The next day had passed rather uneventfully.
Izuku had gone to class and sat through his more mundane lessons whilst trying his best to ignore the increasing feeling of dread welling within him, something still didn't sit well with him about the events that had unfolded the previous afternoon.
It was too obvious of an entrance, if a reporter really did want to infiltrate the school, it would make more sense to have left no evidence of their entrance.
Whoever had done that to the barrier gave off the impression that they wanted the school to know they'd entered, almost like a display of power, a declaration of war perhaps.
Izuku filed away his thoughts as he saw his homeroom teacher walk up to the podium, which was strange since today was All Might's turn to teach them.
Since there were two hero classes in the year, the number one hero split hits attention between the two, one day teaching 1-A and the next teaching 1-B, on Fridays he taught the one second year class.
Third years focused more on internships than hero studies with the school.
Training with the school usually involved crucial hero skills that everyone learned, the school seldom helped with a student's individual quirk during school hours, since everyone requires a different training regimen for their quirks, and pushing one's quirk to the limit tended to be quite destructive, the school sometimes planned field trips or camps where students would focus on their quirks and could just let loose, but during school time, they rarely touched upon purely strengthening quirks.
Which was why Izuku had already started the paperwork for an after school quirk training club.
It would be available to all students of course, even those in the business or general course, he couldn't hope to keep the club private since he would likely need to dip into the school's funding, the fact he was rich still a secret he would rather keep under wraps for now, but somehow he felt the club wouldn't be very popular.
Why would students outside the hero course want to train their quirks to such an extent if they could never use it outside of school grounds?
On that note, there was no way students of higher years would want to join a club lead by a freshman, which it would be with no disputes, Izuku was not about to go through all the effort of creating the club just to have it be taken away from him by someone who thought they should be entitled to it just because they were older.
Still, it would provide a good opportunity to meet with the other half of his year mates.
"Alright everyone, for today's foundational hero's studies, it was decided that you'll be supervised by a team of three, comprising of me, All Might and one special guest." The man began.
Izuku paused at his wording, it was decided?
As in the three man team was a precaution against something?
Not a good sign at all, but the green haired boy supposed that as long as All Might was around there shouldn't be too many issues with whatever they were doing today.
"Sensei, what'll we be doing?" The boy next to Izuku asked, Hanta Sero the greenette believed, his quirk had something to do with tape, it wasn't particularly amazing from what Izuku could tell, but every quirk had potential, it depended greatly on how he used it.
"Today it will be the trial of rescue, it's entirely up to you if you wear your costumes today, since they may not all be adapted to the task, since the training area is quite far away, we'll be getting there by bus, that is all for now, go get prepared, you have ten minutes."
With that everyone scrambled to get dressed in the time limit set by their teacher, and Izuku came to the conclusion that he still sucked at scarves, it was hard to get them to billow just as he wanted it to.
Luckily he managed to get it right in time and had boarded the bus in a rather prompt manner.
The greenette couldn't help but notice that the bus was actually rather awkwardly laid out, it was horribly inefficient but the boy supposed it only needed to carry twenty people at most, so he guessed they could be liberal with the interior.
"Hey Midoriya."
Izuku jumped as he realised his newly made froggy friend had piped up next to him.
"Yes Tsu?" The green haired boy asked.
"I always say what's on my mind, your quirk is really weird." The girl said.
"Ah well, that's because it's not a quirk." The boy replied, "I already explained this to a few of you, but I'll do it one last time since the whole class is gathered, then I'll answer any questions you may have, just don't ask me again after today, repeating myself is troublesome." The greenette stated, gaining the attention of his classmates. "Simply put, this watch I always wear is what gives me the ability to transform into my aliens as Ashido likes to call them, an old family friend gave it to me so I could test it for him, now please ask your question in an orderly fashion."
The class were obviously ringing with curiosity, but they seemed to keep it mutes, asking about one's powers was usually quite a personal topic, and people rarely asked others if they were not well acquainted, but the teens were all convinced they were friends of some description anyway, so singling out one of their classmates wasn't all that big a deal, they were, however, still a little respectful of said classmate's wishes to be orderly, as an attempt to apologise for putting him on the spot.
"From what you've said, if anyone managed to get their hands on the watch could they transform into these 'aliens' as you call them? Would they be as powerful as you straight away?" Momo asked from the back of the bus.
Izuku prepared his usual lie to deter anyone from trying to steal his watch, and looked at Momo with a hint of suspicion, could she possibly recreate the watch with her quirk?
The boy still wasn't particularly certain of the limitations of the raven haired girl's ability, it was best to deter her from attempting to do anything with the watch from the get go.
"Well, this particular watch is keyed to my DNA, so I really wouldn't want to be in the shoes of someone else who if they tried to use it, plus the thing doesn't actually come off, and trust me, I have tried. As for using the aliens, no, in fact they would basically be useless unless they transformed into the more humanoid aliens, it's actually surprisingly difficult to get used to the various body types, and it was something I had to practice for a long time before I could use all of them properly. Next."
"So, we've seen quite a few of them, but how many aliens do you actually have?" A blonde by the name of Kaminari Denki asked curiously.
"Well I have ten of them, but from the little I've been able to find out about the watch, there should feasibly be a way to use more than that, but I can't make heads or tails of the inner workings of the thing."
Izuku was about to ask for the next question, when he was interrupted by his teacher.
"All right settle down now, we're almost there."
"YES SIR!" The class yelled in unison.
Izuku turned to his classmates, realising that a lot of them still seemed to hold curiosity in their eyes, the green haired boy sighed, he didn't particularly want to answer a hundred questions, most of which he probably didn't know the answer to, but he supposed that if people came to him for answers, he could ask a few things in return, which would help him fill in the gaps he had about some of his classmates quirks.
"If anyone has any other questions, come find me outside of class." The greenette said finally.
The rest of the bus journey was spent in a much more controlled manner than before, and after a few more minutes, the teens arrived at the mysterious site where they would be training.
As soon as Izuku saw it, his eyes widened in surprise, laid out before him were various contained disaster areas that spanned what the boy could estimate to be a few city blocks, it was almost like a theme park.
From seeing this, the boy realised that U.A somehow managed to be richer than him, and he owned a large portion of multiple companies, but he did not in fact have the requisite funds to build multiple cityscapes, or a theme park.
It made him wonder how the school could afford so many high tech facilities, it couldn't all come from government grants, there was no way those in charge of running a country would sign off on giving anyone so much money, it could perhaps come from donations of the various alumni that had come through the halls of the school, but then most of a hero's salary was paid by the government too, the money made from merchandise and other publicity stunts notwithstanding.
"Oh my GOD! It's No.13."
Izuku stumbled from the sudden yell of excitement right by his ears, honestly he needed to start bringing ear plugs to school from the amount of times people were screaming at his poor ear drums.
He shot his brown haired friend a slightly annoyed look, before he noticed the pure elation on her face from meeting a hero, it was a face that reminded him of those he used to make before his inner hero fanboy had mellowed out, so he decided to let the vocal assault slide, if only for pure nostalgia.
"You should get his autograph later." The green haired boy told his friend, much to her barely muted excited screeching, as he idly noted his two supervisors having a hushed conversation to the side, the boy noticed the distinct lack of towering blonde and put two and two together.
All Might had used up all his time today, so he wasn't here to teach them.
A pit formed in his stomach, too many things suspicious things had been happening too close together recently, Izuku couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, but he didn't have enough information to figure out what.
A quick transformation into grey matter would probably let him figure it out, but then he wasn't sure if it was worth figuring out, it could just be him being paranoid.
"All righty, before we begin, just one thing… or two… or three… or four." Thirteen began, "I'm certain you're all quite aware, but my quirk is called 'black hole'. No matter what material may get sucked into its vortex, I'm afraid it will turn into dust. Which as you can imagine is very good for rescue operations." The pro hero paused before looking at the class. "It is, however, a power that could also easily be used to kill people. In that way it is no different from the quirks of everyone here. Naturally in this society, quirk use if very heavily regulated, but please don't forget that one wrong step is all it takes to kill others accidentally. That being said, during Aizawa's physical apprehension test you learned the true potential of your powers, and during All Might's battle trail, you learnt the dangers of using your quirk against others. This lesson will teach you how to wield your quirks for the sake of human life!" The hero then took a bow, "that is all, you have my gratitude for listening."
The class clapped and cheered for the pro, it was quite the enlightening speech, Izuku was just glad that there were some heroes out there that seemed to care more about saving people than they did taking out villains in the flashiest way possible.
"All right, first thing's first…" Aizawa began, before he trailed off, his attention drawn towards the plaza.
IZuku looked that way too, following his teacher's gaze, he was greeted by a small blot in the scenery that was rapidly expanding into a spiralling vortex, from the dark confines of the portal came one pale hand, before another one emerged, this one severed and attached to a face with pale blue hair.
"HUDDLE TOGETHER AND DON'T MOVE!" Aizawa commanded with urgency, the class was visibly confused, and just stared at the event wide eyed as if it were another training exercise.
"Oh shit!"
Izuku on the other hand was panicking internally, he'd been wrong, he should have gone Grey Matter as soon as the gate had been totalled yesterday, as soon as his gut had told him something was going to go wrong, he should have gotten to the bottom of it.
He wasn't being paranoid enough.
The feeling of caution had been ringing in the back of his head since he had learnt that All Might was coming to U.A.
It didn't take a genius to figure out that the number one hero was weakening, one glance at stats sheet about arrests made in the last few years, one could tell that All Might was weakening, it had gone from hovering around a hundred cases to barely a few dozen a day.
Then the man basically told the world where he would and when he would be there, not only that, he made it obvious he would be surrounded by hostages at all times, surrounded by child hostages at all times.
It wasn't particularly difficult to connect the dots that villains would attack the school.
Izuku just never thought they would have the balls to do it so early in the school term, he thought they would need more time to rally the troops and plan their strategy, but maybe he had underestimated the underbelly of the world.
Izuu moved his helmet in it's compact form from around his neck to around his ears before he activated it, the white armour changing from it's compact headphone-like state to the full face mask.
"Listen to Aizawa Sensei, and remind me to teach you guys defensive formations when we survive this." Izuku said sternly, the usually laid back boy's sudden change of tone finally tipping the remainder of the class off that something was wrong.
"Thank you Midoriya." Aizawa said, pulling out a pair of yellow goggles from wishing his bandages.
It finally clicked as to who his teacher was.
"You're Eraser Head right? The underground hero who can erase quirks." Izuku asked his teacher, as they watched the villains converse casually.
"You're quite handy at scrounging for information, that's not knowledge that is easy to come by." The unkempt man said in slight amusement. "Thirteen do the evacuation procedure, and try contacting the school, they obviously have someone with a quirk that's jammed the sensors, which might make that difficult."
"Wait Sensei, you're going to fight them alone? That'll put you at a serious disadvantage based on your fighting style, at least let me help." Izuku said, getting ready to transform.
Aizawa gently grabbed the boy's wrist.
"You're strong Midoriya, I'll give you that, but there's more important things to do, I'm counting on you to protect your classmates, remember what thirteen just said, heroes aren't primarily meant to defeat evil, our main purpose is to protect what's good." The man smirked at the boy. "Keep my students safe mr class president."
With that Aizawa launched himself into the crowd of villains.
The words that had just been spoken to Izuku were ones he would carry with him for the rest of his life, still, if he's gone XLR8 he could have picked off the fodder in no time, allowing his teacher to focus on the bigger threats.
He understood that protecting others was more important, but surely ending the threat before it could hurt anyone was a viable way to do that.
The green haired boy looked at the heroic back of his teacher.
He couldn't help but feel that the man was a little odd.