Chapter 4: Melting Wax
The tensions in classes were growing. Not only in 1-A, but throughout the whole school. The staff had put together an assembly to attempt to calm everyone's nerves, and yet it had done nothing to ease the tension. Izuku's only close friends at this point were Kacchan, Shouto, Hitoshi, and Mei. Eijiro, Denki, and Mina from Kacchan's friend group were still friendly with him, as were Momo and Kyouka. Izuku's old friend group wouldn't sit with him during lunch and practically refused to make eye contact with him anymore.
His quirk was practically helpless in this situation as well. During training the day prior, he'd developed the next quirk: Float. It was rather hard to hide this as he began floating up to the roof of the gym and Uraraka was on the opposite side of the gym from him. Aizawa-Sensei had had to erase his quirk just to get him down and that's how he found himself here: sitting with his close friends, who had refused to leave his side, in a personal meeting room with Aizawa-Sensei, Nedzu, and Mic-Sensei.
"It appears that you have gained a new quirk, Problem Child. Do you see how this can be worrisome?" Aizawa-Sensei asked.
Izuku continued pulling at his fingers as he kept his eyes on the ground and nodded. Hitoshi, who was sitting to his right, put his hand on his back and started rubbing circles.
Kacchan, who was sitting to his left, clicked his tongue in anger. "This is ridiculous. If you all are thinking he's the traitor then this is absolute bullshit!"
"Now, now, Bakugou," Nedzu said, raising a paw. "No one said anything about the traitor."
"It's what you're all thinking though, isn't it?" Shouto asked. "That's why you tried pulling him away alone. To interrogate him."
"I think Mei should be here," Hitoshi said abruptly. "She knows just as much as we do."
Aizawa-Sensei sighed. "We weren't going to interrogate Midoriya. But, if it'd make you feel better to have Hatsume here, then I'm sure we can try to pull her from whatever monstrosity she's working on right now."
"Please," Izuku whispered. He wanted all of his friends here. "Tell her Code Coeus and she'll come."
Mic stepped out of the room with a promise to return to the girl as Nedzu turned to Izuku, making him shrink into himself more. "What is Code Coeus, Midoriya?"
"Coeus was a Titan in Ancient Greek mythology," Izuku explained. "He didn't really have any myths tied to him, but his name means query, questioning, or intelligence. The code itself is that I'm getting questioned about my quirk or about being the traitor."
"Why do you have a code for being questioned about being the traitor?" Aizawa-Sensei asked.
"Because practically everyone in our stupid class has got it into their damn heads that Zu is the traitor. It's fucking ridiculous," Kacchan snapped.
Izuku placed his hand on Kacchan's knee to try and calm him down just as they heard running down the hall, two pairs of footsteps, and shouting from Present Mic to stop running. The door to their meeting room slammed open and Mei took stock of the situation before huffing and moving to sit on the ground in front of Izuku. Izuku couldn't help the small smile as he laid his other hand on her shoulder.
"Hatsume, you seriously are not allowed to run in the halls!" Mic-Sensei said, panting as he leaned against the door frame.
Aizawa-Sensei chuckled as he waved Mic-Sensei back into the room. Present Mic nodded and stepped back in, closing the door before retaking his seat.
"You both made it back fairly quickly," Aizawa-Sensei said with an amused smirk and a raised eyebrow.
"As soon as I uttered the code, she dropped everything and booked it here!" Mic-Sensei whined. "I didn't even know she could run that fast!"
Mei looked at the teachers and principal with a smug smirk. "Of course I can. Especially if something is wrong with one of my friends."
Izuku squeezed her shoulder a bit in thanks and she gave a slight nod in turn.
Nedzu clapped his paws together and drew everyone's attention. "Okay! Let's get back on topic, shall we?" When he received a nod from everyone, he continued. "Midoriya, Aizawa was right to bring to my attention that you have developed two new quirks on top of the original." Izuku winced at that and Kacchan grabbed his hand in a tight grip. "Yet," Nedzu continued before any of his friends could cut him off, "we all know you're not the traitor, correct?"
Izuku looked at the principal in shock and could see that Mic and Aizawa both had confused looks on their faces as they also looked to Nedzu. "But-"
"You have gained many allies, Midoriya," Nedzu said with a look that made Izuku think there was a double meaning to his words. "With the way that your quirk is mutating and allowing you to access stored energy in different ways, it's good to have people on your side."
Izuku looked at the principal in a confused manner. Was he helping cover One for All for him?
" Yagi told the rat ages ago and knows the threat of it ," Nana answered.
" He's also smart enough to know that knowledge is power ," Second huffed.
" But why isn't he just making me tell Aizawa and Mic ?" Izuku asked them.
" I bet he figures that you'll tell them when you're ready ," Yoichi said calmly.
Izuku nodded to Nedzu. "It's scary because it seems like a new quirk altogether, but it's all the same quirk at the end of the day."
"Almost everyone thinks he's the traitor and is receiving quirks from All for One, which is the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Kacchan grunted.
"We're really the only people that still hang out with him, except Katsuki's old friends will join us sometimes as well as Yaoyorozu and Jiro," Mei finished.
Aizawa sighed, probably frustrated that his only lead on the traitor was lost. "This is ridiculous. We need to just find the damn traitor already."
"We're working on it," Nedzu said, equally as perplexed by the situation at hand. "As for now, classes have been dismissed for a good minute, why don't the five of you head back to the dorms and relax as we figure out what to do about all of this."
Mei hopped to her feet. "Can I go to the 1-A dorms too?"
Aizawa nodded. "Yeah that's fine, I'm assuming you'll all be going to one of your dorm rooms?"
"Let's go to Izu's today," Shouto suggested. "It's the fastest to get to."
"I'm fine with that," Izuku said, standing as well.
"If anyone bothers you about Mei being there, send me a text on the HeroNetwork," Aizawa offered. "I'll go out there to put a stop to it if they start bothering you."
"Thank you Senseis," Izuku said, bowing to his teachers and principal. The rest of his group followed his lead in standing and bowing before they all left the room.
"What movie should we watch?" Hitoshi asked as they walked down the UA halls.
"Let's watch one of those Ghibli movies again!" Mei suggested.
"I don't think we've all watched 'Howl's Moving Castle' together yet," Izuku offered.
"That's a sick one," Kacchan agreed. "I want Howl's Castle."
Izuku couldn't help his laughter as they left the halls of UA and headed towards the dorms. There were students milling about as it was still a nice summer day out. "Of course you do Kacchan."
"What's that mean, huh?" Kacchan asked, annoyed.
"I bet Mei could build you one," Izuku deflected.
"Oh?" Mei asked, looking excited. "I need to see this movie!"
"No one let her watch AOT," Hitoshi mumbled.
Izuku choked on his spit as he laughed. "Toshi! Wait, her making the EDM gear would actually be so nice! Imagine the uses for heroes!"
Hitoshi facepalmed. "Great, now we're gonna have to watch that show together too."
"What's so bad about AUT?" Shouto asked.
"AOT. It's Attack on Titan," Izuku explained.
"It's fucking weird," Hitoshi added.
"Yeah, batshit weird," Kacchan asked, making Izuku and Hitoshi whip their heads towards the blonde boy.
"You watched it?" Izuku asked.
Kacchan huffed. "I heard you mumbling nonstop about it one day and wanted to see what all the fuss was about."
Hitoshi laughed as they entered the dorms. "I can't believe Katsuki actually watched a pre-quirk anime."
"I can," Izuku said. "We used to watch pre-quirk shows and movies all the time when we were friends before."
Kacchan nodded as they walked past everyone that was hanging out downstairs, Kacchan sending them glares as Izuku tried to avoid eye contact with anyone. The room had immediately gone silent as they'd walked in.
"Izu, do you have enough snacks in your room?" Shouto asked.
"Yeah, I just restocked," Izuku confirmed
"Excuse me!" Iida shouted as the group started up the stairs towards the boys' dorms. "What on earth do you think you're doing, bringing a girl up there?"
"Aizawa approved it, so if you have a stick up your ass about it, bring it to him," Kacchan snapped, motioning for the rest of them to continue up the stairs.
They could hear Iida continue to lecture at them as they walked up, but they all ignored him as they finally reached the second floor and made their way towards Izuku's room. They could still hear Iida shouting all the way up here. He really should just go to Aizawa if he really thought they were doing something against the rules.
Izuku shook his head as he took the lead of the group and went up to his door. He went to unlock it, but as he went to put the key in, the door pushed open.
"You left your door open nerd? Really?" Kacchan huffed.
Izuku could only stand there and stare as he pushed the door farther open. His room was trashed. His drawers were taken out of his desk, emptied, and left overturned. His bed was completely unmade with the sheets and pillows thrown haphazardly back onto the bed. His bookcases were empty, most of their contents on the floor. His All Might posters were ripped from the wall, only one left up with "TRAITOR" written across it in red marker. His figurines were all on the floor and smashed.
"What the fuck," Hitoshi whispered.
Izuku could smell smoke, but he couldn't look anywhere but at his room. Though, it wasn't like he could really see the remains of his room anymore given that his vision was blurred with tears.
There was whispered conversation around him before shapes began to move in front of and past him. One came to stand in front of him, blocking his vision of the room. There were small explosions and the sound of cloth rustling before something was wiping the tears from his eyes.
"-rd. Ner- Izuku." Kacchan was standing in front of him, wiping his tears with, assumingly, a handkerchief. Izuku blinked a couple times before finally being able to look up into red eyes. "Hey, it's okay. We're going to put things back as much as we can and make sure nothing's missing, okay?"
Izuku nodded, eyes still a little unfocused as he tried to look past Kacchan. Shouto, Hitoshi, and Mei were bustling around the room, trying to minimize the damage by putting his notebooks back on their shelves and filling trash bags with the destroyed All Might merch.
"So much money," Izuku whispered.
"And they'll pay it back," Kacchan said, voice a little softer than usual in an effort to comfort.
"Those were limited edition. Why not steal them to sell them? Why destroy it all?" Izuku asked.
"Are you really worried about the money?" Kacchan asked, tilting his head.
"It was my mom's money. She doesn't have much, but she always tried to get me the best," Izuku admitted.
"We're going to figure out who did this and they will be paying you back for each and every piece," Kacchan said.
"And we'll be pulling up the prices for what they all go for today," Hitoshi hissed.
"I can buy you new merch if you want," Shouto offered.
"That's not the point!" Izuku shouted, shoving Kacchan away from him and startling the whole group as he stormed into the room and started going through his notebooks. "They're taking everything away from me. They took my friends. They tried to take the trust of the teachers. They destroyed my room. They're going to try and have me…" Izuku stopped as he scanned through the notebooks again.
"Have you what?" Mei asked, holding his blankets and sheets in her arms.
"Have me… where's number 16?" Izuku asked.
"Number 16 what?" Shouto asked.
"His Hero Analysis notebooks," Kacchan explained, already stepping up besides Izuku to scan the shelf. "Is it in your backpack?" He asked, turning to Izuku after also not seeing it on the shelf.
"No," Izuku said, even as he reached for his backpack and started going through the contents. "I noticed someone went through my bag the other day, so I decided to leave it in here today." All that was in his backpack was his school notebooks and note taking supplies.
"Why would they take one of your journals?" Mei asked.
"He analyzes heroes in them," Hitoshi explained.
"Number 16 was dedicated to our class and a couple teachers though," Kacchan whispered, searching the shelf one more time.
The group frantically searched the room, cleaning along the way so they weren't having to constantly shove broken items around. In the end, the journal was gone. As a group, they headed down the stairs and out of the dorms, back towards the main building of UA.
A knock sounded on the door to the teacher's lounge and Yagi looked up from his lesson planning. He was alone in the room. He sighed as he stood up and walked towards the door just as a second, more insistent, knock came.
Yagi opened the door and his eyes widened in surprise at the sight of one of his students. "Oh, how can I help you?"
"Sensei," they said. "I have a photograph and some evidence that I think you want to see regarding the traitor."
If Yagi's eyes could have widened anymore than they already were, they would have. He waved the student in and gestured for them to sit on the couch before checking the hallway and closing the door. As he sat on the couch, the student began pulling items out of their bag. "Are you sure that it's the traitor?"
"I'm positive," the student replied grimly. "As are most of the other students of the class."
Yagi nodded and listened as the student explained everything they knew, showing him the evidence as it came up.