Narrowing his eyes as he caught sight of Shadow Walker, staring down at his personal tablet with a look on his face that seemed to Trumpet as though there was something uncomfortable on his mind, Trumpet made his way over to where the silver-eyed man was standing. Looking down at the tablet that had captivated so much of his attention, Trumpet sighed. It seemed that Shadow Walker had found the article that Stendhal had written.
"Niseko…"
"Shadow Walker," he said, calling the silver-eyed man's attention before he could become too absorbed in the article he was reading. "Look at me," he said, taking a moment to contact Skeptic; Shadow Walker's superior would, of course, wish to know just what it was that his subordinate had discovered.
The both of them would need to handle this new development.
Guiding Shadow Walker to the office where Skeptic worked, Trumpet let the pair of them in, guiding Shadow Walker as Skeptic prepared one of his puppets.
"It seems that I need to maintain closer vigilance over their media intake," Skeptic growled, directing one of his puppets to take Shadow Walker by the shoulders, forcing the man's head and arms both to remain still.
"Shadow Walker, be calm," Trumpet said, turning the inverse power of Incite once more onto Shadow Walker. "It's for the best. Your little bird will be fine. Harvest will take him in, and once he has, you can both be reunited, and then ReDestro will be able to give your little bird a proper name. It's all for the best, Shadow Walker."
"It's all for the best," Shadow Walker echoed, silver eyes falling half-closed as Skeptic's puppet held him up.
Trumpet raised an eyebrow, as Skeptic's puppet tilted Shadow Walker's head, fitting some kind of device into Shadow Walker's right ear as another of his puppets came over to take hold of the silver-eyed man.
"What are you doing?" Trumpet asked, turning to Skeptic as the man turned back to his computer.
"I asked the Grand Commander to create a device that mimicked the effects of your Meta Ability," Skeptic said, turning to him with a rather unimpressed expression on what could be seen of his face. "He was just able to deliver it today. This should give you more free time to attend to your own duties, Trumpet."
"I suppose," he said, looking back to Shadow Walker, as the silver-eyed man blinked, eyes still half-closed as Skeptic's puppets set him back on his feet again.
The one standing to Shadow Walker's left reached into his pocket, removing the man's phone and bringing it over to the desk Skeptic was seated behind.
"I suppose I'll need to monitor his and Spyglass' media intake more closely," Skeptic reiterated, taking the phone as his puppet handed it over to him.
Watching as Shadow Walker left Skeptic's office, Trumpet found himself slightly uneasy; even knowing that the child Shadow Walker was so interested in had been born without a Meta Ability and hence had no true place in Deika city, Trumpet wasn't certain how he should truly feel about how determined Skeptic seemed to be to keep Shadow Walker from even maintaining contact with him by proxy.
~MHA~
Once all of them had boarded the bus that would take them to the testing center, Izuku found himself contemplating the forms that Aizawa-sensei had handed out to each and every one of them before they'd made their way onto the bus in the first place. It was the form he'd filled out at the training camp; the one that Ragdoll had handed out to him and the rest of class 1-A – and probably 1-B, since they had been in the same camp right alongside him and the rest of class 1-A – and Izuku had tucked the form away once he'd gotten it.
Before he could get too deep into his own head, the bus they were on finally stopped, and all of their class began piling out. Falling in with Kacchan and Kirishima-san, Izuku yelped as Kacchan grabbed his head and ruffled up his hair.
"Kacchan!" he grumbled, glaring at his old friend as Aizawa-sensei called their attention to him and began talking about what would be the next step on their journey to become Pro Heroes.
Apparently, the forms they'd had to fill out had had something to do with the exam they were about to be taking, and as all twenty of them were herded into the building, Izuku looked back to see more people arriving. These ones were coming in from the front, however, and Izuku found himself wondering for a moment just what those other students were going to be doing. Still, as he and the rest of class 1-A all made their way down the corridor, Izuku sighed and pushed those thoughts out of his mind.
He'd have the chance to find out that once they were all finished delivering their forms to… whoever it was working to collect them. As all of class 1-A lined up, Izuku turned to look back over his shoulder as he heard the heavy tread of someone tall wearing sneakers. Smiling softly to himself, Izuku called up Mental Voice from the depths of his own All For One.
/Hey, Dad! Coming to update your license?/ he asked, smile still on his face as he turned back, settling back down on his feet as he followed the line of his classmates into the room where they were all ultimately headed.
/Of course, Izuku,/ Dad said, chuckling softly as he reached out to ruffle Izuku's hair in passing. /I have to take a new I.D. photo, after all./
Once he'd finished turning in the paperwork he'd filled out at the training camp, Izuku made his way into the room where he and the rest of class 1-A had been directed to wait while the first part of the Provisional License Exam was happening. As it turned out, the room they'd been sent to was a waiting room. There were food and drinks, as well as a generous amount of comfortable-looking furniture, all spread around the room where they'd ended up.
~MHA~
The sound of heavy, stomping footfalls drew his attention after he and the rest of class 1-A had been relaxing for some time, and Shoto found himself wondering if the person he was hearing right now was the same one he and Touya had both met that day…
"Hey, Snowcone!"
"Hi, puppy," he muttered, smiling slightly as he found his thoughts once more interrupted before he'd finished with them.
That seemed to be one of the things Yoarashi-san did without thinking, so Shoto tried not to take those kinds of things too seriously.
"How's Auntie doing?" Yoarashi asked, leaning in closer so that the pair of them wouldn't disturb anyone else. "Do you think she'd like another polar bear? Or maybe an arctic rabbit?"
"She's all right, puppy," he said, smiling softly as he led the pair of them over to a couch without a group of his classmates gathered around it. "How have you and your classmates at Shiketsu been?"
As the pair of them settled down to talk, Shoto found himself thinking back to the first time the pair of them had met, back during the exam that all of U.A.'s recommended students had taken. It had been a bit rude of him, looking over his shoulder while he'd been texting Touya and the rest of his siblings, but he'd at least apologized for it, and he was tall enough to look over Shoto's shoulder without craning his neck. The pair of them hadn't quite clicked at first, given how overly enthusiastic he was, but over the course of the exam the pair of them had come to understand each other better.
Yoarashi-san had turned out to feel about the same distain for Endeavor as he, Touya, and Natsuo all did, something that had served to bring them closer together. He'd also met Touya during one of his eldest brother's patrols, which had also served to bring the pair of them closer to each other in its own way.
~MHA~
If there was one thing that Inasa Yoarashi had always believed, it was that passion was the most important thing in life. Still, while he was talking with Shoto – and during his first meeting with Touya, while the Hero named Flashfire had been making his rounds – Inasa had realized that there was more than one way to be passionate. He also realized that both Shoto and Touya, while they were both as warm-hearted as their Quirks, they were warm in different ways.
Touya was sweeter, like a mug of hot chocolate topped with whipped cream and marshmallows; Shoto was more like a hot cup of tea, with just a tiny bit of sugar.
After meeting up with Auntie Rei, Inasa had realized just who Shoto and Touya had inherited their warm hearts from; he'd also found himself wondering just how she'd ended up marrying such a cold-hearted person like Endeavor. It'd been kind of strange; as though Auntie and Endeavor had ended up with Quirks that were just the opposite of the kind of people they really were. Auntie Rei was such a warm-hearted person that he couldn't help but think of polar bears.
And so, the first time he'd been invited to meet her – at the hospital where she was staying, after that cold-hearted bastard had hurt her so badly that she'd panicked at the sight of Shoto – Inasa had brought her a soft, floppy stuffed polar bear to help brighten up her room. There had also been flowers in the room; Touya had probably brought them, since Shoto had obviously been curious about where they'd come from.
~MHA~
When she'd settled down at a table with Jiro, and Tsu, Momo smiled softly as she sipped her tea. The sound of someone else making their way over to the table where the three of them were all sitting together drew her attention then, and Momo turned to see another girl; she was wearing a bright, white uniform, one that matched her hair, interestingly enough. She was also wearing a monocle, and Momo found herself wondering if it was part of her costume, or if it was somehow a part of the uniform at whatever school she attended.
"Good afternoon," she said, giving her attention to the girl who seemed so interested in her; she wasn't really looking at Jiro or Tsu, so it did seem like she was more interested in Momo herself than either of her friends.
"Good afternoon, Momo Yaoyorozu," the girl with the white hair and pale-blue eyes said, smiling at her. "My name is Saiko Intelli. I'd been looking forward to seeing how our respective Quirks would have fared against each other, but it looks like you managed to beat everyone here."
"Well actually, both of the Heroics classes at U.A. attended a special training camp to help us prepare for this," she said, feeling slightly sheepish about the whole thing; here this girl was, having braved her way through whatever test had been set up to determine just who would be able to participate in the Provisional License Exam to begin with, and Momo was just sitting here at one of the tables.
"Oh, well I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything less from such a prestigious school like U.A." Intelli-san said, eyes narrowing slightly even as she seemed to try smiling wider to hide whatever her honest feelings were.
Inviting Intelli-san to sit down with them, hoping that she could at least make the other girl feel a bit better about everything, Momo smiled in an attempt to make Intelli-san feel more comfortable around them, Momo could only hope that she would be able to make some kind of connection with her fellow Hero in training. The pair of them would likely need to work together, depending on what the Hero Public Safety Commission had planned next.
~MHA~
"You know, nerd, there are other things you can eat besides katsudon," he said, waving his chopsticks at the nerd to emphasize just how amused he was by the sheer depths of the nerd's obsession with that stuff. "Besides, I bet it's not even that good, compared to Auntie's."
"It isn't that bad, Kacchan," the nerd said, giving him that same look he always did when he was trying not to laugh, and mostly failing. "Oh, hi."
Turning to look over at whoever it was that the nerd had taken an interest in, Katsuki found himself faced with a purple haired kid – probably one of those second-years he'd heard about while Professor Sleepyhead had been telling him and the rest of the extras what they were going to be dealing with during whatever was going to be coming next; if there was anything coming next – wearing an all-black costume whose front-piece looked distinctly like…
"So, what're you planning to do if we end up having to fight Villains? Bake cookies at them?" he drawled, smirking at the look he got in return.
It seemed like this new guy, whoever he was, had a pretty over-inflated opinion of himself. And if there was one thing Katsuki enjoyed more than teasing Zuzu, it was knocking guys like that down from their high-horses. He'd seen Uncle Sashi doing that kind of thing, back when he'd had more chances to hang out with the coolest of his uncles, and that was also one of the things that made him feel closer to the old man.
"My abilities do not involve the preparation of consumables," the purple-haired kid said, turning to glare briefly at him, before returning his attention to Zuzu.
"Then why are you wearing an apron?" he needled, not quite liking the look Purple Pieman was leveling on Zuzu.
He didn't know just what Purple Pieman's particular angle was, but he was still going to push his buttons until he found out.
"My costume does not include an apron," Purple Pieman snapped, narrowing his eyes. "This uniform of mine has been designed to reflect the uniforms of the guards who stand watch over Tartarus prison; the sole bastion that stands between the civilians and the most terrible Villains that have been cast out by our orderly society."
~MHA~
"That's what you had your costume modeled after?" he asked, looking up from the Katsudon he'd been eating.
"Yes," the purple-haired boy – his hair was tucked under the cap he was wearing, for the most part, but from what Izuku could see it seemed to be at least a couple shades darker than Shinsou-kun's – and from the look on his face, he seemed to be more interested in Izuku himself.
Even after Kacchan tried to draw his attention, to take his measure the same way that Dad would do when he didn't quite know how someone was going to jump when they were put under stress.
"That's interesting," he said, offering the purple-haired boy in the red domino mask a smile.
"It seems as though you yourself chose to model your own costume after both your father and All Might," the purple-haired boy said, seeming not to have noticed that Izuku had been trying to make him feel better by smiling, the way Uncle Toshi was always trying to do in either form. "I found myself wondering, after Sensei was forced to reveal himself to the world in the wake of the operation launched against the Yakuza, just what kind of person the son that the Symbol of Hope spoke of could possibly be."
"So, uhm," he began, rubbing the back of his head as he found himself feeling awkward all over again. "How do I measure up, do you think?"
"You're honestly more shy than I was expecting," the purple-haired boy said, eyes narrowing slightly. "However, it also seems as though you are perfectly in earnest, so it would seem that you will become a perfectly respectable Hero, Izuku Midoriya."
"Thanks," he said, feeling his cheeks warming up a bit, even as the boy he'd been talking to continued to study him. "Uhm, so what's your name, since you already know mine?"
"My name is Seiji Shishikura," Shishikura-san said, nodding sharply as he made his way up to the table where he and Kacchan were sitting. "However, there is one matter that I would appreciate having clarification on, Izuku Midoriya."
"What's that, Shishikura-san?" he asked, not entirely certain what it was that Shishikura-san was getting at.
Out of the corner of his right eye, he could see Kacchan sitting up slightly straighter, though no one who didn't know him as well or for as long as Izuku had would really be able to see that kind of thing.
"I would like to know just why someone with such a respectable pedigree would choose to associate himself with such a vulgar, crude person as the one seated next to you."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?!" Kacchan demanded, before Izuku could think of even a single thing to say, in response to what was really a rude kind of question, when you got right down to it.
~MHA~
When he'd returned to his safehouse, in the wake of the failed raid on the Yakuza compound – after his own, complete failure to save the children who should have been able to look to him for salvation, even though he'd already failed one of them once before – Chizome Akaguro had thrown himself back into rigorous training with the same determination that had carried him through the day of the fire. The day that had seen Stendhal the Vigilante, who had borne the red of life and the black of death, perish in the very flames that had consumed the Rosaru Ward. Rising from his ashes, reborn like the phoenix he had modeled himself after from that day forward, had been Stendhal the Pro Hero.
Stendhal, who now bore the red of fire, and the black of ash.
Still, the thoughts of his failure on the day he'd stood nearly close enough to the vanished children – Niseko Sezu in particular, since he owed the silver-eyed boy, considering that it had been his own actions that had served to reveal the boy's presence to the Yakuza remnant that Kai Chisaki had taken command of – continued to plague him, no matter how diligently Chizome attempted to rededicate himself to his training. He could only take some solace in the fact that his iron-discipline had not slipped so far as to allow such thoughts to trouble him while he was on patrol.
However, once he returned to the safehouse that he'd set up for himself – he wasn't the kind of person who could be said to have a home, and so Chizome didn't bother deluding himself that this place was anything but somewhere he rested after a day's work – Chizome found that thoughts of the children he'd been too weak to save still wouldn't leave him. Finding himself standing over the case where he'd stored the gear he'd used when he had still borne the mantle of the Vigilante Stendhal, Chizome narrowed his eyes as he opened the case. Looking down once more at the gear he'd once used, before the day of the fire had shown him just how fragile the lives he'd sought to stand in judgment of truly were, Chizome settled back on his knees as he found himself considering the path that had brought him to this moment.
He also found himself considering, once more, the constraints that Stendhal the Pro Hero was forced to operate under.
While it was a simple fact that while he had been moving as Stendhal the Vigilante, every member of the police had been his enemy, whereas Stendhal the Pro Hero was able to work with them whenever a situation called for it, there were still some matters that even Stendhal the Pro Hero was unable to resolve. Chizome also found himself considering the other constraints he now operated under. As Stendhal the Vigilante had been a known killer, Chizome had found himself on the receiving end of a not-entirely-friendly suggestion that he restrain himself in the future.
Restrain himself or be restrained, the officer handling his certification had put it.
So, there were still matters that Chizome found himself unable to see to; matters that continued to trouble him, even as he tried to put them aside so that he could focus on retraining himself. Almost before he knew what he was doing, Chizome found himself holding one of the folding blades that he had carried on the front of his vest while he had been operating as Stendhal the Vigilante. Narrowing his eyes as he contemplated his future course of action, Chizome set down the blade and then reached down to pick up the folded uniform in the case.
The garb he'd worn during his crusade as Stendhal the Vigilante had remained within the locked case in his storage closet, folded for long enough that it had begun to wear along the edges of the folds themselves. Laying the costume of Stendhal the Vigilante down on the case where he had kept it since the day he had taken up the mantle of a Pro Hero, Chizome looked up at the display that held the costume that a friend of All Might's – the legend that he'd actually had the chance to meet, on that terrible day of the fires – had designed for him, after All Might himself had vouched for him.
Even though he had been given the aid of All Might in becoming what he was now, there were still constraints that he operated under; still things holding him back.
~MHA~
Looking up at the sliding door as Kurono opened it, Chisaki smiled under the cloth mask he was still wearing as he watched his old friend lead little Niseko into the bathing room with him.
"Come here, Niseko-chan," he said, holding his right hand out, even as Kurono gave Niseko a last push to get him moving. "The water's perfect for the both of us, and I can wash your back and help you wash your hair."
Watching as Niseko hesitantly made his way over to the deep-set tub where Chisaki had settled himself down for the second of his twice-daily baths, he reached out to gently take the pure, silver-eyed boy's right hand as Niseko held it out to balance himself. Settling Niseko down on his left thigh, Chisaki poured out a generous palm-full of the shampoo he used for himself, then began lathering up little Niseko's hair. With both of his hands in the boy's hair, Chisaki was able to use his Quirk to shorten the boy's hair while he was cleaning it.
Under any other circumstances, Chisaki wouldn't have wished to taint Niseko with the use of his Quirk, but the fact that he wasn't actually touching the child's skin made him feel better about his course of action.
Gently setting Niseko down in the still-warm water, once he'd finished cleaning and shortening the boy's hair, Chisaki washed the boy's back and then left him with an extra bottle of soap to finish cleaning himself while Chisaki attended to his own hygiene. Smiling down at Niseko as the boy continued cleaning himself up, Chisaki returned his attention to washing himself. Resolving that he would bring Niseko along next time he took his morning bath, Chisaki grabbed the brush he'd brought with him and began washing Niseko's back.
He'd been hoping that this would have served to draw the pair of them closer together, and yet Niseko still seemed to be unsettled by him.