Shahryar - Yeah, I personally speaking love the dynamic those two have too :D Hilarious. And I agree that Korikoshi sucks at character development, sigh.

Detrametal - There'll be more worldbuilding, just typically in smaller doses :P

Yomunot - Yay, painless expositions. I'm clearly improving! :D

(***)

As the meeting ended Toga quickly vanished (probably to avoid spending time around Yagi Toshinori, with whom she had some clear issues). That allowed Izuku to have a quick talk with his best friend.

Naturally, about what Yagi told him before the orientation/lecture. He really had no secrets from his best friend. He practically Initiated him to have someone that he doesn't have to hide things from! Not telling him would be stupid.

Unfortunately, Kacchan was himself.

"I always knew you were a fucking weirdo, Deku," Kacchan replies. "I just didn't know that you're part Cthulhu, but it really checks out."

"Kacchaaaan!" Midoriya groans. "I'm seriously freaking out over here."

"Grow a fucking spine, Deku," Bakugou replies, glaring at him rather… angrily. "You're partially not human, how the fuck does that matter? See Toga, she's fifty times more inhuman than you'll ever be and you're still getting a boner whenever she winks at you."

… that's one way of putting it. However, his words give Midoriya a rather scary idea.

"Kacchan, what if I find her super sexy because of that?!" Midoriya replies, staring at Bakugou with a shock on his face. "What if I'm super weird because my mind is Cthulhu-like and…"

"Deku, you fucking idiot!" Bakugou erupts, giving him a pause. "If thinking that freaky stuff is sexy means that Cthulhu banged your parent and you're a human-aberrant hybrid, then considering the amount of fucking perverts on the internet, Mankind is about to stop fucking existing as a species. Get a fucking grip. You can be a total weirdass pervert and still be a human being."

Midoriya stares at him, because that was almost uncharacteristically deep thinking for Bakugou. But…

"Oh, cool, so it doesn't have to be because of th…" Midoriya says only to cut it short when Bakugou glares at him. "NOT LIKE I'M A WEIRDASS PERVERT OR ANYTHING!"

"You certainly fucking aren't." Bakugou groans. "Look, I'm going to train at the gym before going home. You go start doing your investigation stuff. Also, any idea on the additional teammate?"

"Weren't we going to go check out where those artificer guys are?" Midoriya asks, clearly surprised.

"Well, do you know where they are?" Bakugou asks. Midoriya opens his mouth but finds no words to speak. "Ask Messy Hair tomorrow, she probably knows. In the meantime, focus on that."

Right, she apparently murdered someone there, so she has to know where to find it. Yeah. That's for tomorrow, though. In the meantime, he has an idea.

"Wait a second," Midoriya asks before pulling out his phone.

FireBroccoli: Uraraka-san

FireBroccoli: I have a question.

Astronomical: ?

That was a fast answer, huh.

FireBroccoli: Did you get the second orientation?

Astronomical: The basics of magic and combat?

FireBroccoli: Yeah.

Astronomical: It's supposed to be tomorrow for me.

Astronomical: Why do you ask?

FireBroccoli: Okay, so I have another question.

FireBroccoli: Are you, perhaps, skilled in close-quarters?

Astronomical: uhm, define skilled?

Astronomical: I'm fairly strong and I learned martial arts a tiny bit but mostly self-defense

Astronomical: does it count?

FireBroccoli: maybe

FireBroccoli: part of the orientation is getting to do an assignment

FireBroccoli: investigate something scary, kill something scary, and so on

FireBroccoli: we were suggested to look for an additional teammate

Astronomical: YES

Astronomical: yes

Astronomical: I want to join pls

Astronomical: this school is scary and I don't want to be alone ;_;

FireBroccoli: … alright, you're joining the party (under probation)

FireBroccoli: contact me again after you'll have your second orientation

Astronomical: yes sir! :D

(***)

"Looks like I got us another team…" Midoriya announces, only to cut his words short when he realized that Bakugou didn't wait for him. "KACCHAAAAAN!"

"FUUUCK YOUUU NEEEERD!" He hears from a distance. Bakugou didn't leave him long ago, it seems.

Right. Everything's normal.

(***)

After returning home - and checking if the wards weren't tampered with or broken - Midoriya promptly sat in front of his computer and began to do research. At both locations. He had nothing better to do either way, at least once he made himself dinner.

He checked… a lot of things. Facebook accounts of people living nearby (they might have made pictures that caught something that Censor forbid them from seeing). Urban explorer forums. Discussion boards for 'paranormal enthusiasts' from the nearby areas.

Midoriya was fairly certain that the school left some clues there. In his opinion, those were rather logical places to look for intel without getting anywhere close to the danger zone in question.

Well, he did find something.

For the combat assignment, he found a recording on the Facebook profile of one of the neighbors. Their cat acted sus, hissing, and so on at what they probably didn't see, so they put a 'lol our cat is weird' film on the internet.

Or, so Midoriya figured out from the accompanying text and the comments under it.

Izuku, being an Initiate, saw something else. It was a black spider, its main body about the size of Midoriya's hand. After having a rather nerve-wracking face-off with the family cat, the spider decided to pack it up and left, crawling under the house fence and disappearing from view.

Kacchan is going to love that assignment.

Midoriya decided to make sure that he doesn't fall into a faculty-laid trap. When the camera shows the cat escorting the spider out of the premises, he can see a water tower on the horizon. He checked google maps and… yep. If he identified the house correctly, the spider retreated towards the abandoned house that they were supposed to investigate.

Izuku then promptly googles 'cryptid spider'. He's absolutely flooded with results. About several hundred subspecies worldwide. 'Cryptid black spider' narrows it to a few dozen. He switches to the image section of the results and…

Yeah, some of those look absolutely goddamn terrifying. At least one seems to be larger than a goddamn car next to him.

After a few minutes of existential horror, he runs into the picture of a spider looking vaguely similar to the one caught in the film. And, a moment later, he gets the name.

Crawler Mimic. The magical section of Wikipedia comes to the rescue.

… freaky, but more of a pest than anything else. Their nests are typically exterminated by the Initiates because they don't really have an awful lot of natural (or unnatural) predators, making them a de facto invasive species.

He notes down what he considers to be a 'proper' plan against it and the tools he'd need to do that as painlessly as possible in his notebook. He'll deal with that tomorrow - it should be time consuming but not particularly problematic.

He moves over to the magic assignment. And here things go weird.

Someone was apparently murdered in that home, many years ago. Some marital affair, according to the stories he managed to dig out. Someone else moved in, a moment later, a random murder. Then, it happened again. So, the home was abandoned and fell to ruin.

This tells him absolutely nothing at all. There are probably a billion things out there that can cause people to go insane.

He checks out anything he can about the murders. It's not a lot, he has no access to police databases and so on, but does find some old conversations about the second and third murder on some 'paranormal enthusiasts' forums.

Not confirmed, but apparently both killers didn't admit to killing anyone. There was an even more unconfirmed tale that they claimed that an unknown person attacked them in their home, there was a struggle, and when the dust fell, they found the victims's corpse.

… wait, he has an idea. It's a bit of a random thing, and it's not about the identity of the mysterious entity but on how exactly it worked.

It was 5pm. They had the time to do that today.

He pulls out his phone and calls someone.

(***)

"Deku," Bakugou asks, staring at Midoriya as if he met him for the first time. "Are you fucking stupid?"

It's almost 7pm, it's slowly getting dark, they are both standing in front of the abandoned house where something (or someone) murdered people and Izuku just asked him to enter it alone.

Bakugou has a point.

"Kacchan, that's a calculated risk!" Midoriya replies.

"You should have asked me to tutor you if you are this shitty at math, Deku!" Bakugou yells back at him. "What the fuck brought that idea to your stupid horny nerd brain?!"

"There have been murders in this building, but they were rather specific ones." Midoriya quickly replies. "In short, in both cases perpetrators claimed that they were attacked by someone they didn't know, there was a struggle, and then, once the attack ended, they discovered a corpse of someone that wasn't there earlier."

"So?" Bakugou urges him to hurry the fuck up. His face says it all.

"I think that whatever's in that house influences your mind in some way," Midoriya replies. "In both cases the 'unknown attacker' was actually the eventual victim, the killer just didn't perceive them correctly. I just don't know if it's mind control, madness-inducing or an illusion. In fact…" He adds after a second. "... walking in with a group blindly would be the stupid option, as it could manipulate us against each other. I need to know what mechanism it uses exactly to figure out what it is."

"And why the fuck am I supposed to be the crash test dummy on this?" Bakugou replies.

"Because you're smart and stubborn enough to outthink or resist whatever it is the most out of us all?" Midoriya replies. When Bakugou gives him a questioning look, Midoriya replies. "Look, Toga will probably leap into murder immediately, I'm a weirdo that whose reaction to the thing we can't predict and Uraraka is a new member that we can't exactly trust, so…"

Silence. Eventually, Bakugou groans.

"You were always the one pushing me into dumb-ass situations but this is fucking beyond that." Midoriya scratches his chin, trying not to look at him. "You know what, Deku? I'm going in. But you fucking owe me something spicy for this shit."

"Y-you'll really do it?" Midoriya blinks at him. Bad choice. Bakugou promptly explodes.

"OF COURSE I'LL FUCKING DO IT YOU PIECE OF SHIT DEKU!" He yells. "YOU GAVE ME YOUR ACTUAL FUCKING REASONING FOR THAT AND IT'S VALID EVEN IF INCREDIBLY STUPID SO OF COURSE I'M GOING TO DO IT! STOP FUCKING DOUBTING ME OR I'LL PUNCH YOU INTO A FUCKING ELSEWHERE!"

Wow, he already started to incorporate pieces of magical lore into his swears. Classic Kacchan.

Then he walks through the entrance door of a ruined house, and vanishes inside.

Midoriya was extremely worried, especially when he heard Kacchan's distant swearing. He was actually about to run inside, when he saw his best friend exit the building. Although the fact that he was walking backwards was actually kinda weird.

"Uhm, Kacchan?" Midoriya asks.

"That shit was fucking trippy as fuck, Deku." Bakugou replies while shaking his head and turning towards him.. "Like what the fuck, you'd love it inside."

"Err?" Izuku lets out, while staring at him questioningly.

"I just walked into a room and suddenly the door behind me fucking vanished." He replies. "And so did the window. So I decided to go back."

"How did you do that if the door vanished on y…" Midoriya is about to ask the question but that's when Kacchan gives him a 'are you fucking kidding me deku' look. "Oh! The faculty wouldn't send us against something powerful enough to teleport you or warp reality, so it had to be an illusion!"

"Of fucking course, nerd," Bakugou replies smugly. "You told me that it might be doing illusive shit so I counted my steps and when I turned around and in what direction. When things went wacky, I just backtracked out of the building."

That's what Midoriya meant when he said that Bakugou could probably outthink whatever was living in that house.

"A right man for the right job!" Midoriya replies cheerfully. Kacchan flips him the bird, that little shit. "Give me a moment to check out the internet for what it might be and…"

Illusion. Supernatural. Causes Murders. Hundreds of entries for potential creatures on the internet.

Goddamnit, the real world sucks.

"... I'll ask Todoroki tomorrow at school," Midoriya replies while pocketing his phone. "See you then."

(***)

"Why would I…" Todoroki replies, once again hiding behind his bookshelf in the library with some romance manga. "... help you in that?"

"Because…" Midoriya replies. "... you're clearly enjoying being there to witness our struggles and generally weird behavior. And you want to continue watching your favorite National Geographic Documentary about weirdos in their natural habitat. In full HD."

Todoroki continues to stare at him for a solid few seconds, before replying.

"How much did you learn about it thus far?" He asks. Midoriya does his best to not scream VICTORY before he gets his answers.

"It doesn't seem mobile at all, having stayed in that particular home for years," Midoriya replies. "Uses illusions to drive people into killing each other. Tried to trap Bakugou in a room by conjuring illusions hiding the exits from him."

"Sounds like a mirrorgeist." Todoroki replies immediately. "Aberrant of the Ancient of Reflections. Infest mirrors that reflected a scene of premeditated murder, and attempt to repeat the circumstances of their birth by manipulating the perception of nearby people in order to drive them into killing each other."

That sounds relatively close to home, except…

"Don't they need a premeditated murder for that?" Midoriya replies with a question. "The murders I read about weren't premeditated, it just displayed the other person as an attacker to make them fight with each other."

"Yesn't." Todoroki replies. "Might have been self-defense. If they planned to throw the infested mirror out, the mirrorgeist turned them against each other to stop that from happening. They are normally much more subtle, for example causing troubles in a marriage that might escalate into murder by making both sides suspect that they are being cheated on with some slight manipulations and so on."

Now that sounds MUCH close to home.

"And how do you fight those?" Midoriya replies. "They are aberrants, not cryptids or demihumans, so I suspect that I won't find a lot about them on the internet."

"True." Todoroki nods scarcely. "Writing too much about aberrants and Powers on the internet page would begin to… warp it. As for dealing with the mirrorgeists, you just need to find the right mirror and smash it. It'll be tougher than it should and will bleed from the cracks. Of course…"

"... it'll try to stop us," Midoriya replies. "And it'll be hard to smash a mirror that we can't even see."

"Bingo," Todoroki replies, as expressionless about that as ever. "There is a trick to that, but I'm not going to tell you about it. That would make it way too easy and if you keep getting too much help from others, you'll die the first time you get none."

"... a small tip?" Midoriya asks. Todoroki stares at him for a few seconds before replying.

"Shadow." He replies. "That's all that I'm willing to say. Also, I'm going with you, but don't expect me to assist you. I'm just a spectator."

Time for the guesswork, Midoriya decides. But in the meantime… new teammates and so on.

(***)

"Kacchan, Himichan, this is Uraraka." Midoriya announces officially. "She's going to join our… wait, are we already a cabal or what?"

"I think that we are." Toga replies. "And it's surprisingly fun!" It's rather obvious to him that Uraraka doesn't find Toga's presence in their small group to be 'fun'. "I'd have joined one long ago if I knew it's so much fun!"

"She's off the table by the way, Himichan." Midoriya announces. Toga glances at Uraraka, who replies with a worried look. "For now, Uraraka is… on probation, I guess. She is joining us for the assignments, then we'll see what happens next. Questions?"

"When the fuck did you start to meet new people behind my back?" Kacchan decides to cut in in a classic Kacchan way. "First Messy Hair, then the Library Freak…"

"I'm here, you know that?" Todoroki asks from his natural position behind the bookshelf.

"Of course I fucking do." Bakugou says. It's his library mode, so it only registers as a raised voice rather than downright screaming. "Now what? Round Cheeks?"

"R-Round cheeks?!" Uraraka stammers while grabbing her cheeks in shock. "T-they aren't t-that round, I t-think?"

Midoriya sighs. This is going to be more complicated than he expected.

"Ignore him, Kacchan has a horrible memory when names are involved." He then adds, "I'm not even sure if he remembers my own name, it's all nicknames with him. For as long as he doesn't refer to you as 'Extras', he isn't looking down on you."

"Of course I fucking remember your name, Deku." Bakugou snarls. "Don't tell me you're actually doubting me?"

"Then what's my name?" Izuku asks, while giving him a wry smile.

"Now I'm not going to answer that…" Bakugou replies while glaring at him. "... because I'm pissed off over you doubting me."

"Of course you do, Kacchan." Midoriya replies before rolling his eyes around. "Alright, so the plan is as follows: tomorrow is Sunday, so it's a free day from school. We meet at the school's entrance, then we go deal with our magic assignment. If everything goes correctly, we'll also deal with the combat assignment afterwards. Wear long trousers, preferably ones rather thick. Kacchan, bring your baseball bat, everyone bring a… broom or solid long stick, I'll explain when you show up."

"No additional equipment, Deku?" Kacchan replies, clearly surprised by it.

"We don't need any for as long as we aren't dumb about it, and honestly, I want to make sure that other cabals see us as serious business." Midoriya replies. "Any questions?"

They have none. So, they depart from school, leaving Toga behind. She waves at them over the school fence, shouting to Izuku to invite her for the night if he feels bored. Soon after that, the remaining three students all go their separate ways.

Midoriya noticed that he was missing his math textbook a few hours later.

(***)

"You know that yours is a very sloppy acting?" Toga announces cheerfully an hour after the rest of her 'cabal' headed home. She's back at her classroom at school - it's her kingdom now that the school closed. "Izucchan would be sooo angry if he saw you now."

Uraraka raises her face from the textbook she was half-hugging, half-sniffing in the corner of the classroom.

"Don't you dare talk about him." She replies angrily while staring Toga down. "Don't you dare say his name. Izuku is mine."

Oh this is so cuuuute! Toga can't wait to play a little with the girl in front of her. It'll be so much fun! Izuku occupies a disproportionate amount of her thoughts, but c'mon, Uraraka's an eye candy herself!

"Or what?" Toga tilts her head a little. "What exactly are you going to do if I refuse?"

"You're a danger to him." Uraraka replies coldly. "Who knows when you will change your mind and decide to eat him. Leave him or I'll make sure that you won't hurt him. Permanently." She adds the last word after a second-long pause, her facial expression suddenly steeling up.

"Are you sure…" Toga grins. "... that you aren't a bigger threat to him than I am?"

Himiko Toga realizes that she made a mistake a second later, when colors begin to leave Uraraka's face…. right before she leaps at Toga, the girl letting out a rather inhuman scream. She's fast enough to get into melee distance before the ghoul has the time to switch out of her fully human form.

Well, crap.

She dashes back, but Uraraka grabbed a chair during her charge and slammed it into Toga's head. Who is promptly reminded that in the end, she's an ambush predator… and something dangerously close to being a glass cannon.

It's going to hurt.

The sequence of punches throws her at the wall behind her. Uraraka dashes in, fury on her face. Toga dodges a knife (when did she pull it out?!) by a hair's breadth, the blade carving a long line at the side of her head and severing a part of her ear instead of gouging her eye out.

No time for full ghoul mode, but she'll do what she can.

She grabs the extended arm by the hand, then uses her other hand to break it below the elbow. Uraraka barely has the time to register the attack before Toga swipes her own knife from her fingers and pushes it into her throat.

Toga fails to block the retaliatory punch. Between it and the wall, this probably fractured a rib. She won't survive it if she remains in that position, what can she do…

Her hand grasps the backrest of the nearby chair. She reinforces her arm as much as she can and slams it into Uraraka's side. What would have killed an average person only serves as a momentary distraction. Toga uses it to bounce off the wall behind and bodyslam Uraraka.

It's strong enough to make her fall backward. Toga lands on top of her (Uraraka screaming something as aggressive as incoherent, the voice distorted by the knife still being there) and decides to prove that she has a knife as well. And unlike her opponents' earlier attempts, she knows how to do it right.

Uraraka fails to react in time before the knife is pushed into her right eye. Despite the injuries, she still has enough of a fight in her to drill her hand into Toga's side in an attempt to get the ghoul off her, the nails of other hand carving out a solid chunk of Himiko's thigh.

She then loses her left eye to Toga's claws. And a moment later, Toga breaks her neck before completely tearing her head off (the two knives still sticking out of it)… and limping elsewhere to recover from the fight.

Behind her, Uraraka finally stops struggling, her headless body going limp on the classroom's floor.

"Tomorrow…" Toga mumbles to herself, ignoring the trail of blood she was leaving behind her for now. She needs to get to her safehouse and start casting magic before she bleeds out. "... is going to be so damn awkward."

(***)

"T… Himichan's already here." Izuku announces as Bakugou arrives. He can see the ghoul smiling at him while standing dangerously close to his best friend. "You're here and Todoroki…"

"I can see him, Deku." Bakugou groans. "Seriously, Library Freak?"

Todoroki, being himself, arrived wearing one of those stupid beer caps that you could attach cups of some drinks to. He has two of them, on both sides of his head. And a large (and still unopened) bag of popcorn in his hands.

"What?" He asks, staring blankly at Bakugou. Who decides that he isn't paid enough for that.

"So, we're only missing the Round Chee…" Bakugou looks around. "Oh, there she is."

"S-sorry, was I late?!" Uraraka finally stops her hurried run through the streets, bending forward to catch her breath. "I o-overslept a little and…"

"No, you're right on time!" Midoriya quickly reassures her. "And… wait, is that my textbook?"

"Yes, I'm sorry, I have no idea how it ended in my backpack!" She quickly stammers out. "I must have grabbed it accidentally when I came by your desk to ask you about the library meeting, I'm sometimes a total scatterbrain and…" Oh god, she's just as talkative as Deku is. Bakugou is so fucking done with his life.

"No problem, I've once done that with Kacchan's backpack, somehow." Midoriya replies with a smile. "Thank you for finding it for me, I was actually worried that I lost it permanently! So…" He looks around the rest of the group. "... time to head out?"

They all agree. Bakugou notices something of a tense eye contact between Uraraka and Toga that Midoriya clearly didn't. Is Uraraka still worried about a ghoul being there? Perfectly logical, Bakugou is very worried about that himself.

He can only hope that it's not a beginning of some fucking love triangle over his nerd, because this'll probably end with bloody fucking murder.

(***)

*nefarious snickering*