The cramped prison cubicle known as an office was as suffocating from the thick layers of dirt as the encompassing grey walls. Inside the concrete cage only held the space for a small oak desk with piles of boxes and filing cabinets obscuring the fading paint of the lilac baseboards. The french vanilla scent of the steaming glop of coffee swirled in front of the LED monitor on the humming box computer. The tapping of the archaic keyboard hid the low din of the rumbling voices echoing outside. There might have been some birthday party happening for all Edith cared, but she typed away without any mind.

Edith Void, a thin and youthful appearing woman rolled her eyes when she heard a cheer go up outside. For all the work she put in as CEO of Void Industries, she wished literally anybody else in the office felt the same way. Her eyes strained from the incessant typing that she did, and her hands ached with the opening stages of carpal tunnel. A noble-looking woman, her brunette hair curled around her forehead and ran down to her slender back.

Barefoot with her heels kicked off, her toes scrunched into the musty brown carpet that warmed the frigid room.

When the door opened, she grabbed her porcelain mug and waved it in her hand. "This is too weak. I need another."

"Maybe you should rethink what you truly need."

Edith snapped her gaze towards the door of the small office. When it shut, a young man with a dark ponytail stared back at her with a blank expression. Wearing a decent black blazer with a lavender shirt, he slowly trudged over the small expanse of the room and pierced his bright blue eyes at her.

"Fine, I'll rethink," Edith said and paused for a split second. "Yep, still need that coffee," she said while setting down the mug but clutching it in her hand.

"Edith Void," Fyodor said while shoving his hands into his pockets. "I believe you have something that can help with my problem."

Edith narrowed her eyes. "Are you a new intern? Did Carl hire you?"

Fyodor's eye twitched. "Enough of the games, Edith Void. I want something, and you are going to help me."

Edith rolled her eyes and drummed her fingers on the edge of her coffee mug. "Look, I don't know how you got here. But you need to leave. I have a lot of things to do. Papers to write. Press releases to finalize. All that jazz."

Fyodor slammed his fist on the desk. The glass unicorn paperweight shook on the edge of the desk and fell to the floor with a unremarkable thud. The coffee in Edith's mug jumped and dipped over the rim leaving small mocha droplets on top of a few pages of press releases.

Edith peered down at the soaked pages and raised her head back up. Fyodor leaned over the desk with his hands propping his body upward to leer above her.

"Who do you think you are?" Edith asked with an apathetic tone. "You know, those letters were for the President. He's gonna be disappointed when he sees they have coffee on them."

Just then, Fyodor opened up his mouth. What came out from it was a strange, almost translucent cloud that seemed more like floating liquid than a noxious gas. The fumes flowed around Edith's head, and her eyes seemed to cloud over with strange film as if she were fast asleep. Unfocused, she lost the grip on her mug and the rest of her limbs fell limp.

Fyodor could not help but grin when he saw Edith trembled like a bobblehead in her chair. The lady was in her own world, and Fyodor saw that she was frozen with whatever she had seen from his breath. The soft sound of the office workers milling around outside covered the escalating breathing that came from Edith.

After staring into nothingness, she shuddered and collapsed back in her chair. Whatever she saw rocked her to her core, and she grabbed her chest and heaved in air. The air around her disappeared, and she looked up at Fyodor.

"Do you see what I can do for you?" Fyodor said. "Maybe we can benefit from each other."

Edith composed herself and considered the man in front of her. A person as young as he was with a quirk that powerful had to be worth something. Not only that, but what she saw made her heart soar into space. Not that her mind was working that well after twelve straight hours in this small office, but she cleared her throat and massaged the area above her pounding heart.

"What can I help you with, mister?"

Mango sparks spurted from the hot welding iron that screeched on the metal orb.

Snapping off the switch, Martel lifted up his helmet and examined the final piece on his item. It was a red ball that was as heave as a softball but fit snug into his small palm. He felt the cool titanium alloy and peered at the welded ridges smudged into the sphere. It was a porject he had worked on for the past week, and he was content with seeing the results done.

The early morning air gushed past him. Musky mildew sparkled on the tips of the manicured grass that covered the earth alongside the sidewalk to the main school buildings. Martel liked the crips walk up towards the school entrance. The calm meadow soaked in the brigh sunshine made his muscles relax, and the chirping of the seagulls soaring above calmed down the generally quick tempo of his heart.

"Hey, Jimmy Neutron!"

Martel jumped and toppled to the side as a taller boy in headphones popped out of nowhere and nearly smashed into him. He clutched his chest and fell onto his bottom over the edge of the sidewalk. His pants moistened from the wet grass, and clumps of dirt and clippings littered the back of his suit pants.

"Oh, sorry about that," Abel said. He grabbed Martel by the shoulder and hoisted him up. Martel cringed at the feel of the wetness clinging onto his dress pants, but he stumbled forward as Abel tugged him along.

"Hello, Abel," Martel said with his teeth grinding on themselves.

"Martel, I gotta ask you something," Abel slung an arm around Martel. The shorter kid found himself twitching at the sudden touch, but he said nothing. Perhaps the boy was just being friendly.

"Does it have to with hiding things in my void space?" Martel asked. "Because I don't do it for other people. Blake already asked my about hiding his cyanide pills in there."

"No, it-what?" Abel asked. Then, he shook his brown locks. "Never mind. I wanted to ask you about our teacher."

Martel blinked as the double doors opened to enter the school. The bright chandelier of Lady Liberty above them gleamed in the early light. A flush of air conditioned oxygen swam over them like they had just plunged into a quiet pool. Martel's skin prickled with goose flesh at the sudden chill, and then he thought back to the question.

He shrugged off Abel's arm. "What about him?"

Abel adjusted the loose-fitting tie that hung its knot below his sternum and cleared his throat. "I just thought you might know some things about him. Seeing as how you come from a family who have worked with heroes."

Martel thought back to his mother and the company that his grandparents started. He cracked his knuckles, stopping in his tracks as students filtered around them like a sea of fish slithering around two small boulders.

"What I know about Deku," Martel said. "Is that he can generate up to 3000 megajoules of energy with his Saint Thomas Smash that he performed on August eight four years ago. It was the largest smash he has recorded to date. However, his Guam Smash that he uses consistently can record about 1000 megajoules in any vector that surrounds him."

"That's great and all," Abel said. "But I mean...where did he get that energy? Surely, you guys no more than just any other fan boy."

Martel spun around on the toes of his leather penny loafers and started for the spiral marble staircase. "We have class now, Abel."

"Wha? But Martel!"

"Some things are not up to me to disclose," Martel said. "And I suggest to you that there are things just not worth knowing."

Martel strode up the staircase joining in the talkative students that surrounded him. His face glowing a light red, he bit his lip while keeping his gaze locked onto his shoes. His parents had entrusted in him much secret information on support items and the heroes that utilized them. One thing they did not tell him was the origin of Deku's power. That was something that he hacked into the Void Industries systems and found out himself.

In fact, he sort of wished he did not know now.

Abel sipped on his energy drink, his headphones hanging around his neck. He peered at the chalkboard behind the teacher's desk where Deku sat. The Pro-Hero adjusted the yardstick rulers on his desk, a tight smile on his innocent face as he hummed a small tune to himself.

"Something is off with that guy," Abel whispered to himself before sucking on the bendy purple straw.

"Where you saying something?" Austin said next to Abel as he finished up his breakfast hot dog.

Abel scratched his curled hair and shook his head. Feeling the thick locks in his fingers, he twirled them while his gaze burned at Deku. His readings into their homeroom teacher left little answered but many other questions. It outlined the basic facts of his exploits, but nothing that could not be found online. There was only an interesting segment at the very end of the dossier, but it was blacked out with some strange ink.

"So, we're gonna start out today with something different," Deku said as he grabbed a tower of papers in his hand. He ran around to each desk and threw down a couple of stapled sheets. Two papers fluttered down and stopped right on Abel's arm.

As the rest of the students looked down at the paper, Deku sat on his desk at the front and clasped his hands together.

"These are your aptitude surveys for your internships you'll be doing around winter break," Deku said. "Here in America, this survey is used to help assign you all to a specific place. You can also learn a lot of things about yourself and where you see yourself in the future. So, we are going to put you in groups of four, and you all can talk and fill out the sheets together. It's like a team building thing, isn't it?"

"What if I don't wanna learn more about other people," Synaes crackled out.

"Then you're reading the wrong story," Robyn said as she smiled at you, the person reading this.

"We are going to learn more about each other," Lloyd said. "It will be beneficial to the obstacles that are ahead of us in the future."

"The only obstacle I have right now is hearing your voice," James said.

Deku sighed and rubbed his forehead. He rose to his feet and waltzed towards the grandfather clock in the corner. "Why don't we just all try to get along for a few minutes? Here, we've assigned you groups. You have fifteen minutes. Discuss."

With a click, Deku turned the alarm hand on the grandfather clock towards the number three.

Ding!

Following the paper, the students turned their desks towards the correct groups and consolidated themselves.

"What's up with this first question?" Megan waved her mechanical pencil in the air like it was a magical wand. "Why do I want to be a hero? Isn't that obvious?"

Hunter stretched out his arms, his chair groaning from the move. "Some people want to do it for bad reasons, I guess."

"Like what?"

Synaes clacked her walking stick on the side of the chair. "Money. Fame. Women. Why do most people do the things they do?"

"Well, I always wanted to be a breakdancer," Hunter said. "But my parents told me I couldn't feed myself without being a Pro-Hero."

"A breakdancer?" Megan asked.

"You know, you get the cardboard out," Hunter smiled with a faraway look in his eyes. "Africa Bambaataa on the boombox. And you just do what you feel through the vibrations."

Synaes ignored him and felt the pages on the special braille-embossed version of the sheet. "What have I learned most from where I've lived? What a dumb question."

Megan clicked her pencil and drew a line on the side of the paper. She knew she had been quiet over the past few days. A slight shiver coated her spine when she peered around the room. Her alabaster skin seemed to be tickled by the gentlest, yet unsettling draft that flowed through the cracks in the oak door at the front entrance. Some of the students had intrigued her with their power. Most notably, Blake had even used it on her when they sat on Hollywood Boulevard. At first, she found herself mad at being the punchline for Blake's pin-prick. Then, she started to feel an unease billow in her queasy stomach. Not only that, but she saw how dedicated he was to the whole act when he was stabbed my Robyn's sword. He had the ability to cause more pain and damage than many others, and he seemed to be outright cheerful over it.

Spying the boy talking that Chinese girl's ear off, she realized that she had known very little about these strangers at all. Even Synaes, that blind girl she had found herself increasingly comfortable with, was as much a mystery as anyone else. Yes, she grew up in Iceland, but there was not much else known.

Megan twitched her lips upward and faced the rest of the group. "I learned about three card monty."

"The card hustle?" Hunter asked.

"And every other scam in the book," Megan said. "You, Synaes?"

The girl puffed a strand of her silver hair away and stared down, her black sunglasses betraying no emotion. "Never drink a six pack of beer before a fight."

Hunter tilted his head. "Did that happen to you?"

"Oh, most of the men in Reykjavik are like that," Synaes said. "That's what most of them do. Even the heroes. Police officers actually do things in that country. They don't just clean up and direct traffic like everywhere else."

Megan sighed. She was not getting a thing from this girl. She rested her head in her hands and peeked out to the others.

Towards the corner of the room, Lloyd scribbled like a mad man on the paper. The words flowed through him like a river of milk and honey gushing into a village. He saw the answers to his questions illuminate his path forward like a lighthouse sending him from the sea. He let out a light laugh as he wore away on the aptitude survey.

"Yes, yes," Lloyd muttered to himself. "These questions are all what I have been thinking about!"

"Uh, Lloyd?" Katsu asked. "I think we're supposed to be doing this together."

Lloyd gazed up like a curious beaver and clicked his pencil. "Oh. I apologize. I was just so excited at all of these questions! I love this one. If you were caught in the crossfire of a gang shootout, who do you save first? The dog or the old lady in the middle?"

Katsu flashed a side glance at Moxie. She shrugged her shoulders. "And what did you pick?"

"Isn't it obvious," Lloyd said as he pushed back his non-existent glasses on the bridge of his nose. "I would use my quirk to create a wave of dust that would envelop me and the dog as well as the old lady. Then, I would negotiate a peace deal between the warring gangs. In that time, the dog and the old lady could run away."

Moxie scratched at his lengthy chestnut hair. "But what if the old lady can't run away?"

"That's the problem you have?" Katsu asked.

Moxie tore at a small corner of the page. "Okay, but I like this question. What Pro-Hero would you like to work with the most one day?"

"Well, I would love to be around my sister," Lloyd said. "But I guess that isn't fair. You know, I've always had a soft spot for Ingenium. That Pro-Hero in Japan wh-."

"What a shock," Katsu interrupted. "What about you, Moxie?"

The girl thought about it for a second, biting into the inside of her gums in thought. "That's a really good question. I think what makes a hero worth being around is someone that understands some important things about life. Obviously, how important every life is to every person. But also, what makes life worth living. It's so easy to be brought down by all the sad stuff and tragedies that go on in the world. And I think a lot about whether I can even be a hero by dealing with that. There might be a day when I come across something really bad. Turns your stomach inside out bad. And I wonder how I'll do then. I'd hope by that point, I learned how to get over it, but I think having another hero, one that can look past that and focus on helping people, that's the hero I need."

Katsu smiled and leaned towards Moxie. "And that's why you'd be a good hero. Because you actually value people's lives. And feeling bad about tragedy...that just means your human."

Moxie nodded. "You're right. And I want to be that kind of hero."

"Maybe that hero is closer than you think."

The two stared at each other, their eyes not shying away from the other.

"Uh...guys?" Lloyd asked. "Hello? Can we finish this? Guys?"

As Lloyd tried to get their attention, the rest of the room was abuzz in the strange questions. On the other side of the room, James ticked his tongue at the ridiculousness. He shook the paper in his hands and scanned over the words.

"What kind of question is this?" He asked. "If you're future wife cheated on you with your best friend, what would you do at your birthday party?"

"If you saw doggie on the flower shop counter, would you say hi?" Abel asked. "I guess I would."

"No one asked you, raccoon," James slapped his paper onto the desk.

"Why am I a raccoon?" Abel asked. "I thought I'd at least be a honey badger."

Robyn leaned her head closer to James and pinched his cheek. "Aww, did someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed."

James shook off her soft fingers and scooted back, the lightest zap of neon light sparking between the impact. "Let's just get this over with. Kermit, whaddya wanna be when you grow up?"

Anton furrowed his brow and uncrossed his legs from under his desk. Despite Robyn sitting right next to him, she appeared to be gazing with far too much interest at James. When she let out the lightest giggle, Anton's frown burned into his face. James reminded him far too much of his brother, except he had even more of an ego. Not only that, but he was hogging up the attention from the rest of the students.

You scrounge! You're jealous because the only kinda cute girl that's noticed us ever is hitting on your enemy.

Anton bit on his pencil. His eye twitched at the mention of another nickname towards him, but he sighed and waved it off. "Away from you."

"You wanna fight right now?" James shouted.

"Chillax, dudes," Abel leaned back with his arms behind his head. "No need to fight. Just let the good times roll."

"Are these supposed to be good times?" Anton said in a dry tone. "I'd hate to see bad times."

Robyn cleared her throat and ran her finger over the page. "Here's a good question. 'What would your ideal sidekick be?'"

"Nobody," James said. "They'd get in the way."

"Not even someone with healing capabilities," Robyn smiled at James.

"Tch. Like I need to be healed," James said. "I'd fry those villain morons into the next century."

You're just gonna let him smooth talk her like that?

"But what if you don't fry them," Anton said. "What if one of them is made of rubber or something?"

"Then I beat the shit out of them, Kazoo!" James yelled again.

In the dead center of the room, Austin sighed to himself as Blake chattered at ten thousand miles per minute. He had no idea that this classroom held that much oxygen, but here was Blake going on about a question on the survey.

"...and then they walked over to the drugstore and bought an aspirin. Can you believe that? Absolute torture for seven hours, and they give them an aspirin to calm them down! They had the funniest sense of humor."

Hearing a lack of words next to him, Austin blinked. "Oh, right. Sure. Very funny."

Ding!

Deku wondered where the time went, but he decided that it was best to stop things before some of his more unruly students did anything. He took up all of the forms and set them back in his desk.

"Great. I hope that gave you all something to think about," Deku said when he set the papers back down on his desk. "Now, we need to get ready. Today is a little field trip we are taking!"

That was how the students found themselves piled onto a fancy school bus down the 405 into the heart of Los Angeles. The bus was a sleek indigo with the school crest emblazoned on the side. Izuku was surprised at just how much they modeled it after the old U.A. buses. Even down to the metal poles in the center and the limousine-styled benches that lined the sides of the main seating area.

He smiled back at the class as the inched down the freeway. Even in the early morning, traffic was horrendous in the city. In fact, Izuku had only learned just a few minutes before class of the trip. Apparently, Principal Tommy had cut a good deal with some certain people to take them to a Void Industries laboratory. They would see all of the new gadgets and creation process in building the right support items. Maybe some of the students would even be inspired.

Izuku glanced at the bus driver. "Excuse me, sir. How ma-."

"Name is Ray," The black man said in a gruff southern voice. He had thick dark brown side muffs and a long beard that was infested with stray grey strands and bits of old cheese crackers. The man's black overcoat hung over his shoulders like a burlap sack, and his graphite undershirt clashed with the camo shorts that squeezed on his torso threatening to burst the button in the middle. He had his eyes peeled right on the road staring at it like it would attack him if he were to turn away. Izuku thought he seemed like a strange fellow that would peruse the deepest corners of pawn shops for arrows and dusty roller skates for Christmas shopping, but he decided most Americans were probably like that.

"Ray," Izuku said. "Can you tell us how much longer?"

"Oh, it won't be much longer," the man called Ray said as he turned the large steering wheel. "You know, it'll be a nice little trip. Nothing else but a nice field trip to teach kids things. Nothing else but that."

"Uh...right," Izuku said with a strange fade off.

In the middle section of the bus, Leo clasped his hands together and gazed out the window. A small Prius trailed next to them like a minnow following a whale. The skyscrapers of the downtown area reflected the ribbons of concrete that danced away from it and made up the roads of Los Angeles. The sun peaking at the right time, the tops of the glass-coated buildings sparkled like stars traversing the sky. With the bright blue ocean fanning out above them, not a cloud dotted the horizon. Even the ghostly remnants of the moon were still visible, it's fuzzy outline fading every second into the background.

Leo sighed and twitched his leg, a nervous habit that he had picked up from years of riding the metro line in Manchester. The boy had worried all morning about the wrinkles in his dress shirt and the odd Double-Windsor knot on his neck. His dad would throw him in the Channel if he found that he had given up and decided to tie just a simple Half Windsor. He was quite prideful in that way.

Every time he raised up his eyes, he would immediately shrink them back down to his lap. Ever since his escapades in the team challenge, people would give him some odd stares. While some had praised him for his quirk, he knew that they were all lying. They found him to be a weirdo that would mess up their timeline. A danger. A menace. And beyond his quirk, no one would find him worth talking to. In fact, few at all even said more than a daily greeting once he left the hospital wing. Sure, none of the students seemed all bad, but he was hesitant to name any of them as more than a classmate. He only had two other people in his life he would call friends, and where were they now? Gone, off to do bigger and better things than talk to him.

Leo closed his hand on the warm gold of the pocket watch in his pants. All he felt he had in this new land was this watch and himself.

"Oi, Leo. I asked you a question."

Oh, and this guy.

Leo had no idea what designs James had on him. He wanted to believe that there was something in his personality that made him more approachable for the intimidating guy. However, he was not naive and knew it was just his quirk that made James curious. He did not want to bite anyone's hand, but he would prefer to be left alone at the moment.

"Oh, right. What was it?"

"I was asking if you had ever been in a street fight before."

Leo stared into James's eyes and felt a warm flush around his cheeks. "I don't...don't think so. I had a friend who was a footballer, so he would kick the ball at me for practice. I tended goal."

"Oh, so he would tackle you or something?"

"Tackle?"

"You played football," James said. "So I'm sure you got a few bruises."

"He means football as in soccer," Lloyd said directly across from James separated by a silver holding pole. Leo gasped at the intrusion, a sure sign that James was about to get heated. "He was the goaltender."

"Nobody asked you," James balled up his fists. "And this is conversation between me and the Doctor here."

"He doesn't want to talk to you," Lloyd said. "You should respect his wishes and leave him be."

"Or what? You're gonna call my mom on me?" James said with a deep sneer.

"In fact, maybe I will," Lloyd jabbed a finger upward in the air. "Perhaps the only people that can set you straight are your parental figures. If I tell them you are bullying people, then we can see just ho-."

"I'm not bullying shit," James crossed his arms. "Leo likes hearing my voice. Right, Leo?"

Leo shook in his seat like a tree branch in a hurricane. "I...I...I think ma-."

"You see, you amoeba," James said to Lloyd. "Now leave us alone before I throw you into the ocean, you sloppy sloth."

"If anyone is the sloth, it's you," Lloyd said. "You're tie is horribly knotted. Your shirt isn't tucked in. You didn't even iron your jacket, did you?"

James seethed and ground his teeth. How dare this man insult his grooming appearance! "Oh, yeah? Well...I'm...I'm...I'm bigger than you! So there. Leave us alone."

For good measure, James turned in his seat and sat facing the window. It must have been terribly uncomfortable since he had to hug his legs and hunch himself over them to fit in the small seat. However, Leo felt the pang in his chest dissipate like the final remnants of the traffic jam. The bus was finally moving at a decent speed again, and he soothed himself to the rumble that shook him in the bench.

Lloyd touched the top of his head. "That's not true at all," He said more to himself. "If anything, I'm roughly a few centimeters taller than him."

"I don't think that's what he meant by bigger," Abel said from all the way at the back of the bus. He sat in the very center of the back row with four other students crowded around him.

"My question is: how would he even know that?" Austin said next to him.

"Whatever," Abel shook his head. "Now gather in close, guys."

Facing Abel, Austin scanned the other members of the small group in the final row. Abel had called for Austin to meet him and some select other members of the class to meet him during their bus ride to the lab. When he sat down, he was met with Blake (who he had hoped to have finally gotten rid of from their survey session) as well as Drake and Katsu. He had sad little to Drake since they had worked together to win the Heroes vs. Villains challenge. Then again, neither said much in general. He was a little surprised to see Katsu there. He had thought he already had his small group in Moxie and Lloyd.

"I've called you all here today because I have a plan," Abel whispered. "A plan that the five of us can best accomplish together. We need to keep all of this a secret. The moment we are found out, we're dead."

"So...why are we doing this then?" Austin asked.

"Because we want to die?" Drake asked.

"Because we need to prove something to the world," Abel said. "Listen, I've been doing a lot of research about our teacher, Deku. And by a lot, I mean I looked into his teacher profile."

"The one from the school," Katsu said. "Me and Abel looked it over last night. And we found nothing."

"Isn't that good?" Austin asked as he pushed back his glasses on the ridge of his nose.

"In the quirk section, everything was redacted," Katsu said.

"They used the black marker," Abel explained. "Like the kind they use in top secret intelligence shit. They're hiding something about Deku's quirk, and we need to find out what it is. I know exactly what we need to do, because me and Katsu know where the info is being stored."

"And that would be?" Austin asked.

"Principal Tommy's office," Katsu finished.

"So," Abel pointed down to fingers and used them to walk over the air in front of them. "We utilize our plan to break into Principal Tommy's office and get the top secret shit. Then, we gather it up and release it to the world."

"Why?" Drake asked.

"Why?" Abel clutched his headphones. "Because we deserve to know the truth! Why is his quirk identical to All Might's? Why does no one recall him using it before he entered U.A.? Why does it seem like he has unlimited power? Don't you want to know these things?"

"Not particularly," Austin said in a deadpan tone.

"But Katsu," Blake pointed at the Japanese kid. "You came from Shoto, right?"

"He never tells me anything about this," Katsu said. "The closest I got was when I straight up asked him. He told me that Deku just had his quirk awaken much later than everyone else. But I was always suspicious. And if we can find out for sure where it came from, the-."

"What do you mean by that?" Drake asked. "Where it came from?"

Abel leaned in towards the others. "I have a theory that Deku's quirk...it's not just his own. He had to get it from somewhere. I don't know how or why, but he wasn't born with what he has. And if we can prove that, then maybe we can be the beginning in a long line of proving what some of these pros claim to be isn't that great."

"So, like, he stole his quirk?" Blake asked. "Sounds pretty evil if that's true."

"Why can't it just be that his quirk awakened later in life?" Drake asked. "He could be a late bloomer. Do we really need to know any of this if he's a hero and doing good things?"

"Well, we're going to find out," Abel said. "People deserve to know the truth. For the record, I've dealt with Pro-Heroes who aren't all they're cracked up to be, and I'm not gonna sit here and let another one dictate what we do. And guess what? I just told you all this stuff. So that makes you all complicit. I can rat you guys out right now to Principal Tommy and have you expelled!"

"I really don't think that's how blackmail works," Austin said.

Abel fell down to his knees. The semi-circle of people stared with bulged eyes like he was a cow giving birth in front of them. "Please, guys. This is important. I have a plan to reveal this information, and I need your help! This is for the good of humanity. The greater good!"

"The greater good," the other four members chanted in a monotone voice.

Abel raised up his palms. "So, I have a plan. Will you guys help me?"

Austin looked down upon Abel. The normally hyper and jocular boy had a glassy film over his eyes as if he were pleading to them. He had not known Abel for long, but humility did not seem to be a behavior he exhibited often. Yet, the seriousness on his face left a resolve as strong as the pillars on the bridge they were now crossing into the southern part of the city. Clearly, there was more to this than Abel let on. He cared about it more than just finding out about his teacher's quirk.

"There's a real reason why you want to do this, right?" Austin asked. "You don't care just about the truth."

Blake, Drake, and Katsu stared back down at Abel. His overdramatic demeanor now melting into an oasis of pensive reminiscence.

Abel pulled off his headphones from his neck. He set them down on the chair and threw himself upward.

Plopping himself back in the chair, he tapped a finger on the music-listening devices and slumped his shoulders.

"So, I had a friend a while ago," Abel said. "His name was Seth."

It's here! A new chapter!

Thank you so much everybody! I am thrilled that we are here today, and I am so glad that you kept up the momentum. We are entering a new arc, and I hope you enjoy it!

Not much to say that hasn't already been said! Thank you for your patience. The best is yet to come!

Also, I am changing the cover art of this fic to showcase some of the amazing fanart! The first up is James Guzman! Enjoy, Harvoc Phantom! The artist is Eggys Trash. You can find him on Twitter and other sites.

So, what do you think? Let me know! It appears this field trip has a lot more to offer than people think. What will happen? Find out next time.

Make sure you review! All of these things you do motivate and inspire me to keep going. So...keep doing it! Hahaha!

Thank you. See you soon!