BREAK

Izuku Midoriya is at the beach.

The mayor of the nearest city has issued an evacuation order, the governor has called in the national guard, and the president of the United States is rocking back and forth in his leather chair and wondering why he ever took the job.

In other words, just another day in Florida.

Izuku sips on a pina colada. Well, a pina colada if a pina colada was a cocktail made with motor oil, iron filings, and a splash of nuclear-grade uranium. It has the paper umbrella and curly pink straw, and really, does anything else matter?

Izuku slams the entire glass into his mouth, chomps it to dust, and shouts "Another!" A nervous attendant in a hazmat suit waddles forward with a tray.

Bakugo watches from afar, binoculars in hand and notebook at his side, ready to expose the secrets of the impending robot hordes to the world. On any other day, a man half-buried under the sand, pointing binoculars at the beachgoers and muttering to himself might get a raised eyebrow, or perhaps a panicked 911 call from a tourist inexperienced with the routine madness that is Florida. Today, however, Izuku is at the beach, and that means Bakugo gets dogpiled by the coast guard, the FBI, the navy seals, and a paraplegic Vietnam war veteran.

"Sir, unidentified intruder apprehended," the FBI agent says. "Your orders?"

Izuku looks at him. "That is Katsuki Bakugo."

"E-excuse me?"

"He is now identified. Thank you for your service."

The assembled special ops forces exchanged puzzled looks, shrug, and go back to their assorted hiding places inside garbage cans, under vehicles, and in a conch shell.

"I'll never surrender!" Katsuki shouted. "I'll stop your plans, whatever they are, and liberate the people!"

"I do not have any plans."

Katsuki's eyes narrowed. "Nice to know that the AI hasn't mastered their deception algorithms."

"Was I supposed to have a plan? I thought that the point of a vacation was to not have any plans. Next time, I will make a plan. Maybe becoming a bike and biking across the ocean. That sounds like fun."

Katsuki whipped out his notebook and hurriedly wrote, 'Infiltrating bicycles to remove humanity's only source of machine-free transportation.'

The ocean shook. A kraken, hundreds of feet tall, rose out of the waves. Its shadow darkened the beach. Its tentacles toppled palm trees, and its bulbous eyes cast their baleful gaze upon the distant cities. Its chipped, barnacle-crusted beak opened, and it roared defiantly at the heavens.

A green flash split the sky. The kraken twitched as a spear of plasma blasted through its trunk, leaving a circular hole that let the sunshine through.

"You were blocking the sun," Izuku said in a narrow cone of sunlight. "But now you are not. You may continue whatever it is you were doing."

The kraken, quivering before Izuku, stood perfectly still, not daring to let any shadow touch him.

Just another day in Florida.

496

A vacation for both Izuku and my brain. Kinda just let it do what it felt like.