Narrowing his eyes as he continued down the path that Sir Nighteye had advised him to take, informing him that he would not only encounter Niseko Sezu, but another child who had been taken by Kai Chisaki and his Shie Hassaikai, Stendhal flexed the spring steel gauntlets he was wearing, extending and retracting the claws that aided him in using Bloodcurdle in combat. Sweeping his gaze up and down the streets he continued to walk through, Stendhal caught the sound of small feet, running as fast as they could. Snapping his head in that direction, Stendhal headed immediately for the alleyway where he had just spotted the tiny forms of Niseko Sezu, as well as a small, white-haired girl with a large horn on the right side of her head.

The pair of them were obviously scared, and given who they were running from, Stendhal could fully sympathize.

He was just about to call out to them, when he spotted Kai Chisaki himself, determinedly stalking the pair of them. Leaping forward, Stendhal extended one of his collapsible staves, aiming to knock Chisaki back so that he could save Sezu and the girl from him. Chisaki was quicker than he was expecting, however, and Stendhal was forced to let go of that staff as Chisaki used his own Quirk to deconstruct it.

"Chizome Akaguro," Chisaki said; Stendhal narrowed his eyes. "I truly should thank you, for bringing my attention to the suffering of such a pure child," he continued, reaching out with his white-gloved left hand to catch hold of Niseko Sezu's shirt collar, dragging him firmly backwards. "I could hardly leave him in his present situation, after everything you revealed to me."

Niseko stumbled, terrified silver eyes fixing him in their gaze; Stendhal ground his teeth. He'd previously been informed about just what Chisaki's Quirk – an emitter-type by the name of Overhaul – was capable of, during the briefing that he had attended with Sir Nighteye and his Sidekick, Lemillion. The short range and esoteric requirements of his own Bloodcurdle was nearly the worst kind of matchup against the kind of Quirks that only required the touch of a hand, or as in Chisaki's case a single finger.

Still, he had been the one to reveal Sezu's presence to Chisaki, a fact that the man had all but thrown in his face, and thus it was his responsibility to save the boy; as well as this girl who had clearly been under the control of Chisaki for long enough that she seemed to have given up on escaping entirely, now that the man himself was standing before them. Narrowing his eyes as Chisaki pinned Sezu against his left side with a firm, white-gloved grip, then barked a command to the young girl – whose name was apparently Eri – that had her making her way over to his right-hand side with a look of hopelessness firmly on her face.

"As a gesture of gratitude, Akaguro, I'll allow you to leave this place alive."

"I'm sure you would, Chisaki," he snarled, grabbing another of his staves with his right hand, as he extended the claws on his left gauntlet.

He'd need to move quickly; one of his specialties, yes, but Chisaki would hardly have rose in the ranks of even the degraded Yakuza without more than his Quirk – terrifying as such a thing would be, in the hands of a man like him – to fall back on.

Launching the extended staff at Chisaki's head as a distraction, Stendhal dashed forward, spring steel claws extended and aimed for Chisaki's exposed front. Chisaki, however, was indeed fast enough to deconstruct that staff in mid-flight. However, the sound of a bullet ricocheting off of his armor drew Stendhal's attention to the other man standing at the far end of the alleyway. Or rather, the two men standing there. One of them was dressed in a white, hooded cloak, while the other was in a long, black coat and black pants. Both of them were wearing the same kind of beaklike mask.

Chisaki himself was wearing a more ornate-looking version; it must have been some kind of affectation of the Shie Hassaikai as a whole.

"Master Overhaul," one of them said, though the fact that both of them were wearing those beaked masks made telling them apart more difficult than it strictly needed to be. "We came as soon as we received your summons."

"Good to hear," Chisaki said, turning back to him with a narrow-eyed look of what was clearly distain. "You had your chance to end this peacefully, Akaguro."

Not bothering to waste any more time with words, Stendhal signaled for backup, then dove forward, raising another of his three, remaining staves. A long strand of what seemed to be gray hair punched through the white hood of the masked man standing behind Chisaki and to his left. Dodging out of the way, Stendhal buried the hook of his grapple-gun into a nearby building, springing off of the ground and looking down at Eri and Niseko; the silver-eyed boy was watching him with an expression of terrified hope.

Activating his transponder, signaling Sir Nighteye and his Agency, Stendhal narrowed his eyes and dove back into the fray once more.

~MHA~

Folding his arms, as he and Todoroki made their way up to the mockup city where they were going to be facing off with All Might, Katsuki turned to look at Todoroki again.

"So that's what your Quirk can do," he said, kicking the road as the both of them paused just before the tall, double-doors that would lead into their part of the testing ground. "Well, we've got a couple of fuck-off huge hammers, and we need to take on a human wrecking-ball," he barked a laugh, feeling a bit apprehensive, and more than a little eager to get this whole exam started; if nothing else, the match-up was bound to be interesting. "Still, there's a lot you can do with a hammer."

When he looked over at Todoroki, Katsuki found that Ice-n-Fire was staring back at him with nearly the same kind of expression he'd find on Izuku's face when the nerd was thinking deeply about something he wasn't sure what to make of.

"Come on, let's get going," he says; figures it would be up to him to get things moving.

He was always the one who got Izuku moving when the nerd would get lost in his own head, after all.

~MHA~

Running as fast as he could, following the signal that Chizome had sent out, Mirio couldn't help wondering just what kind of trouble Chizome had ended up in, since he'd not only called for backup, but he'd also activated the wide-band transponder built into his costume; the one that would send out a signal to call any nearby Heroes in the vicinity. Mirio wondered if that second signal had been something Chizome had sent out on his own, or if something in his suit had done the job for him.

He'd read that Chizome's suit was designed to ensure that he could focus more of his attention on the people that he needed to help; something that would call for backup when he needed it, and even wake him up when he was forced to sleep during one of his patrols.

Mirio thought it was a bit strange, but he'd learned that that was just the way Chizome was: he was just as diligent when he was doing his investigative work as a reporter. Chizome hadn't even been dissuaded by Endeavor and his many suits for libel, and Mirio had also heard that the Flame Hero kept an entire stable of lawyers to handle the bad PR that Chizome's articles would generate for him. He was pretty sure that Chizome's articles all being OP EDs was the only thing that kept him from being successfully sued by Endeavor.

Before he could think anymore about what might have been going on, the sight of the Freelance Hero himself brought him up short. Chizome was slumped against the wall of the alleyway he'd clearly been fighting in… Oh, no! Gathering up Chizome's armored form, shifting him so that he could grab some of the bandages that Chizome kept for those times he'd find people who needed medical assistance when he was out on patrol, Mirio wrapped the bleeding stump where his right arm used to be as quickly as he could.

He must have been forced to fight Overhaul, Mirio reflected, gathering Chizome up in his arms and turning to leave the alleyway. Of course, now that he wasn't solely focused on helping Chizome before the Freelance Hero could succumb to his wound, Mirio could see the damage that had been inflicted on their surroundings; it was more than obvious that Chizome had been forced to fight against Overhaul, and he hadn't been up to the task. Really, if anyone could be said to have a bad match-up against Overhaul, it'd have to be Chizome.

"…failed…"

Looking down as Chizome muttered something, Mirio shook the Freelance Hero slightly, trying to hold his attention for as long as the man could maintain consciousness. "Hey, it's all right. You didn't have a good match-up; Overhaul was the worst person you could have tried fighting."

Biting his tongue before he could say how lucky Chizome had probably been, to only lose an arm when he'd been fighting against a man with a Quirk capable of destroying someone's entire body with a single touch, Mirio ran as fast as he could back to Sir's Agency. They would need to call Sensei; not only for Chizome, but also to support them while they moved against Overhaul and the Shie Hassaikai as a whole.

~MHA~

The sound of another of the ice walls that he'd created being battered down drew Shoto's attention, just long enough for him to start thinking about what kind of power One For All – the Quirk that Hisashi Midoriya had created, alongside his younger brother – already possessed.

"Don't you start nerding out on me," Bakugo-san said, firmly shaking his shoulder and bringing Shoto's attention to what they were about to be doing. "Taking him on is like trying to fight a natural disaster; we need to get out of here," Bakugo-san said, a tight, tense grin on his face as he looked back over his own shoulder at where the sounds of All Might battering his way through the ice walls that Shoto had laid down to delay him. "Can you make a ramp now, or do you need to warm up a bit?"

"I'm fine," he said, nodding sharply as he turned to sculpt a ramp for the pair of them to use.

"All right, good," Bakugo-san said, nodding sharply as he guided the pair of them over to the base of the ramp, punctuated by the sound of All Might battering down another of his ice walls. "Let's get the hell out of here, before All Might comes to punch our heads in."

"Right," Shoto said, climbing up the base of the ramp, and waiting for Bakugo-san to climb up behind him.

The pair of them braced themselves against each other, as Bakugo-san blasted them up the ramp with the aid of his Quirk, and Shoto wrapped his arms around Bakugo-san's waist, using his ice to push them along as Bakugo-san used his own Quirk to rocket them up into the air and in the direction of the principal's escape gate.

~MHA~

The sound of his own harsh breathing echoed in his ears, but Hikaru Nurikabe tried as hard as he could to concentrate on Soramitsu's hand as his friend stroked his hair in an effort to settle the both of them down.

"Tell me about lake Kawaguchi again?" he asked, if only to give the both of them something to concentrate on.

Something aside from the fact that both of their Quirks – the very disease that Master Overhaul had dedicated himself to eradicating – were steadily eating away at both of them. Soramitsu… Soramitsu had it worse than he ever had, or ever would. Sure, he'd been forced to essentially blind himself ever since his Quirk had developed; ever since he was four years old, he hadn't been able to take off whatever makeshift blindfold he'd worn without… Cutting off those thoughts before he could get too deep into them, Hikaru forced himself to relax again.

"I'll take you there, when all of this is over with. Once Master Overhaul cures the both of us, we'll go there together," Soramitsu said, his tone slightly breathless, and with that distinct warble that Hikaru had long since come to learn meant that Soramitsu's own Quirk was getting to him.

Reaching up for the beaked mask that served as the last blindfold he ever hoped to wear, Hikaru licked his suddenly dry lips. "Do you need me to-?"

"I- Yeah, I think I need you. I'm sorry," Soramitsu said, and Hikaru found himself closing his hidden eyes.

Once again, Hikaru reminded himself that this kind of thing was only going to have to go on until Master Overhaul had perfected his cure, and the both of them were able to just live as normal people; he'd be able to finally, properly see again, once Master Overhaul had perfected his cure.

Making his way to the far end of the room that he and Soramitsu both shared, Hikaru tried to steady himself as best he could, even as he dug his right thumb under the edge of his beaked mask. Pulling it firmly away from his eyes, still closed as they had been in contemplation, Hikaru forced himself to open them. The burning sensation in his eyes, accompanied by the awful, squirming sensation of his flesh expanding in all directions, right up until Hikaru felt the confining walls of his and Soramitsu's shared room pressing into his hideous, mutated bulk, filled him as he uncovered his eyes.

The darkness that had closed around him the only thing keeping his unstable body – his unstable, uncontrollable Quirk – from forcing him to fill the entire space of his and Soramitsu's room, rather than just the front half of it.

He supposed that, if he could retain any actual awareness of the world around him when he was forced to unleash his horrible Quirk, he would have been able to hear what Soramitsu said to him before his old friend began eating his way through the massive, misshapen blob of flesh that Hikaru's uncontrollable Quirk had reduced him to. Stranded in senseless darkness, not only blind but also deaf, immobile, and mute, Hikaru clung to the knowledge that Master Overhaul was working diligently on a cure.

Really, it was the only thing that kept him relatively sane, at times like this.

~MHA~

Making his way over to the bed where Stendhal – or rather Chizome Akaguro, considering the fact that the Freelance Hero had been stripped of his armor just as soon as he'd been brought the infirmary within Sir Nighteye's Agency – had been laid out awaiting him, Hisashi narrowed his eyes slightly as he focused on the empty space where Chizome's right arm had once been. Gathering himself, layering the Quirks he would need in order to address the wound he was being presented with, Hisashi raised an eyebrow as he sensed the approach of one of Izuku's friends.

Mirio Togata, the one Mirai had put forward as a second candidate to inherit One For All; it was all rather interesting, since to this point he hadn't been aware of more than one candidate being put forward in such a way. Still, in those early days there had been no such system to encourage those such as Enji Todoroki to pursue their ambitions through the means that One For All would provide for them. In that light, of course, Hisashi could see both how and why such a thing had occurred.

It was all so interesting.

"Sensei, will he be all right?" Mirio asked, making his way over to the bed where Hisashi was working on his current patient, using a combination of flesh-shaping, regeneration, and telekinesis Quirks to restore the arm that Chizome Akaguro had likely been forced to sever during the course of his abortive battle with Chisaki.

"He'll be fine, I just need a little more time with him," he said, glancing over his left shoulder as Mirio settled into a nearby chair to watch him at work; Hisashi chuckled under his breath.

More than a few times, among those who called this hidden identity of his the Symbol of Hope, there were those calling Sensei the Man of Miracles; in either case, Hisashi found that he rather enjoyed the adulation.

"I'm glad to hear that," Mirio said, grinning widely in a way that suggested a more than passing familiarity with the persona that Toshinori had adopted in his guise as All Might.

Hisashi suspected that, if he asked, he'd be certain to find Mirai's influence at the heart of it.

~MHA~

Once they'd all been gathered together in the Central Plaza, Izuku and Yaoyorozu-san – or Momo-san, since she'd told him he could call her that when the both of them had gotten back after their own practical exam – both got all of their fellow students back onto the bus, which seemed to be the same one that they'd used to travel to the U.S.J. Settling down next to Kacchan as the bus lurched into motion, Izuku opened his latest notebook, trying to distract himself from the worry about just what was happening that would call both Uncle Toshi and Uncle Mirai back to Uncle Toshi's agency.

There had to be something huge, and who knew how many more-

"It's gonna be all right, Zuzu," Kacchan said, reaching out to wrap his right arm around Izuku's shoulders. "Whatever's happening, I'm sure it'll be fine. They've got All Might and his old Sidekick working on the case. Whatever it ends up being, with those two tackling things it'll all be solved before you know it. Just wait and see."

"Thanks, Kacchan," he muttered, allowing himself to lean into the comfort Kacchan was offering him while they made their way back to the main campus.

It was probably true, considering the raw power that Uncle Toshi could bring to a fight, and the sheer utility of Uncle Mirai's Quirk, but Izuku still couldn't help but wonder what was actually happening to need the both of them working on whatever case had come up. Sighing as U.A.'s main building came back into view, Izuku closed his notebook and tucked it back away in his locker with a quick use of Warp Gate. Standing up as the bus they were all in came to a neat stop, he quickly joined Momo-san at the front of the bus to lead the rest of their classmates back out.

All the while, Izuku couldn't help but wonder what was going to happen when this holding pattern they all seemed to be in finally broke…

~MHA~

Making his way into the room where the child – the pure one that Master Overhaul was fond of, not the cursed thing that the lower-level thugs were sent to look after – awaited him, Shin Nemoto looked around the room where Niseko Sezu had been placed. It was hardly the kind of space where such a young boy could be content, so perhaps that was the reason that little Sezu was so unhappy at present. Still, he'd been assigned to find out just why it was that Sezu seemed so unhappy with his current situation, and he was not about to assume something he had not yet determined for himself.

However, Shin reminded himself once again that it was not that the boy was precisely ungrateful for his present accommodations, Master Overhaul simply wished to know why little Sezu seemed so unsettled around him.

Looking down into those wide, frightened silver eyes, Shin called up his Quirk so that the boy's clear unease wouldn't prevent him from speaking, the way it had so many times when Master Overhaul would attempt to connect with the child. "Now, little Sezu, tell me: why do you seem to fear Master Overhaul so much?"

"It's his eyes," little Sezu said, pulling his blankets up around his shoulders and seeming as though he wished to fold in on himself; the same way he always seemed to do when Master Overhaul would try to connect with him. "They remind me of Dad's, when… When he and Mom left me in Hosu," the boy seemed almost set to stop there, so Shin gave little Sezu another nudge with his Quirk. "Dad seemed angry, when I didn't develop a Quirk when I was supposed to; Mom seemed really sad, though."

Making his way over to where little Sezu was sitting, wrapped in the blankets that were so clearly a comfort to him in a place he hadn't yet begun to think of as his new home, Shin reached down to ruffle the child's short, brown hair. "There's no need for you to fear Master Overhaul," sliding his hands down to gently cup the child's cheeks, Shin raised little Sezu's gaze until he could look squarely into the boy's silver eyes; he smiled slightly as he saw the uncertainty there. It was a first step, though certainly not the only one he was hoping to take, this day. "He would never leave you in any place such as that. He cares for you very deeply."

Pausing for a moment, Shin considered the child's interactions with Irinaka, those few times when the pair of them would cross paths. While it was true that such a question was more due to his own curiosity than anything that Master Overhaul or any of his comrades were demanding of him, but Shin still wished to know little Sezu's true feelings. "Why do you seem so fond of Irinaka, child?"

"He looks kind of like a penguin," little Sezu said, seeming at least a bit more settled than he had been when Shin had first made his way into the room that Master Overhaul had been generous enough to provide for him.

"You're fond of them?" Shin asked, reaching up to gently stroke the boy's short, brown hair as the pair of them continued their conversation.

"They're my favorite kind of animals," little Sezu said. "Just like Sensei-"

Covering little Sezu's mouth with his pointer and middle finger, before the boy could start in on how much he'd been taken in by the masses and their mindless adulation for the corrupted system of Pro Heroes that had been formed to keep the Shie Hassaikai and their fellows down, Shin smiled softly under his mask. Yes, little Sezu was still mired in all of the attitudes that Master Overhaul hoped to change, but it seemed that he would come around.

Master Overhaul just needed to know how to handle him properly.