CHAPTER 31: HOPE

"So you plan to finally arrest Midoriya once and for all." Gran Torino summed up what his old student just explained.

"Yeah." Toshinori answered solemnly.

"Do you have the stomach for it though?" Allmight wasn't sure if that was a joke or not. "You've failed to stop him twice already because of your own feelings of guilt. What will make this time any different?"

"This time it's me who will be catching him by surprise." The man stated with conviction.

"Are you sure, because from what I've seen you've been down this road before." He was referring to all the times they thought they were one step ahead of Midoriya only to find out he was the one ahead of them. "How do you know this isn't another trap?"

"I'm not so foolish as to fall for that again. Even if it is a trap we've developed a backup plan." Toshinori told him. "We have reason to believe the hero killer known as Stain is secretly working for Midoriya. The masked operative in the H.R.D seems to possess the same quirk as that man. If we can find some tangible evidence and publically reveal it."

"You can use Midoriya's own tactics against him." The old hero realized. "This time public scrutiny will be aimed at him. I see, your mounting an attack on two fronts at the same time." Gran Torino rubbed his wrinkled chin in thought. "As smart as Midoriya is he can't be in multiple places at once."

"That's right. When I publically confront him next week, Nezu is going to take a crack at accessing Midoriya's files." Toshinori explained the plan. "He'll be too busy with me to realize that his computer system has been broken into."

"How will he do that?" Not that Gran Torino was questioning the mouse's intelligence and way around cyberspace, but breaking into the files of a government official will be quite a feat.

"He has connections with the government. Being U.A's principal for so long as granted him certain privileges." That was that all he wanted to say on the matter.

"Why did you come here then if you've got everything figured?" The man's former sensei asked.

"Because when I beat Midoriya this be the final act of my hero career." The gaunt man sighed almost tragically. "I can feel One for All bleeding away little by little each day. My final fight with Midoriya will probably expend all of it."

"One for All, its part of that gauntlet, the green stone." The old hero pondered this. "I'm sure some of the country's top scientists could figure out a way to get the quirk back."

"Whether they can or they can't doesn't matter anymore. I'm entrusting the future to Mirio Togata." Allmight proclaimed proudly. "As my successor if One for All can be retrieved than by rights it will go to him."

"Well then good luck to you." Gran Torino watched his old student get up, wobble for a brief moment before righting himself. Then the blonde man walked out of his house. Call it old intuition but something didn't feel right. Almost like there was a nagging sensation of doubt that Toshinori might not win. But why wouldn't he win? Allmight was the world's strongest hero. He had years of experience under his belt. What did Izuku Midoriya have? As powerful as he was it was still relatively recent that he acquired his power. Even if he possessed One for All and All for One that didn't mean he mastered them. So what was the threat here? Why wouldn't this bad feeling go away?

ISLAND H.Q.-CONFERENCE ROOM

"I thought it best to assign all of you code names." Izuku explained as he slid envelopes to all six of his knights along the meeting table. "For you three." He turned to his right to the three former U.A students. "Publically you can still have whatever hero name you so desire, but during your time in my department when out on an assignment you will be referred to as these." They each opened their envelopes revealing an I.D badge with their respective codenames.

"Angel." Ochako smiled at that. He must have got the idea from the wings he gave her.

"Fahrenheit." Shoto read his. Rather to the point, but he preferred that.

"Quicksilver." Tenya frowned at his codename. He would have rather stuck with his hero name Ingenium, but he'd roll over and stick with it.

"Now you three." He turned to the left seats. "Are still villains wanted by the police, so you will always be referred to by your codenames whenever anyone else is around. You will also be wearing masks to hide your identity." The three criminals opened their envelopes to read their I.D badges.

"Guillotine." Stain smirked at how fitting that sounded.

"Chameleon." Himiko pouted her name. She wanted something cute like what Uraraka got.

"Dragon." Dabi cocked his head at his name. He kind of liked it.

"Do not lose your badges please, you'll need them to gain access to the base." Izuku warned them all. "Now on to the next thing. The following week is the big public presentation I'll be giving at Coruscant Stadium. After that we'll be able to move forward with the next step of the plan."

"You still haven't told us what you're presenting." Todoroki brought up.

"Well since it's almost finished I guess there's no point in keeping it secret anymore." Pushing a few buttons on the table, a touchpad keyboard appeared. Izuku put in his password and series of access codes. In a few moments a hologram was projected in the center of the meeting table. The image appeared to be one of the Titan robots, but this one looked bigger and more powerful. "This is called Nemesis, it's a robotic peace keeping unit designed to temporarily replace Allmight."

"I still say these walking trashcans will never be able to replace real heroes." Stain said with a haughty attitude.

"They're not supposed to. With false heroes slowly being weeded out these robots will be needed to pick up the slack." Izuku supplied.

"Are you mass producing this one?" Tenya asked making mental notes of everything he was seeing and hearing about this project.

"No. This time I'm going with a more quality over quantity approach." He explained. "Mei and I will just keep upgrading and improving on this one until it becomes obsolete when a human symbol of peace can arise to take the mantle."

"I've fought these robots many times, they're strong but not that strong, so what makes this one so special?" Todoroki questioned. Unbeknownst to them Iida was listening intently to learn all he could about Nemesis.

"This one is designed and built to fight on par with some of the top heroes." Izuku said proudly. "Next week I'll be presenting this to the public along with a demonstration." He conveniently left out what that demonstration would be, not that they noticed. After a short summary of their progress in training Izuku ended the meeting. Once they left the conference room the only ones that remained were Izuku and Stain who needed to have a more private meeting.

"So any leads yet?" The gauntlet wielder asked.

"A few." Stain frowned as he reached into his pack and pulled out a small plastic bag that he tossed on the table before them. "Quirk erasing bullets." Using the gauntlet he lifted the bag through the air and into his awaiting hands.

"Where did you get these?" Izuku pulled one of the small metal bullet darts and examined it closely.

"A small time gang had a few of them. At first they weren't that willing to part with them, but with a little…persuasion…they coughed them up…eventually." The former hero killer said with a dark tone.

"This could pose a problem in the future." Izuku frowned as he tossed the bullet back into the bag. If these became more available it could potentially ruin everything he tried to achieve. He would have to take these to the lab for further analysis when he had time.

"It's not that much of a threat. It only erases a quirk for less than a day." Unlike the boy Stain didn't seem as concerned by this development.

"Still. We need to find out where these bullets are coming from." Izuku looked to the man for answers.

"No one that I encountered seems to know. It must be a very complex distribution network." That was as far as his investigation was able to get for now.

"Dabi sticks out too much so I'll be assigning Himiko to assist you in tracking down the source." Seeing him nod in agreement the green haired teen decided to ask something that's been on his mind for a while now.

"So what do you think about the next phase?"

"Well…As much as I still respect him, even I'm not blind to how much weaker he's become." Stain had to admit that at least. Midoriya had done a good job of convincing him of this fact. "If we hope to make any real progress then he'll need to go away."

"Then it looks like we're in agreement." Izuku smiled at him.

ELSEWHERE

'Fucking vultures', Bakugou glared at the crowd of press that he passed on his way back into U.A. They media hounds tried to swarm him and Aizawa, but that teacher had it up to here with them and made them back off with an intense glare. After that he was told to go back to the dormitories. The ash blonde did as he was told without a fuss. Another week babysitting those quirkless kids had gone by and Bakugou still kept them at a distance, but out of fear of himself mostly. Though he didn't tell Aizawa about that so the man just assumed he wasn't making any real progress.

Walking through the common room he received silent stares as his welcome. Bakugou's classmates still wouldn't talk to him after learning the truth from Deku. He thought at first that wouldn't bother him, but it did. The hallucination was right, it did hurt being alone. Bakugou knew that some of them probably blamed him for what Deku was doing right now. They also probably blamed him for losing three of their classmates to the villain as well.

'Whatever.' Deciding to just ignore the stares Katsuki went up to his room. When he arrived at his door he was surprised to see someone standing next to the door waiting for him.

"Hey." Kirishima said awkwardly, not meeting his eyes yet.

"What do you want?" Katsuki grumbled as he went to open his door.

"I think you and I need to talk." The red head finally looked up from the ground to face him. "What Midoriya said has been bothering for a while and I need to know your side of the story." As much as he wanted to refuse, to turn the other boy away he knew he couldn't. Bakugou had already confessed this all to Hound dog during counseling sessions so doing it again shouldn't be all that hard.

"Alright." The blonde let him inside, nodding at the desk chair for him to have a seat. Bakugou sat across from him on the bed. After a long tense silence he decided to tell the whole story. He started with how he knew Deku since kindergarten. He explained to Kirishima how his quirk first manifested and Deku's didn't. How he came back one day from the doctor to find out he was quirkless. He explained how everyone started treating Deku, himself included. Bakugou finished the story by summarizing recent events that they both knew already leaving Kirishima to process everything he was told. He thought that he would feel better by getting all this off his chest again, but he didn't.

"So you're a bully, that's the gist of it." The red head gave him a disapproving stare. Katsuki wanted to deny it at first, but he crushed the instinct. A bully is exactly what he was, he could admit that now. "You thought Midoriya was looking down on you when in reality it was the opposite. He was looking up to you." He could see that because he too used to look up to Bakugou. The blonde's eyes widened when he was told that. That made sense, the nerd always used to follow him around when they were younger.

"Heroes are supposed to protect the weak and helpless, not belittle and mock them. What you did wasn't manly at all." Kirishima stood up from his chair. He was so disappointed that he had to go back to his room and think about all this. Bakugou watch him leave. He didn't bother stopping him, he was done trying to justify his past actions. Kirishima paused before he walked out the door, looking back at him one last time. It looked like he wanted to say more but decided not to. With that he left, closing the door on his way out.

'So that's it then.' Bakugou's eyes went down to the floor. He spilled his guts to the closest person to a friend that he had and now he too turned away from him. The blonde sighed as he wondered when he would ever live down what he said and did to Deku. He realized his hatred for him in the past was horribly misplaced, but he definitely hated Deku now for the right reasons. That damn nerd was dismantling and warping the hero system to better suit his twisted ideals. The bastard even humiliated Allmight, the person they both once looked up to. Despite the past between them Deku needed to be stopped. Figuring out how was the real problem. Maybe if he found a way to beat him, everyone would forget and forgive what he'd done. It wasn't much, but it was the only hope he had left at this point.

I ended up getting very sick with the flu the previous week, so I had no choice but to push the chapter to next Sunday. When you're that sick all you can do is lay in bed, stare at the ceiling and try not to think about the vomit that you know is coming.

Now next chapter might end up being another two week wait. That's because next chapter will feature the big confrontation with Allmight. Its going to be a very long chapter, hence the longer wait. I might split it into two, but I kind of want it to be all one chapter. If there's an update next Sunday then that means I decided to split it, if not it will be two weeks instead.

Still trying to humanize Bakugou a bit more. For those of you who don't like him, don't worry. I'm almost at the point where I need him to be. After that I'll probably not develop him anymore. I got him to the point where he can admit he's wrong without having a mental breakdown, but there's still some selfishness in there.

Also the codenames are all revealed. Originally before I came up with the name Knights of Balance, they were going to be called Arc Angels. I decided to avoid the religious terminology. Plus I really wanted Ochako's codename to be Angel.

Thanks for reading.