COSMIC

"Mffrl mmm frfrll mrll, mmfl mffrl mmm mrfrfll," Thirteen said underneath her bulky hero costume. Iida dutifully wrote down every muffled sound, but the rest of the class scratched their heads at the incomprehensible noises and equally incomprehensible block of equations that engulfed the chalkboard.

"Excuse me, Thirteen?"

"Mff Mrfrfll?"

"We can't understand you under that helmet." Ochako blushed and asked timidly, "I know you never take off your helmet, but could you speak more clearly somehow?"

Thirteen tapped her helmet and said something about her mic being broken again that no one else understood. A lightbulb lit up over her head before it got sucked into a billowing black void as she took off her helmet. The light in the classroom visibly bent as a powerful gravitational field drew it in.

"Ugh," Mineta said, shivering, "I'm getting 'Nam flashbacks."

"Mineta! That is highly disrespectful of actual Vietnam war veterans!"

"What would they care? They've all been dead for two hundred years."

Thirteen spoke again, but all sound and half the chalk lines vanished. Ochako tried to tell Thirteen she still couldn't hear anything, to no avail.

Izuku walked up to the front of the room and slapped his hand over the open finger in Thirteen's suit. A squelching, sucking noise, not unlike a plugged vacuum cleaner, came from the opening. The black hole dissipated, exposing Thirteen's real face.

"Wait, you're not a cosmic entity?" Ochako asked, crestfallen.

Thirteen gave Izuku a petulant look. "You ruined my PR campaign."

"My apologies. I observed a potentially fatal anomaly and acted to prevent any casualties."

Thirteen sighed and unzipped her suit. "I had this whole plan to hide my identity for years and then casually take my helmet off one day and make people excited over what I look like."

"Isn't there a chance people might not care after so long?" Ojiro asked.

"Or what if people haven't read the manga yet?" Kaminari added.

Ochako pouted. "Aww, I thought you were this mysterious cosmic entity. I wanted to meet one!"

As Ochako spoke, a rift opened into a space not meant for mortal eyes. A tentacled visage, one whose mere literary description would drive any reader insane, poked through the gap between dimensions. Shoji and Izuku stared into the abyss unaffected. The others spouted gibberish as blood dripped from their eyes.

"Shoji, dear," the cosmic horror said, "You forgot your lunch."

Shoji rolled his eyes. "I told you, mom, they make lunch for us."

"I know, but I made this fresh from the primordial ooze. It's your favorite, isn't it?"

Shoji reluctantly accepted the paper bag filled with non-Euclidean shapes and writhing tentacles. "Thanks mom."

"You're welcome sweetie. Have fun in school!"

Once the cosmic horror was gone, Nezu said over the intercom, "Izuku, kindly break the glass that says 'in case of cosmic horrors' and read page fifty-three."

Izuku, following the instructions, said, "ereh was uoy tahw tegroF."

As the class stirred, Ochako blinked sleepily and asked, "What did I miss?"

500

And that's why Shoji never takes off his mask.