Unknown's hand flew up in a split second, stretching under Bakugo's arm as her fingers quickly met the dark green metal of his gauntlet. The moment her fingertip made contact, a deafening crack pierced the air as the weapon shattered, bursting into hundreds of tiny shards. She saw his eyes widen in shock, momentarily drawing his attention away from her, and wasted no time in flicking her eyes to the side, quickly bringing another chunk of ice underfoot. Once again with a solid platform beneath her, she zipped to the right, rapidly putting distance between herself and the still-stunned Bakugo. She still had Todoroki to deal with, however, as he sent another blazing stream of fire to block her path. She didn't stop this time, rather she wove through the flames with practiced speed, her eyes glued on the hole in the enormous patch of ice that led down into the arena below.

Todoroki grit his teeth as a wave of ice burst from his right foot, instantly sealing the gap just as she began closing in on it. However, his eyes widened as she made no effort to stop or slow down, instead she sharply tilted the platform beneath her, dropping it forward at a right angle as she kicked off from its surface, plunging headlong towards the ice. She rapidly fell towards the minefield of jagged, frozen crystals with no reservations, and just before the first sharp point could pierce her skin, her arms shot up to cross in front of her eyes as the entire mass of ice shattered, countless shards bursting and gleaming brilliantly as they caught the sunlight.

Unknown plummeted through the air, landing with a heavy clamor on the twisted pile of metal below as tiny frozen shards rained down around her. Her eyes quickly found Horus, who was occupied with a few heroes not far away. He glanced at her, and she motioned up towards the hole in the ceiling.

"Time to go. She's had long enough to get out," she stated quietly as she reached Dabi across the arena, also engaged with a number of pro-heroes. She ducked to avoid a rush of blue fire bursting from his palm.

"So soon?" he mused, dodging a streak of purple light before leaping back in sync with her. A pair of footsteps joined theirs as Horus landed at their side a split second later.

"Your turn," she stated, glancing at the redhead expectantly.

"I don't need you to tell me," he scoffed.

Through the gap in the ceiling, the sky began to darken as heavy gray clouds formed rapidly overhead. The clear blue sky gave way to thick stormclouds at an alarming rate, drawing the attention of the civilians, students, and teachers all around them.

The three leapt away as the ground beneath them suddenly split open and a scattering of pro-heroes rushed at them. They countered each attack with imposing accuracy, flares of blue arching out wildly alongside unseen forces that slammed into those who got too close. The sky overhead began to crackle as the first drops of rain escaped from the heavy clouds, rapidly building before it soon grew into a relentless downpour. Rain fell into the stadium uninhibited through the massive hole in the ceiling, instantly drenching all those below with its frigid spit.

Unknown glanced at a pair of teachers rushing at her, motionlessly sending them flying backward with a loud crack, before her eyes landed on the large pile of rubble from the collapsed section of roof. Three flat pieces of gnarled steel separated themselves from the mound before darting out in different directions. One of them zipped directly to her, passing quickly through the air as she leapt onto it, lifting her up and out of reach. As she crossed under the gaping hole and into the heavy rainfall, she glanced up momentarily to pressurize the air above her, causing the rain to bounce off and stream to the ground in a mock halo overhead. Distant shouts from below were drowned out by the steady, thundering beat of the storm as she rose up through the ceiling.

Glancing back down for a moment, she scanned the shrinking figures on the ground, her eyes pausing as they landed on a group of her former classmates. Among them were the distinct outlines of Bakugo and Todoroki, both of whom had reentered the arena at some point, and though their expressions were too far to see, she could feel the unmistakable burn of their eyes on her.

Dabi and Horus were not far behind, each balancing on twisted pieces of metal, following Unknown through the gap in the ceiling. The streets and buildings of the abruptly gloomy city quickly came into view. In the distance, she could see the vague flashing of red and blue lights.

"Reinforcements will be here soon; let's move," Horus stated, having to raise his voice over the sounds of the storm.

Unknown nodded and shifted the pieces of scrap metal forward. The trio cut through the cold, damp city air, high above the empty streets, as they quickly disappeared from sight.

It was an enigma at first.

No one knew why the League of Villains chose to attack the Provisional Licensing Exam that day; they had left as quickly as they appeared, without explanation or any apparent gain.

Dozens were injured to varying degrees, mostly relegated to the group of teachers who had been present, although a number of civilians had also sustained serious bruises and burns.

The intriguing part about it all, however, was that no lives had been taken.

The Hero Association spent many hours interviewing all those involved, locked away in conference rooms discussing the motive behind the attack, yet were still unable to identify any satisfactory reason. Aizawa answered their questions patiently, recounting everything he saw and detailing his conflict with the redheaded boy. This was the first time any information on the Sacrosanct children, as they were being called, had come to light since the Kamino Ward incident, and the investigators put heavy emphasis on it, seeing as it was their sole guide in their efforts to identify the members.

Horus, as a number of students had overheard the others calling him, was a skilled combat fighter, having shown little trouble in keeping up with Aizawa despite the hero having nullified his quirk. He used a number of small weapons, including serrated knives and a set of brass knuckles, and appeared well trained in close-quarter combat. His sheer strength was brutal- a number of pro-heroes had bruises and broken ribs to prove it- and he was considerably fast as well. Aizawa surmised the boy was responsible for the sudden rainstorm that had prevented reinforcements from catching them as they escaped, and the Commission concluded it was most likely a weather-related quirk.

By the time the nearest responding heroes arrived on the scene, the dark clouds had already begun to disperse and the three were nowhere in sight. They could do nothing but console the students and tend to the wounded until medical teams arrived.

Aizawa wondered how they were able to get away with it. Though not all of the teachers present possessed offensive quirks, and many were occupied with protecting the students and civilians, they still outnumbered them at least ten to one. Perhaps they could have allowed the students to engage instead of merely permitting self-defense- although that didn't stop a few of his students in particular- but they weren't quite heroes yet, and he had a feeling there would have been many more serious injuries had they allowed such a decision.

That was when he began to understand.

The ones who sustained the worst of it all were the ones who fought the hardest, the ones who went after the villains again and again despite the building pain of their wounds, purely out of determination to protect those around them. The students and civilians who chose to stay on the sidelines escaped with little to no injury, and those unlucky few who didn't were almost exclusively injured by stray attacks not meant for them.

It was a message, he concluded.

Resist and be destroyed.

It was fear they were after, which would explain why they so deliberately chose not to take any lives. Despite the shock value a high body count might bring, they weren't interested in shock; instead, they would allow their victims to live, to go out into the world with the scars of the encounter in their hearts. They might try to carry on as they used to, yet underneath, most would be unable to truly continue as they had before. The looming threat of another attack would always lurk in the back of their minds; after all, if the League of Villains could attack a building full of heroes and get away with it, what couldn't they do? That was what they wanted. They wanted the students, civilians, and heroes alike to spread their fear across the country, tainting the public trust in the power of pro-heroes, even making the heroes themselves question their own abilities. It was a plan without guaranteed success- after all, it was difficult to predict how people would really respond after such an event- but the consequences would be dangerous and far-reaching if circumstances ended up as they intended.

Aizawa could already see the brunt of the impact on his students. Their morale had dropped considerably since the disaster at the licensing exam, though perhaps theirs was a unique case, as it wasn't the attack itself that had discouraged them, but rather the encounter with their old classmate. Regrettably, the effects were present in every one of them to some degree. Perhaps those wounds were too fresh, or perhaps they hadn't fully accepted the reality of the situation, but in any case, seeing her again had disturbed them deeply.

It was terrible to watch.

Bakugo was the most affected by far, though this was, unfortunately, to be expected. Just when he was beginning to recover, just when he was regaining some minuscule bit of his shattered sense of normalcy, she appeared once again, and once again, he fell into a less-than-ideal coping mechanism. It was terribly familiar. He was withdrawing from the others; what few interactions he had these days were pockmarked with bouts of rage and unprovoked aggression, and it didn't help that it had gotten to the point where his classmates were more worried for his health than their own. It was a mirror image of the aftermath of Kamino Ward, though there was one key difference. Instead of locking himself away in his room, he was now spending those long, solitary hours in Gym Gamma, fully pouring his internalized frustration into training. If the gym was unavailable, whether due to scheduled closings or occupation by other students, he could be found in Ground Omega instead, pouring out his anger in the privacy of the forest and often leaving large patches of charred, blackened plantlife. Accordingly, his performance during in-class training exercises had improved faster than anyone else, although Aizawa couldn't say he was pleased with the change. At best, it was a tangible outlet, a distraction from his tumultuous state of mind; at worst, it was a self-destructive obsession that would inevitably end up burning him out. The rest of the class did what they could to support him, but in reality, they didn't quite know how to handle it themselves. It was the first time they had seen Naoko, or rather, Unknown, in person since her defection, and the first time most of them had witnessed her true abilities. If there was any silver lining, however, it would be that the students were not subjected to witness the more... grotesque uses of her quirk, as debuted in Kamino Ward.

The entire situation was messy and unpredictable, and while Aizawa would certainly do everything in his power to keep his students away from the conflict, they were already too deeply involved to escape unharmed. Now, he could only try to mitigate the damage, to preserve their spirits as best he could.

In the beginning, Todoroki didn't think much of Ito Naoko. She was cheerful and bright like many of his other classmates, she seemed to get along well with most everyone, and she was little more than another face in the day-to-day continuity of his life at UA.

The first time he truly noticed her was during the sports festival. He had interacted with her a number of times prior, but he always found her rather forgettable. Her match with Bakugo was what drew his attention, along with many others' as well. He could never quite figure out why she had thrown the match. She didn't seem like the type to pull such a stunt for attention, and despite the attention, it certainly didn't help her odds of being scouted by an agency. That was the first time he considered there might be more to her than meets the eyes.

In hindsight, there was always something a bit unusual about the girl, though not in the sense that it stood out. Quite the contrary, in fact, she was almost too average; everything from her grades to her personality to even her appearance was extraordinarily unremarkable. She blended perfectly into any setting, a simple background character no one would think twice about. Though he had long suspected she wasn't always being entirely honest, he never could have imagined the truth of it all.

None of it was real. Not her quirk, not her personality, not her name. Todoroki wondered how tiring it must have been to keep up such an artificial face all that time, what lengths she went through to forge her entire being. And for what? What was the point? He didn't know, though it made him wonder all the more. One of the many questions bubbling in his mind was why she had grown close to so many people. Ito Naoko had no shortage of friends, but if she truly never had any interest in any of them, wouldn't it have made more sense for her to keep to herself? Or was it part of her ploy to hurt them even more? To make them suffer? Bakugo, Midoriya, Uraraka, Yaoyorozu, Asui, Ashido- did she want them to feel such twisting betrayal? Even he himself couldn't fully ignore the clawing pain in his chest every time his memories reared their ugly head.

...

"Congratulations, Todoroki!" Naoko grinned as she sat up from the dirt floor of the training field. She wiped a hand over her glistening forehead, using the other to brush the dirt from the back of her blue gym uniform. The class had been paired off to spar that afternoon, and as usual, she had just lost.

"Are you ok?" Todoroki asked passively as he stepped in front of her.

She gratefully took his outstretched hand, pulling herself to her feet. It was only after she smiled up at him that he noticed the cut on her cheek.

"Oh, you're hurt."

"Huh? Where?" she blinked curiously as she glanced down at herself, carefully examining her arms.

She felt a warm hand slide under her chin and gently lift her head back up. Her sunny brown eyes found his mismatched ones as they peered intensely down at her. She noticed his gaze was focused just a bit below her own. The pad of his thumb brushed over her cheek, and she instinctively lifted a hand to touch the spot.

"Oh, you're right," she flinched a bit at the faint sting as her fingers met the open cut. She experimentally pressed around the area a few more times. It didn't hurt much and seemed rather small: a bit of ice must have scratched her during the match. "It's nothing- I'll just clean it after class!"

"You should clean it now."

"I'll be fine, it's not bleeding," she grinned, removing his hand from her cheek and patting it gratefully before letting it fall back to his side. "Plus, you know Mr. Aizawa will lecture us again if we stop sparring for too long!"

"You should take care of your wound first."

"You make it sound so serious..."

"It could get infected."

"It's just a cut, Todoroki- I promise I'll be fine."

"I'll get the first aid kit."

"Huh? Wait! I said I'm fine!"

Blatantly ignoring her calls of protest, Todoroki made his way into the nearby gym, and not a minute later, he reemerged with a white box in his hands.

"You didn't have to, you know," Naoko smiled up at him, having reclaimed her spot on the ground.

He only hummed in response as he knelt down next to her, lifting the lid of the plastic box and taking out a little square package. He felt her eyes on him as he tore the corner, pulling out the disinfecting wipe and lightly pressing it to the reddening cut. An apology fell from his lips as she winced. Removing a small yellow tube from the first-aid kit, he applied a bead of the clear gel to the center of a band-aid before placing it over the cut.

"Thank you, doctor," she giggled childishly as she patted the cloth-like patch on her cheek. "If being a hero doesn't work out, you should consider going into medicine."

"I hope that's not commentary on my abilities."

"Of course not! You're as strong as they come, Todoroki!"

...

She wasn't the first to tell him that, of course. He had grown up hearing the same thing from everyone around him: how gifted he was, how fantastic his quirk was, and he had a record to match. He never had much reason to doubt it until now.

He replayed his encounter with Unknown over and over again, and each time, he grimaced at the realization that he hadn't been able to land a single hit on her. In fact, the closest he had gotten was twice knocking the platform out from under her feet. That in itself would be unsettling enough, but the real trouble came in that she didn't seem particularly fast. She was agile and quick enough in her movements, but not to the point where his attacks wouldn't have been able to keep up. After some thought, he suspected it had something to do with her quirk; perhaps she was able to manipulate air pressure to slow objects around her, thus why his ice never seemed to reach her in time.

Though he didn't know why, Todoroki found himself spending hours carefully considering their brief skirmish. He concluded, in all likeliness, his right side could do little against her, given her defensive use of her quirk. His left side, though not as affected by it, wasn't the ideal counter either. She had rather completely snuffed out his flames when he tried to use them, but somehow, he had a feeling it wasn't as simple as she wanted it to seem. Unknown had only used her depressurization ability once during the entire attack, and she waited until the fire was almost directly in front of her before activating it. Although he couldn't prove it, he had a suspicion that depressurization was much more difficult for her than pressurization, which meant his left side could be quite effective against her, should they ever cross paths again.

He had a nagging feeling they would.

He still had one final issue plaguing his mind, however, one he had yet to make sense of. It went deeper than her abilities or her forged personality; it bothered him more than any of that.

Unknown hadn't attacked a single one of his classmates.

Even when they confronted her head-on, even when Bakugo was trying vehemently to blow her to smithereens, even when Todoroki himself stepped forward with every intention of striking her down, she never so much as left a scratch on them. He had a hard time believing this was out of the kindness of her heart, considering the two dozen broken bones she had left the teachers with. He couldn't understand her behavior, especially not when her words kept echoing relentlessly in his mind.

"I suppose you've always been like that, Todoroki. Too observant for your own good."

That was the only time he had been able to get under her skin, the one thing that caught her off guard, and he didn't know why.

She was up to something. Something beyond the attack, beyond the League of Villains, perhaps even beyond Sacrosanct. Something was festering in that walled-off mind of hers, and he needed to figure out what it was before she could harm any more of his friends.

"You're up late," a voice spoke abruptly from behind him.

He quickly turned around, his surprise remaining well-hidden as his gaze landed on a familiar figure.

"I was just about to go inside, sir," Todoroki stated evenly as Aizawa approached him with the same lazy stride he always had.

"You should go. It's only a few minutes before lights out," he mused, glancing up.

The pale crescent moon shone brightly against the cloudless night sky. The autumn air grew colder with the turning of the season, and the end of the year was rapidly approaching.

Todoroki only nodded before quietly excusing himself, turning and starting back towards Heights Alliance.

Aizawa watched as his figure slowly retreated into the distance, growing smaller before soon melding into the indistinguishable darkness of the evening. He noticed the boy looked tired, much like many of his other students, though he was a bit better at hiding it.

He often considered if he should tell them, if knowing would ease their anguish.

The thought crossed his mind often, yet he quickly buried it away each time, because as difficult as it was to see his students in pain, he knew the truth was bigger than any of them.

For the time being, he would keep his mouth shut and play his part.

There wasn't much time left, and powerful cogwheels were ever-turning behind the scenes.