The secret to being good at one's job was to enjoy it.
Nomura Rokuro was standing at the edge of the cliff, staring at the building where forty hero students, six pro heroes and one child were sleeping. It was 3 AM. Between the intensive quirk training that lasted the whole day, having to watch over forty students and the remedial lessons that ended at 2 AM, all of them were exhausted and would sleep like the dead.
They should have known better than to leave themselves so vulnerable. After the attack on the USJ and even after the noumus had been free to have fun in that mall, the heroes shouldn't have let the children who would succeed them leave the safety of their school.
Horrible things happened to people who didn't know how to protect themselves and their guardians were left with a lifetime of regret.
He turned towards his ragtag bunch of misfits, carefully chosen for this mission, be it because of their quirks or because of their sadistic predilections. Two of them hadn't even waited, preferring to wander and have their own brand of fun.
Rokuro would have hated to get in the way of their spontaneity.
"Gentlemen, ladies and esteemed monsters!" he smiled, adopting the same expression of someone he used to know and who always seemed completely in control. "It's time to do your worst."
A little away from the others, someone curled into fetal position, his hands with bloodied fingers digging into his mop of purple hair, started to make a high pitched whine then begged, just like he did every time something was expected of him.
"I can't do it I can't do it I can't do it I can't do it…"
Rokuro could remind Sorrow (a nickname the purple-haired-man hated) that he didn't need his cooperation but he already knew it.
A good leader didn't need to dirty his hands, especially when a bunch of overgrown bullies with something to prove could do it for him.
5… 4… 3… 2…
A heavy boot kicked Sorrow in the back, sending him face first into the dirt.
He didn't stop begging.
"Will you shut the fuck up!?" Steel hissed, the sharp metallic strands she had for hair hovering over his limp form, like she could barely restrain herself from stabbing him.
"Hey there, there is no need to get mad over this," Rokuro lazily said but his glance towards Steel was enough.
She froze, not in fear, but out of careful consideration for the fact she had just attacked a member of their team and Rokuro would have legitimate reasons to break her in half for that. Meanwhile, Sorrow, finally quiet, moved in Rokuro's direction.
Rokuro gave him a hand, hiding his disgust as he felt how clammy Sorrow's palm was and helped him back to his feet, cementing the image of a just leader who cared about the members of his team.
"Don't forget where you come from," he warned them, his voice now lower and his smile sharper. "You might be here to enjoy yourselves but your targets can't be each other. Is that clear?"
They didn't nod but none of the killers he had brought with him dared to look him in the eyes, which was good enough of a reaction.
Rokuro waved his hand.
"Go have fun. You know what to do."
They didn't need more than that, leaving one by one, both to get away from him and because what they were craving for was close.
All of them were killers but just the opportunity of snuffing the life out of someone wasn't enough.
It went deeper than that, for they all despised what they felt that society had done to them. They resented the fact they had become the dregs of society and they wanted some payback.
The future elite, the people who had what they had been deprived of, made for perfect targets
Soon, only three noumus and the one person who wouldn't fight tonight stayed with him on the edge of his cliff.
"I am surprised you're not calling your new friend," Michael said, his long blond hair swirling around him. His smile showed teeth that made anyone looking at him feel that they should be pointy.
That was the thing about Michael. He felt wrong, in ways hard to perceive. Rokuro, as someone who had spent years perfecting his "nothing to see here, completely human and normal" appearance could pick up on the slightly-off proportions and the myriad of little details that elicited the uncanny valley but normal people seemed unable to notice anything that wasn't extraordinarily obvious.
"I don't mix business and pleasure anymore," Rokuro simply answered.
Oh, he was tempted to warn Anyone of what was going to happen. But he had a job to do and in any case, inviting that fascinating new player to the party felt like cheating.
Michael chuckled, his voice kept low but somehow managing to be incredibly annoying because of a pitch too high for human ears to pick on but still perceivable to most people in the worst ways, and he went to work.
At about three in the morning, forty teenagers were startled into consciousness as a deafening noise shattered the silence of the night. Some of them immediately recognized them as explosions while others thought it was the sound of thunder and a few didn't even try to identify it.
All of them looked by the window and saw the fire and the smoke starting to rise from the crown of the trees.
They reacted as one panicked entity. They might be hero students, they might have been told what to do during dangerous situations, but this knowledge hadn't been drilled into them yet and they ran outside their rooms, their minds overwhelmed by the urgency of the situation.
Most of them had the presence of mind to grab their phones. They took nothing else as the rest of their stuff was outside the room in which they were sleeping.
Nothing happened to the first people going through the door just so the second wave wouldn't suspect anything. Students crossing the threshold never made it to the other side and in the confusion, the remaining children didn't immediately notice it, as they crossed another door further down the hallway.
When they heard the sound of several massive explosions detonating at once, the six pro heroes still in their bed woke up instantly and sprang into action. They didn't take the time to change into their hero costume. They grabbed their shoes and their support gear and five of them ran to the students while Mandalay ran to Kouta's room.
It took them less than fifty seconds to reach those rooms.
Only to find them completely empty.
Mina was running through the hallway, blindly reaching behind her to grab Toru's hand, and in the next moment, she was in the forest, all alone. Stones and sticks were digging in her bare feet and while she wasn't surrounded by fire, she could smell smoke.
Her mouth opened on her own, ready to call the others only to think better of it.
Someone had teleported her out here. It meant that the fire wasn't a freak accident but someone literally trying to smoke them out.
It's happening again. Just like the USJ.
She only managed to take one careful step before a bloodcurling scream pierced the silence. The sheer pain and horror in this sound splashed her like cold water, leaving her trembling, her acid begging to be released just so she could feel safe again.
Who was it? It was gone now and she couldn't tell if the scream had come from a boy or from a girl. She couldn't tell if it had stopped because they were safe or if it was because…
The sound of someone babbling reached her. She lowered herself so she would be hidden by the trees and the darkness, and she slowly started to advance, tip toeing so she wouldn't make a noise.
She quickly saw him. Not a student but he didn't look like a villain either. He looked like a normal man, kneeling on the ground, his face hidden by his arms. If she had seen him during the courage test, she would have bravely screamed "THAT'S A GHOST!" and ran in the other direction.
Two contradicting thoughts crashed inside her man. He was either a villain and this was a trap or he was indeed someone who needed help and avoiding him meant leaving him at the mercy of whoever had brought her in the woods, of whoever had made someone utter this bloodchilling scream.
He had to be a villain. There was no reason for him to be here except for that.
But what if I'm wrong?
She was still wrestling with her doubts when she heard the whoosh sound of something sharp cutting through something dense, then the sound of a tree about to fall on her. She jumped on the side, turning while she was still in the air.
A tall woman wearing dark camos, a black tank top and combat boots, was standing among what remained of the trees. Her hair was impossibly long, each strand metallic and way too sharp to Mina's taste.
The tree that could have crushed her fell with a loud noise, making the sobs of the man in the middle of the road louder.
The woman winked at her and the thin filaments that constituted her hair struck at Mina.
The hair was fast but Mina's reflexes were better and she had just spent an entire week making her production of acid faster, better, stronger. She didn't leave the villain a chance as she produced and propelled her acid.
Horrible pain bloomed all over her body. Pain so intense and so alien that no words could describe it. She screamed and screamed, her mind refusing to comprehend what had just happened.
As she was screaming, something pierced the arm she had raised in front of her face in a futile and defensive reflex.
This pain was so inconsequential compared to the rest that she barely noticed it until the hair hooked and started to drag her towards the laughing villain.
Minoru was going to die. At the USJ, he had known this was going to happen, and even if he had somehow managed to survive, his death had been predicted that day. Every breath, every dirty thought, had just been a suspended sentence.
He was walking slowly, afraid that his next step would bring him to something horrible. He had one sticky ball in each hand, aware that it wouldn't protect him. He wasn't like Todoroki and Bakugou or even like the rest of the boys in the class.
He didn't defeat bad guys. He just barely survived them.
In the end, Minoru was right.
His next step did lead him to something horrible.
Minoru didn't immediately understand what he was looking at. He saw the blood, of course. He saw the villain that looked like he had emerged from a horror movie or at least from the nightmare of someone deeply disturbed. But he kept looking and looking, following the sneaker he was seeing, the bloodied leg, and couldn't see which unfortunate classmate had just stumbled in front of a villain.
When he realized that he was looking at a cut off leg, Minoru didn't scream but only because all the air in his lungs was frozen solid. Still, he raised his hands to his mouth, trying to prevent any sound from escaping it or just to keep himself from throwing up in abject fear.
The leather-clad-villain grabbed the leg and held it like it was some kind of treasure.
He was drooling.
Minoru had just managed to hide behind a tree when he started to hear the noises of mastication.
Neito had four minutes and thirty seconds to find someone.
He was running at full speed but there were only trees and various things on which to trip since he was running in the woods in the middle of the night. None of his classmates were here. He didn't even see anyone from 1-A, even though this might have been the only time where he would have been genuinely happy to see them.
Because in four minutes and twenty-five seconds, the quirks he had borrowed from his classmates would be gone.
Soon, he would be a sitting duck.
Neito didn't immediately recognize the still form standing among the trees as a person. He almost ran into him, carried by his momentum, but some atavistic instinct made him freeze before his brain could fully register what he was seeing.
Crimson leathery skin strung out on monstrous muscles that would put Shishida to shame. A head that had dropped any pretense that it belonged to something from this era, looking like what a mix between something feline and the most vicious velociraptor Neito could have imagined. Impressive talons finished his fingers, the kind that belonged less to a hawk and more to something from a horror movie.
Fuck.
The villain smiled at him, revealing a row of teeth that were the stuff of nightmares.
One moment, Kouta was in his room. The next, he was throwing himself to the ground as something huge and dark almost ripped his head off. Someone screamed in pain or maybe despair. Someone else screamed, the voice not belonging to a human voice but still managing to convey rage.
Blind panic flooded the child's brain. He had to run. He had to escape.
"TOKOYAMI! CALM DOWN!" a girl screamed, more to make herself heard than because she had lost her cool.
Kouta recognized this voice. It belonge to the pony-tailed-girl who ate a lot but he couldn't see her. The woods were too dark. There wasn't even a moon tonight.
"I CAN'T! RUN!" the bird face answered, sounding in pain and horrified, terrified at the idea of hurting her while fists of darkness were hitting everywhere.
Kouta didn't know if the black-haired-girl did run. He didn't look back. Instead, he crawled, keeping low, and once he was out of reach, he ran as fast as his legs could carry him. There were no thoughts in his brain except the certitude that he had to hide or something horrible would happen to him.
Asui and Toru were lying on Uraraka, probably crushing her but the alternative was worse.
Above them, one of the explosive noumus they had seen at the mall was perched on a tree, trying to find a target. But Toru was the perfect invisible flesh blanket and Asui's camouflage had become better in the last few days.
They waited, seconds passing too slowly. Toru was sweating. She could feel it in her back.
Eventually, after a small eternity, the noumu took flight. Toru waited thirty seconds, she even counted them, before she started to get to her feet and Asui followed her. They were giving a hand to Uraraka, who was a little red in the face, when Asui's head whipped in the opposite direction that the explosive noumu had taken.
A second explosive noumu was watching them, his skin already starting to glow.
"Oi, Half and Half, do you have something more important to do?" Bakugou almost snarled. "A fucking date to cancel, maybe?"
Shouto quickly finished typing his message but he didn't put his phone back in the pocket of his UA tracksuit pants because of his classmate's comment. It was because he was carrying the vice class representative and with her chest pressed to his back, he could feel her breathing and her heartbeat picking up. Yaoyorozu would be waking up soon and he didn't want her reading over his shoulder.
"Mind your own business," Shouto warned him, unease starting to rise within him.
It probably said a lot about him that he was more worried about his best friend who has to be sleeping soundly in his bed than about his classmates who were in the middle of a villain attack.
Because he just knew that Anyone would be called. They were in the middle of nowhere and hero students, and even the pro heroes, could do the math. Calling for back-up would take time. While there was an organization specialized in dispatching agents quickly just one app away.
Midoriya might have said that his organization wouldn't go to non-verified members of the server but they would still call for his help because survival was never about rules.
And Shouto knew Midoriya. He might be able to lie to himself and convince himself that he could leave people asking for help alone but Shouto knew better and so did All for One, Nagisa and whoever would be needed to sit on him and prevent him from running to a place full of heroes who wouldn't hesitate to arrest him.
But even if Shouto stayed silent, Midoriya would know that the Summer Camp was attacked and no one would be able to prevent him from rushing to Shouto's unwanted rescue.
So Shouto hoped that, for once in his life, his best friend would listen to him and believe in him.
"Don't fucking bother," Bakugou barked. "No pro will arrive in time to help us. We're on our own."
"Thank you for your input," Shouto breathed, exasperated.
For a moment, he thought that Bakugou was going to explode right here and there. They had never been able to stand each other. Bakugou hated him because he seemed to hate anyone on principle and Shouto disliked him because he had tortured his friend for ten years.
Shouto would have given his left arm to be Midoriya's childhood friend. To have someone so loyal, so good, with him during the hell that his early life had been. And Bakugou Katsuki had done his best to break him.
But Bakugou simply insulted Shouto quietly and kept walking, fuming in silence.
The smoke was starting to reach them and the fire wasn't far. Shouto was tempted to do something about it but it would take a lot of ice, which would leave him exhausted, and with such lack of visibility, there was a high probability he would freeze one of his classmates.
Instead, he hoisted Yaoyorozu's limp form up on his back because she had slipped in the time he had needed to send the message. They had found Aoyama and her, passed out away from the road, surrounded by the signs of a struggle.
Aoyama, who was slung in a fireman's carry over Bakugou's shoulder, started to stir. There was a dark spot of dry blood in his blond hair. Shouto doubted that he had knocked himself out against a tree while running in the dark so someone had neutralized him. At least, it looked like he would wake up soon and tell them what had happened. Or at least walk on his own.
Shouto was quite surprised that Yaoyorozu wasn't stirring herself or making any movement indicating that she was waking up. People who were asleep or unconscious breathed slowly, their chest rising fully and descending deeply while Yaoyorozu's heartbeat and breathing had been fast for a while.
Uh.
If he was wrong, he would have to apologize to Yaoyorozu.
Shouto abruptly removed his arms. If Yaoyozu had been unconscious, she would have fallen to the ground and probably thrown several invectives at him. Instead, her legs circled around his waist, her right arm around his shoulder and she hugged him from behind.
"You're so smart, Todoroki-kun," she whispered in his ear, giving him goosebumps.
Something sharp appeared in his field of vision, so fast that it was blurry enough for Shouto not to know what it was, but it was aiming for his eye.
His left side burst into flames, eager to get some personal space and Yaoyozu got the message, jumping from him with a cry before he badly burned her.
"HALF AND HALF!"
The vice class representative was still in the air when Shouto's ice caught her, trapping her until only her chest and head weren't trapped in the ice. A knife was still in her hand.
"You didn't even hesitate!" she said, something dark in her eyes, like he had betrayed her when he had prevented her from stabbing him. "You could have burned me alive! And you call yourself a hero?"
In this moment, Shouto had the confirmation that this wasn't Yaoyorozu under a mind manipulation quirk.
"Like father, like son, right?" she smiled, and everything about her expression was wrong for the face of the other recommended student in 1-A.
Shouto crushed the hint of annoyance those words gave birth to while Bakugou, a hand now free so he could use his quirk more easily, approached.
"What the hell did you do to Ponytail?"
"This one?" she smiled but now she had fangs that definitely didn't belong to Yaoyorozu. "Nothing! She is so cute but we didn't get to become friends! I couldn't even play with the adorable blond boy! Couldn't let you two suspect anything!"
She tilted her head and with the movement, some goo fell down the ice, revealing another girl, with blond hair and golden eyes. She shook herself like a dog out of the rain, literally shaking off her disguise.
"Todoroki Shouto. Bakugou Katsuki," she spoke their name like she was tasting them.
Bakugou and Shouto immediately realized that they were specifically targeted. They whipped around, looking for a threat and what looked like an explosion of thin razor blades surged at them from the wood.
In less than a second, Bakugou and Shouto had the time to see a woman with prehensile hair standing in the woods, holding what looked like a passed out man by the scruff, while they used their powers in order not to be skewered.
They used their flames and explosions at the same time.
There was no pain quite as bad as fire. A burn refused to leave its victim, biting into them until they fully healed and even then, a burn could hurt months later when it was close to a heat source.
Shouto didn't remember the pain when his face had been scarred with boiling water. He remembered being in pain but the sensation itself had been lost to time and to the fog that came with long periods of convalescence.
This time, pain didn't spare him.
This time, he felt every sensation as his own flames licked his skin, digging into his flesh and bringing something his mind, too used to wielding fire as his, couldn't quite comprehend.
Bakugou's scream answered his own as his quirk also turned against him and he saw him falling to his knees, clutching his broken and burned wrist, a moment before Shouto crashed to the ground, his body seizing.
Hisashi was starting to believe that bad luck was contagious. More exactly, he was starting to believe that Izuku's trouble magnet tendencies had rubbed on him, making the simplest plan a mess.
He was hovering in the sky, watching quite an impressive fire forest. More exactly, someone had set off multiple fires to create an approximative circle of flames that was slowly but surely trapping everyone inside.
Including a pro hero with an extremely useful quirk that he had intended to visit tonight. Somehow, Hisashi doubted that she would be kind enough to stay sleeping in her bed during an attack, so he would have to find her before her quirk was lost to the flames.
I am definitely going to get blamed for that new attack, he sighed.
Kurogiri, who was hovering next to him as a dark cloud, started to make concerned noises that Hisashi had learned to associate with one teenage villain about to make his life more difficult.
"Yes?" Hisashi calmly enquired.
Get on with it, was left unsaid.
"Yami wants to be warped to the Summer Camp," his warper said as he looked at his phone. Whatever Izuku was typing, it was leaving a trail of notifications. "One of the students must have asked for Anyone's help."
Of course they would. Heroes were so eager to decry Anyone when he was eclipsing them but so prompt to ask for his help as soon as they realized they were out of their depths.
"Things would get needlessly complicated if he saw us here," Hisashi reminded Kurogiri. "He does tend to jump to conclusions when I am concerned."
Kurogiri nodded. "Yes, he is now asking where you are. And promising consequences if we both are at Snowdrift's summer camp."
Of course he would.
"Warp him far away from the camp so that we have the time to find Ragdoll. And keep an eye out for Snowdrift. Yami would be intolerable if he lost that one."
Kurogiri gave him a glance.
"Have you noticed you often talk about Yami like he is a toddler who can only be pacified with the right toys?"
"And such an approach never failed me so far."
Kurogiri chuckled, only for the quiet laugh to stop abruptly. He tilted his head, considering something, before nodding.
"Don't wait for me," he said before disappearing.
Hisashi blinked, feeling vaguely abandoned.
Then he remembered which pro heroes were at the camp and that if those new villains had any sense, they would put the priorities on neutralizing them.
Kouta only stopped running when he reached his hiding place, deep in the mountains. Here, he was safe. Here, no one would find him.
But then it hit him.
He was the only one to be safe. Aunt Shino, Aunt Ryuko, Aunt Tomoko and Uncle Yawara… Even the stupid hero students, they were all in the forest and maybe… Maybe…
"Kouta?" Mandalay's voice lifted him from the panic in which he was drowning. "If you are near the camp, go back! I can't come to you!"
Deep down, he wanted to curl into a ball, to hide and not move until someone found him. He had to force himself to move, urging his legs to take one step at a time, until he reached the edge of the cliff and looked at the forest.
Any hope of going back was dashed by the vision of a circle of fire spreading through the forest, cutting him from the camp. Worse, it was trapping the people who, unlike Kouta, didn't have the time to flee the incandescent perimeter, inside the inferno.
"If you're too far, find a student and stay with them! They will protect you!"
"They couldn't wait for me?"
Kouta almost jumped out of his skin as he heard the deep voice and he turned to see a large figure wearing a dark cloak, looking at the blaze with what could only be qualified as exasperation.
"How am I supposed to get back in there, now?" the man rolled his eyes, his hood falling back to reveal a mask. But Kouta didn't need to see his face. He knew his voice, even though he had only heard it distorted through videos.
He had been laughing. He had been laughing and saying how he regretted how weak they were.
Kouta took a step back.
'' … You hear me, Kouta?'' Mandalay's voice kept ringing inside his head. ''I am so sorry, Kouta, I don't know where you are. If you're near the camp, go back! If you're not, hide until you find a student and stay with them!''
Muscular, the man who had killed his parents, tranquilly followed him.
"It's a nice hat you got there! Would you trade it for this lame mask?"
Kouta couldn't run.
No one was coming to save him.
Someone fell from the sky.
Whoever they were, they just appeared from a dark fog, looking very startled about the absence of solid ground under their feet. A "Fuuuuuuu-" sound reached Kouta. Muscular, startled, kinda raised his arms.
The newcomer landed in the arms of the man who had killed Kouta's parents.
The child couldn't say which of them looked the most surprised about it. There was an awkward moment where they looked at each other, puzzled and obviously wondering how to react, then the hoodie-wearing-creep jumped out of Muscular's arms.
The vigilante from Anyone (because Kouta watched the news and could recognize their stupid uniform) promptly pretended that nothing embarrassing had happened and looked around.
"You wouldn't know where I can find the UA summer camp, would you? Full of hero students? Maybe with some villains here and there?"
Muscular and Kouta slowly pointed in the direction of the Summer Camp. The vigilante turned his head and looked at the forest fire that was impossible to breach unless one had the quirk for it or a firefighter gear.
The vigilante muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "I'm going to kill that warper."