detrametal - Nice to know that the humour's working :D

Shahryar - It's surprisingly nice to write Deku & Kacchan volatile bromance, ngl. And it's very fun to write Shoto Todoroki like, well, like this. Also Deku isn't a demihuman :P And you might be onto something with Uraraka. And nice to know that you're a person of culture who appreciates the gem that Phineas & Ferb is.

(***)

"Oh. Wow." Midoriya says dryly. "I'm going to die so much."

"Yes, there is a moment during the early stage of every Initiated's career when further 'you're going to die' announcements just stop giving you the same emotional impact," Yagi admits. Yeah, that's one way of looking at that. "The unfortunate thing is that I believe I have run out of potential clues to follow, at least for now."

"That… I see." Midoriya sighs. "So the investigation is going to stay quiet at least until my dad decides to emerge from whatever dimension he hid in."

"He probably just traveled through it, and has already returned to our world… somewhere else," Yagi replies. "Probably. I'm going to be on the lookout for him, especially as he might be a threat to the UA, or at the very least has some worrying plans for the school." Midoriya gives him The Stare. "Look, he didn't have to stay in this particular town. You're a minor, you'd have to follow him. But he stayed here and enrolled you in the UA, despite being a powerful Initiate that was clearly hiding from the faculty. How would you describe that fact with one word?"

That was easy.

"Suspicious," Midoriya replies. Yagi nods.

"Precisely, Young Midoriya." He replies. "So I'm going to stay on the lookout both for him and for your… suspected mother. In the meantime, focus on getting the hang of the magic world, alright?"

"... how much will I have to pay for all of that?" Midoriya deadpans. Yagi actually ends up laughing.

"Don't worry about that, Young Midoriya." He replies. "I do realize that Candidacy is dangerous, but the whole point of its existence is to let teenagers like you take the first steps into the world of magic on their own, with the faculty making sure that it's not 'excessively' dangerous. Your father sounds like a potential source of 'excessive danger'. Hence, dealing with him is my job."

"Define 'excessively dangerous', please," Midoriya replies. "Because after meeting Toga, I'm not sure what the faculty means by that."

"Within the confines of this town…" Yagi replies. "... you'll not encounter anything that you cannot defeat, repel or escape from. Deaths happen, but the causes of them are human stupidity, excessively bad decisions, or other people. Not things that you had absolutely no influence on."

"What about Toga?" Midoriya asks. "I still remember her wiping out an entire cabal on her own. That sounds like something that no random person can deal with on their own."

"It's more complicated than that," Yagi replies. "Toga is dangerous and crafty, but almost all of their victims were people that let themselves be lured into her safehouse or those that attacked her. She's still human enough for The Censor to not hide her from the non-Initiates, meaning that if she attacks her target in front of them, they'll see it and will report her to the normal teachers, meaning that she'd probably be expelled. Even without them being aware of the supernatural part of what happened. You can keep her off your back merely by sticking to crowds until you join a cabal. For the Initiates, such behavior is basically survival 101."

"The best way of surviving as an Initiate… is to avoid threats entirely," Midoriya says, prompting Yagi to nod. In that light, it makes some degree of sense. Joining groups of Initiates for self-defense, making sure that you aren't alone, making sure that you're aware of your surroundings and continue running countermeasures on identified regional threats, not letting yourself be lured anywhere by people you don't know… that sounded like a lot of important lessons to learn.

"I think that it's time to let your friends in." Yagi then says while glancing at the door. "You feel like you're in the right mind for that talk? I did drop some pretty heavy things on you, and I know that it's not easy for…"

It's… actually nice to have a single figure of authority that's not a total dick towards him, Izuku decides.

With how life seems to hate him, he's 100% sure that once he becomes a part of the Black Course, he'll get Aizawa as a mentor. Just to screw with him some more.

"It's alright," Midoriya replies. He… already kind of digested the revelation that he might not be fully human. He'll still have a talk about that with Kacchan, but that's for later. "Let them in."

(***)

"Alright, kids," Yagi announces once everyone is seated. "We're going to have a quick lecture concerning the basics of magic… I say lecture, but I really hope for some active participation from your side." Bakugou looks vaguely hyped about that, probably due to treating this as a form of a dare. Midoriya shivers internally. "Once that'll be done, you'll get an assignment from me that can be completed at your convenience, and that will allow you to test your grasp on the basics… without being TOO dangerous."

Midoriya raises his hand.

"Please, define 'too dangerous'." Izuku then says. Yagi groans lightly, while Bakugou gives him a vaguely irritated look.

Is asking about danger despite being a danger magnet a form of hypocrisy? Kacchan looks like he's considering pointing that out.

"Not that talk again, Young Midoriya," Yagi replies steadfastly. "First things first. What do you think magic is? Toga, don't answer that." He quickly adds when it becomes obvious that Toga is about to open her mouth.

She looks dejected about it. Damn.

"Well, there are apparently some scary things out there," Midoriya replies. Kacchan doesn't know the answer, and it's clear that it pisses him off. "Magic is borrowing or channeling their power to do things that shouldn't be normally possible."

"Passable answer, yes." Yagi nods. "We refer to those 'scary things' as Powers. They are godlike entities that, in fact, inspired most if not all religions and cults in human history. They aren't omnipotent, but when compared to us… Well, it's the old 'human versus ant' analogy at its finest. It's extremely hard to make them actually realize you exist, which… is rarely good." He glances at Toga. "I believe that Young Toga knows that from an autopsy."

"Yup!" Toga replies with a cheerful smile. "I overdid magic, suddenly bam, I'm a ghoul! Not a random mutation or madness, so my patron must have noticed me and made me look cooler. Then it probably forgot I existed."

… okay, good to know. Midoriya deeply respects Toga's ability to dish out her traumatic backstory while cheerfully smiling. Bakugou has some distinctly different opinions on the subject, clearly enough. But he keeps it to himself.

"Those Powers have different names in various cultures." Yagi continues, ignoring Toga once again. "In the last few decades, once the global culture settled in, we've had them systematized into several pantheons with a unified naming convention, but if you run into older books and artifacts, expect having to guess out a lo… Yes, Young Bakugou?"

"How many of those 'Powers' are out there?" Kacchan asks.

"Several dozen major ones, probably a lot more minor ones but those tend to come and go." Yagi replies. Yeah, that's… a lot. "As for the naming convention I mentioned: each pantheon has its own name, followed by 'of X'. So, for example, Young Toga's patron and the source of her magic is the Ancient of Flesh. Young Midoriya, in the meantime, learned his first spell from the Primordial of Fire."

"How many…" Bakugou asks again.

"Four pantheons," Yagi replies. Judging from the look on Bakugou's face, it was the answer to the right question. "Archons, Ancients, Primordials, and Shapers. Archons are a source of something close to a 'white magic', except it's still as volatile as all others, and are sometimes compared due to that to the 'biblically accurate angels' thing. Ancients are pretty much the source of what can be said to be 'black magic', although as you can guess from Young Toga's presence here, it's not exactly banned. Primordials are mostly about elements, so fire, water, air, earth, plus a few more. Shapers are about reality. Their magic lets you play with the laws of physics and the material world in general. Anything from manipulating gravity to firing literal lasers from your eyes. Questions?"

"Uhm, so from the whole 'cosmic horror story' vibes I'm getting, I assume that archons don't really classify as good guys, right?" Midoriya decides to clear that uncertainty right away.

Yagi sighs.

"Archon of Mercy might let you heal a lot of injuries…" He replies. "... but eventually, you'll offer yourself to Young Toga as a meal because you'll be so far gone that you'll consider that as an act of kindness and selflessness - and see absolutely nothing wrong with that. I saw enough malevolent 'white mages' and benevolent 'black mages' to not assume anything about the people I meet on the basis of the Power that's their patron. As for the Powers themselves, attempting to communicate with them is a waste of time, so it's not like we can ask them for the plans. Or even understand those plans. Or even know if they have plans."

Yagi then sighs once again.

"Just, whatever happens, remember that trying to actively worship them is in most cases a horrible idea," Yagi replies. "Exploit them for power, while trying to balance the connection with them with your own anonymity, yes. Worship them as deities, no. Because they WILL notice you. And the life of a magic user is one of trying to find a balance between being noticed and staying anonymous. You can't learn powerful magic without the Power realizing you exist, but if you go slightly too far, you're at risk of a sudden loss of humanity. Like what happened to Young Toga."

"It was quite cool." Toga decides to cut in. "Pretty freaky at the beginning, but I'm used to it now."

"I don't think…" Bakugou says. "... that you're supposed to get fucking used to that." Toga gives him a surprised look. Bakugou groans.

"Yeah, let's just hurry to the end of this talk, because I get the feeling that it's going to go in a weird direction if we stay around for too long." Yagi decides to speak Midoriya's thoughts. "So, you learn magic by being exposed to things touched by the Power in question. For example, Young Midoriya learned his first spell by reading a journal of someone who was clearly driven into… probably madness, or at least a high degree of weirdness, by the Primordial of Fire. Resulting in the words and the meaning behind them carrying a sliver of the Primordial's power. Normally, you need repeated exposure from multiple sources tied to a singular Power to get anywhere. As a result…"

Now, Midoriya understands.

"So the whole bit about 'get ambitious, investigate or fight things'..." Midoriya says while raising his hand. "... is so that we can obtain more such 'shards' of lore, which also tells the faculty what we're clearly striving for before becoming a proper Black Course student?"

Yagi looks borderline relieved.

"Precisely, Young Midoriya!" He says with some finger guns to boot. "You can learn the basics from multiple Powers. However, once you start exploring deeper, it's considered wise to focus on a single Power. It's already hard to balance attention and anonymity in such a case, trying to do that with multiple Powers basically guarantees the bad end sooner rather than later. Now, the second subject. Sanity damage and corporeal instability. Why?" He asks them.

Toga raises her hand. Yagi shakes his head. Toga, once again, looks dejected.

"Because when we use magic too much or see too much spooky shit or get exposed to too much spooky shit…" Bakugou replies. "... we start looking spooky?"

"Colorful, but not incorrect," Yagi replies. "Mental and bodily changes are the result of the supernatural exerting pressure on yourself without the guiding hand of the Power to make the resulting form stable, like Ancient of Flesh does with the ghouls. Human minds and bodies have a tendency to push up against those changes, meaning that if given enough time without repeated exposure, changes tend to revert or at least soften. Think of this as having two stats for your sanity - current and max. You start having 100 in both. If you're hit by something so badly that the current one goes to 20, it'll eventually grow back to the max… although receiving such a powerful blow probably reduces your max sanity to 90."

"That makes sense." Midoriya nods. "Judging from To… Himichan's case, I assume that there is no such pushback when a Power does their magic?"

"Correct." Yagi nods. "Powers don't simply break your sanity or corporeal stability, they alter you on a deeper level. It might be a bit of a sketchy comparison, but… you know what gender dysphoria is, right? Female mind, male body or vice versa, causing the sense of unease over the mismatch?"

He decides to summarize it just in case. They all nod.

"Normal mutations are akin to someone with a male body and male identity getting his body altered to be female." Yagi continues. "They'll perceive it as unnatural, and will - in this case, even unconsciously - strive to correct that. However, when Toga was turned into a ghoul, her 'identity' was altered as well. Becoming a ghoul was unnatural and scary to her - until it happened because then being a human was unnatural and scary. There's a reason why cases of reclaiming your humanity are extremely rare. And it practically doesn't happen for the demihumans in the second generation or afterward, because they tend to lack external attachments to humanity, such as still human family members, to motivate them into even trying."

That was… kind of existentially dreadful. On the other hand, Toga felt different after hearing that explanation.

She wasn't just a random nutcase. She was, at some point in life, a completely normal girl that decided to learn magic and went a step too far. Her current self… wasn't exactly her fault. It wasn't exactly her decision to eat humans, and her apparent lack of issues with that…

To her, denying herself the human meat was probably as illogical as to Izuku was refusing to breathe. Eating humans was just natural to her.

A natural thing that resulted in who knew how many deaths. The world clearly wasn't fair. If there was an Archon of Justice out there, Midoriya really wanted to file a complaint. About a lot of things.

What would happen if Izuku used too much fire magic? Bam, and he is a… what exactly? Fire elemental-equivalent? If overusing fire magic meant developing pyromania, did that mean that burning everything was natural to 'fire elementals' just as eating human flesh was to ghouls?

"Alright!" Yagi claps his hands. "That concludes what can be considered to be the briefest possible summary of magic. Now, it's time for an assignment. Unlike attending this orientation, it is entirely optional." He adds. "However, be aware that going on it might be beneficial to you in the long-term."

"Give it." Bakugou, of course, has his competitive spirit all but raging. "Sensei." He adds after Yagi gives him a rather dry look.

"Right." Yagi sighs, before pulling out a folded map of Takoba city from his pocket. "There is an abandoned house pointed out on that map. Inside of it… lives something supernatural. Dangerous, yes, however not to a group of people like the one in front of me. Unless they act criminally stupid. That's your assignment." He adds while handing the map to Midoriya.

"I think you forgot to mention the fuck we're supposed to do with it." Bakugou says. In his typical, abrasive way.

"As I said, it is an entirely optional assignment." Yagi replies. "Ignoring it is an entirely valid choice of action, akin to playing it safe and giving a potential danger a wide berth. You can also investigate the building, check out the magical section of the wikipedia or ask around your acquaintances… like Young Todoroki… in order to identify the entity in question without facing it, and then report all of that to me. And, of course, you can do all of that and then enter the building in order to eliminate it." He shrugs. "The choice is yours."

"Nerd, that one's on you." Bakugou announces. "Your ability to investigate random fucking things and then drown everyone around you in trivia mutterstorms is borderline fucking divine."

Midoriya isn't going to take that face down.

"What are you talking about?!" Midoriya immediately replies. "That isn't tru…"

Bakugou isn't going to take that face down, either.

"Deku." Bakugou cuts in. "Someone once disagreed with you on whether one character from an anime that you've only watched once a few years ago was gay or not. You ended up watching the whole thing again and spending literal hours researching associated media and even the authors fucking tweets just to give that guy a thirty minutes long lecture after he already managed to forget about the argument. Don't you fucking tell me that it's not true."

"Uhm," Midoriya remembers that particular incident, and he'd really like to say that this doesn't prove anything but it fucking does. Shit. "I mean…"

"I think…" Yagi suddenly says. "... that you'll all fit right in. Just remember that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer. Now, you were also supposed to receive an orientation when more combat-oriented situations were involved, from Aizawa-sensei of course, but…"

Midoriya reads the rest of the subject from Yagi's face.

"But he decided that wasting his time with people that are probably going to die soon is illogical and told you to relay the assignment, if there is any, to us, before leaving," Midoriya says. "Am I right?"

"Yes, you're entirely right." Yagi says, before sighing loudly and pinching the bridge of his nose.

"God I fucking hate that guy." Bakugou groans.

"Big mood." Midoriya replies.

"He's cool, one time my prey asked him for help in front of me and he…" Toga was about to speak, but then she got three very emotionally scarce stares. "... you know what, nevermind. Please continue."

Wow, each time that Midoriya decides that they hit the absolute bottom of Aizawa-sensei's teaching skills, something like this happens. That guy's unbelievable, and not in a good way.

"He's an extremely experienced Initiate with a lot of experience in doing borderline suicide missions for the Supernatural Public Safety Commission." Yagi comments. "And a very good teacher, once he actually puts his back into it. Unfortunately, his traumatic backstory t-m left him a bit… jaded." Did he seriously add the vocal version of copyright ™ to those words?! Wow. "I'll give you a quick rundown in his stead. Rule one - if it's physical, it can be killed. Rule one dot one - sometimes you're going to need a small nuke to get the job done. Questions about that?"

Bakugou raises his hand.

"Where can we obtain the nukes?" He promptly - and with a straight face - asks. Midoriya lets out a slight choking sound in the background.

"Ask the artificers and prepare a lot of contribution points," Yagi replies with an equally straight face. "Those guys and gals sometimes scare me a little. You can certainly obtain guns from them, and there is a shooting range in the restricted area of the school where you can train yourself in using them. Young Bakugou has some physical combat training, if I remember correctly?"

"Yeah," Bakugou replies. "Boxing, wrestling, even fucking kendo. Also, I might have trained some baseball but quit because hitting the ball with the baseball bat is fucking boring."

Midoriya sighs in the background. Classic Kacchan, being himself so much that it hurts. He decided that baseball looked cool, dominated Rozaryu's baseball club, then decided that they were all a bunch of losers, refused to elaborate and left.

Goddamnit, Kacchan.

"You know what, I'm not going to ask what exactly you preferred hitting with that bat." Yagi replies. Midoriya believes that decision to be extremely wise. "But consider capitalizing on those skills. Bigger things will walk through you unless you obtain some body-strengthening magic, but there is no such thing as a combat skill that's useless for an Initiate. Young Midoriya, consider learning how to use a gun, while using your fire magic as a last resort when something gets closer to you. Obtaining some tips on self-defense might be a good idea too. Young Toga, be yourself."

"Yay!" Himiko says cheerfully while waving her hands around. "I can do that!"

No one doubted that for a millisecond.

"This is a fairly balanced party, but being balanced is rarely enough." Yagi continues. "Think about getting at least one more close-quarters combatant. Doesn't have to be as specialized as Young Bakugou. Drop by the artificers' laboratories if you want to get some actual equipment. Now…" He pauses for a second, before resuming the talk. "... potential enemies."

"Aren't you rushing this talk a little bit too much?" Izuku decided to ask.

"I wasn't even supposed to give you this talk, and I don't want Aizawa to know that I did it behind his back." Yagi replies. Yeah, it makes sense. While being blindingly revolting, but… they're kind of used to it. "Most of the minor stuff is what we often refer to as cryptids. So animals, either from our world or from Elsewheres, evolved to take advantage of minor bits of magic to do things that can't be explained by normal biology, so the Censor keeps them hidden. Imagine a subspecies of wolves that can breathe fire."

"That sounds actually quite cool," Bakugou announces with a rather intimidating look on his face.

"It does, doesn't it?" Yagi, surprisingly enough, agrees with him. Midoriya groans. He can only hope that Bakugou won't try to goddamn tame a wolf like that. "Then you get undead, which is everything that remains active despite having biologically expired. Might be physical or not. Rarely causes sanity or corporeal damages, but is often just human enough… because humans are the most common source of undead… to be tricky and problematic to deal with."

"Also they taste bad." Toga adds. Midoriya isn't sure if he wanted to know. "But sometimes it's not the bad type of bad, it's like strangely tasting foreign cuisine or something."

Now Midoriya is fairly certain that he didn't want to know. Judging from the look on Bakugou's face, he isn't the only one.

"Then come demihumans." Yagi adds, giving Toga a slightly colder stare. "Which means everything that used to be human but stopped being one, while still being technically alive. Most common Powers gave birth to at least a single species, although with a lot of them being consistently exterminated on-sight as Initiates for being dangerous, they are rarely numerous. Young Toga is an example of… well, I won't say 'well-adapted' demihuman, but she certainly found herself a niche."

"So it's the case of 'coexistence isn't possible' moment?" Midoriya asks.

"If coexistence is possible with something, you can expect it to be co-existing with us already." Yagi replies. "We have too many serious problems to create new ones. There are cases of demihumans being accepted among the Initiates, for as long as they aren't a threat to the greater human society, but the scale and a very presence of that varies between countries. Now, the final category. Aberrants."

"Aberrants?" Bakugou asks.

"Aberrants." Yagi confirms. Midoriya shakes his head in the background. "Basically speaking, everything of supernatural origin that was never human and was never born naturally. The truly eldritch things are all aberrants, typically created, spawned, birthed or whatever else by one of the Powers. Some are more unified, enough to have something that can be described as a 'species', or perhaps a 'type' or a 'class'. Others are much more varied. Those tend to be both the most alien and the most dangerous of things you can encounter out there, but as beings born from the Powers, they also offer the most benefits if bound, banished, slain and so on. It's also what typically gets summoned by people."

… so, his mother was (probably) an aberrant that couldn't figure out how physical works so she (was it even a she?) shaped itself after the nearest living organism. It was an interesting thing to know.

If, well, you excluded the whole existential horror accompanying the concept.

"Alright, kids!" Yagi announces. "That concludes the brief summary. As for the assignment…" He pulls out YET ANOTHER map of Takoba. "Yes, this is another map. Yes, this is another abandoned house. We have a number of them in the city."

"Sorry to ask, but is the school actually maintaining those for Candidate training?" Midoriya decided to ask.

"Absolutely," Yagi confirms his suspicion. "That's why we know exactly what is there before we send any Candidates. Those houses are monitored and occasionally… have their occupation arranged, if you catch my drift. In this case: sometimes, the Initiates are forced to work as pest exterminators. Something not from the mundane world has set up a nest in the building and began to slowly expand its numbers. You're supposed to wipe it out before it starts to take over neighboring houses, the ones inhabited by people. The choice of method is yours…"

Bakugou raises his hand, with enthusiasm suddenly blooming on his face.

"... but be aware that blowing the building up or setting it aflame isn't going to earn you a lot of points unless the threat actually justified the nuclear option." Yagi adds.

The enthusiasm on Kacchan's face suddenly pales.

(***)

Honestly, tell me if that was a decent exposition or not, I need to establish some baselines for that. I used to have LARGE problems with very painful expositions in my old writings, but I think that nowadays I got it mostly under control. I still would like your opinion on that :P