Zone; there, the Hurricane Zone, with the glass-domed roof clouded by an ominous, swirling black. Shoto flicked his fingers, absently coating, then defrosting, trickles of frozen liquid from their tips as he considered the pros and cons of ending up in any particular Zone.

"I've used this power over the years to save many lives, but that's not all my power can do; if I chose to, it could just as easily be turned against someone, and used to hurt, to kill. I'm not the only one here today with a quirk that could potentially be used in such a way, am I?

"In the superhuman society of today, where personal quirks are stringently regulated and must legally be certified, that may not seem like a concern. Nevertheless, the possibility always exists, and on your path to become pro-heroes, you must never forget that the slightest misstep with your powers could lead to someone's death."

If given the choice, Shoto would pick the Blizzard Zone without thinking twice, but was that the smart option?

Part of the point of this exercise (though 13-sensei hadn't mentioned it, it would no doubt come up at some point) was, Shoto was sure, for the teachers to see what each student would do when faced with a natural disaster their quirk or training didn't allow them to naturally combat. A lot of things about an individual could be uncovered from something as simple as throwing them into a situation outside of their comfort zone: how someone reacted under pressure, their ability to think outside the box, their creativity, intelligence, reaction times, innate skill.

Simply put, the best way to get the measure of a man was to toss him into an unpleasant situation and watch to see what happened.

"With Aizawa-sensei's fitness tests, you discovered the limitless possibilities to your powers; with All Might's Hero vs. Villain battle training, I believe you were able to experience the dangers inherent in using those powers against another person. This class is a fresh start, where you will learn how to use your quirks to save people's lives. You do not have your powers for the purpose of hurting others! I hope that today, you walk away from this class knowing that your powers exist for you to help, not to harm."

Another possible part of this excursion was to familiarize each student with the protocols to follow in the event of any possible disaster, something Shoto was sure Aizawa-sensei would be testing them on at some point in the future.

All these things could be inferred with a bit of thought, an acceptable level of intellect, and the willingness to be proven wrong.

All things considered, Shoto had the distinct—if dismaying—feeling that he would most definitely not be ending up in the Blizzard Zone. The most likely options were looking to be either the Earthquake Zone, or the Fire Zone: the first because Shoto's quirk was ill-suited to the enclosed spaces that made up most of the zones (unless one had impeccable control, which Shoto did, but the teachers wouldn't know that just yet), and the second because… well.

For the second, Shoto would have to hope they hadn't noticed the distinct lack of flames in his repertoire up till this point, and would therefore not be inclined to attempt to change that—

A flicker, nearly out of his line of sight.

Shoto flicked his eyes to the side, only vaguely curious, and immediately jerked his entire head around as hair began to rise on the back of his neck.

One light flickering out was one thing: light bulbs met their natural end at the most inconvenient of times, and even in a location twice the size of a football field, created for the sole purpose of running simulation exercises, all things came to their natural ends eventually.

But one light, then immediately after, a whole row of them? And not just dimming, but shattering?

Between one breath and the next, the air changed.

At first, it was a mere spot in an otherwise colorful landscape. But then it grew, and it grew before their startled eyes until a swollen, purple-tinged whirlpool of emptiness had swallowed the whole of the Central Plaza.

"What the—" someone began to say.

"Everyone, stick together and fall back!" Aizawa-sensei barked, talking over the muttered question, and shocking all of them out of their stupefaction.

Shoto's adrenaline levels had been climbing since that first fizzle-crack of a dying bulb, and he clenched his hands around the humming running from the tips of his fingers, up through his buzzing brain and swooshing down to his jittery toes. For the first time in a long, long time, Shoto almost thought he could use his fire willingly, if given adequate incentive.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong, and the wrongness echoed down to his very bones.

Elbows popped his head out next to Shoto and squinted at the swirling black vortex. "What's that all about? Sensei? Is this a part of our training?"

Shark Teeth scratched his head and added in his two-cents. "Is this that, you know, 'Haha, it's already started suckkkeeeerrs—' thing Present Mic pulled at the Entrance Exams?"

"Get back," Shoto snapped, shoving Elbows behind him roughly before he could think it through. Not looking away from the hair-raising scene taking place some 100 meters in front of them, Shoto continued: "Something's not right here. Listen to Sensei and get back."

The black spot of negative space began to spit out humanoid forms, one at a time at first, then two, then three, until the entire courtyard was teeming with people.

From where they stood at the top of the tall staircase leading down to the Plaza, Shoto thought they almost looked like ants… and then had the fervent, unrealistic wish that they would indeed turn out to be so.

"13, protect the students," Aizawa-sensei intoned solemnly. Then he was pulling down bright yellow goggles, capture weapon beginning to float about his shoulder as his quirk activated, and Eraserhead flung himself down the stairs and into battle.

13 physically pushed Shoto, and the rest of the class, behind them as Eraserhead engaged the villains in battle.

He was good. Shoto watched, tension thrumming in his limbs, as the underground hero utilized the long, versatile white strands of his capture weapon to trip, tie up and fling villains against each other, and alternated throwing in his quirk (an act which gained a lot of very surprised villains, who were soon too deeply unconscious to do anything else) at unpredictable intervals.

For a good five minutes, Eraserhead single-handedly took on a crowd of easily twenty villains, some with incredibly tricky quirks; he even shot down a villain with a mutant-type Quirk (one Erasure, Eraserhead's quirk, was apparently unable to erase) with a quick toss of his capture weapon and a twist-kick-punch that threw them on their back and knocked them out like a light.

For a hero who thrived on battles fought in the dark anonymity of night, where Shoto imagined there were many more opportunities for silent ambushes and even more silent takedowns, he was doing stupendously well.

Even so...

Freckles summed his thoughts up succinctly, his eyes widened with panic and concern: Eraserhead was doing well... but it wasn't going to last. His quirk and his talents were both not suited to head-on attacks, something the villains were quickly noticing, and if something didn't change fast, he was going to get slowly but surely pushed back and overwhelmed.

Suddenly, the air in front of them began to swirl and twist, the view of the courtyard obscured by quickly stretching fingers of smoky black; then they had their own problems to contend with, as the villain with glowing yellow eyes and inky-black smoke for a body teleported Shoto, and select members of his class, into parts unknown before they could do more than attempt to fight back.

There were worse places he could have ended up.

When the villain's teleportation quirk spat him out, after three endlessly long seconds of darkness where he hadn't been sure what was up and what was down, Shoto found himself facing a good dozen or so villains, none of them looking half as discombobulated as Shoto, and not one of them seeming anywhere near as unhappy as Shoto was to be there.

Thankfully, the Landslide Zone provided only mild cover and little in the way of projectiles—for the villains. This left Shoto free to throw his cold-half out, in whatever shape or form he pleased, with abandon, something that often led to the villains being buried alive in a coffin of ice, or thrown head over heels by an unexpected avalanche—appropriate, in the landslide zone, if of a slightly different make. Shoto was quite fond of the irony.

(He was kind enough to leave them breathing room in every instance, but not much else)

When the dozen or so villains that had appeared in the landslide zone along with him had been either knocked out or otherwise put out of commission, Shoto ran hot fingers over his lightly-trembling side: cold, but still far from at his limit.

"Is this really it? Pathetic," he murmured to the villains before him, his eyes still on his fingers. "Taken down by a mere child... Do you have any pride, at all? No, no need to speak, the answer's obvious."

He sighed, shaking his head in faux-sadness. "You should be ashamed of yourselves."

When the villains unanimously bristled, murderous intent wafting off of them in clouds,

Shoto nearly chuckled.

Was he playing with them? Yes. Was he enjoying humiliating them? Yes again. Was this behavior befitting a future hero, one who had every intention of reaching and permanently taking the Number One spot? Not in the slightest.

But while Shoto stared down the Villains, their enraged screeching nearly unintelligible from the effect of their chattering teeth, he decided he was owed this much.

There was a thin, invisible curtain drawn across the boundary between his surface thoughts and the deeper emotions that lay underneath, and right now, Shoto could see the dark, sickening ichor of terror-fury-panic smearing against the barrier barely holding it back. The more shallow parts of him, that saw that awaiting horror and, while accepting of its existence, wanted no part of it, was perfectly content to embrace the well of superiority that itched to bring a sneer to his face. Anything to keep the knowledge of the true danger of their current circumstances from tearing fear through his mind: of how they were cut off from all communication, of knowing he hadn't been the only one cast into a pit of potential vipers (and knowing he was one of the few who could view those vipers as mice, and handle them accordingly), of knowing that help was... probably not coming.

That fear aside, Shoto knew he was actually perfectly suited for this unanticipated trial: when you were at the top, you stood alone, and The Number Two hero had ensured he learned that lesson, over and over and over again, until it stuck.

Now, Shoto prowled menacingly forward as he prepared to teach the villains a lesson of their own. This lesson they would learn, over and over and over again, for as long as was necessary.

"Now tell me... what is this I hear about the Symbol of Peace?"

When he had squeezed the last bit of information he possibly could out of the villains, Shoto aimed a punch at the last one and let his hand drop, torn.

They had seemed so certain: All Might may not be here, but what they had intended for him would have ensured he didn't walk out of the training facility alive.

Even knowing the danger had mercifully passed, Shoto couldn't fight a strong surge of unease. The mere existence of something purportedly strong enough to destroy the pinnacle of strength—the invincible Symbol of Peace—was unthinkable; that they were so deeply certain of its presence, here, in the same building within which Shoto stood, was terrifying.

It couldn't be allowed to stand. Shoto knew that the smart thing to do would be to make his way back to the entrance (a daunting enough prospect, knowing the warp-villain could still be there, blocking the way) and make 13 aware of these developments, but… All Might knew what the hero would be able to actually accomplish with that information. While knowledge is power, and what you knew would (theoretically) be less likely to hurt you, the odds of all of them walking out of here in one piece was… not likely.

What Shoto really wanted to do was continue on to the different zones and assist his classmates, who would no doubt be floundering and getting themselves injured right about now. His quirk was well below its usage limit, taking down the villains had been a walk in the park, and after all, wasn't rescue training all about saving the weak and the helpless?

"Wow, Todoroki-kun, you're really stro—woah, hey hey hey, it's just me!"

Before the words had finished forming in the empty air next to a collapsed building, Shoto had turned and shot out a massive column of ice, his adrenaline spiking as he silently cursed himself for his inattention. How had he missed the villain? And where were they? He was sure he'd gotten all of them—

A rock rose to nearly face-level from the ground, about where the call had originated, and began to wiggle with enthusiasm.

"Todoroki-kun! It's me, Hagakure! Hagakure Tooru!"

The familiarity in the voice niggled at him, enough that Shoto abandoned his next attack to cautiously move in the direction of the floating rubble.

"...um, you, um. Do know who I am...?"

Stress and paranoia had stripped him of all the social niceties he may have bothered with before this moment. After a second of thought, he bluntly stated: "No."

"Eehhhhh, that's so hurtful?" the voice whined. It was actually starting to sound familiar, and Shoto thought he recalled something, something to do with gloves, floating in the air—

...Oh. Invisible girl. She had been on the team with Tails during All Might's Battle Training.

"Hagakure Tooru," he said slowly, tasting the name on his tongue. The girl with the quirk that turned her totally invisible, so long as she wasn't wearing clothes. The thought alone should probably have turned his face red, his hands fidgeting; Shoto instead found himself feeling a strong burst of envy. What he would have given to be born invisible, instead of evenly split in half between the side of himself that he hated, and the side that reminded him of pain and grief.

The rock jumped up and down, and a corresponding scatter of pebbles on the ground made Shoto look down and furrow his brow.

She was barefoot, wasn't she? Didn't that hurt?

Immediately, a thought jumped into his head: what would have happened if he had caught her in a sweep of his ice?

The thought was too horrifying to contemplate, and Shoto shied away from it in favor of a thought that had just occurred to him.

"Did you hear anything the villains were discussing?" He demanded, absently shooting a coating of ice over a villain who had come-to earlier than expected and seemed to actually be making headway as he tried to chip through the ice. He seemed to finally give up, then, his lips blue and energy sapped. Shoto took pity on him and knocked him out again.

"Yeah, something about All Might?" Hagakure said hesitantly, a little closer now, proving to Shoto once and for all that his classmates were strange, impossible creatures, whose priorities and lack of focus made absolutely no sense.

"I just finished questioning all of the villains, how could you not—no, never mind that, I need you to go to 13, and Aizawa-sensei, if you can, and tell them the villains have a way to fight All Might, and I believe them when they say it will work."

Ignoring Hagakure's gasp of horror, he iced another waking villain, knowing the time was ticking by, knowing that each second could mean the difference between getting out of here with all of them alive… and not.

"Go, as fast as you can!" he barked, talking over the invisible voice that protested, saying, "But what about you?"

"I'll handle the villains, then see if I can find anyone else who needs help! Now go!"

There was a small shower of scattered pebbles, then the sound of bare feet slapping down on a partly-stone, partly-earthen ground, slowly heading farther and farther away. Then there were only the sounds of barely-breathing villains, and the far off boom-boom-crack of things and people breaking, cracking, and tearing apart.

Shoto spared one last, barely-guilty glance for the still-frozen villains and their potentially awful injuries, before heading towards the Central Plaza, where the loudest sounds had originated.

They had known what they were walking into by infiltrating the building; they deserved what was coming to them.

His first instinct had been to head to the Fire Zone.

Despite his hang-ups with his quirk, Shoto was better equipped than any of his classmates to deal with fire. For the sake of potentially saving lives in an emergency, Shoto was fully capable of compartmentalizing and repressing his issues for long enough to get the job done. He headed to the dome (its glass roof shifting in constant, sweeping waves of yellow-orange-red light), his boots crunching on broken glass and gravel and concrete, and was fully convinced he could manage it—until he was a handful of feet away from the concrete walls, and close enough to feel the heat.

Fire bloomed golden petals in the parts of his mind that Shoto had shut off and away, heat inching through the cracks in his mental walls, and without meaning to, he physically shied away from the entrance to the large, domed building. He stopped a bit of a ways away, stunned at his instinctive reaction. Shoto told himself to go back, urged his body to move; but his arms and legs trembled and stayed frozen, and he knew that with the way time was so very much against them, he couldn't afford to waste it here when there were plenty of other people he could help.

Bitterly disappointed in himself, Shoto turned instead to the Central Plaza where he had been hearing loud, destructive noises, distantly, for a while now; and as he headed closer, those noises grew clearer. If any of his classmates became injured because Endeavor had seen fit to tear off a part of his burning self and force it onto a yukionna who had wanted nothing to do with it, then Shoto would...

The thought hovered, unfinished, as Shoto picked up his pace and ran towards the noises.

The villain's appearance (a heteromorphic quirk, maybe?) was a frightening thing.

Even the small glimpse Shoto had stolen as he let loose a carefully-controlled arc of ice at the villain holding All Might (All Might, the symbol of peace, possibly the strongest man alive, how in the world—) threatened to sear itself into his brain, forever to sit there and haunt him in the day and traumatize him at night:

Tiny eyes (oddly blank and inexpressive) staring down from above a large, painfully-sharp looking beak, filled with piercing rows of teeth. Dark blue, thick-looking skin with numerous scars and scratches, trailed down massive, bulging triceps and biceps. Long, jagged talons, digging deeply into flesh, turning the Mightiest Hero's white shirt a deepening red. And above the bulging muscles, the talons and unsettling eyes, was the pink-grey of an exposed brain.

The large body of the villain was half-submerged in the black pool of the Warp-villain's quirk, with the upper half of their body holding down All Might's torso—kept still by the talons embedded in his left side—while the lower half rose up from the ground and was kept secured by the tight grip All Might had on their waist. Even as Shoto ran, dodging Shark Teeth who jumped over to run alongside him and a flying Explosions who had come bursting out of nowhere, the Warp-villain was pulling All Might into the sinister darkness of their quirk. His hindbrain screamed at him, yelling that this was not going to end well, and that was when Shoto struck, freezing the parts of the hulking form that were detached enough from All Might to not affect him.

With the new addition of Shoto's ice, and Explosions's distracting of the Warp-villain with his quirk and manic grin, the Symbol of Peace would hopefully gain the upper hand.

(A statement Shoto had never dreamed, even in his worst nightmares, that he would ever have to say.)

"I heard you have a plan," Shoto taunted the villains absentmindedly, his eyes fixed on the frozen limbs of his victim. His fingers twitched, prepared to cast another net should the villain so much as flex. "I heard you had something strong enough to take down All Might. All I'm seeing right now is a mindless animal, only good enough to be thrown at a target and hope for the best."

Freckles was there, a little ways back from where he had been violently—and knowing Explosions, unintentionally—rescued from the Warp-villain's dark embrace. Shoto spared a thought for the boy, one that wondered at the relieved tears on his cheeks and found them oddly disproportionate to the danger he had been in.

The monstrous villain heaved, but All Might held them down as he pulled out the appendages holding him captive and shot away. Shoto, relief threatening to loosen his tightly contained vigilance, added, a little breathlessly: "Villains really do run their mouths when they've been cornered, huh?"

Warp-villain tightly controlled in the grip of his lightly-sparking hand, Explosions turned to him and sneered. "Freakin' Edgeshot, Thermostat, you really like to fuckin' run your mouth, don't ya?"

Coming from Explosions, that was incredibly insulting, and also hypocritical. Sadly, despite how much his giddy relief made him want to reply in kind, Shoto was cognizant of the fact that now was neither the time nor the place, so he settled for rolling his eyes and ignoring him.

It was then that another villain (an incredibly unsettling one, with graying hands attached to various parts of his body that Shoto suddenly recalled having seen, back when the villains first emerged from the portal) intoned darkly: "Nomu."

And the monstrous villain began to haul themselves out of their frozen prison.

The snap-crack of limbs, so deeply frozen that they were simply falling off from the stress of the pressure imposed on them, echoed throughout the open space, freezing Shoto in turn, as if he too had a quirk holding him still. It was only for a second, and Shoto was quick to bring back his focus, but the shock of knowing that his quirk had done that...

The point at one wounded shoulder, where ice had detached an arm, began to bubble. Before their collective horrified eyes, muscles, exposed nerves and sinew bulged and writhed, and began to form a new appendage. Apparently the Monster—for it was a monster, wasn't it—had a regenerative quirk to go with its shock absorption.

The villains' confidence in their trump card was starting to make unfortunate sense.

Then, the Monster moved. There was a moment where Shoto thought he saw something like an after-image: a blur of dark, moving limbs, and a cloud of sand that burst upwards in its wake; that apparition then headed directly for the stunned face of Explosions, who definitely would not be able to dodge in time.

A split-second of a half-taken breath later, Shoto was no longer where he had been previously standing.

"The fuck?" Explosions exclaimed, his already gravity-defying blond hair flying about him in the strong gust of wind All Might—it had to have been All Might—left in his wake. Shark Teeth was there, as was Freckles, both looking just as shell-shocked, and Shoto sharply turned his attention to the long gouges in the concrete ground, leading in a long trail down some 100 meters away to a broken wall and an opaque cloud of debris.

Shoto hadn't even seen him move.

When the cloud parted, bits of rubble and stone falling to the ground, what it revealed sent a deep shot of fear through Shoto's chest.

All Might, looking rough and beat up, arm locked in front of him to block the blow. That even All Might should falter from a mere punch...

Where had they found such a terrifying creature?

The villain with the hands (Handy Man, Shoto dubbed him spitefully) began to monologue, faking innocence as he protested that he had only been protecting his poor, unsuspecting comrade from the heroes' brutal attacks. All Might called him on his bullshit, but Handy Man only grinned unsettlingly and didn't refute him.

"Get them," he said instead. "Kurogiri, Nomu. I'll handle the children."

Shoto settled into a defensive stance instantly, refusing to allow budding fear to mar his focus, and tracked the approaching Handy Man with his eyes—

And then there was a hurricane, and All Might.

What unfolded before them next was a battle of monsters:

And it was a battle. Wind sent concussive blasts from the center of the conflict, threatening to rupture the concrete walls and purposely-collapsed buildings around them. Shoto had to put up an arm to shield his face and brace his entire body, at one point, as the strength with which each massive, powerful fist meeting its mark (both blue and fisted beige fighting to gain the upper hand in a battle of monster vs. monstrous ability) nearly knocked him off his feet. The two villains were not so lucky, and Shoto watched with distinct pleasure as both Handy Man (Shigaraki Tomura, his mind supplied darkly) and the Warp-villan 'Kurogiri' were sent flying.

Being on the sidelines was... not pleasant. Still, Shoto watched, half his attention on the fight, the rest on the two disoriented villains and his stunned classmates, and made no move to step in. After all, what could he, or anyone, do? This was the battlefield of the gods (a fight between Zeus and Hades, between Odin and Jormungandr), and a mere mortal stood less than no chance of making even a single iota of difference.

And anyway, if watching from a distance was this terrifying, Shoto had zero interest in seeing it up close.

It had become a fight between an immovable object and an unstoppable force, and Shoto watched as slowly, by increments, the positions of who was who switched, and the unstoppable force—All Might—began to chip away at the immovable object—the Monster—fighting to keep its place.

It happened between one punch and the next. All Might (in a move nearly too quick to follow with the naked eye) caught the villain by the arm and swung, around and around, as their momentum carried them high in the air... and threw the 'Nomu' down to the ground with enough force to shatter the hard ground below it.

Eyes watering, Shoto squinted at the unbelievable sight before him, determined not to miss a single second. He wasn't entirely successful, and what happened next was too difficult to track, but he (along with, no doubt, everyone within the building) heard the words that boomed out of All Might's mouth and echoed throughout the courtyard:

"Tell me, Villain, have you ever heard these words?"

Concrete blocks flew, wind buffeted, a clenched fist cocked and electric-blue eyes glinted triumphantly:

"Go forever beyond! PLUS ULTRA!"

A punch landed, a dark figure went flying through the glass-domed ceiling, and in its wake stood All Might: Victorious.

A few things happened, then, in quick succession:

First, the remaining villains (more specifically Handy Man, who had flown into a rage shortly after the Nomu disappeared into the distant skies) were not perturbed by this apparent win and seemed like they were going to push their quickly dwindling advantage to further attempt to take down All Might.

Next, instead of letting All Might work out how to fix the issue, Freckles leaped into the fray; a quick jump with his powerful quirk—one that was both ill-thought, doomed to failure, and somehow too quick for Shoto or even All Might to stop—that shattered his leg as it left the ground, nearly ended with Handy Man's quirk splintering the skin off of his face.

Finally, with the distinctive crack of a bullet, a hole appeared in the hand outstretched to destroy Freckles's face; a few crack-crack-cracks quickly proceeded to leave a few more, throwing the villain back and away from his potential victim.

Help had arrived at last.

There was something going on between All Might and Midoriya.

Shoto thought this to himself as he watched the ambulance drive away, carrying with it the unconscious forms of the Symbol of Peace and Shoto's badly injured, mysterious classmate.

It was almost as if… but no.

Shoto shook the head and the thought away, ruefully amused at his own foolishness. What did he know about fathers and sons, anyway?

Almost since the start of school, if he really stopped to think about it, Midoriya and All Might had had a strange sort of chemistry about them, a comfortable familiarity that had no place existing between the Number One Hero and a student whose most memorable quality was his ability to shatter his limbs with his quirk. In spite of that chemistry, however, comparing their interactions to those between a father and son was ludicrous and absolutely fanciful, at best.

And really, what did Shoto know?

(The hand around his neck squeezed.

It wasn't so hard as to cut off his air supply... but the panic from knowing the person controlling that hand would happily do just that, as easy as breathing, plus the feeling of having heat wrapped suffocatingly around his throat, was enough to make Shoto choke and splutter and fail to get any oxygen in his lungs.

"Not good enough," a cold voice said. He was thrown aside a moment later, and the wall reached out to catch him in its hard, unforgiving embrace.)

Fathers and sons had only ever been a thing of pain and rage and tears of frustration, to Shoto. Even if, at some distant point in his past, things had been different? Just knowing the way things had changed only a few years down the road was enough to discourage him from attempting to recall those times any further.

And really, when it came down to it, Shoto was curious, but not enough (just yet) to stick his nose in an area it was so obviously unwelcome.

So he turned away and walked to where the rest of his classmates had gathered to wait for instructions, telling himself to put it out of his mind.

And he did try, as Hagakure cheerfully admitted she had been in the same Zone as him (a terrifying reminder, as he could have easily wrapped her up in the ice he'd cast on his group of unfortunate villains, not even noticing until it was too la—no. No, he wouldn't think of that-), as a police detective came to ask them questions and update them on their teachers' status's (Aizawa-sensei… 13…), and when one of the teachers finally came around to hustle them into a bus and back to school. He had other, much more important things to be worried about: like how the villains had managed to break through UA's vaunted security; how the villains had known where they would be at that hour; how they had known All Might would be there; and how they had managed to find a Quirk strong enough to stand up to All Might…

Things which, again, were not his business to worry about, but seemed like much more logical things to be ruminating over than any potential relationship that may or may not exist between All Might and his classmate.

(Even then, the thoughts lingered: What are you to each other? What is it that you're hiding?)