Shahryar - Perhaps. And yes, it's odd to see more dangerous and at least comparably evil version of canon Overhaul to come to the rescue of... well, the world.

TheGreatBubbaJ - Aiko's final song was still not elaborated upon, remember :P

Jpx0999 - Aye-aye! :D

(***)

Watch for Onion Ninjas, they are a menace.

(***)

It was nice, at the beginning.

Momo Yaoyorozu was looking forward to studying at UA for more reasons than just wanting to become a pro-hero. Yes, she had the makings of a Top Ten Hero (looks, background, powerful quirk and so on), but it really didn't matter to her that much.

Money? She had it. Popularity? In a way, she had it, people were looking up to her almost too much. Helping people? Would be nice, but it certainly wasn't something that really cluttered her mind.

Momo Yaoyorozu, in the end, looked forward to her school life. Friendships, first loves, generally doing all those things that she was badly lacking in her life due to being tutored by teachers hired by her parents.

It was a lonely childhood that she had. Being a prodigy made her even more alienated, really. She didn't have a lot of subjects to talk about with the people of her age that somehow popped around her parents' residence (typically while accompanying their own parents during some social event).

In all honesty, her lonely childhood probably saved her from death or injury when Liberator blew up the prestigious private Middle School attended by many children of people from the same social strata as her parents (and a lot of notable pro-heroes). The same one that she almost managed to persuade her parents to send her to two years earlier.

It was, frankly, a good reminder that things weren't as jolly as she hoped them to be. Japan… was having problems, even back then. Clashes between heroes and villains were increasingly common.

She only found much later that All for One was applying pressure on the villain world to be more active, as a part of his process of preparing ground for what was later on going to be known as the First Paranormal Liberation War.

But all those complicated and nasty things weren't going to matter (at least until she was going to graduate) to her at all! Because UA was, well, UA. And she was going to have friends!

It didn't take her a lot of time to find the first one. She genuinely expected to bond with Todoroki first (they knew each other in passing thanks to their families being both rather important, influential and generally somewhat connected), but Shoto was a human-shaped glacier.

Instead, she found Kyoka Jirou.

It was… Honestly, Momo (soon obtaining her first ever friendly nickname of Yaomomo!) herself didn't know how it happened. They didn't exactly share a lot of hobbies or interests.

Maybe Yaomomo simply decided that it's time to lower her expectations when knowledge and hobbies of her friends were involved? Not anyone had to keep books about molecular physics on their end tables!

Still, she made a friend (Kyoka agreeing to become one for her, especially once Momo admitted that she'll be her first friend ever). Everything was going just as nice as Momo imagined it!

She does her best to not let a shit eating grin pop on her face when Kaminari Denki uses some very colorful words to insult Bakugou (who really should, to quote Kyoka, take a chill pill). Before telling Midoriya that he would gladly be a part of his hero agency.

All while Kyo was busy glaring at Bakugou from her own seat right next to Yaomomo. Yeah, they were in agreement there.

Midoriya clearly needed that. She really looked forward to getting to know him closer, she rarely met people whose wits equaled hers!

Also Denki, despite being a bit of a dumbass (self-proclaimed, really), felt like a nice person. Momo for some reason felt like he and Kyoka were on the same wavelength more often than not, huh.

The bus stops in front of the USJ. Momo is really looking forward to this!

(***)

It was… much less nice, only a short while after the beginning.

The villain attack came out of nowhere. Momo barely remembers most of it. She's… numb, pretty much.

Seeing her classmate die in front of her, while being completely unable to do anything about it, does that to people.

But Kyoka… Kyoka is doing even worse.

And Yaomomo is her friend. Not for long, but… friends don't abandon each other when troubles appear, right? They stick together until the end. And Momo Yaoyorozu is serious about friendship.

Ambulances and police cars all around. For now they were still on a single casualty officially, Mineta and Thirteen were rushed to the nearest hospital, they were still (fruitlessly) fighting for their life.

For now, it was chaos in front of the USJ. Kyoka was told to wait for the police to come and ask questions as to what exactly happened. So was Momo, actually.

In the meantime, Kyoka was sitting on a bench. A small isle of solitude and calmness in a sea of people frantically moving around.

Momo sat next to her friend. She wasn't sure if Kyoka noticed it (Jirou was just… staring into space). She was still looking for the right words to say when Kyoka proved her wrong.

"It was my fault." She says. That's all. Just four words. But the amount of pain in her voice while saying those words was… it didn't feel like just four words.

"No." Momo had a lot of words she planned to say. Somehow… all of them flew out of her head right now. "No, it wasn't your fault. It was Tesla and Entropy, not you."

She is… trying. Her education didn't cover what just happened. She doesn't think that there is an education course out there that can prepare you for something like this. But she is going to do her best.

For her friend. The first one she ever had.

It's probably better than thinking about her own feelings right now. Kyoka saw Kaminari's death, but so did Momo. She… she'll think about it later on.

"I kicked him, Yaomomo." Kyoka says. Hearing her voice is… it hurts. It hurts so much. "If I didn't, he…"

"You didn't know that one of the villains had an electric quirk." Yaoyorozu replies. "We landed ourselves right in the middle of the largest swarm of villains at the USJ, with no class powerhouses like Todoroki or Bakugou nearby. We did our best. It just wasn't enough."

She feels guilty too. She should have made a better plan. She should have made sure that Kaminari didn't get too far from the improvised shelter. She should have rushed over to his position after the blast, to check if everything was alright.

She was the leader while it happened. The responsibility was, eventually, hers.

And she failed.

She had a power trip. Despite it being their first week at UA, they were mowing down the villains left and right. They were thugs, and barely competent at that. Entropy got them to bull-rush the students, knowing fully well that they were going to most likely lose either way.

They were just a distraction to keep the students from interfering with the actual plan. Two-bit thugs that were too dumb to realize that they were utterly expendable and that Entropy was only going to help evacuate them if things played out perfectly.

But there were too many of them, so Yaoyorozu decided to use Kaminari for an AoE attack. And it… and it…

Don't think about it.

Kyoka has enough. She starts crying. Slowly and lightly at first, just a few tears finding their way out of her eyes. But it gets worse and worse. Soon she is less sobbing and more wailing, right into Yaomomo (who moved to hug her as closely as possible when she realized what was happening).

"Everything's going to be alright." Momo says, patting Kyoka's head lightly. "You wait and see. Things will get better, I promise you."

Kyoka made her remember those words months later, after the Summer Camp Massacre. When they lost so many classmates. When they heard that Midoriya was going to be expelled for something they knew he didn't do. When Aoyama took the quick way out. When Kyoka lost her ability to speak forever.

Kyoka just stood there, tears streaming off her face. A piece of paper in her hands. On it, a short question.

"Does that count as better?"

For the first time in years, Momo Yaoyorozu didn't know how to answer someone's question.

(***)

Kaminari killed by Tesla. Mineta killed by Hanzo Suiden.

Ojirou killed by Muscular. Koda and Satou killed by Entropy. Shoji killed by Moonfish. Sero killed by Dabi. Aoyama killed himself. Midoriya all but killed by the fucking HPSC. Uraraka and Hagakure kidnapped, and later assumed dead.

Iida going off to murder fake heroes, alongside the Hero Killer.

They made no new elections for class representatives after Iida left. No one wanted the role, either way. Yaoyorozu held it by default. No need for a vice-representative either.

Half the representation for less than half the class. It was fitting, really.

There was something of a temporary spike in determination following the Summer Camp and Kamino Ward. It drove them all through the Provisional License Exam. But eventually, by the end of their first year of school, it has given in to apathy.

The dorms were quiet. Very quiet. Even Bakugou was quiet. That's what Momo remembers the best about that time. People stuck to doing their own things, without raising their voice. Typically without looking at each other.

It's as if they were all the protagonists of a horror movie, fearing to make a louder sound in fears of attracting the murderer. Maybe there was a murderer, actually. It would explain why the casualties stopped when they began to be quiet.

In Thunderbolt's defense, he realized that things were horrible and with an ever worse forecast. He genuinely did his best to get them proper therapists (no one wanted more kids from All Might's old class to go Iida).

It just didn't really work. Maybe they were just too far gone by then. In a way, it felt like everyone (minus Bakugou with his newly found cold determination and the Mina & Kirishima power duo that just refused to give up) was still in the Hero Course through sheer apathy.

Changing that, looking for other career avenues and so on, it was… just too hard. Besides, it required admitting that their dreams all went to hell, and… it really felt like doing that meant finally going insane.

In a twisted way, Yaoyorozu got what she wanted. She had a boyfriend - it took Todoroki a while to realize what he felt for her, and for her to realize the same thing, emotional apathy getting to them both for a while. She had friends - Jirou and Hatsume, the latter she met thanks to Midoriya's recommendation.

Sure, Jirou was… quiet. It wasn't about her being mute, it was… she just didn't do a lot of things. She was staring quietly, the look on her face unnerving according to most. 'Eyes of a corpse', Momo heard people say. Barely blinking, just staring.

She was attending therapy sessions, but… it just wasn't working. It was delaying the inevitable, at best. But the light was returning to her eyes just a little when Yaomomo was around.

Hatsume was as manic as always. She was… refreshing in her optimism. Helping her tinker around with stuff was as therapeutic for Yaoyorozu as her moments of closeness with Shoto.

It wasn't optimism. Hatsume just didn't know how to express her actual emotions, so she defaulted to inventing, as that was her most important thing. Something that she could focus entirely on.

Yaoyorozu realized that the day Creati died was the day when she discovered that Shoto supposedly murdered his family due to Endeavor's abuse. It was illogical, it was insane. She knew that Endeavor was trying to make amends, that Shoto was actually happy about it, about his family finally healing, but no one wanted to listen to her saying that it couldn't be him.

She went to the Support Department workshop to say her goodbyes to Hatsume, just to see her packed up already. She already did the paperwork, having officially dropped from the UA the same day that Yaoyorozu did.

Only Ashido and Kirishima came out to say their goodbyes to Yaoyorozu and Jirou. To the others, it was just too painful. It started again. The murderer was stalking the class once more.

Tokoyami and Asui dropped out during the next four months. Only Kirishima, Ashido and Bakugou lasted until the third year, and the former two dropped out three months into it. Bakugou died a few months later.

The Cursed Class came to an end.

For once, Yaoyorozu wasn't apathetic about what happened. She was… angry. Furious. Livid. Enough to not return to her home. Enough to disappear. Enough to use her skills and some names she learned during her internships to join the underworld.

She wanted the HPSC to burn. But then, Jirou (who followed Yaomomo around like an obedient dog, doing their best to be pet by the person who holds their leash, not caring about anything else) killed a thug that tried to attack Counterfeit.

Seeing the look on Jirou's face after the kill made Momo Yaoyorozu realize her mistakes. But it was too late.

She always realized things way too late, didn't she?

Hatsume genuinely tried to set up a fully legal business, but… did Momo drag her down too? Sure, the thing that made Hatsume embrace villainy was something else, but… would she have even thought about it if she hadn't happened to know a friendly local supervillain?

The HPSC made one more of their many mistakes when, after Aizawa's conspiracy fell, they decided to make Power Loader make a public statement about the whole conspiracy being some Paranormal Liberation Front leftovers, just to delegitimize it further.

Threats? Drugs? Mind-control? They might never know. But if he said those things willingly, he wouldn't turn up dead a few weeks later.

HPSC wanted to make sure that he wouldn't say something later on that would ruin the narrative, most likely.

It broke Hatsume. She never knew how to process her emotions. Enough hatred and the container broke, spilling it everywhere around. Making her drown in it.

And even then, Yaoyorozu's zeal began to die down. Apathy came back. The government just refused to fall, despite the spike in crime. Her attempts to help outfit and supply the Table of Rejects, the Underground Hero Network and, eventually, the New Vigilante Alliance, didn't work out.

Her means became her goal. She was a revolutionary no more. Just a crime boss, and damn good one at that.

That was until Izuku Midoriya came back to life. Because for the first time in ages, she felt like she could actually see the HPSC crash and burn.

And until Mirio Togata killed Jirou. Because then, for the first time in ages, Momo Yaoyorozu was truly and completely angry.

(***)

The siege of Deika was the closest thing that the modern age had to a medieval siege of a castle.

There were no easy approaches to the city. The reason why Re-Destro invested into what used to be a small town in the middle of nowhere and turned it into the MLA headquarters was because it was easy to defend.

Mountains to the west. Mountains to the east. There was a railway and a highway (thanks to Detnerat's investments) going north and south. Passing some small rivers along the way. With bridges that, in the worst case scenario, could be blown up.

Deika City was incredibly easy to defend. If the MLA was outed ahead of schedule, Deika would draw the attention of the heroes and the JSDF, while the remaining half of the MLA forces nationwide (divided between numerous bases) would wreak havoc on the enemy backline.

Adding the remaining organizations of the PLF to the mix for the 'wreaking havoc' part was a further improvement to that particular strategy of Re-Destro.

As a result of the preparations, the supposed all-out attack on Deika City was stalled, leading to months of the closest modern equivalent of trench warfare.

Fifty thousand MLA warriors, twenty thousand QLF soldiers and an assortment of 'others' (noumus, foreign mercenaries and so on) were holding ground against a hundred thousand JSDF soldiers and three thousand heroes.

The biggest problem - logistics of the prolonged siege - was solved by Kurogiri (who also warped in a lot of new MLA recruits, their ideology beginning to spread among the growing ranks of the PLF).

The second biggest problem - airstrikes, especially against crucial infrastructure like power stations - was mostly dealt with with a combination of heavy air defense and a lot of useful meta-abilities.

In the end, although it took them a few months to get there, it was the besieging side that was exhausted faster. As it often happened during sieges.

And then, when the besiegers began to waver, the time to strike came.

For the past few months, the defenders made no serious attempts at counteroffensive. Counterattacks to retake lost positions happened, but no major attacks. This was in a way a ploy. Something to lull the heroes and the army into a false sense of security.

There was no major push from the MLA. Instead, a series of counterattacks. Whenever they encountered a determined defense, they stopped… and, instead, attacked the neighbors of the defenders that held.

Whenever a weak spot was found, reserves were committed.

A wave after wave, slowly cracking the rock. The JSDF realized too late that it was facing a regular counteroffensive, just of an unusual form. By the time the commander of the besieging forces was rushed to his command post, the initial skirmishes escalated into complete chaos.

The JSDF positions were collapsing.

The soldiers were tired of months of pointless warfare. Of hearing about the successful villain attacks at the cities that they used to be garrisoned at during peacetime. Of hearing MLA agitators shouting their arguments at them through megaphones, day and night.

A lot of them, at this point, put in only a token effort.

Once a few units began to abandon their posts, a chain reaction started. More and more units suddenly realized that they were outflanked by the advancing PLF forces - only to start retreating, dragging even more units to follow in their steps.

The commander of the siege didn't have a lot of time to start issuing orders before the bomb that Hagakure planted at his command post at All for One's order exploded, killing almost everyone inside.

This changed the retreat into a rout.

Best Jeanist and Edgeshot realized that things were going to go from bad to worse when Re-Destro appeared on the battlefield. In person, in his full Claustro battle suit.

They realized how much 'worse' it was going to be when Re-Destro began to showcase recent improvements to Claustro, most of them born thanks to Izuku Midoriya's boundless imagination.

Best Jeanist held ground for twenty-five seconds before Re-Destro severed him in half with a vertical slice of a blade coated in his Stress Output Burden. Edgeshot's attempt to disengage was cut short by Re-Destro carpet-bombing his general area with incendiary missiles.

After all, if Claustro already makes Re-Destro look like a mecha… why not embrace the idea completely?

The deaths of two Top Heroes and their failed attempt to delay the assault was the final straw. What followed was a complete rout, and the biggest military disaster of Japan at least since the first Meta-Liberation War.

Re-Destro and Izuku Midoriya were equally furious when, after the battle, they discovered what had become of Hagakure Tooru, and that All for One used her for his decapitation strike against the enemy forces.

She ended up staying at Deika afterwards, Re-Destro refusing to give her up at Izuku's insistence. Maybe, just maybe, they would find a way to fix her up. Probably once the current, infuriating 'alliance' with the demon lord was over.

Which was going to happen soon, as now that the heroes were in full retreat, the value of allies began to go down and down.

(***)

"Be safe out there, Izuku." Ko Yotsubashi smiles. Notebook smiles back and leaves. He already said his goodbyes. Ko was just saying her last words.

She didn't see his smile. It's generally hard to see things when you're blind since birth.

"You know…" Hypothermia decides to address the issue right now. "... that you could just tell him openly that you like him back and agree to the marriage here and now?"

"Well, I certainly could do that." Ko admits. Soma Michiko starts pushing her wheelchair back towards her quarters. "But don't you think that it'll be much funnier to have him return home after this just to discover that he came back right in time for his own wedding? Even his mom is in on that! His reaction is going to be absolutely hilarious!"

"He'll just faint on you." Michiko replies.

"Maybe." Ko remains unfazed. "To be honest, I'm more worried about him fainting, freaking out or making stupid mistakes during his job because he was told that the marriage is going to happen a few days before the day. He's way too anxious when I'm involved, so I want to keep that to a minimum."

That, in Hypothermia's opinion, made sense. Once again, even Inko said that it might be best to cut down on the whole 'waiting period for marriage' bit, or her son's heart might not survive.

In Michiko's opinion, he and Ko were absolutely adorable together. And supremely innocent about it. Although Ko mostly outwardly. Inside, she was… well.

To quote Ko herself during their last girl night, Izuku's meta-ability (the one making him learn and master skills much faster than other people) promised her some rather interesting things when prolonged marital life was involved.

Ko was… slightly too repressed for her own good, really. It was always the quiet ones, and she was very quiet for most of the time (aside from when she and Izuku were chattering about something).

"I'm happy for you." Hypothermia says it. "You really deserve each other."

"Yeah." Ko sighs, staring in space, the wheelchair moving quietly through mostly empty corridors. "He knows what it means to feel useless. I wish I could manage to overcome it as much as he managed to."

"You were never useless, Kocchan." Michiko replies. "Don't look down on yourself. We had that talk already, and…"

"We also had a lot of talks about you being a valuable human being that deserves happiness just as much as I do, Michan." Ko cuts back. "Did you stop looking down on yourself?"

Soma Michiko doesn't answer that. The rest of the journey is quiet. Hypothermia feels as if she was supposed to say something, but… she has no idea what. She never knows what to say.

Why is Ko her friend, even? A small voice deep inside her is trying to tell her that it's because of her meta-ability, the only thing in her that has some value. But… Ko wouldn't be like this.

They are at their destination. Ko knows the outline of this place, she can easily navigate it on her own. But instead of doing that, she asks Michiko to hold her hands.

Hypothermia doesn't sigh loudly at that, but somehow, Ko reads her opinion on the situation from air.

"Yes, I know we've been doing this each time you leave Deika with Izuku…" Ko announces loudly. "... but it worked each time, so we're going to stick to it. Say the words, Michan."

Of course she will. There is no stopping Ko Yotsubashi when she sets her mind to something.

She holds Michiko's hands. On Hypothermia's best (and first) friend's face, a faint smile.

"I'll keep him safe." Hypothermia says. "I promise."

She never saw her best friend again. But she held her word until the very end.

(***)

You were warned about the onion ninjas.