My Hero School Adventure is All Wrong, As Expected

by storybookknight

Hikigaya Hachiman is the last person on earth who should ever apply to U.A. High School. Yet somehow, he gets in anyway. In a world of irrepressible optimism and idealism, these are the adventures of a young man who believes that idealism is a lie.

24. And So The World Moved On Regardless

A/N: The chapter would have been done a few days sooner, but I decided to take the time since the Sports Festival Arc had finally finished to thoroughly plot out some of the upcoming chapters. I now have a firm idea of what I'll be writing all the way through the Hideout Raid arc!

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There were a lot of heroes who called reporters 'vultures'. The implication, that we were nothing more than unclean scavengers or eaters of carrion, was doubtless intended to be insulting. Personally, I liked the metaphor. If not for the hard work of the free press, the cities of Japan would be piled high with dead bodies that stunk to high heaven. No amount of pretending that the corpses didn't exist would solve the problem; somebody somewhere was going to have to digest all that rotting meat eventually. Might as well be someone like me who actually enjoyed the taste.

"Kizuki-sama, the report on UA's first year Sports Festival is ready." If I was a vulture, then Gakuro was one of my little chicks; there were quite a few reporters under my nominal command at Shoowaysha, but only a few had the right combination of muckraking instincts and revolutionary fervor to make them worth taking under my wing personally.

I looked up from the monitor of my computer to accept the briefing, taking a second to appreciate the way that Gakuro's straight black shoulder-length hair fell as he presented the file. "Give me the highlights," I said, deciding to humor him with some attention.

"Yes!" He shouted, practically coming to a salute. I'd have to train him out of that, I noted internally. A bit of overzealousness was understandable coming from a new recruit to the company, but enough people acting in a military fashion around me at all times could in the worst case scenario lead someone to get … curious. And that was my job. "First off, despite the previous attacks on UA by the League of Villains, there was no other notable villain activity that took place during the festival."

I raised one lilac eyebrow. "If there was, and you'd waited until now to bring me that news, I'd have had you…" I trailed off for emphasis, and enjoyed the way that Gakuro-kun went pale as I said, "...fired." He flinched. "So? What did you find? What's my headline, Gakuro-kun?"

"T-that's just it, Kizuki-sama! There are a couple of noteworthy headlines!" I tapped my fingers on the desk thoughtfully, waiting for him to continue. "First off, there's someone who won first place in all three events of the competition. What's more, he's a strength type, just like All Might!"

My fingers stopped. "And you didn't immediately pick that as the headline?"

"There's also an opportunity for a controversial headline discussing Endeavor's son. Not only did he not place particularly well - he was the runner-up - despite the fact that he had a dual ice-fire meta ability, it was clear that he only ever used the ice half of it, and he appears to have burn scars on his face. There are quite a few potential implications there that we could make use of," Gakuro explained. "Plus, the competition this year was unusually violent, and the majority of the perpetrators were survivors of the USJ incident, so a societal welfare angle might be possible…"

I held up a hand to stop him. "No one questions your commitment to the revolutionary cause, Gakuro-kun. Your efforts in finding media spins relevant to the goals of the Meta Liberation Army are commendable." I smiled at him, enjoying the way that his typically serious eyes sparkled like those of a dog after just a few words of praise. "But remember, our revolution is a long and bloody march, not a mere sprint."

"Ma'am?" Gakuro questioned.

I scowled at the papers on my desk, resisting the urge to bite my thumbnail in frustration. It was so tedious to find polish that matched the blue tones of my skin, after all. "Ever since the villain attack at USJ, UA has been restricting media access. They say that they're only targeting 'tabloids' and 'gossip rags', but who determines that?" I slammed my hand on the desk in frustration, and as I did so I felt my quirk activate accidentally, sending a wave of energy into the wood that wrapped itself into a tidy little knot, ready to explode at my command. I didn't detonate it, of course - I liked my desk. It would just have to dissipate on its own. "It's the first stirrings of censorship, the grasping tyrannies of the soul-less, ability-less bureaucrats in the Hero Commission as they try to lock down the freedoms of all humans to use their meta abilities as they see fit."

"I see, ma'am!" Gakuro shouted enthusiastically. "I would never have noticed, if not for your guidance!"

"Don't discount the muckrakers and bottom-feeders of the media world, Gakuro-kun." I said, smiling viciously. "As soon as you get rid of the scavengers, the entire ecosystem collapses. Think for a second. Why is it that UA is so adamant about making sure that the only available sources of media access belong to loyal lapdogs and lackeys? Why now? And don't say the 'League of Villains', that's obviously an excuse."

The young man put his hand to his chin, thinking hard. "Are you saying… that they're hiding something? And, given the timing, probably something related to All Might?"

"Probably, but that's the exciting part," I said, gracing him with another smile. "Doesn't it make you want to find out what it is? Doesn't it make you... curious?"

My eyes met Gakuro's, and the two of us shared a conspiratorial look. "Unfortunately for me," he said in a low voice just in case there was someone within earshot who wasn't part of the inner circle, "that code-name is taken."

I rolled my eyes at him tolerantly. "So, here's what we're going to do," I told him. "Publicly, we're going to toe the party line. Go with the strength meta kid, talk him up as 'the Next All Might', or 'All Might's Successor'. With any luck, he'll crack under the pressure and we can write a few articles about how the aging hero can never be replaced, and so on. If we don't want to jeopardize our media access, we'll have to stay in their good graces for now."

Gakuro immediately started taking notes, the perfect picture of diligence and attentiveness. Ah, it was no good. I was starting to get curious about just what it would take to pierce that earnest mask… "You said publicly, ma'am," Gakuro said as he looked up from his notepad. "I take that to mean that we're going to be making some other moves as well?"

Again, I started rapping my fingers on the desk, feeling how the buried landmine of energy under the surface of the wood rippled with each tap, begging to be set free. "Reach out to the tabloids that we have relationships with. We're going to go fishing." I reached for the dossier Gakuro handed me earlier and opened it to the section on the Sports Festival's winner, searching for a fault line. "We need to create a situation where UA is going to feel compelled to grant us access to start asking questions, which means that we need to start stoking controversies. There," I said, stabbing the relevant section with my fingernail. "The first place candidate was willing to break his own fingers with his meta ability in order to win. Market the controversy on this boy, set up a few articles to condemn him for the extreme actions that he took in order to win, and then take it to social media. I want bots set up praising this kid to high heaven and just as many bots cursing him to hell by the end of the day. Get people to take sides on this kid."

"I see. And then?" Gakuro asked.

"Once we get the public to care about this kid, everything else about the Sports Festival is going to become more interesting by association." I started flipping through the other pages that Gakuro had prepared, looking for the hooks that I would hang after the public took the bait. "Set up a few serious accusations on the Todoroki situation," I decided eventually. "Normally, putting up a headline like 'is the #2 hero a child abuser?' would just get squashed by the Hero Commission or slapped down by a lawsuit from the Endeavor Agency, but if it's released when people are paying attention to the festival already, then those rumors become a lot harder to stop."

Gakuro frowned. "Even so, we'd still be taking a bit of a risk and burning a few of our disposable media assets. Do you think it's true, Kizuki-sama?"

"Power corrupts, Gakuro-kun. Dress so-called 'heroes' up in fancy costumes all you like, they're still the jackbooted thugs of the aristocracy, and prone to all of the abuses that come with that position," I said with a smirk. "That's why the Meta Liberation Army's cause is so important; only by making sure that every citizen is ready and able to use their meta abilities in their own defense will we have any hope of overturning the antiquated societal structures of the past." I paused for effect, and then my smile widened, anticipation sizzling through my veins. "Besides, it's because I want to know the truth that I'm doing this. Don't you wonder how they'll react? How they'll deflect? The lies that they'll tell, and the truths that they'll reveal doing so? Don't you want to see the soft, slimy underbelly of our society?" My voice climbed slightly as my excitement got the best of me, and belatedly I realized I was half-out of my chair with enthusiasm. I coughed into my hand and sat back down, trying to regain my composure. "In any case, Gakuro, don't think of us as slinging about unfounded accusations - we're just asking the questions that the government doesn't want us to know."

Gakuro bowed his head. "Thank you for your guidance, Kizuki-sama. In that case I shall go and prepare immediately."

"It's fine as long as you understand," I said, airily waving his thanks away. "So, go with a 'Bone-breaking Ice Princess' angle for Campestris' sister, a 'Violent Explosion Maniac' angle for this Bakugo character and... just one more thing." I paused as I made it through the folder without seeing a face that I expected. "Why did you leave this student out of your analysis?" I grabbed my monitor and turned it around to show Gakuro the feed for the #presidentialtreatment Qwirker hashtag, settling on a gif of Hikigaya Hachiman.

He blinked. "I apologize, ma'am! Since he had an obviously weak meta ability and only made it to the tournament by chance, and washed out early, I didn't think he would capture the public's interest for long! Students have lost articles of clothing in prior events and while there's sometimes a media response, it's usually a mere flash in the pan! If you want me to put out articles on public decency in media broadcasting, though, I can-"

I held out a hand in a semicircle that snapped shut, motioning to Gakuro-kun to shut his mouth. "No. You should consider him as a tool similar to the first-place winner, Midoriya. He's bait, not a hook. Yes, the public being interested in him is likely just a flash in the pan, but if we can manage to put out a story about him while the enthusiasm is still there that'll draw eyeballs. What else does he have going for him, besides the eye candy?"

Gakuro pulled out his notepad, going through it frantically. "Let's see… um, he lost to the candidate who went on to win second place, so it's not like we can say 'he lost to the first place winner so who knows how far he could have gotten if not for the luck of the draw.' And, like I said, he got into the tournament by luck…" Gakuro flipped through a few more pages. "Oh, he was the student that gave the speech in the beginning. Should I do something with that?"

A quick Moogle search brought up a shaky phone camera video of the speech in question. Slowly, I felt a smile growing on my face. "Yes, yes you should. Belay the plans to put the first place winner on the cover. Instead, we'll go with 'UA's Declaration of War vs. the League of Villains.' All of a sudden, the first place winner breaking his fingers, Campestris' sister breaking other students' bones, the explosion boy's aggression - why, that could all be the acting out of traumatized children responding to violence with violence."

Frantically scribbling notes, Gakuro nodded enthusiastically. "Hikigaya also kept fighting until he fainted mid-match, I can include that as well. Overtraining or abusive teachers, that sort of thing."

"Good." I said with a nod. "Get it done."

As he was turning to leave, Gakuro hesitated. "I apologize in advance for saying this, Kitsuki-sama, but… if we run this headline, and those villains take this 'declaration of war' seriously, we'll be painting targets on the backs of all of these children. I realize that it's all for the cause, but if you hadn't considered that aspect already -"

I smiled sweetly, but Gakuro cringed as if I had stood up and shouted at him. I rapped my fingers on the landmine in my desk, feeling it quiver with every impact, and knew that right next to Gakuro's heart, there was another landmine just waiting to be unleashed… and I could see from the delicious fear in his eyes that he had just remembered it too. "They might be adorable little puppies right now, Gakuro-kun," I purred, "but before too long they'll be grown into loyal dogs in service to the oppressors of mankind. It's hardly a tragedy if they get strangled in their cribs."

He nodded, swallowing heavily.

My smile never faltered. "Get it done."

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"Congratulations, Matsuri-san! You must be so proud!"

I took a distracted sip of coffee and looked up at Akita. Her insectile eyes and the rhinoceros beetle horn sprouting from the middle of her forehead would have made her look like a sentai show villain if not for the fact that she wore flowery hair clips to keep her hair out of her face and wore a conservative pantsuit instead of something more garish. "I'm sure I'll get there eventually," I said self-deprecatingly. "Right now, I'm still working my way through feeling surprised."

"You weren't expecting your son would do so well?" Akita said, sounding slightly surprised herself.

I looked over at the photo of Hachiman and Komachi sitting on top of my desk. In it, Hachiman was skinny and pale, an obviously fake smile plastered on his lips for the sake of the photograph. "Not exactly, no."

"Hey, Hikigaya! I never realized your kid was such a scrapper!" Nobita called out as he walked past my desk towards the water cooler. "Who's he get it from, you or your husband?"

I did my best to smile and laugh off the question. "Must be me," I said just for the sake of it, but honestly? That was what I wanted to know. Sure, it seemed like the kids had been growing and changing every time I took my eyes off of them ever since they were born, a problem which had only gotten worse after I decided to go back to work, but even taking that into consideration it suddenly felt almost like I didn't know my son at all.

As Akita drifted away and Nobita vanished down the hallway, I surreptitiously dug out my phone to watch the video yet again. Even with the sound turned off, I could still almost hear the explosions as I once again watched a familiar stranger fight like a professional hero, accepting brutal hits in order to be able to return the favor. Where the heck did a kid who never so much as got into a single fight during his entire school career, no matter how badly his classmates teased him or bullied him, suddenly learn how to fight like that? What the hell were they teaching at that school?

Feeling a little bit sick to my stomach, I put the phone down and did my best to drag my attention back to my computer monitors. There was a discrepancy of several tens of thousands of dollars hiding somewhere in this account, and it was probably buried somewhere in the rats' nest of reciprocal companies and subordinate corporate entities that made up our investment infrastructure. I was guessing that the idiots in the Nagoya office had probably misreported something in the foreign account statements like usual, but… maybe if I did a line by line examination of their ledger in comparison to the download I got from the central mainframe, I could...

"Hey, Hikigaya, congratulations!"

I suppressed the urge to slam my head down on my desk as someone came by and interrupted my train of thought yet again. I looked up, preparing to snarl my thanks at the hapless idiot who interrupted me, only to realize that the hefty, balding man approaching me was in fact Torasuke, my boss. "Oh, uh… thanks!" I said, doing my best to force a cheerful smile.

"I watched your kid's match, and wow, what a fight, huh?" He said gormlessly.

I grit my teeth to avoid yelling at him. Why are you sitting and watching the Sports Festival when we're coming up on our deadline for statutory reporting? Of course, I didn't exactly have a leg to stand on, given that I'd been distracted with it myself, but for one, my son was in it. For another, I'd originally supposed to have taken the day off for PTO until my boss's fuckups had trapped me in the office. And lastly, I'd at least had the decency to only watch my son's matches - and I strongly suspected Torasuke had watched the whole thing. "Yup, pretty impressive," I said with my jaw clenched. "Hey, how does the municipal bond account look? Did you get it balanced?"

"Well, I thought I had, but it's not truing up to the historical, so I probably missed something." No, really, you think? "How about you? How are the foreign investments coming along?" Torasuke asked, coming around my side of the desk so that he could lean over my shoulder and peer at my monitor with little or no regard for personal space. I was pretty sure he was just being stubborn about not wearing glasses when he should instead of being a creep, given that he did the exact same thing to male coworkers as well, but it still raised the hackles on the back of my neck.

"Foreign's coming along," I said brusquely. It was about four times as much work as the municipal bonds he was supposed to have been working on, but I was betting that I'd still be done before him. "Halfway done, maybe?"

"Nice work," Torasuke said, "we'll be done on time yet."

'On time' was days ago, you oaf. We'll barely meet the final deadline, and be burning the midnight oil to do it. "Right, well. Was there something else you needed Torasuke-san? Or were you just checking in? If there's nothing else, I'd like to get back to it," I said with a nod at the monitor.

"Nope, just saying hi," Torasuke said, finally leaning back away from my monitors and giving me room to breathe. "Listen, don't worry too much about your kid, alright? I know it kinda looked like he took a couple hits, but they've got great medical facilities at UA. Worst case scenario, he winds up with a couple of cool scars, right?"

God. Scars. I hadn't even been considering that. The worst of it was, Torasuke probably thought that he was actually being helpful. I glared at him, pointedly avoiding answering his question. "Let me know when you're done with the municipal bond portfolio, I'll validate it for you so we can upload it to the system," I said by way of dismissal.

Thankfully, Torasuke finally, finally took the hint and wandered off back to his office to pretend to work for a little while longer. God, how messed up was it that my kid was probably in a hospital bed right now, and I was sitting at work worrying about how to do my boss's job for him? There were days - more and more of them, lately - where I wondered if I should quit. Going back to work had made sense when Komachi's quirk came in; it was a lot easier to remodel a house so that it would survive a rambunctious child with super strength on two salaries than one, and I'd never really enjoyed being just a housewife to begin with.

Unfortunately, it was starting to seem like the sort of things that Hachiman needed weren't the sorts of things that could just be solved by throwing a little bit more money at them. I was proud of him, of course - god, how couldn't I be? And the fact that he was committed to being a hero was plain to see just based on how hard he'd been working for it. But I was starting to worry that he was overworking himself for it… not that I was setting a particularly good example for him in that regard.

I checked the corner of my monitor for the time. Shit, already past four? As a surge of anxiety spiked through my bloodstream, I felt my tight grip on my quirk dissolve and the sudden reaching sensation as my body proceeded to attempt to scout out all of the nearby quirks it could find. In a densely packed office building. A kaleidoscope of quirks whirled dizzyingly before my eyes before settling on a quirk that stripped paint or ink off of flat surfaces. I groaned, clutching my head as it started to throb from the information overload. Damn, that was exactly what I needed to round this day off, a quirk migraine. "Shit."

I dug into my purse for some over-the-counter painkillers. My stomach was going to be unhappy with me for it later, but the way the day was going I was going to wind up with heartburn anyway, so might as well see if I could avoid having a headache to go with it. Soon, I promised myself. Just one last push, and then deadline season will be over and I can actually spend some time with the kids. Maybe Wataru and I could take them to Destinyland to celebrate?

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"Onima, give me the breakdown of potential internship candidates," I barked into the earpiece I was wearing. "Start from the top."

"Er, right now?" Onima's usually energetic voice asked diffidently. "Are you sure?"

I encouraged the heat simmering at my core to roar out of my feet, sending myself rocketing forward above the crowded city streets in a gout of flame. "Don't make me repeat myself," I said brusquely, biting back my irritation at being questioned. "Villain activity of this level doesn't require my full attention."

"Holy shit on a stick you fuckers it's Endeavor!" A monkeylike criminal shouted as he held on to the back of the getaway van that was attempting to flee an electronics store. "Speed up, speed up, speed up!"

"Uh, right, okay. So, starting from UA, our number one candidate is probably Yukinoshita Yukino-"

"Skip her," I cut Onima off, then shouted "Flashfire Fist - Hell's Curtain!" In tandem with shouting the name of the super move, I sent out a massive wave of fire that impacted the asphalt in front of the fleeing van. The van did its best to swerve around the pillar of flame, but inevitably oversteered and tipped over onto one side. The quartet of gangsters inside immediately started clambering out of the van. "I agree, she'd be a good candidate, but I've already spoken with her sister. She's unavailable."

Onima's coughs crackled over the earpiece. "I see. In that case, we have the first and second place candidates, Midoriya Izuku and Bakugo Katsuki, but we felt that they could both use some more seasoning before we sent them any invitations. Midoriya had the problem of being too injury-prone, and Bakugo lacked comportment."

"Split up! He can't catch us all!" A bulky, robotic-looking villain shouted as he kicked open the back of the toppled van and ran for a side alley, a stack of laptops tucked awkwardly under one arm. I ignored him for now, searching for any villains with enhanced movement capabilities. The driver of the van, a scrawny looking villain wearing a scarf as an impromptu mask, appeared to be able to make short-distance teleport hops, so they were my first target.

Biting back the growl that tried to climb its way out of my throat at Onima's mention of the brute-force thug who had defeated Shoto, I channeled my anger into action and landed in the midst of the villains, shooting flame downwards from my fist as I fell in a three-point landing to cushion my fall. Fire rippled in all directions along the street in a wide-area burst, catching the teleporter in his ankles as he reappeared in the danger zone. "Put Bakugo on the short-list," I said as I sprinted forwards, temporarily eschewing flames in order to punch the teleporter across the jaw and knock him unconscious. From there I spun on my heels and ran in the other direction, knowing that any other villains who would have run would have reacted to my appearance and fled in the other direction. As expected, the monkey villain who had been clinging to the back of the van was now attempting to scale a fire escape across the street. "If there's really nobody else, I'm willing to overlook a small attitude problem as long as he's got talent."

"Yes sir," Onima said. "After him, there's Iida Tenya - I imagine we'd have similar problems recruiting him as we did miss Yukinoshita - Ashido Mina, and Monoma Neito."

Once I was far enough away from the unconscious teleporter that he wouldn't get roasted in the backblast I rocketed up to grab the monkey villain by the back of his jacket. "Trash," I said scornfully as I yanked the villain off of the fire escape, then swung my arm so that they landed in the garbage-filled dumpster below. "Stay there where you belong!" Dropping my voice back to normal conversational tones, I replied to Onima. "Hmm, I don't remember the latter two names."

If he was surprised at my inattention, Onima's voice didn't show it. Blandly, he said "Ashido had the acid spray, and used it to achieve a similar high-speed movement profile to Yukinoshita, while Monoma was the power copier who washed out in the first round against the other power copier."

"Him." I felt a smile spreading across my face as I remembered the flame that erupted from his arm, the way that he loosened Shoto's ice and turned the entire situation on the battlefield around. "If there's any opponent that Shoto's going to have to use his whole quirk to take on seriously, it's him." It would be easy to pit them against each other, half-quirk against a whole quirk, to show Shoto the futility of his rebellion. I continued upwards from my temporary position on the fire escape, taking to the top of the building for a vantage point against the remaining fleeing robbers.

"I agree, sir, but from the agency's perspective, extending an offer to a first-round knockout isn't necessarily ideal." Onima reminded me.

I made a tch of annoyance before spreading my fingers wide in a fiery net. "Flashfire Fist - Hell Spider!" Lines of condensed heat lanced out of my fingertips, precisely aimed to cut off a fleeing villain's retreat from a distance. "Kido, Burnin, I'm funneling one of the fleeing suspects in your direction. Suspect is 1.1 meters tall, roughly spherical, and appears to be able to change direction quickly by bouncing."

"Oh no. A suspect with a ballistic movement quirk. Whatever shall I do." Kido said sarcastically. "Thanks for the meal, boss."

"Take this seriously, would you?" Burnin scolded. "We have a reputation to uphold."

Ignoring the side-chatter, I raced across the rooftops, making occasional flame-empowered hops to easily clear the gaps between them. There was one last quarry to hunt, and I wasn't about to let them get away that easily. As I headed in the direction that the robot-like villain had been escaping, I returned my attention to Onima. "It's fine," I said, "first-round knockout or not, he clearly has potential, and his quirk makes him a good fit for work in large agencies like ours." More importantly, while the other two candidates had what I looked for in prospects - speed, control, resourcefulness - in terms of their ability to polish Shoto, they were clearly subpar. "What about Shiketsu?" I asked. "Any promising first-years there?"

"Despite the fact that they don't televise their Sports Festival like UA does, they've got just as much talent," Onima said, sounding impressed. "Three potentials, this year. Yoarashi Inasa, Iino Miko, and Ishigami Yu. Yoarashi has a strong elemental quirk - wind control - and he won the overall tournament. Frankly, sir, I think he'd be a natural fit. The second place winner, Iino, has a very versatile strength enhancing quirk, and she seems very disciplined. And then Ishigami is a swallow heteromorph with flight and some enhanced movement capabilities; he performed quite well, but wound up in a bad match-up against Yoarashi."

"This one's all wrapped up, boss," Burnin interrupted. "Moving to secure the scene with Kido."

"Strength enhancer types aren't usually a good fit for the Endeavor Agency," I said in a low voice as I looked down at the robotlike villain hiding in the alley below. They were currently touching an air conditioning unit, apparently … communing with it, somehow. Best to wait until they were finished, sometimes interrupting quirks like that could be dangerous; not that I particularly cared about what happened to the villain, but there was no sense in damaging a perfectly good air conditioner. I frowned impatiently as I waited, adding "for all that the general public adores thugs with more power than sense, I've found that the majority of heroes with simplistic talents like that tend to be overvalued in comparison to their actual results."

"Well, Iino-san's quirk was really more of this thing where her whole body glowed gold and amplified the force she could produce than an actual strength quirk per se, but sure, it's your call, boss," Onima said, sounding a little surprised.

"In any case, even if I were interested, another agency would probably be better suited to training a quirk like that," I said. "Same goes for the flier; Hawks has a habit of picking talents like those up when he can." I let myself smile as the villain finally detached from the air conditioning unit, their body now configured to blow cold air from their chest - as if that would save them against my heat waves. Putting one hand to the earpiece, I said, "it's bad for the agency's prestige if we send out too many invitations that aren't accepted, so just send out the invitation to Yoarashi. He, Monoma, and Shoto should be more than enough distraction for the week. Now if you'll excuse me," I said to Onima, "I'm going to blow off some steam."

I dropped down in front of the robot villain, who immediately turned up their newfound air conditioning blowers to full to try to cool me down even as they dropped their ill-gotten loot and swung their fists at me. "You're going down, hero!" The thug shouted.

Frankly… the cool air was refreshing. "Pathetic," I sneered, and I ducked the punch then returned the favor with a right cross to the robotic villain's jaw. As expected, their body felt metallic enough that it didn't do much damage. The sudden burst of fire I released from that hand in close proximity to their face made them shout in panic and back up, however, and I took the opportunity to bury a second flaming fist right into their gut. Meticulously, savagely, I picked the robotic villain apart in melee, heating my punches just enough that their metal skin deformed and bent with every strike. They fell to the ground in a heap at my feet within minutes. "Just another thug," I muttered. "Your bad luck for running into me tonight."

"Everything alright, Endeavor?" Onima asked over the radio. "Burnin' and Kido have secured the villains you subdued earlier, what's your status?"

I looked down at the scorched, unconscious body of the villain. The frustration I felt over Shoto's continuing nonsensical rebellion hadn't diminished in the slightest. "Capture complete," I grunted. "I'm going to head to the next patrol nexus early." The villain groaned, and I briefly debated kicking him to make sure he stayed down before taking a deep breath and dismissing the idea. "I need to cool off."

"Ten-four," Onima said. "I'll make sure they have your icing supplies ready."

"Acknowledged. Endeavor out." I said, before sighing and looking up at the moon, rising from between two buildings. If only burning frustration was as easy to extinguish.

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The phone in the center of the conference table chirped in the low-pitched tones of an outgoing call, then clicked as it finally picked up. "Ah ha ha! I am here! Actually, I'm not. Please leave a message after the beep."

I sighed in poorly concealed frustration, placing my face in one hand, only to feel a surreptitious nudge to my side. "Long day, Kan?"

"Yeah, you could say that," I muttered to my friend Ryo, who was still in his heavy fur-coat style hero outfit but had removed the dog muzzle now that we were away from the crowds. Most of the other faculty and staff members in the room were in similar states of dress, mostly in their costumes but with a few bits removed for comfort; I myself had removed my visor and gloves, and was enjoying the fresh air on my skin. "I spent a while talking to 1-B, trying to console them on their losses. They're not feeling particularly happy right about now."

Ryo's canid head tilted to the side, which I knew from long association with him was his equivalent of raising a single eyebrow. "I imagine that it's not just them, is it? I seem to recall hearing about some sort of bet recently…"

My shoulders slumped. "Don't remind me," I groaned. "Unless you hear me say something stupid like that I'm going to play poker with Aizawa, in which case remind me right away. Man has one hell of a poker face."

As Ryo and I chatted, on Nezu's second attempt to call All Might the conference phone finally made the ka-click of a successful phone call. "Sorry about that," Might's voice spoke tinnily from the disclike conference phone in the center of the boardroom. "It took me a minute to get somewhere private to make the call, and then I wasn't quite sure how to dial into the meeting..."

"That's alright, All Might-sensei," Nezu said with equanimity. "We understand that you're a very busy man, and a little bit of unfamiliarity with the phone systems is only to be expected given that you're new. You'll get used to them with time."

I wasn't quite as sanguine about the delay as Nezu was. Sure, having the All Might on staff was an incredible public relations coup, and I admired the man personally, but from a professional standpoint as his coworker he was a little bit hard to get along with. It was hard to argue that the Number One Pro Hero didn't deserve the special treatment that he received, but he certainly received a lot of it, and every time he did it inconvenienced the rest of us. Out of curiosity I scanned the room to see if anyone else was feeling the same twinges of frustration that I was, but if they were they were hiding it well. "Still, I'm very sorry," All Might said, "I'll try to avoid this in the future."

"Please do," Nezu said. "Now then, let's begin, shall we? First of all, I'd like to thank everyone for their hard work over the past few weeks. Getting this year's Sports Festival ready in time with all of the additional complications that this year has brought wasn't easy, and all of you have gone above and beyond in order to make the festival a resounding success this year as well. Please, give each other and yourselves a round of applause."

Dutifully, we all clapped. I caught Ectoplasm's eye from across the table and rolled my eyes slightly - the two of us had talked about Nezu's penchant for political theater in the past. His heteromorphic jaw made it hard for him to smirk, but he let his jaw drop a little bit to 'smile' wider for a second, which was good enough. As I looked around the room I noticed Ishiyama rubbing his flat-topped grey head. "I swear, these kids tear up the arenas worse and worse every year," he grumbled good-naturedly. "I think I might alter my curriculum a bit to include a module on how much it costs to fix the damage after Hero-Villain fights."

"While I'm sure that you're talking about your turn at teaching hero studies, I'd pay money to see you try to work that into your Modern Literature classes," Midnight said with a laugh from her seat next to Cementoss.

"Ahem," Nezu cleared his throat squeakily to settle everyone back down. "Thank you. Now, I'm sure that there are still quite a few bumps to be ironed out, so I'd like to go around and have everyone discuss any problems that have come up in regards to their areas of specialty - just high level summaries to start, and then we can go more in-depth later if necessary. Ishiyama-sensei, why don't you start us off with discussing the physical structures of the festival?"

Cementoss nodded in acknowledgement. "Well, we avoided the worst case scenario," he said, "it was a little bit chancy during that last fight, but I don't think we're going to need to do any emergency reinforcement of the superstructure before the second-years take it over tomorrow. Unfortunately, the obstacle course is going to require a little bit more effort to take down - we tried to keep it modular, but you really went plus ultra on the design there, Nezu."

"Why thank you," Nezu said with a bow, his whippy tail wagging with pleasure. "Power Loader, how are things looking from a technical angle?"

"I'm going to be dragging the entire fleet of robots into the maintenance bay after all the festivals are done, but I think we'll manage," Power Loader said. "Other than that, we've got the usual raft of broken cameras and staticky speakers to deal with, well within projections." He paused for a second, carefully reaching up to scratch his face without clanging his heavy gloves against his helmet, before continuing. "All systems green on the new security systems, and no signs of any attempted tampering either."

Nezu nodded slowly. "I see. Then, perhaps the League of Villains has retreated to lick their wounds for now. Inui-sensei, does your work on the security perimeter corroborate that sentiment?"

Ryo drummed his fingers on the conference table absent-mindedly. "I didn't smell anything out of the ordinary, or anything belonging to the scents at the Woof-SJ." Ryo's voice took on a bit of a growl-like burr of irritation as he continued speaking. "Maintaining the new security prrrrotocols wass trrricky, thow, peoprr kept brrrreaking them au aurr." After a long deep breath and a heavy sigh, he wrestled his voice back under control. "Damn tourrists," he finished wryly.

"A necessary price to pay, I'm afraid," Nezu said with equanimity. "Present Mic, perhaps you could put some reminders to follow the posted signs and directions in your announcements?"

"No problemo, boss-mouse," Yamada said, snapping his fingers and pointing a pair of finger-guns in Nezu's direction.

"Speaking of security, how did things go with coordinating the Pro Hero security response, Snipe?" Nezu asked. "Any trouble?"

"Lemme put it this way," Snipe said in his laid-back drawl. He was still wearing his gas mask and cowboy hat, for whatever reason, but had slung his cape over the back of his chair to reveal his shoulders. "The heroes we invited were mostly no trouble. A little bit of lollygagging and lax attention from some of the folks who got too sucked into the festival, but nothing too bad - pairing people up seems to have helped keep everyone honest and focused. The heroes who we didn't invite, now," he pursed his lips. "Well, let's just say it's lucky we don't have quite so many second years with famous relatives, yeah?"

I spared a glance for Aizawa, who let out a long-suffering sigh. I couldn't help but smirk, just a little bit. It was good to see that he had at least a little bit of a price to pay for taking a class full of ringers.

"Yes, I'd like to discuss some strategies to address those issues in more detail later," Nezu said, "but I'd like to finish the overview of all of the external factors first before we begin discussing student-related issues. Ectoplasm, how did we do financially?"

"As expected, we made a major loss on the festival," Ectoplasm said, his hollow-sounding voice echoing through the room. He had taken off his hood at some point, which revealed sweat-spiked black hair, and had put on a pair of reading glasses over his pupilless eyes to help him work through his printouts. "The salaries of dozens of pro heroes don't come cheaply, even with most of them giving us discounted rates. However, the large donations that we received from the Endeavor and Might agencies should make up for the shortfall without a problem."

"Ah ha ha! Glad to hear it!" All Might's booming laugh came through tinnily over the conference phone. "It's partly my own mess that caused the issue, so of course I had to step up to help make things right!"

"We knew the risks when we hired you, All Might-sensei," Nezu chided him, "the fact that you decided to assist us financially is welcomed, of course, but by no means necessary. Now, let's see, who's left? Lunch Rush, how did the food stands perform?"

Lunch Rush, still in his full uniform including fume muffler and chef hat, gave Nezu one of his usual cheerful thumbs-ups. After a second, he realized that All Might couldn't see it over the phone, and awkwardly cleared his throat. "Fine," he said in a rough voice. "Might need to order more ingredients than expected. Lots of hungry heroes." He paused for a second, then added, "Fatgum." As if that one word explained it all. Honestly, it sort of did.

Nezu nodded, running a hand thoughtfully along his whiskers. "Midnight, how does the media response look?"

Midnight frowned and pulled out a tablet. "Good news and bad news. Official news reports are generally favorable, but I'm seeing a lot more in the way of clickbait and unsubstantiated rumor articles this year, and those are taking a significantly more negative tone than in years previous. It's probably pushback from the fact that the scandal mags finally gave us an excuse to kick them out, but we'll need to keep an eye on it to make sure none of the rumors start gaining traction. A few of the kids are picking up some media attention - mostly the usual pattern, people checking out the winners of the festival and so on, but…" She looked up from her tablet and smiled wryly at Aizawa. "Surprisingly, Hikigaya is leading the pack."

"Because of that speech he gave at the beginning?" I asked. "It wasn't bad, but I didn't think it was that impressive."

Kayama's wry smile transformed into more of a leer as she continued staring at Aizawa. "Not just that. See, it turns out that one of Power Loader's camera bots caught Hikigaya giving the invisible girl the old 'Aizawa Special.'" She made a few kissy-faces in Aizawa's direction, and the room broke out into laughter. I myself couldn't hold back a smirk, my lips curling around the upturned fangs that protruded from my lower jaw.

Aizawa grinned mirthlessly. "Ha ha. Very funny. So, Recovery Girl, has Hikigaya approached you yet about getting training for when it's safe to use your quirk on people?" He asked, clearly doing his best to change the topic.

Shuzenji snorted aggressively. "I don't think Hikigaya knows how to ask for help with training. Maybe if he did, I wouldn't be putting him on medical probation for being underweight." She grimaced. "Over a hundred quirks means over a hundred potential side effects, and either he can't tell they're there, or he's just been ignoring them."

Lunch Rush, uncharacteristically, spoke up. "I'll set up a meal plan -"

"No-" "Don't-" Aizawa and All Might spoke up simultaneously. There was a brief silence as the two tried to decide who would speak first, only for All Might to break the stalemate. "Go ahead, Aizawa."

"Right," Aizawa said. "Lunch Rush, you should wait for Hikigaya to approach you before you work on anything. Recovery Girl has already put him on probation and let him know what he needs to do to get his weight up, so the next steps are on him. If he needs to learn how to ask for help, we need to make it clear that he actually has to do so in order to improve."

"I couldn't have said it better myself, Aizawa-kun!" All Might said exuberantly through the conference phone.

Lunch Rush gave the two of them a thumbs up.

"Before we get too carried away with discussing student-related issues, do you have anything else to report from a public relations standpoint, Midnight?" Nezu asked.

Kayama shrugged, the motion doing interesting things to her curvaceous figure, and chewed on the back end of her tablet stylus thoughtfully. "I'd like to go into some in-depth strategies for our response to some of the more vicious rumors going around, but that can wait until after we've finished covering the overview."

Nezu's whiskers twitched. "Capital! In that case, Recovery Girl, are there any other students with pressing medical issues?"

"Midoriya," Recovery Girl said in a deadpan. "But we've been over his problems as a group often enough that I don't think they need yet another rehash. Other than him, I wouldn't call it a medical problem per se, but Todoroki is apparently stubborn enough that I actually wound up treating him for a mild case of frostbite."

Aizawa's eyes narrowed. "Just because I haven't expelled anyone yet this year doesn't mean I can't," he said threateningly. "If Todoroki doesn't figure things out and fast, showing the other kids that even the #2 pro hero's kid can get kicked out if they don't take things seriously sounds like a wonderful object lesson."

Ryo cleared his throat next to me, an almost bark-like sound. "With all due respect, Aizawa, this might not necessarily be the best time for your usual methods. Your classroom has been stinking of stress hormones ever since the USJ attack." I'd wondered, once, why Ryo had chosen to get into psychological counseling as a sideline from hero work. At the time he'd blown it off with a joke, saying something like "everybody could use a therapy dog sometimes," but I wondered if it didn't have more to do with the fact that he needed to be able to stay calm to even talk properly and so got very good at it over time. Whether that was the case or not, you could usually hear it in Ryo's voice whenever he stepped into his counselor role; the canine accent that tended to lurk in the background of his speech otherwise would typically vanish to near imperceptible levels. "Your class doesn't really need to be reminded to take things seriously right now, Aizawa. If anything, they could stand to lighten up."

Aizawa grunted. "Maybe," he allowed. "And Todoroki is putting in full effort everywhere else but in regards to the full use of his quirk. Hopefully today's losses will inspire him to change his mind about using the other half of his quirk, but if not I'll send him to you, Hound Dog, before I go ahead and expel him."

Ryo nodded. "I appreciate the vote of confidence."

"Speaking of your class needing to lighten up," I said with a glare at Aizawa, "just because I understand why you let your class get away with what they pulled doesn't mean that I agree with it. Seriously, just because you have the latitude to teach your class the way you want to teach it doesn't give you the right to teach my class the way you want to teach it, too. If you wanted your kids to give my kids an object lesson you should have run it by me, first."

Aizawa's sunken eyes bored into mine. "I didn't tell my class to do anything," he said, sounding so bored that it pissed me off. "And everything they discussed in front of me was well within the rules of the competition. We've had explicit alliances between groups of students in other Sports Festivals; what makes this case so different?"

"These are first years," I said bluntly. "In the past, when students have made alliances it's been in the second and third-year festivals, after everyone knew their classmates well enough to be comfortable working together like that. In those situations, everyone has an equal opportunity to be in a position to scheme." I shook my head slowly. "Right now, my whole class is feeling like they got ambushed and set up by your class."

"They did," Aizawa said, infuriatingly nonchalant. "So what? Hikigaya put effort into setting up that ambush. They might feel that the strategies he used were unfair, but if I had gone out of my way to ruin his hard work that would have been unfair to my class."

I shook my head. "I think you still should have. Or counseled Hikigaya privately to try a different strategy. Or something. As it stands, it's going to be difficult convincing these kids to work together on things in the future unless we take specific steps to defuse the resentment, and there are some good kids in the class who aren't going to get the attention they deserve this year from prospective employers."

"Given the fact that Villains all over Japan are becoming more and more active, I'm of the opinion that those kids will gain just as much from the experience of being plotted against as they would from having a slightly more prestigious internship placement." Aizawa said. "And while we'll want to do something about the resentment eventually, in the short term it'll be good motivation for them to work harder to surpass their rivals."

"Whether or not that's true, you still don't have the right to make that decision for my class!" My voice rose a little bit as I said the last two words, but before I could continue Principal Nezu clapped his paws.

"Now, now," Nezu said. "You both have excellent points here. Aizawa-sensei, I do agree with you that letting Hikigaya-kun proceed with his strategy unimpeded was the right move, but you really should have consulted with Kan-sensei and myself as well. We are a team, after all, and we can't all work together to teach our charges effectively without clear communication between us."

Aizawa nodded to Nezu. "Sorry about that. I'll be more careful in the future."

I folded my arms in frustration and leaned back in my chair. Alright, if Nezu agreed that Aizawa made the right call, maybe I was letting my irritation over the bet I lost color my opinions… but it still rankled. Grudgingly, I gave Aizawa a nod as well, silently agreeing to let the matter rest.

"Kan-sensei, I do think you're right as well that steps will need to be taken to work on reconciliation between the two classes. We can discuss that in more detail in a little bit," Nezu said. "Before that, though, any other particular student-related concerns that you two would like to bring up for discussion?"

"Bakugo," Aizawa said after a second. "His attitude problems have been tapering off since the start of the year when he figured out they weren't impressing anybody, but that disgraceful scene at the end of the festival shows that they're still very much present, and I'm afraid he'll backslide."

"Monoma," I said, responding to Aizawa naming a troublemaker with one of my own. "He's got an inferiority complex a mile wide, and he seems to be taking a leadership position in driving my class to rivalry against 1-A. If we want to prevent a bunch of pointless bickering we'll want to start from him."

"Hikigaya," Aizawa sighed. "He's showing signs of survivor's guilt from the USJ incident. We might be able to treat his health issues but without addressing the root cause behind him pushing so hard I feel like we're just slapping a bandage over things." As he said that, he smiled wryly. A second later, Present Mic laid a comforting hand on his shoulder from the seat next to him.

I thought about it for a moment. "Kendo, probably. It's not on the level of survivor's guilt, but she was looking pretty distressed about the fact that 'as a class president she didn't do anything', never mind that it was never really part of the position's job to begin with."

Aizawa frowned, thinking for a second. "Midoriya and Todoroki have both been brought up already, but beyond Midoriya's health challenges I'm not sure he's ready for the level of public scrutiny that first place will bring him."

"Ahem. Ah, if I may," All Might said, "I might be able to talk to him and help him deal with that," he said almost diffidently. From almost anyone else, I would have thought it was bragging, but…

"That does sound like a potential solution, All Might-sensei," Nezu chided, "but let's wait until we're done enumerating our problems that we want to discuss before moving on to solutions, shall we?"

"Ahaha! Sorry, sorry, I got too overeager," All Might laughed uncomfortably.

"No harm done," Nezu replied. "Aizawa-sensei, Kan-sensei, any other students you would like to add to the discussions?"

I nodded. "Ebina," I said, "She had a 'friendly fire' incident during the cavalry race. We need to discuss training for her to deal with that or some strategies involving support items to help her mitigate those concerns, and probably someone to talk to her to make sure she takes the right lessons away from it all. That's it from me," I finished.

"Not from my class," Aizawa said, "but that does remind me - I think both the student who got hit by Ebina's friendly fire and Shinso Hitoshi who made it into the tournament would make good seeds for potential heroes rising from the ranks of general education. We should discuss our plans for that as well."

"All right," Nezu said. "Anything else?" He paused briefly, but no-one spoke. "No? In that case, let's move on to specific solutions…"

108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108*108

A true hero would have looked closer. Becoming invisible wasn't hard - all it required was an empty cup and a baggy poncho. Dressed as a panhandler, one arm rattling loose change around as if to beg for attention, my ruined face half-hidden below unwashed hair, I was as anonymous and untraceable as a ghost. Every few minutes, 'heroes' rushed down the street past me en route to the scene of my latest cleansing, completely ignoring my pitiful form where I huddled in an alleyway out of the wind.

The Stain of rumor was a deadly and terrifying killer, a powerful Villain able to take down even the mightiest of false heroes in seconds. The thought that such a killer might be willing to live amongst the downtrodden and the damned, among those who society had, through their adulation of false idols, ultimately failed - why, it somehow never crossed the Heroes' minds.

Even if it had, I was hardly the only unfortunate wandering the streets. Quirk registration laws, anti-heteromorph discrimination, the slow march of corruption as the parasites running this society sucked more and more blood out of the underclasses, the destruction wrought by Villains who the False Heroes failed to stop; there were any number of reasons why the streets were full of men living like me. Fitting, that the seeds of failure that the False Heroes had sown had now grown into a dense forest in which I prowled unseen.

However, although I was currently beneath the heroes' notice, the same could not be said of the true vagrants and vagabonds of the city. One anonymous tip to the police at the wrong time and all of my plans to reform this unjust society would go up in smoke. So as I approached the oil drum that had been turned into an impromptu campfire and meeting ground for the forsaken and forgotten, I made sure to come bearing food and alcohol.

"Yoooo, Chizomeeee!" Waving at me in almost slow motion, an aging sloth heteromorph in a tattered long coat turned away from the fire. To hear Ginji tell it, his quirk slowed down his metabolism so that he barely needed to eat in exchange for making him too slow to keep a job. More realistically, he was a lazy alcoholic shithead without any human dignity. "Goood hauul todaaay?"

A quirkless kid with his hair in filthy dreadlocks named Kanetsugu clapped his hands in appreciation, the fingerless gloves he was wearing slightly deadening the hands' impact with each other. "Yo, man, one of these days you're gonna have to show me how you always manage to come back so flush!"

"Someday, maybe," I lied. Given that my secret technique for a successful day of 'panhandling' involved supplementing my take with cash I had robbed from criminals I murdered in the past, even if I was stupid enough to share it with a drug-addicted chronic shoplifter like Kanetsugu it was unlikely that he would be able to put the technique to any use. "Right after you cut your nose off, I'll show you the ropes."

"Hah! You know Kanetsugu's too much of a pussy to do something like that," Nobuo grunted. His face and the exposed skin on his hands were pockmarked with painful-looking warty growths of flesh that were as tough as steel, and his personality was as unpleasant as his looks. "We'll have to hold him down." He leered at Kanetsugu, who cringed away from him.

"Quit fucking with the kid and pull up a chair already," Hideo said. Aside from the fire, Hideo was the real reason why the mangy curs of the alleyways congregated around this spot. Coincidentally, I was here for him too. "Pass me one of those beers, Chizome!" He cajoled, "doing this is thirsty work!" It was a nonsensical excuse, of course, but I placed the heavy thirty-pack of cheap piss on the ground away from the heat of the flaming trashcan and started passing out my bribes anyways. As I passed close to the fire and handed him the beer, Hideo flashed me a grin full of crooked and damaged teeth. "Alright! Hideo's Video corner is ready to broadcast!" He unbuttoned his jacket, revealing the flabby expanse of his stomach - and the smallish but fully functional television screen set in the middle of it. Reaching up over his head, he pulled on the tops of his ears to extend the aerials. "What are we watching, Chizome? You brought the food, so you get first pick."

Had I been on my own, I would have wanted to watch the news. The lies and hypocrisies of the corrupt ruling class were usually well hidden by the puppetmasters in the so-called Hero Commission in order to keep the populace complacent, but every now and again a few morsels of truth slipped through the cracks. But because I didn't want to risk getting too absorbed in the hunt and letting my mask slip, instead I shrugged. "I don't care. Whatever's on."

"That's why, I keep sayin', Hideo, you gotta get some adult channels on there!" Nobuo laughed long and uproariously, not minding that nobody else was doing the same. "Get some SexTube or something, nobody'll be bored then!"

"Weee could waaatch sooap-"

"Fuck no, we're not watching soap operas," Nobuo half-shouted, waving a warty fist at Ginji. "I ain't nearly drunk enough for that shit yet."

"Um…" Kanetsugu said hesitantly. "We could watch the Sports Festival, maybe?"

"Sold!" Hideo said, forestalling any further discussion. "Shit, I forgot that was on today!" He reached up to the dials on the right and left sides of his chest above the screen, flipping through channels even as he raised the volume. Staticky sounds emanated from his open mouth as he dialed in the correct frequency until finally the voices of the commenters of UA's Sports Festival could be heard.

I leaned back against a wall, finally relaxing a little bit as the bums' attention shifted off of me and onto Hideo's stomach - except for Hideo, who was staring into the only slightly cracked full-length mirror he had found in a trash heap somewhere and leaned up against the wall. With half of my attention, I watched idiot teenagers stumble around on each others' shoulders, convincing themselves that halfhearted displays of athleticism had anything to do with true heroism. With the other half, I listened to the city, hearing the sound of sirens as they hurried to the scene of my latest cleansing. I watched the skies and the rooftops, and saw false heroes milling about in panic like flies buzzing about a disturbed corpse.

By the time that the Sports Festival was approaching its finale, one of the heroes had finally approached our group. I heard the dull clanking of metallic armor before I saw them, and took the time to carefully arrange my weapons beneath my poncho so that I would be able to reach them easily if worse came to worse. I schooled my facial expression into a careful show of slack-jawed neutrality, pretending that I was totally absorbed in the inanity spewing from Hideo's stomach. "Excuse me gentlemen," a voice called out, distorted slightly by the tinny echoes of a helmet. I looked to the side, and saw a hero in white-painted full body armor, accented by golden exhaust pipes. "Have you seen anything out of the ordinary today? Someone running past in a hurry, or carrying weapons?"

Of course they hadn't. I had walked up calmly, my weapons hidden, carrying a noisy box of beer to mask any sounds that my blades might make. "Sorry sir," Kanetsugu said, speaking for all of us. I shook my head with the rest of them, feigning ignorance even as my blood raced. "It's been pretty quiet around here."

"I see. Glad to hear it," Ingenium said. "If you fellows need anything… there's a new shelter open in the cannery district that you might want to look into. The streets aren't safe, these days." Although his face was covered by the helmet, I could hear the smile in his voice. "It took me longer than I expected to find funding for it, but it's open now, so be sure to check it out."

"Thaaaanks," Ginji said, "weee wiiiilll."

Ingenium nodded, then took off in a cloud of grapefruit-scented smoke, sprinting away in hot pursuit of the mysterious Stain and never realizing that I had been right under his nose.

I was glad. Ingenium was no All Might, of course, but he was a rare 'hero' in this day and age who operated without seeking media endorsement, without letting himself be tainted by the impurity of the modern era. If he got in my way, I would have to kill or cripple him; my mission was too important to permit anyone less than All Might himself to stop me. But once I had cleansed this wicked society, a new and just order would rise from the ashes - and perhaps, if he continued on this path without straying due to temptation, I could see Ingenium being a part of it.

"Ptu." Nobuo spit on the ground as Ingenium left. "Nosy fuck."

"Noooow, nooow -" Ginji attempted to calm Nobuo down, but Nobuo was a few beers in and looking flushed.

"Shut the fuck up, Ginji," Nobuo snapped. "Bad enough we got fucking heroes interrupting our TV time, we don't need your slow-talking ass interrupting too."

Hideo's jaw was sort of locked open so that he could broadcast sound more effectively, but it was easy to see him roll his eyes and then look suggestively at Kanetsugu even as he reached up to turn up the sound of the broadcast.

"Um, so, who's your favorite so far?" Kanetsugu asked in response to Hideo's prompting, trying to distract Nobuo before he really went off on a rant. "I kind of like the snow girl, personally - she's kind of cute."

The girl in question was fighting another ice user for the right to get third place, using bursts of apparent super speed to dodge the giant glaciers being fired at her. Oddly, it looked like she was trying to stay close to the ice user without ever closing to melee. Nobuo watched the fight for a second before hocking another wad of spit and mucus onto the ground. "Not like you can fucking tell," he complained, "what with UA's shitty fucking uniforms. It'd be way fucking better if they made the girls wear bloomers, am I right?"

"Ha ha, sure thing, Nobuo," Kanetsugu agreed.

As the fight finished with the snow girl's win, the broadcast cut to commercials. A pair of shapely legs that terminated in a pair of pristine white shoes appeared, preparing to run down a track, and Nobuo whistled. "Now that's what I'm talking about! Give the girls a uniform like that, right?"

I realized too late that Nobuo had turned over his shoulder to look at me for signs of agreement to be able to hide my snarl of disgust. "You're a pig, Nobuo," I said hurriedly, trying to cover my tracks.

"What's the matter with you?" Nobuo said, turning more fully in my direction. "Are you saying that you," he pointed the hand holding the beer can in my direction vigorously enough that a little bit sloshed out the top, "wouldn't tap a fine piece of ass like that?" He jerked his other thumb back over his shoulder.

On Hideo's stomach, the camera panned up to reveal a set of women's activewear stylized so that it resembled a particular hero costume, and then further up to reveal the face of the so-called 'heroine' Campestris. "Surpass the impossible," the announcer declared, "Strike Athletics."

My stomach roiled with nausea. If I still had nostrils, they would be flaring; instead the sneer I made pulled at the scar tissue in the middle of my face and twisted my expression into a vicious snarl. "Her? She's pathetic. She's just another pretty face playing at heroism for the camera, corrupting everything that the name 'hero' should represent. The only way I would even consider touching her would be to put her out of society's misery."

"The fuck?" Nobuo said, looking at me with confusion, before his face twisted into a leer. "Oh, I see how it is," he said, stumbling in my direction. His breath stank of alcohol as he got right up in my face. "You're just tryin' to hide a stiffy, ain'tcha?" With that, he reached out and grabbed my poncho, yanking it aside to reveal the suspicious bulge he had noticed.

It was the hilt of my sword, of course. I sighed in exasperation, and as he looked down at my hunting outfit in drunken confusion I unsheathed the ka-bar hunting knife from its sheath in the small of my back and jammed it into Nobuo's ear up to the hilt in one fluid motion, right where there were no armorlike boils to get in my way. "Worthless fool," I spat scornfully. As his legs went limp and his bowels voided, he somehow managed to retain a deathgrip on my poncho. The weight of his falling body dragged it off of me, revealing my heavily armed countenance to the other three men in the alley.

"Holy shit, you killed him! You're - you're Stain!" Kanetsugu shouted, scrambling to his feet.

"Fucking run!" Hideo screamed as he fought his way out of the camping chair he had been sitting in. Perhaps out of misplaced bravery, perhaps because like many scum of the alley he was the sort of person who attempted to solve his problems with violence, or even perhaps out of simple clumsiness, Hideo did his best to try to stumble in between me and Kanetsugu to buy the kid time to flee.

I kicked Nobuo's body forwards, then sprinted forwards, using it as a springboard as I charged Hideo directly. My hands went to the hilt and sheath of my sword, and as I neared Hideo I drew the sword and swung it all in one simple motion, what in older times would have been called an iai. Against a hero or someone more competent I wouldn't have bothered trying the move, but against a clumsy oaf like Hideo the steel of my blade slashed out against his blocking arms deep enough to hit bone. My tongue lashed from my mouth as I passed him, sending him in paralytic contortions to the ground.

Kanetsugu was already running, but I had a brace of well-balanced throwing knives for just such an occasion. It only took me a few steps to throw the knife, and when it hit it knocked the kid off-balance for long enough that I was able to catch up to him even without using my quirk. "No, wait!" Kanetsugu cried as he turned around in panic. "Don't kill me! I'm a fan! I even -"

Whatever he would have said became a moot point as I jammed twenty centimeters of steel into his gut and he screamed in pain. Red blood welled up through his clothes and soaked my hand. I pulled my hand away and licked it, leaving the knife in to staunch the bleeding. He'd live as long as he didn't pull it out - probably, anyway. Finally I turned around to look at Ginji, who was still sitting calmly on the decrepit folding chair which had doubtless been pulled out of a garbage heap at one point in time. "You didn't run," I said emotionlessly. "Why?"

"Wooouldn't geeeeet faaar," Ginji said, gamely looking straight at me. He clearly was terrified - his eyes were wide enough that I could see the whites around the pupils clearly, and he was panting in fear, but he faced me nonetheless. "Whyyy'd youuu kill theeem?"

I snorted in distaste. "Nobuo had it coming. The other two will live, with medical attention. I just needed to keep them from running to the police to buy time to get away."

Ginji nodded with forced calm. "Iiii seeee. Iii wooon't ruuun eeeither."

A brief, humorless chuckle escaped my lips. "In that case… you won't be seeing me again." I turned to the frozen Hideo and Kanetsugu. Hideo's stomach was still playing, the ad for Strike Athletics swiftly replaced by one for Destinyland, 'Japan's Safest Holiday Destination!' I licked my lips thoughtfully before speaking up once again. "Don't worry about talking to the police. I expect it. Tell them that from among the faceless masses … justice, true justice, is coming for them." With that, I sprinted off down the alley, heading for the escape route I had scoped out long ahead of time.

Yes, it was long past time for me to seek out another target for cleansing. And I had just the one in mind.