A.N.

So, I realize it has been a while. I'm not really back just yet, because I haven't written much more yet. Just after my current break started, I made the decision to start searching for another job so a lot of time has been eaten up by job hunting and then new job orientation type stuff, as well as some other life stuff. I know everyone is eager for the next arc, so I'll give you an interlude chapter to tide you over a bit.

Several comments on the last chapter said that the kids deserved a break and some time to process and such, and I realized that they were absolutely right. A 'breather episode' is a good idea after this last arc, so I decided to write one before getting back into the show. I had fun writing this chapter, so I wanted to give a big Thank You to the readers for giving me the idea. Hope you guys all have fun with it too!


When the next day came, Nedzu announced that he was calling an official 'rest day'. Which meant that there would be no watching the future, and that everyone was apparently free to just do whatever they wanted instead.

The announcement came as a surprise to the students. Similar to their future counterparts, they'd started to get used to the feeling of one thing happening right after another. Still, the change of plans was met with relief. Everyone was still reeling from what had been shown the day before, and from some of the things that lead up to it. So no one felt the need to argue with the principle's declaration.

No one was quite sure what to do at first. So, after breakfast was eaten and everything was cleaned up, people just lounged about for a while. Midoriya found himself sitting back to back with Iida on the floor, while Todoroki, Uraraka and Tsuyu lay around them. Uraraka's head rested on Tsuyu's stomach while Todoroki's head rested near Midoriya's feet.

Midoriya himself didn't talk much at first. Instead he just let the sound of the others wash over him. Tsuyu had talked about her siblings for a while, which was cool because none of them had realized she had such a big family before. It made the others wonder what it would have been like for them to have that many siblings. Or, in Todoroki's case, wonder what it would be like if he'd been able to be as close to his siblings as Tsuyu seemed to be with hers. That inspired Iida to share a couple stories he had from growing up with Tensei, which resulted in quite a few giggles. It turned out Iida's tendency to get really into whatever role he'd been given wasn't a recent development.

Midoriya didn't break his quiet until a sudden idea occurred to him. He had been looking at Todoroki, and a part of his brain started musing about his quirk once again. He tried to shut it off, reminding himself that they were supposed to be relaxing and stuff, but before he managed it a question occurred to him, and he blurted out:

"Todoroki, could you keep an ice cube from melting in your mouth?"

The light conversation halted and everyone turned to look at Izuku. Which was a bit of a feat in Iida's case.

"What?" Todoroki asked.

"It just occurred to me...you know how you were training to keep the water around you the same temperature during the summer camp? Do you think you'd be ever be able to control your own temperature enough to keep ice from melting in your mouth?"

"I...don't know. Maybe."

Midoriya was relieved to see that Todoroki actually looked intrigued by the idea, rather than creeped out.

"It is a shame that none of our quirks work here, otherwise we could test that theory." Iida said.

"We'll have to put it on the to do list." Uraraka said.

"I don't know, maybe you should start with something else. Your mouth is really close to your brain, so it might be a bad idea to try and keep such a low temperature there." Tsuyu pointed out.

"Oh yeah, that's a good point." Midoriya muttered, feeling a little abashed.

"He'd end up getting the brain freeze of the century." Uraraka giggled.

"Maybe it would be better to try keeping it from melting while holding it with both hands." Iida suggested.

"Oh oh! What if we went the other way and tested stuff with his heat?" Uraraka sat up so she could look at Todoroki properly. "Have you have tried to cook things with your own fire? What if you could cook an egg in your palm? Or make toast?"

"Todoroki the toaster!" Tsuyu said with a laugh.

"If I could figure out how to do that, then I would change my surname to Toaster." Todoroki said with apparent sincerity, making the others laugh.

That was right about when Koda tentatively approached the group and said something about a card game that Ojiro and Shoji were organizing. So before long they all found themselves joining a different circle on the floor, and wondering where Shoji had found the playing cards.


Yagi and Aizawa's first instinct, upon being given free time, was to sit down and start to sort out some plans. The others quickly put a stop to that.

"How many times do I have to tell you that when I say 'relax' I mean actual relaxing, not just more laid back work?" Recovery Girl demanded, shooing Yagi off the couch he'd first sat down on.

Yagi looked to Aizawa for back up, but he already had Present Mic partially draped across him. The younger blonde was rambling about something, and this had apparently caused Aizawa to automatically go into some sort of daze. Which sort of made sense, since Yagi had seen young Yamada doing this exact thing while Aizawa dozed on and off in the teacher's lounge.

"Don't look so distressed All Might, it would be much better to make plans once we have more information wouldn't it? After all it would be a shame to get things hashed out only to have to rethink everything due to some new revelation, wouldn't it?" Nedzu pointed out. "Why don't you visit with the students? I'm sure they could use some reassurance that you are doing well after what we saw yesterday."

Yagi conceded that the principal had a good point, and wondered off to see what the students were doing. His attention was caught by a group settling into a circle, with young Shoji holding up a deck of cards. Well, card games were typically fun without be strenuous right?


Ashido had decided that the free day constituted the perfect opportunity to start making some plans for that band they talked about when this whole thing first started. So now she had Jirou, Momo, Hagakure, and Mineta all sitting around her. Currently, she was staring in awe as Jirou listed off all the musical instruments she had experience with.

"Just how many can you play?" she asked.

"I guess I never really counted. Mom's a musician, and Dad's a composer, so I've kinda been surrounded by music my whole life, and tried playing a lot of different things. I like rock the best, so I've kept up with guitar the most." Jirou explained.

"Well, every band needs a guitar right? We're already on the right track! As for me, I wanna lead the band's dancers!"

"Can I be one of the dancers too?" Hagakure asked eagerly.

"Sure! We'll make sure to get long sleeved outfits so people can really see you."

"Yay!"

"My music training has been focused on the classical, so a keyboard would likely be the best instrument for me." Momo reminded them.

"Plus we're gonna need more than one guitar if we want this thing to get off the ground, and there's more than one kind too, you know." Jirou said.

"Uh, I've never played a guitar, but I could try learning. I'm already pretty good at tech stuff though, so I could probably help with set up while I learn." Mineta offered.

"That's a good idea! It's important to get the set up done right, especially if we want to do affects and stuff." Ashido agreed.

"When we get back, I could see if we have any old instruments that you could use for practice. That way you can see if you want to continue or not without having to buy anything expensive." Jirou offered.

"Th-that would be awesome! Thanks!"

While the rest of the group chatted about who else to invite to the group and who might be up for learning to play various instruments, Mineta reveled in the fact that he was hanging out with a bunch of girls and none of them had slapped him or yelled at him this whole time. He silently berated himself for not trying this approach sooner, and became even more determined to keep this improvement once they all got out of this place.


"So the name of the game is 'Mafia'." Shoji explained to the gathered group while Ojiro was taking specific cards out of the deck. "Everyone will get a card handed out to them, and that card will determine if you're a civilian, a member of the mafia, the sheriff, or the doctor. I'm going to be the mayor, which means I tell you all to 'go to sleep' each round, which means you all close your eyes, and then I tell different roles to 'wake up' and tell me what they plan to do. When the mafia wakes up, they choose someone to kill. The sheriff will point to someone and I'll tell him if that person is a member of the mafia or not. The doctor chooses one person to save. You'll all 'wake up' at different times, so no one will know what the other roles are planning."

"Do the civilians just sit around then?" Tsuyu asked.

"No, after I tell you how the night went you can all talk about who you think the Mafia members are and vote on someone to expel from the town. The mafia will want to convince you to throw someone else out, while the sheriff will want to convince you to throw out the mafia, assuming they've figured out one or more members."

"So we'll have to figure if the ones trying to be the most convincing are mafia members, the sheriff, or just a civilian with a hunch." Yagi said. The group had been surprised when he asked to join the game, but had been more than welcoming once they got past that.

"That's right."

"So how come the mayor doesn't get to be chosen by card?" Sato asked.

"You can do it that way if you want, but I think I have to be the mayor. Even with our quirks turned off or dimmed, I still have better hearing than most of you, so that could give me an unfair advantage if I got another role. I might be able to hear people moving during 'nighttime'."

"That makes sense." Midoriya agreed.

"How do you decide a winner?" Todoroki asked. Ojiro was the one to answer this time.

"The Mafia wins if they kill off everyone in the town. Everyone else wins if they vote off the Mafia before that happens."

"Everyone understand?" Shoji asked. After getting unanimous nods, Ojiro held out the cards face down, and everyone picked one.


"Do we have to?" Kaminari whined.

"If you losers are gonna sit there staring while the cooking is happening and then expect to eat any you're gonna have to clean up afterwards." Bakugo insisted.

"It's only fair guys." Kirishima pointed out while measuring ingredients for Bakugo to add to the dish.

The glare that Bakugo was sending at Kaminari and Sero said that the pair would regret it if they tried to ditch after eating, so they reluctantly agreed to the terms.

"Hey Bakugo, you wanna arm wrestle with me after this is done?"

"You're on Shitty Hair!"


"So, the night has passed." Shoji narrated. "Unfortunately, Uraraka was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and witnessed a Mafia member committing a crime. So the Mafia decided to do away with her to make sure she would keep silent. The doctor was out of town on a house call, so he wasn't around to save her."

"What?! I'm out already?" Uraraka complained.

"Oh Uraraka, we hardly knew her." Tokoyami said somberly.

"And yet, sometimes, it's like we can still hear her voice." Ojiro brushed an imaginary tear from his eye.

"Deku! Iida! Todoroki! Tsuyu! Swear you'll avenge me!" She called out to them.

"I swear to do my utmost!" Iida declared.

"I'll try." Tsuyu said.

"Yeah, we'll do our best to figure it out!" Midoriya agreed.

Todoroki seemed displeased about something, but nodded along with Midoriya's words.

The group started discussing who they should vote out as a possible Mafia member. Ojiro pointed out that Koda was being awfully quiet, which caused others to remind him that Koda was always quiet. Tokoyami got accused because apparently someone heard him say 'revelry in the dark' during nighttime, but given that they still didn't know exactly what that meant he could have said it for any one of the roles. Throughout the whole thing Iida was the loudest voice and tried to direct all the conversation.

"My young Iida, you are getting into this just as much as you did during the times you were assigned a villain role!" Yagi said jokingly.

That got people looking at Iida suspiciously. It wasn't long before people started to decide that Iida really was getting a little too into the game and that meant he was likely a Mafia member trying to deflect suspicion. So, while Izuku did try to defend him, he ended up being the one that was voted out.

When nighttime was called, Iida and Uraraka didn't have to close their eyes with everyone else, since they were out. They wouldn't be allowed to tell anyone what they saw though.

Shoji called for the Mafia to wake up. Both Tokoyami and Yagi opened their eyes.

Uraraka and Iida stared at All Might, shocked and indignant. The hero just smirked at them.


When Bakugo and Kirishima were done with the soup they all ate together. Kaminari and Sero decided that having to clean up afterwards would be worth it because it tasted amazing!

"How'd you learn how to cook so well anyway?" Kirishima asked.

"Its not that hard, just follow the directions." Bakugo said between gulps.

"Tell that to my mom and me. I swear we could both burn water." Kaminari said.

"Maybe you should stop electrocuting it then."

"I don't use my quirk when I try to cook!" Kaminari said a little too loudly. Sero gave him a look. "Okay, I tried it one time! I mean, electricity is supposed to get really hot, so I figured it might cook things really fast when I was little. Trust me, never made that mistake again."


"Doctor, wake up."

Todoroki opened his eyes.

"Doctor, please point to the person you want to save."

Todoroki pointed at Midoriya, who was sitting next to him.

Shoji sighed. "Doctor, you can't pick the same person every time. Please pick someone else."


"Oh my gosh Jirou can you sing too?" Ashido asked excitedly.

"Well, I guess I do like to sing songs while I play them, but I'm not sure I'd be up for singing in front of a real audience..."

"You could just sing for us at first. That would be a good first step between being in private and being in front of a crowd." Momo suggested.

"Maybe..."


There were only three people left. Midoriya, All Might, and Tokoyami.

"Well, I guess the Mafia wins." Shoji announced. "Two of them are left, so no need to do another round just for them to kill off the last person."

The three remaining people showed their cards, and now everyone was staring slack-jawed at All Might.

"All Might was a member of the Mafia?!" Sato asked incredulously.

"It was the perfect storm, no one would dare to accuse him." Koda said in quiet horror.

All Might laughed lightly. "I must admit, that certainly gave our team an advantage."

"Kero, I told you we should have voted Tokoyami out."

"You wanna what makes it even worse?" Shoji asked. "The first person you voted out was the Sheriff."

"Wait, that's the role Iida was getting so into?!" Ojiro asked. Uraraka nodded glumly.

"Apparently I must rethink my strategy for when I am assigned nobler roles." Iida lamented.


After the boys finished eating, Kaminari and Sero started cleaning up. They found it wasn't as bad as they thought it would be. After seeing all those things and not being able to affect anything, it was surprisingly therapeutic to have control over something small and see the changes your actions made. Aoyama came in shortly after the pair started cleaning, and joined in on helping them.

While they were doing that, Bakugo dragged Kirishima to the table so they could try arm wrestling. Without Kirishima able to use his quirk, both were pretty curious how this would go. When they started, they were at a stalemate for a few seconds, then Bakugo started pushing Kirishima's hand down. Kirishima fought back, but it wasn't long before his hand was slammed into the table top.

Kirishima grinned. "I shouldn't have expected anything less, but now I wanna know how you'll do when I can use my quirk."

Bakugo grinned back "Bring it on!"

"What are you guys doing?" An unexpected voice made them jump, and they turned to see a floating set of clothes.


While the game of Mafia was going on, Nedzu had found a chessboard and challenged Recovery Girl to a game. The old hero knew full well there was no winning against the principle, even if his quirk was being dimmed right now, but decided to give it a shot anyway. It would be interesting to see how far she got since he had a sort of 'handicap' on right now, and it wasn't like she had anything in else to do. Nedzu seemed to be functioning under the same logic, and wanted to challenge himself with this new limitation. He challenged Aizawa when their game was done, then Yamada.

After the Mafia game concluded a couple of students even came over to give it a shot. Midoriya made it the longest out of the students, which didn't surprise anyone at this point, but all of the games were still fairly short with Nedzu winning handily every time.

Recovery Girl couldn't help but wonder if Nedzu wasn't taking his own advice, and was secretly planning things out in his head while he played. It wouldn't surprise her, but she had no way of knowing either way.


Hagakure had come into the kitchen to look for food for the group, and when she saw the arm wresting match she got curious and went back to ask if any of the others wanted to compete and that somehow resulted in the whole 'band discussion group' moving into the kitchen and official brackets being drawn up. More were added when people started to migrate in from the chess competition and Mafia game.

While waiting for his turn, Bakugo got caught up in a conversation between Ashido and Jirou, and it came out that he had gotten drumming lessons at one point. This inevitably resulted in him getting dragged into band planning, despite his token protests.

Mineta hid behind the other band members, desperately hoping not to get drawn into the arm wrestling. He knew he had no chance, especially after Shoji came in.

On the subject of Shoji, the entire competition got delayed due to arguing about whether or not it made sense for Shoji to be a part of the competition now, since his multiple arms and such could count as him still having his quirk while others didn't. So, while some people made it pretty far in the competition (including Shoji, Bakugo, Kirishima, Ojiro, Iida, and Sato) there was no winner before everyone was called for dinner.

Kaminari sulked for quite a while, since Jirou had beaten him at arm wrestling. Jirou had smugly told him he needed to train harder.


Aoyama lingered at the edges of various groups. Every time he thought of trying to join one, he couldn't bring himself to do it. He didn't feel like he deserved to be a part of anything at this point. He didn't deserve to share in the laughter, didn't deserve to be considered part of the group, not after what his other self's actions had helped bring about.

He only allowed himself to join in on something when he saw Sero and Kaminari cleaning. Helping with cleaning couldn't make up for what he'd done, but it made him feel a little better to do something helpful. He couldn't even bring himself to eat much of anything throughout the day.

When it was time to sleep again, everyone felt more ready to face the next viewing than they had been at the start of the day.

Well, there were two exceptions, but no one had really noticed that. Aoyama had gotten pretty good at putting up a shallow, unaffected front after all. And, just like at the USJ, no one questioned his absence from any one group too much.

Bakugo had managed to ignore the pit of guilt eating at his stomach by first cooking, then getting involved in all the other things that came his way. He knew that All Might losing his quirk wasn't all his fault, he knew the story behind One for All now after all, but a dark corner in his mind kept reminding him that he lost the last embers of it during a mission to rescue Bakugo. It whispered that the whole world had seen All Might's weakened form because of that mission, because of him, and he didn't know how to deal with that. So, for a little while at least, he simply decided not to.

Despite all of that, even the two conflicted boys managed to fall asleep after a while, and faced the morning with the rest of their classmates.


A.N.

I have no idea whether or not Japan has the card game Mafia or anything similar to it, but decided to use it for this anyway due to the comedic potential and the irony (since they'll be facing the Yakuza in a later arc). As for an 'in-universe' explanation, we'll just say that the game managed to migrate over to Japan by the time this future year takes place.

On a related note, I still remember this one time I was playing Mafia in a big group and got outed as a Mafia member because one of the players who had died saw me choose to kill off one of my friends and said my name in a scolding way. She seemed sincerely confused when I blamed her for me getting voted out of the group during the following turn. -.-

Also, the ice cube theory and the whole 'Todoroki cooking eggs and toast with his bare hand' thing came from various tumblr posts I saw a while back. If I could remember the specific posts I'd link them, but unfortunately I do not. My apologies.

Also, also, Aoyama seems to be struggling quite a bit here. Maybe he just needs a little more of a push to finally talk about it...