Thank you for giving this story a chance. Before we get going, I'd just like to say something quick.
This work draws heavy inspiration from HeyHamlet's Umbridge AU, which is part of his AU Repository over on AO3: all credit for this story's idea goes to them. However, it won't be a 1:1 remake of that AU: while the premise will remain intact, I'm going to mess around quite a bit with the plot structure. Since I'm feeling poetic, I'll dub the resulting story as the Takaoka AU. (If you don't know what that means, go watch Assassination Classroom, it's well worth your time.)
That's all I have to say. Thank you again for giving this story a chance, and I hope you enjoy it!
Chapter One: The Teacher Is Not Your Friend
When Izuku entered Class 1-A fifteen minutes early one sunny Thursday morning, the first thing he saw was Eraserhead outlining the day's objectives and course schedule on the whiteboard, his sleeping bag nowhere to be found. Once the sight sunk in, he considered pinching himself, thought better of it, then his eyes met Eraserhead's and he shuffled to his seat without further delay.
As he pulled out everything he needed for first period, he rationalized the unexpected event as best he could. Most likely, Eraserhead didn't have to patrol last night and got adequate sleep as a result. Not wanting to ruminate on the possibilities there, all relevant thoughts slunk into the back of his mind as he prepared for the day to come.
Everything else proceeded per usual: by the time homeroom started, each of his classmates occupied their respective seats, some chatting while others kept to themselves. Once the bell rang, all personal conversations stopped in their tracks, the focus shifting to Eraserhead as he stared Class 1-A down.
"Before we get started, I have an announcement to make," Eraserhead said.
Izuku tuned in without a second thought. If said announcement warranted this level of preparation from Eraserhead, it meant something was up.
"Due to recent events both on and off campus, the government has begun scrutinizing U.A.'s security and curriculum," Eraserhead continued. "Therefore, they're going to take a more direct role in shaping both those aspects, at least for the time being. While this means many things, only one impacts you at the moment: starting today, you will have a new Heroics teacher."
While Izuku remained locked in place, not yet able to process the idea of Heroics lessons without All Might, the rest of the room erupted in a cacophony of questions, everyone trying to shout over everyone else. However, once it became clear that Eraserhead made a point of not acknowledging anything they said, silence returned within seconds.
"Calm down, and keep your conspiracy theories to yourself," Eraserhead said. "All Might is still your Heroics teacher on paper; he's just going to take a backseat for the time being. Speaking of which, I will also take a backseat for the next few minutes: when I met your new Heroics teacher earlier this morning, she insisted on explaining her goals and intentions to you herself. Therefore, I'd like you to give a warm welcome to your new Heroics teacher, Ms. Kamashida Kiruya."
Their new teacher flung the door open as soon as Eraserhead finished his sentence, allowing her to saunter in. Eraserhead stepped aside and let Ms. Kamashida take his place, which meant Izuku got a good look at her before she started her introductory speech. She stood a few inches shorter than Eraserhead, with gray eyes, short inky-black hair, and a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. Her simple clothing meshed well with the U.A. aesthetic, while each of her hands sported five extra-long, sharp nails, each one painted a different color.
"Good morning, everyone," Ms. Kamashida said, all sunshine and rainbows. "As your teacher has said, I am Ms. Kamashida, and I will have several roles inside this classroom for the time being. In addition to leading your Heroics lessons, I will also be supervising your other classes to determine whether they're up to par with our standards."
While Izuku doubted a bad English curriculum had anything to do with Class 1-A's incidents, he conceded she at least had a valid excuse there. The government already wanted to check in on their Heroics lessons; they might as well cover all their other bases while they were at it.
"I'd think my role here is simple enough to understand, so I'll stop there," Ms. Kamashida said. "Now, does anyone have any questions?"
Izuku kept his hand down, but Shouto's hand went up like a rocket, even beating out Iida's. If nothing else, Ms. Kamashida wasted no time before calling on him. "What's your name, mister?"
"Todoroki Shouto."
Ms. Kamashida's eyes lit up. "Oh, like Endeavor?"
Izuku winced, but Shouto ignored the question altogether. "What's your hero name? I've never heard about you before."
Ms. Kamashida chuckled. "In the industry, I go by Scythe. You won't find me on any billboards or leaderboards, though; I only got my hero's license about a year ago. However, before I became a hero, I spent more than a decade working as a combat trainer and strategist for a private military contractor, so I'd say I'm more than qualified to teach you some self-defense."
That gave Izuku a name to research out of personal curiosity; he'd never heard of Scythe, either. At the very least, he wanted to figure out the extent of her capabilities.
She paused for a second, perhaps waiting to see if anyone else had anything to say, then pointed to Iida. "And your name is?"
"Iida Tenya, ma'am."
A beat. "I presume you also have a question?"
Iida cleared his throat, looking Scythe straight in the eye. "I don't mean to discredit your credentials, ma'am, so please don't take it that way, but I'm guessing there was stiff competition for your role. What made the government choose you over all the others who applied?"
"Oh, that's an easy one," Scythe said. "While many of my competitors had the same or better credentials, at the end of the day, my Quirk provided exactly what they wanted: it's strong and has direct applications in combat if used well. As far as I know, in a fight with anyone who isn't Eraserhead, there's very little your Quirk can't solve."
Izuku tasted something sour in the back of his throat; Scythe displayed Quirk bias at its finest. Not an uncommon view, to be fair, but still an unpleasant one no matter how many times he saw it. He thought someone the government hand-picked for this role would be better than that, but perhaps he set his expectations too high.
Several more members of Class 1-A raised their hands in response to Scythe's statement, but as if to spite them, the bell for first period rang, meaning any further questions got lost to the aether. "Oh, dear! It looks like we're out of time for questions. We'll talk again once we get to your Heroics class, but until then, try to pretend I'm not here. It can't be hard."
The location of Scythe's desk didn't help the illusion, though. While Eraserhead hadn't deigned to move their desks around to accommodate the newest member of Class 1-A better, her desk still sat smack in the middle of the back row. While it meant all of them retained an unobstructed view of the front of the room, it also meant everyone in the back row had to be careful not to trip over each other every time they needed to leave.
Scythe did her part to blend in if nothing else: once she reached her seat, she poised herself to take notes, pulling out a thick notebook and several pencils designed to work with her nails. Hunched over the desk, she looked just like everyone else, albeit aged by a solid twenty years or so.
Not long after, Present Mic strolled into the room, just as exuberant as usual. Once he started the day's English lesson, Izuku set his thoughts about Scythe aside, at least for now. She'd prove her worth, or lack thereof, during their upcoming Heroics lessons.
The sky remained picturesque as Uraraka followed the rest of Class 1-A outside. Their first Heroics lesson with Scythe loomed large in front of them.
Scythe herself walked between All Might and Eraserhead, her head held high and her overlong nails swinging from side to side with every step she took. From the sound of it, she wanted to start a conversation, but neither Eraserhead nor All Might seemed to be in a talking mood. Uraraka sympathized; at the moment, she didn't want to talk either.
For now, Scythe had kept her earlier promises, fading into the background once the day's lessons started. She'd asked a handful of questions each class and pulled Present Mic aside for a few minutes once second period ended, but besides that, all she did was take notes with a speed and fervor only Bakugo and Iida rivaled, which had to be hard with nails like hers.
Now, however, came the meat and potatoes of her role, the position she'd been recruited to augment if not outright fill. While All Might had his flaws as a teacher, he still had a personality hard to surpass and genuinely wanted them to do well: if Scythe wanted to fill his shoes, she couldn't just rest on her laurels.
They stopped at an inconspicuous patch of grass somewhere on campus, Scythe turning to face them with all the cheer she'd brought that morning. "Thank you all for arriving on time for my first Heroics lesson. Before I start explaining what's to come today, do you have anything to say, All Might?"
All Might spoke but two sentences. "I wish you the best of luck, Class 1-A. Plus Ultra."
"Plus Ultra!" All of Class 1-A joined in on that one.
A long pause followed their call, like Scythe expected All Might to launch into a speech. When that didn't happen, Scythe took control. "Okay! With that out of the way, let's go over today's Hero exercise. Don't worry, it's going to be an easy one the first time around."
Uraraka paid close attention as Scythe launched into her explanation. She and Eraserhead would be role-playing villains in this exercise. Class 1-A's goal was to subdue both of them and vice versa. However, to throw in some wrinkles, the building representing their playing area would be dark, the starting placement of each student had been randomized in advance, and while she and Eraserhead would be wearing night-vision goggles, they would not.
"As you may have learned during your summer orientation, villains often won't be so kind as to announce their presence or fight you on favorable terms," Scythe said once she finished explaining the rules. "The numbers won't always be ten-to-one in your favor, either, but again, I'm going a little easy on you this time. Do you have any further questions?"
No one did.
"Good. Now, I'm going to chat with Eraserhead about our strategy. You have ten minutes to do the same, then we'll escort you to your starting places. Go!"
The instant Scythe finished speaking, she and Eraserhead walked out of earshot to formulate their plan. Uraraka didn't pay much attention to them beyond that, though: the second all of Class 1-A was in range Iida hit the ground running. "They're further trained than we are and they'll have superior navigation skills. Meanwhile, we have numbers and Quirk breadth on our side. We can't un-train Eraserhead and Scythe, but we can make our environment brighter. All ideas on how to accomplish that are welcome."
Five of their number stepped forward: Shouto, Yaoyorozu, Bakugo, Kaminari, and Aoyama. With all of them being able to produce light independently, their goal would be to find as many others as possible and form groups, the larger the better.
From there, while Eraserhead's Quirk was known, Scythe's remained hidden, even if both her nails and her name implied a cutting-based Quirk. For all they knew, it could be an intentional misdirect to throw them off and prove you couldn't judge someone's Quirk just by how they looked. Eraserhead had a restricted field of vision, so swarming him promised to work as long as his head wasn't on a swivel, but if Scythe's Quirk translated well to crowd control and they stuck together, it'd take either a lot of luck or a lot of them to bring them down.
Perhaps twenty people represented too many cooks in the kitchen: in their provided ten minutes, while some theories had been ventured about Scythe's Quirk, their game plan remained rather haphazard; it more or less amounted to finding as many classmates as possible, then swarming the two teachers. At the very least, by the time Scythe and Eraserhead returned, Uraraka had put herself in the best headspace she could.
"Time is up," Scythe said. "Now, girls follow me, boys follow Eraserhead. We'll lead you to your starting locations, and don't think we won't know if you move early. You may only leave when you hear our announcement."
Uraraka wasted no time following the instructions, and everyone else followed likewise. Just like that, the class embarked on a journey for parts unknown.
Despite the encroaching darkness, Kaminari held off on using his Quirk yet. He only had so much juice in him before he lost his mental faculties, meaning every charge counted. No point in wasting them.
Some of his classmates reached their spots before he did and others took longer, but besides that, he had zero relevant information about how to find them to his name. That was probably the point, but it didn't make this exercise any easier.
"Begin!"
The noise came from both everywhere and nowhere; perhaps this building had a hidden PA system he didn't know about. Either way, the volume and the complete lack of warning almost sent him diving for cover. After the shock subsided, though, he powered up for a few seconds to determine his immediate surroundings, picked a direction, and began speed-walking, eyes open for anything with even a smear of color.
A muffled thud down the hall made him quicken his pace. A second nearly caused him to start running. His speed didn't matter after the third one, though, since its source hit him in the face.
Preparing for battle, he risked a charge, hoping his skills still held up with restricted vision. However, when most of his view got taken up by the bottom half of a purple sphere and its former owner, his shoulders loosened just a little as he peeled off the obstruction.
"You're not a wall," Mineta said, keeping his voice low.
Kaminari smirked. "Thanks for noticing. You know where anyone else is?"
"Nope, you're the first one I found," Mineta said. "I want to try something in here so bad, but I don't think now's the time."
Kaminari went to affirm that statement, but any further conversation got interrupted by an angry shout from not too far off. "Hey! If anyone can hear me, I could use some goddamn backup right now!"
"Well, we all know who that is," Mineta said. "I assume he'd like some help?"
"If he's the one saying it, he needs the help," Kaminari said. "Come on, let's go!"
Their eyes had begun adjusting to the lack of light; while their vision remained far from clear they could make out enough outlines to avoid running into walls while they looked for Bakugo. They found him in no time at all, but instead of being surrounded by villains as Kaminari expected, he remained alone.
Kaminari's face fell. "Dude, what the hell was all that for?"
"I'm trying to make it easier for you bastards to find me," Bakugo said. "Sure, it might attract the villains as well, but that's a risk I'm willing to take."
"A rather foolish risk, I must say," came a new voice. Before Kaminari felt prepared, Scythe had entered their field of vision, blocking off their easiest avenue of escape in the process.
"Thanks for jinxing us, dude," Mineta said, squaring into something resembling a battle stance as he did.
Scythe gave Bakugo a knowing smirk. "I didn't even need the night vision goggles to find you three. You're supposed to be the best Hero course in the country, I'm sure you know better than to do something that stupid!"
A low growl rumbled from Bakugo's throat, probably an attempt to stifle a sentence laden with expletives. Without any further words, the three of them split off, each one of them trying to divert Scythe's attention away from the others as much as possible. This pause lasted a few seconds, Scythe sizing the three of them up even as they did the same to her.
Mineta attacked first, popping off a sphere with each of his fists and hurling them at her. Scythe sliced both of them out of the air with her nails, not even having to take any steps to do so; if that didn't imply a cutting-based Quirk, nothing did. As long as they avoided her nails, though, nothing she had seemed capable of causing serious injuries. They'd be fine if they played it smart.
Scythe charged Mineta, who launched one more sphere in her direction before trying to dive out of the way. However, Scythe knocked the projectile aside, then course-corrected to follow Mineta, her dive knocking him to the ground in a savage display. She wasn't a large woman, but she still dwarfed Mineta, pinning his hands down as he tried to squirm out from under her.
Kaminari charged to try and knock her off Mineta, but Bakugo beat him to the punch and sent her tumbling. "Not today, you… maniac!"
Unfortunately for the three of them, Scythe found her feet within seconds while Mineta was slow to get up; he'd recover, but not in time to stop her next attack. Meanwhile, Scythe charged straight for Bakugo as he braced himself, powering up a mighty explosion.
Kaminari had seen this movie before, but he'd never been a fan of the ending; all the more reason this worked better as an interactive experience. Time to intervene before Bakugo caused something he probably didn't mean to.
Right before Bakugo exploded, Kaminari came in from the side, intending to both land a hit of his own on her and spare her from the worst of the inevitable explosion. Right as he passed Bakugo and attempted to knock Scythe down, Scythe made a slashing motion with her arm, causing something sharp to rip into his side even though he saw nothing but empty air make contact.
At first, Kaminari's side just felt warm and wet, like he'd spilled a drink on himself. A second later, the pain caught up, a red-hot fire that caused him to topple with a rather undignified screech. Everyone else in the room noticed it too, their faces shifting between at least seven or eight combined expressions in the space of three seconds before they all rushed to him.
Bakugo shouted for Eraserhead at the top of his lungs, utilizing his arsenal of foul language in a variety of new and creative ways in the process. Meanwhile, Mineta popped another sphere off his head to try and plug the gash before Bakugo waved him off, then resorted to screaming "Medic!" over and over again. Scythe said nothing at all, instead hunching over him with a fragile, nervous smile on her face. Kaminari rolled over so his injured side wasn't on the ground, but the motion felt like a knife scraping against his skin, so any sudden movements remained out of the question for now.
Eraserhead arrived in what felt like no time at all, a conga line of worried students hurrying along with him. "Might I ask what happened here?"
"He lunged at me and I couldn't change direction in time," Scythe said. "I didn't mean to hit him like that, I'm so sorry."
"I'm sure you didn't," Eraserhead said, not quite sounding convinced. "At the same time, charging a villain who's demonstrating a cutting-based Quirk without any weaponry is usually a bad idea. Keep your distance from them if possible, and if not, at least be prepared to dodge. Does everyone here understand that?"
At least ten voices answered, "Yes, Eraserhead." Kaminari said the same thing, but his voice had none of its usual pep, all of it leaking out of him alongside the blood from his injury.
He saw Eraserhead lean forward to make eye contact with him. "If you can understand me, blink twice."
Kaminari blinked twice.
"Good, you're lucid. If you can, take off your shirt and press it against the injury, it should stem the bleeding until we can get you to Recovery Girl. Since that's where you're headed now, though, it shouldn't be very long."
Kaminari followed Eraserhead's instructions with heavy limbs, the ruined shirt now a makeshift bandage. The initial contact made Kaminari hiss, but the bleeding slowed and the pain remained bearable.
With some help from his classmates, Kaminari staggered to his feet, his side still bleeding into his shirt. Then, with each arm over a shoulder, he began the long trip to the infirmary, every step aggravating the gash in his side. Yet, he shrugged it off. Real villains would do way worse to him if they caught him; he needed all the training he could get.
Above all else, Scythe had to have gotten this role for a reason, so his injury, painful as it was, had been an unfortunate accident. She just needed to settle down and figure out what their limits were, and from that point on, none of his classmates would suffer injuries at her hands.
The pain suggested otherwise, but Kaminari remained confident things could only go up from today.
Scythe's role at U.A. draws heavy inspiration from Umbridge's High Inquisitor role from the Harry Potter series.
I tried to incorporate puns into my original characters' names to stay in the vein of the source material, but I know very little (read: next to no) Japanese, so forgive me if those names sound a bit odd. I won't be getting a kanji tattoo anytime soon, to say the least.
My plan is to try and update this every other week for now. Therefore, the next chapter should be out on the 15th. Hopefully, I'll see you then!