Izuku glanced furtively around the corner of the hall, panic rising in his chest. The hall was quiet and he slinked across to the empty doorway across the hall. He only had a couple more seconds before his trial would start in earnest. He closed his eyes to take a breath and recompose his fraying nerves.
"Your job is to get out without getting caught. You will get bonus marks if you are able to pirate class records from the server room."
Aizawa Sensei's instructions rang in his mind as he stalled. As his first lesson with Aizawa Sensei, he had been taken to another local high school, not specializing in hero studies, and had been tasked with stealing student records amidst a fire drill. The local teachers knew he would be here and had been requested to operate as though they were heroes while the resident students underwent a standard fire drill. He had been given the school's layout the night before and told to memorize it. Not thinking much of Aizawa's lessons at the time, he had neglected to do so. Now he was sorely regretting that.
As he rested in the doorway, he risked a glance up into the classroom and took note of the older students within. Judging by the chalkboard the class was some advanced mathematics course, and while he was pretty happy with the state of his academics, this material looked to be well above him.
Izuku shook the thought from his mind and tried to zero back in on the task at hand. He glanced around at the signs on either side of the stairwell down the hall. He was on the second floor, which meant one more floor between where he was and the ground floor. He figured jumping out of one of the windows wouldn't be too dangerous, but might lose him points with Aizawa for property damage.
Izuku swallowed forcefully and thumbed his wristband to comfort himself. He had been permitted to bring his support items into the exercise with the expectation that they wouldn't be used on any of the students of the school.
No unnecessary violence. Izuku repeated to himself, forcing himself to his feet and onwards to his next break spot. Quickly, Izuku strode down the hallway, doing his best to not appear out of place as he rounded a corner and strode straight into something solid. Next thing Izuku knew he was being lifted clear into the air by the collar of his uniform. From the corner of his eye Izuku noticed that they were just outside the girls' toilets on this floor and looking up Izuku took note of the person who was lifting him.
She was tall, maybe a head and a half taller than he was and she was broad across the shoulders. Strength quirk; avoid confrontation. She was glaring down at him and with another surge of fear he noticed the flecks of blood that hadn't quite been cleaned from her knuckles. He was quickly deposited on the floor as the girl forcefully swung him out of her way before striding away down the hall and turning into another classroom.
For a moment, all Izuku could do was tremble, half supporting himself against the wall of lockers, blood pounding in his ears. It took a moment for Izuku to find himself again as he stared after her. Finally, as the pounding in his ears began to quiet, he heard what sounded like a pained moan from inside the toilets. For a moment, the exercise left his mind as he called out quietly.
"Are you okay in there?" he questioned hesitantly, not wanting to go into the girl's toilets.
Quiet greeted his questioning as whoever was moaning inside quieted for a moment.
"Hello?" he pressed, unwilling to leave someone in pain, regardless of his task and whether or not he knew who it was. Call it his stubborn desire to help people and be a hero, but he couldn't care less as to why. He just knew that he had to help.
"Go away," the voice sounded from inside the bathroom. It was quiet for a moment again before Izuku heard a yelp as someone slipped and crashed to the floor.
With that, Izuku couldn't ignore that it sounded like someone was hurt and he threw his exercise and his respect for propriety to the side and strode nervously into the toilets. There his heart dropped as he found a girl that he recognized, Jakusha Nageruhito. One of her eyes was swollen shut and she was bleeding from a cut just above her left eyebrow. She was rubbing her head as she half lay, half sat next to a sink smeared with her blood.
"Jakusha!" Izuku exclaimed worriedly, "what happened?"
At the recognition in his voice, Jakusha looked up at him, only half recognizing him through the throbbing pain in her head. She squinted her good eye as she stared before it widened as she realized who she was talking to.
"Midoriya?" she began, her voice wobbly and uncertain, "what are you doing here? Don't you go to UA?"
"Nevermind that!" Izuku almost snapped back in worry, "what happened to you? Are you okay?"
"Oh… that," Jakusha waved him off. "I'll be fine," she assured him, "I've had worse from Mika before. You saw me at the hospital…" she trailed off as she realized what she'd just said.
"I thought you were hit by a car or something?" Izuku replied with uncertainty. He thought he'd caught her drift, but didn't like what she was saying.
"Right, that's right," Jakusha tried to play off, but Izuku wasn't quite so gullible.
"Did that girl I just walked past do that to you? Did she do this?"
Jakusha grimaced, gingerly touching the cut on her forehead, her fingers coming away slick with blood. Seeing this, Izuku pushed himself to his feet and withdrew several sheets of paper towel from the dispenser by the sink and offered them to the girl on the floor. She took the paper towel from him with a quiet 'thanks' before pressing them gently to the still-bleeding injury.
She was quiet for a long moment before she replied hesitantly.
"Yeah," she forced out before she took another long pause.
"I can't believe it! Does your sister know? Your father?"
"No," Jakusha snapped out, grimacing as the paper towels stuck to her slowly-congealing blood as she drew the wad away to see how it was doing. "And you'd better not tell any of them. Father doesn't care what happens to me and Enkiyori can't work well at school if she's thinking about me." Considering her condition on the floor, Izuku was surprised by the amount of strength coming through in her voice.
At her proclamation, Izuku was torn. She was obviously miserable with this situation she was dealing with, and if her father didn't care for her, Izuku didn't know how she had lasted so long. Even he, when dealing with Kacchan for the last several years, had really needed to feel his mother's love for him, even if he wasn't sharing what was really happening at school.
Izuku opened his mouth to argue that Nageruhito deserved to know what her sister was going through, but he was interrupted as the school's fire alarm sounded all around them. It was shortly accompanied by an announcement over the school-wide speaker system as the teachers and students were briefed on the extent of the situation.
"All students and faculty, this is a drill, though there are special circumstances that will accompany this drill. There is a student in the school that is undergoing a hero-course exercise that students are not to interfere with directly. Should you see this student that doesn't belong, you are to report it to the nearest teacher. Do not engage with this student directly as they are performing an important exercise, thank you."
Jakusha looked sideways at Izuku for a moment before speaking.
"Is that you?"
He nodded nervously as the exercise took full swing.
"Do your thing then, Midoriya, I'll deal with the Mika situation." She then forced herself to her feet and strode out of the toilets, wobbling unsteadily all the while.
Izuku internally debated for a moment as he watched her go, but in the end, if she said she would deal with it, Izuku would trust her and get on with his assignment.
He gave Jakusha a moment to get clear of his work, just in case things with the teachers got hairy, before he collected his fears and pushed back out of the washroom.
Immediately, he plastered himself against the wall as a faculty member passed him by, only missing him out of the corner of their eye by chance as he then sidled awkwardly down the hall. He dared not blink, and his eyes darted from one end of the hall to the other every half second, barely even taking in what he saw there.
It took a moment for him to reach a stairwell that led him up to the third and top floor. He peeked out of the stairwell cautiously, glancing to either end of the empty hallway. No one in view. He stepped quietly out of his hiding place and tip-toed down the hall to where he saw a sign indicating the school office.
He chanced a glance in through the glass wall of the office and his heart skipped a beat when he spotted the school's head of security standing over a computer with several cameras, seemingly watching over the school's evacuation, or perhaps watching out for him.
Controlling his breathing as best he could, Izuku considered his options.
Fight the teacher… like I could do that. Pretend I'm a student that needs him to get something from another room? I could pull off needing an inhaler. Create a diversion to call him somewhere else? Maybe, but what could I suggest is happening?
Just then, a handheld radio attached to the teacher's belt crackled to life, spitting out some hurried ramblings that Izuku wasn't quite able to catch.
"Repeat! Over," the teacher in the office spat back into the radio, obviously not completely understanding either.
"Altercation in the main hall. Students are fighting. Report ASAP to assist in breaking up. This could be the hero student."
"On my way down," the teacher snapped back into the radio. Izuku risked a peak around the corner and spotted the teacher grabbing a jacket off a nearby chair before whipping around and charging out the door, not noticing Izuku plastered against the wall next to the door in his haste.
It was only a moment before the teacher rounded the corner of the hall and disappeared, but Izuku still took a moment to recompose and listen for anyone else left in the office. Not hearing anyone, he stepped in and swung the spinning chair around so he could take a seat in front of the school's computer, blessedly left open and unlocked in the teacher's haste to leave.
Izuku popped open the computer's file explorer and set to work finding the documents that Aizawa Sensei had asked of him. It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for and he quickly inserted a hard drive that Aizawa had given him in preparation for the exercise and loaded it into the computer's USB port before transferring the files to the chip. The files copied quickly and Izuku popped the hard drive from the computer as soon as it was done. Clasping the drive in his hand, Izuku pushed to his feet and spun to leave the office, but as he did, his eyes caught on the security feed that had also been left open on the monitor next to the computer he'd been working on.
A flash of lime-green hair on the screen, pursued through a crowd of students by a figure he recognized as she towered above so many of her classmates. Jakusha was being chased by the same bully who had beaten her earlier that day.
Izuku's mouth set into a firm line as he resolved without thinking to help her in her fight against her bully. He pushed his way out of the room, recalling as best he could the features he'd seen of the school and triangulating where the two girls were running.
Left out of the office and take the first flight of stairs. Izuku's mind rushed just as fast as his feet as he flew through the halls of the school, into the stairwell and down to the ground floor. Turn right and go straight until the science labs and hang a left. His feet tore up the ground between him and his destination as he knew that on her own, Jakusha had no chance of winning a fight, or even holding her own against the quirk-enhanced bully. Swing around the corner here and – …
"– thought you could get away? No one calls me names like that and gets away with it. Least of all your insignificant ass," Mika's breathless voice snarled from up ahead. As soon as he heard it, he saw Jakusha back up from the next corner up ahead, one hand up and the other clasping what looked to be a syringe behind her back.
Jakusha seemed to be even more out of breath than Mika sounded, her face flushed red and beads of sweat dripping from her brow. Seems like the chase lasted a fair while. Izuku noticed nervously in the back of his mind that there were no other people in the vicinity. The teachers that had come downstairs to break up the altercation that had been reported (Izuku assumed that this must be it) must have gotten lost in the crowd.
"Please, Mika," her voice sounded, gleeful? It was hard to tell through the gasping for air, but Izuku's momentary confusion was cleared up quickly when he noticed Jakusha's lips quirk up in a manic smile. "I wasn't trying to get away. It's just that down here, there's no one around to stop me level the playing field…"
Izuku continued to charge forwards as he heard Mika snarl and lunge from around the corner, arms extended to grab and throttle the smaller girl, but Izuku watched with wide eyes as Jakusha swung the syringe from behind her back and jammed it full force into Mika's left forearm.
The bigger girl stampeded forward, entirely disregarding Jakusha's attack, and Izuku was able to register Jakusha's manic smile collapse as she took note of what was actually happening.
Mika slammed into Jakusha, driving her back into the lockers on the other side of the hallway, crushing her into the metal structure. Izuku heard the strained cry of pain as Jakusha undoubtedly broke something in the crash.
"STOP!" Izuku bellowed as he closed the last distance to where Mika was standing over the collapsed locker, looking with dread down at her hands before slamming into nothing. Izuku stumbled through where he'd been expecting to collide with a solid of a person, but instead, he just collided with something soft, and then the solid metal of another set of lockers.
"Ow…" Izuku groaned as he recovered his bearings. He clasped a hand to his forehead before shaking his head lightly to clear the gathered fog. As his eyes cleared, he looked up and noticed Jakusha standing in front of the crushed locker. He absently noticed the colorful paper and notebooks that had spilled out, but focused on the horrified look on Jakusha's face. Scrambling to his feet, he rushed to her side, taking note of how one arm hung limply at a weird angle from her shoulder. "Jakusha! Are you okay? We'll get you to the hospital as soon as we can!"
At the haunted look in her eyes, Izuku nervously glanced over his shoulder, fully expecting to see Mika there, glowering in all her terrifying glory, but he saw nothing but a pair of pants and shoes in a small heap and a shirt tossed slightly to the side.
"Where did she go?" Izuku questioned nervously, glancing around in all directions, looking for a pair of muscled hands reaching from the shadows to rip his head off for daring to try and tackle her.
Glancing back at Jakusha, her horrified eyes were zeroed in on the clothes strewn on the floor.
"Jakusha! Talk to me! Are you okay?" Izuku could feel his panic rising as he failed to locate the threat and Jakusha continued to stare, horrified, at the clothes piled on the ground.
"Jakusha–"
"She's gone…" Jakusha's voice quivered with fear as she stared blankly forward. "She just – gone…"
"She just– I beg your pardon?" Izuku questioned apprehensively.
"I stuck her with the needle, and she – …"
For a moment, Izuku couldn't make sense of what she was saying, the fog in his mind was too much for him to work through, but that only lasted a moment.
There's no way…
Izuku snatched the syringe from Jakusha's limp hand. She put up no resistance, just continuing to stare. He whipped around and picked up the shirt that had been tossed to the ground. At this point he recognized it as what Mika had been wearing when he had seen her by the girls bathroom. Meanwhile his dread continued to build.
He quickly stuck the syringe into the fabric of the shirt and pushed out what was left of the contents in the needle and watched as the color sapped immediately, the fibers unwove, curling up and contorting to a fluffy structure, before the fibers took root, drilling straight into the tile floor of the school, sprouting into fully grown cotton plants and then subsequently shrinking. Growing rapidly in reverse, turning from full plants to sprouts to seeds, and then to nothing at all.
Izuku stared at what he had just witnessed, at a loss for what to do, but then Jakusha let out a sob and the world came crashing back.
"Jakusha, I need you to answer me here," Izuku started, dreading the answer to what he was about to ask. "Where did you get this?" He asked, indicating the syringe.
"He– he said it would level the playing field… He said it would make her like me… Like us–" Jakusha managed to choke out. As she finished, her eyes focused on Izuku's own. "I don't– I don't think I'm disappointed."
"Where did you get this, Jakusha?" Izuku questioned again, fearful at what he'd just heard her say. He half-registered a pulsing shift in his grasp, but remained focused on the girl in front of him.
"Kai–" her voice drowned away as a new wave of fear washed over her features as Izuku's hand was forced open. Izuku dropped the shifting syringe to the floor as it landed, it rapidly split open and expelled a fully grown person on the floor. The man heaved himself up to tower over the two high-schoolers. His medium length brown hair stood up in all directions on his head and his muscled arms reached far above him as he stretched. He wore what looked like a sharp, reddish-brown button-up with black overalls and he stared down his nose at the two children in front of him.
"Chisaki," the man smiled as he said the name. "But you look like you know what's going on, or at least more than you should."
"Who–" Izuku faltered, "who are you?" he finished, voice squeaking at the newly manifested man.
"Don't matter who I am, just matters whatchu seen here today. I thinks we'll see what the boss wants done with you, little man. And you, little missy, are coming back to report to the boss with me." With that, the man drew back an arm before slamming his fist forward into the side of Izuku's temple.
The world turned black.