Author's Note: Okay, so it's been a few weeks, and all I have to say is that writer's block is a little bitch, and I'd slap it in the face if it was more than just a meta construct that has no physical form. But I managed to get it done this week. I originally planned for this to be a lot more chapters detailing this little mini arc, but it'll probably be like 2 or 3 more chapters before the end of arc 3 and the beginning arc 4: Overhaul!
Also, if you want to get into a place with other lovers of MHA, and specifically IzuJirou stuff, come on and join this Discord server that I'm on:
/eFtmT8cTbY
We're only kind of crazy, and not at all a cult... except, we also kind of are. Anyway, yeah, join that!
I hope you enjoy this chapter! It's cross-posted on Ao3 as well. Leave a review if you want to. I welcome the feedback! See you next week hopefully.
"What the shit?!" The blonde yelled. Kaminari. Izuku took note of him.
"Aizawa-sensei, why are these vigilantes here?" Izuku recognized Momo Yaoyorozu.
Before Aizawa could say anything, Izuku stepped forward. "Are we going to have another problem, miss Yaoyorozu, heiress to the Yaoyorozu fortune?" That caused the heiress to stop talking and quiet down. "Sorry Eraserhead, but I'm going to answer this one." Aizawa simply nodded. Izuku nodded to his teammates, and they joined him.
"If you're unaware of who we are or have forgotten, we are Societas Requiem. We took down Blackout and Stain, and we saved Katsuki Bakugo from the villain All For One. We are here because your dear teacher asked us to be here. He told us that there are things he can't teach you like we could. Overwatch, if you could." Izuku said. He nodded at Mei, who stepped forward next.
"For this next week of your heroics class, one team will be fighting us each day. This is for us to recover after each fight, but it is important for each of you that this is the case too. When you fight villains, they will typically be at full strength. Those in the later teams would gain nothing fighting us after other groups already had that day. NightHawk." Mei stepped back and Fumikage stepped forward.
"This is no reason for those who are sitting out on each day's battle to grow complacent." He summoned Dark Shadow who began to pass each notebook to its respective new owner. "Each of you will analyze your classmates' performances as well as your own. Talk about the strengths and shortcomings of each person's performance. I believe we have arranged for the tapes of each match to be accessible to you all in the new dorms. You will have a week to complete these. It would be best for you to start while watching the matches. Heartquake."
Kyouka stepped forward. "Now, you're probably wondering why you are being told that you have to do this."
"I was thinking that, yeah!" A pair of gloves and boots said. Hagakure was her name from their notes.
"It's because these are part of your grade for this assignment. Both your performance in these fights as well as your written analyses will count towards your grade. You'd better do well on both. Oh, and the best part? We'll be grading both." Kyouka explained. That earned some gasps from almost every student. "Take it away, Mastermind."
"We have designed this entire assignment. We know each of your quirks. Your assigned locations will put some members of your team at a disadvantage. As a team member, your job is to do your best to nullify the weaknesses of your teammates. Changeling, you're up." Hitoshi walked back next to Mei, giving Himiko a high five as he passed.
"Now, what is your goal for the match? Good question! Your team is the hero team, duh. We are the villains. You will find us and try to take us down. There will also be hostages around the buildings that we have scattered ourselves in. You'll have ten minutes to find us. After that, we start executing hostages. Once we've started, we execute a hostage every minute unless we're occupied. Once they're all dead… we start our hunt." A number of students audibly gulped. "You'll need to immobilize us. We won't go down quietly, and even if you find the hostage, we might be hidden to attack you while you're least expecting it. If you fall unconscious or get bound, you're out. You lose points if you hurt the hostages. You gain points by saving them. Understand?"
The students all nodded, most still too stunned to speak.
One student, the frog girl Asui, asked, "Will we get to know your quirks since you know ours?"
Izuku then had an idea. He walked to the back of the group next to Hitoshi and Himiko.. "Normally, most villain quirks are unknown. But sometimes, information can come in about a quirk. And sometimes it can be wrong. Due to this, we will each tell you our quirks; however, one person can decline to answer and another one of the remaining five will lie about their quirk." He put his hands on their shoulders. He hoped they got the message.
"That makes sense, kero." Asui said with a nod.
"I'll go first." Izuku said. "My quirk is Analysis. It speeds up my mental processing speed and it increases the amount of stimuli I can begin to process. It doesn't speed up my body, though. Now, done the line starting with Overwatch."
"My quirk is Zoom. I can zoom my vision and see things really close." Mei said.
"My quirk is called Mind's Eye." Hitoshi lied. "I can read people's minds a few seconds in the future." That was good. He got the hint.
"I will be declining to answer." Himiko said simply. Wonderful. They both got what Izuku was trying to tell them.
"My quirk is called Earphone Jack. I have these jacks that I can use to channel my heartbeat and I can hear things better." Kyouka explained.
"My quirk is Dark Shadow." Fumikage manifested Dark Shadow. "This is Dark Shadow."
"Yo." Dark Shadow said simply.
Izuku clasped his hands together. "Now, with that out of the way, let's get to the action, shall we? Team One, you're up today. We will go and set up and send word to your teacher whenever we're ready for you. You then have to find us and the hostages and take us down. Good luck, heroes." Izuku laced the last word with every bit of vitriol that he could. He rolled his mask eyes to ones to emphasize that. They would learn today. He would teach them. With that, the six members of Societas Requiem retreated back into the city, leaving the hero students and two teachers standing there.
"That was… eventful." Vlad King said. "Well, you heard them. Get a move on. Aizawa, Nezu, and I all agreed on this. Those not participating today, follow me to the observatory." He walked up to Shouta. "I hope you know what we're getting into." He said under his breath.
"Me too." He agreed.
A few minutes later, it was just Shouta, Iida, Hagakure, Tsuburaba, Tsunotori, Fukidashi, and Yanagi all standing in the same clearing that they had been in before. A small beep from Shouta's phone caught his attention. It was a single message from Snake Eyes: "We're ready."
"Alright." Shouta said. "They are all set up. The hostages are robots. Good luck, you five. Take this seriously."
Iida nodded. "Of course, Aizawa-sensei. It is most prudent for us to take any training seriously. We must train as if we were doing hero work. Sloppy training yields sloppy results in practice!" His hand made a chopping motion as he spoke.
"Right. Now, as soon as one of you leaves, I'll let them know and the timer will start." Aizawa said, his voice staying monotonous.
"Iida, I have an idea!" Hagakure jumped in, almost interrupting Shouta. "Carry me, and once we find out where they are, I can look for them!"
Iida stiffened for the slightest amount of time, but Shouta saw it and made a mental note of it. "If that is what you wish, Hagakure. I apologize for the implications of carrying you like this, but it is important." With that, he picked up the invisible girl and ran off into the city with the four kids from class 1-B following after them.
Shouta sent a message to Snake Eyes saying that they had left and that their timer could start.
"Aizawa has said they have left. Your ten minutes start now, Changeling and Mastermind. Overwatch, do you have your position?" Izuku asked over the comms.
"Aye!" Himiko said back. "We'll kill a hostage in a few minutes!'
"Yes, I'm set up." Mei responded as well.
"Good." Izuku said. "NightHawk, you, Heartquake, and I are on supplementary distraction duty."
"Heard." The two of them answered over the comms.
Now, they just had to wait. It was simple. Iida, using his maneuverability, would scout out where they were. Mei would distract him, and possibly Hagakure, by setting up in a different location and firing at them. If that failed, then that's when Izuku and the other two would come out. Either way, it was all just a ploy to get time to run out and to execute the hostages.
It was all just a waiting game now.
Iida rocketed down the street with Hagakure in his arms. He had been running for just under a minute when his wandering eyes spotted the flash of a sniper's scope at the top of one of the nearby buildings. He slid to a halt, carefully dropping Hagakure off to the side. He looked to where he saw the flash, only to dive to the right as a shot rang out. Where Iida stood, a glob of pink goo had appeared.
"Halt, villain!" Iida pointed in the direction that he had seen the reflection from.
"Iida, I'm going to search around here. They have to be somewhere in the area. Hold whoever that is off" Hagakure whispered, moving her hands stealthily to point around. "I'm going mega stealth mode."
Iida nodded slightly. Enough for Hagakure to see, but hopefully not enough for this sniper to see. Gloves and boots fell to the ground, and Iida could barely hear the faintest footsteps around him. He looked back to the rooftop sniper only to hear another gunshot ring out. Followed by a yelp.
"Hagakure!" Iida yelled.
"They know where I am! How?" She strained.
"Hold on, I'll get you out of there!" Iida said, grabbing hold of the glued form of Hagakure and pulling. He used his engines to strengthen his efforts, and after a few seconds, pulled her out of the sticky substance. He immediately retreated off into the alleyways that dotted the city.
"Iida, where are you going?" Hagakure asked.
"If they can see you, then you're vulnerable." Iida said, disappearing behind some rubble in the city.
"I had them, but they're gone now. The speedster pulled out the invisible one from my glue." Mei said over her comms mic. "They might head towards your location." Mei shouldered her rifle and pulled out her grappling hook. She fired it in the direction of another rooftop and swung away to another building. A new vantage point would suit her well. She scoured over the rooftops until she saw what she was looking for. "I see the other four, though." As she zoomed in, the students from 1-B were running towards her previous location.
"We have visual on them as well." Izuku replied. "Keep on after the two you found before. We'll take care of these four no problem."
"How much time has passed?" Himiko asked.
"About three minutes." Mei said. "I'll keep looking for those two. If I can immobilize Mr. Proper, hunting down the invisible girl won't be too hard."
"Keep on them, Overwatch." Kyouka said.
"Mastermind, she's also naked, so you had better not look." Mei said, refocusing on scouting the alleyways.
"How could I even look in the first place? She's invisible. And I'm guarding the hostages." Hitoshi responded.
"Yeah, well, I'm gonna take her down so that you don't have to." Mei responded cheekily.
"Whatever." Hitoshi responded. Mei caught sight of a flash of silver in a nearby alleyway. She loaded a new cartridge into her grappling hook and swung towards them. "Remind me to develop a self-retracting hook soon."
"I don't even know where Iida went…" Yanagi said as she leaned forward, her hands on her knees.
"Those 1-A kids…" Tsunotori sighed.
"Yeah, tell me about it. They think just because they've had more villain encounters than we have that they're above us." Tsuburaba grumbled.
"Careful, you're sounding like Monoma." Fukidashi's speech bubble read.
"It's true, though." Tsuburaba defended.
"Let's just focus." Yanagi said quietly.
"Yes, you should be focusing." A voice said from an alley they had just passed.
"Oh no-" Tsunotori started before getting punched in the face with a gauntleted glove. The connected hit was then amplified by a blast of sound. Heartquake stepped out of the shadows and adopted a fighting stance.
"Tsunotori's out already?" Fukidashi's speech bubble read. He stepped back and put his hands up to his mouth. The word 'echo' came out of the speech bubble, and the surrounding areas began to shake with a powerful echo.
Heartquake kept walking forward, a single hand on her headphones, keeping them flush to her head. Her jacks snaked down to her boots and blasted a massive wall of sound. Tsuburaba quickly put up a wall of solid air to block the sound from reaching him, keeping himself and Fukidashi safe.
The visible word 'echo' began to grow in size, but as it reached a large size, it instead shrank rapidly. Heartquake kept walking closer to the group of hero students, her boots no longer blaring her heartbeat. A few random items flew towards Heartquake, surrounded by a purple glow, but before they could hit the woman, a dark being surged forward and knocked them out of the way.
"She's not alone!" Tsuburaba yelled to his classmates.
"No, she's not." Another voice said from a newly opened door to their left. Out of the shadows stepped Snake Eyes, his mask showing those two piercing red dots. He rushed forward and landed a beefy kick in Fukidashi's gut.
Fukidashi crumpled to the ground from pain. Snake Eyes spun around and brought his leg up for a powerful axe kick, but his foot made contact with another wall of air. He backed off a few feet, keeping light on his toes.
"Fun little trick, Tsuburaba," Snake Eyes said. Before Tsuburaba could respond, a sound-enhanced punch connected with the back of his head, and he fell to the ground.
"NightHawk." Snake Eyes said as he made a few hand signals that the two still conscious students couldn't determine the meaning of. The same dark being from earlier flew by the two unconscious students, picking them up, putting the capture tape on them, and taking them away.
"Now it's a fair fight, right? Two against two?" Heartquake said, taking her place next to Snake Eyes. Snake Eyes reached one hand up to the side of his face and stayed there. Fukidashi and Yanagi could hear the briefest of sounds from him, but they were quiet and undistinguishable.
"Fukidashi, go now!" Yanagi yelled as she moved her hands, gathering a bunch of rubble with her quirk.
"Are you sure?" His speech bubble read. "We could get hurt with this!"
"Yes." She nodded as rubble began to spin around her.
"Alright…" Suddenly, the word 'Boom' grew out of Fukidashi's speech bubble. Yanagi shot her pieces of rubble towards the word as she and Fukidashi ducked into cover. The word soon exploded, sending Yanagi's rubble shrapnel everywhere.
The two of them peeked out from behind cover to see a pile of broken building parts and rocks where both Heartquake and Snake Eyes once stood. They walked over to the pile of broken pieces of the building to investigate the scene. As Yanagi and Fukidashi pushed aside rubble, two small jacks poked their way out of the pile and stabbed the both of them in the neck, causing them to freeze up on impact as sound waves were injected into their bodies. A pair of gloved hands pushed their way out of the rubble as well, grabbing both Yanagi and Fukidashi's arms and wrapping them in capture tapes.
Defeated, the two of them slumped over as Snake Eyes and Heartquake pushed their own way out of the destroyed building parts.
As soon as Yanagi yelled for Fukidashi to 'go now,' Izuku activated Analysis. He took in all of the information that he could, telling all of it over his comms link as soon as his mouth caught up with his eyes. Izuku noticed the word that Fukidashi was making was the word 'boom,' he noticed an overhang above them that would fall directly in front of them, and he noted how fast Kyouka's jacks could move when she wasn't being sneaky. And he relayed all of that information as quickly as he could.
Immediately, Kyouka's jacks ascended and blasted the overhang free with enough time for it to fall in front of them right before the 'boom' exploded. The newly felled wall in front of them did keep them safe from the explosion, but the force of it did push the wall back considerably. That coupled with the shrapnel that Yanagi had supplied, the two of them were now shrouded in debris.
Luckily for the two of them, they were covered in shadow, but the gaps in the rubble were large enough to give them a viewpoint. And just enough space to have Kyouka's jacks sneak out. With the students stunned, Izuku took the opportunity to grab hold of them with the capture tape and officially mark them as 'out'.
"Good job, Snake Eyes." Kyouka said, standing up out of the pile.
"You too, Heartquake. Good job taking my Analysis into consideration." Izuku responded, standing up, himself. They both dusted themselves off and walked back to the center of the alley that the confrontation had taken place in. "Good job on your support, NightHawk." Izuku saluted to a rooftop nearby to see Dark Shadow come out of Fumikage.
"What about me?!" It asked.
"You did great, Dark Shadow, yes." Izuku replied. "Alright Overwatch." He said over his comms. "It's up to you now. Take those last two down."
"Have our ten minutes even ended?" Himiko asked.
"No. You still have three minutes." Izuku responded.
"Aww damn." She responded.
"Fine with me." Hitoshi said. "I get to relax a bit."
"And you don't get to see the naked invisible girl." Mei said.
"You did hear what you just said, right?" Hitoshi asked.
"Yes, and?" Mei responded once more.
"Regardless, you have this right, Overwatch? You don't need help?" Izuku asked, looking further through the alleys..
"No yeah, I got this." Mei said. She shouldered her rifle, used her quirk to zoom in with her mask to see infrared. Looking down the alley in front of her, she saw both Iida and Hagakure hunching down by the corner of an alleyway. "Well, sitting ducks do make easy targets." She chambered a round into her rifle, fired a shot, and within a second repeated the same course of action, pinning the both of them to the ground. "They're immobilized. That's game."
The students all sat in awe in the camera room. Very few of them really had any idea of what had just happened. The ones that did were writing rapidly in the journals that they had been given.
Kan and Shouta were in the corner the entire time. "Damn…" Kan started. "Now I can see why you lost to them. They're gutsy and smart. They know how to work alone and as a team, and they know their strengths. Alone, any individual member couldn't stand up to us, but together, they're a threat. And we haven't even seen what the other two are capable of."
"You haven't seen what the other two are capable of." Shouta corrected.
"Can you tell me which one lied? Or is that one confidential?" Kan asked.
"It's Mastermind. What he said is not what his quirk does. I think it's if you respond to something he says, he makes you unable to move for a while. It's incredibly annoying." Shouta whispered.
"I see…" Kan nodded to himself.
"Well now what do we have here?" A voice called from behind them that sent chills down both of their spines.
"Principal Nezu…" Shouta said, acknowledging but not looking at the rodent… thing…
"What a good performance from those kids." Nezu said. "Send them to my office when they're done, okay?" Nezu hopped off of the seat he had slid into despite neither teacher realizing it, and exited the room.
All of the other students hadn't even noticed the conversation. They were either too shocked or too engrossed in their writing to notice. Shouta supposed he didn't really have a choice, given it was his boss that told him to do it…
Sighing, he took out his phone and sent them a message: "Principal Nezu wishes to speak to you once you are done in the training area. I don't know what it's about, but he didn't seem to be asking."
He put his phone away and went back to watching his students. Whatever this meeting was supposed to be, he wanted no part in it. Societas Requiem was frightening enough. He didn't even want to consider Nezu being in contact with them.
"Why did you want to speak with us?" Izuku asked as they stood outside the door of Nezu's office.
"Come now, don't be so on guard. I just want to help you." Nezu placated.
"The first sign of something being off, and we are out of here." Izuku said, motioning them inside.
"Good. Thank you for listening. Come in, pull up a chair. Get comfortable. And do close the door." Once the door was closed, Nezu spoke again. "We have a lot to talk about, Izuku Midoriya." Nezu smiled.
