Chapter 4

.::An Unsettling Meeting::.

Kyouka drummed her fingers against her cheek in an unsteady rhythm as she sat at the kitchen table, glaring down at the (her?) cell phone. She had spent the past twenty minutes just scrolling through various news sites trying to get her bearings, and so far nothing made sense.

All of the news stories seemed pretty run of the mill at first glance, with maybe a few more about villains than usual, but it didn't take long to notice some strange patterns. For starters, police tended to use their quirks on the more petty villains. That alone stood out because only Pro Heroes were allowed to use their quirks in that sort of manner. That led her to notice another detail: there were less stories about heroes.

When she switched to the tabloid sites she found them almost totally void of Pros, focusing instead on musicians and actors. Kyouka frowned as she scrolled down the list of headlines, fingers tapping her cheek at a faster pace. The tabloids LOVED talking about Pro Heroes, to the point they had entire magazines dedicated purely to intruding on heroes' personal lives. The distinct absence of so much as even Present Mic felt wrong.

A frantic pounding on the door jarred her from her thoughts. She quickly got up and took her phone with her as she went to answer it, typing in another website address even as she unlocked it. "JIROU!" Kaminari screeched as the door opened, flinging himself at her with tears in his eyes. Kyouka neatly sidestepped the sudden embrace without looking up and the blond stumbled forward into the now-empty space, nearly falling. He caught his balance and quickly righted himself while she used her foot to kick the door shut behind him.

"Don't yell, I don't know how sound proof the walls are," she muttered, pulling up a different window in the browser. She finally raised her head to find Kaminari staring at her with panic in his eyes, not that she could blame him. Deep down she felt the same sort of unease and anxiety, the sheer mass of unknowns leaving her feeling more vulnerable than ever, but she forcibly smothered those feelings as she focused on the blond's rambling.

"We're totally in Hosu!" he whined. "I looked around while I was heading here and this is absolutely Hosu and I don't remember moving here, this makes no sense—"

"We already established that, idiot," Kyouka cut in dryly, shooting him an annoyed glare. During their earlier phone call she'd checked the tags on the unfamiliar uniform for the school's name, and a quick internet search had turned up a regular private high school in Hosu. When Kaminari found the same school name on his own uniform, she'd quickly opened the map on her phone to get her address and sent it to him.

Part of her was impressed he'd managed to find his way there without getting lost. Normally she'd expect him to find her fine, even if he barely managed to scrape by in their classes, but he also had a tendency to panic in crazy, unexpected situations. That had also been why she'd decided against going to his location instead. Whoever waited could use the time to investigate on their phones, and Kyouka had some doubts about Kaminari's ability to calmly gather information in a short time.

Her decision had paid off, she thought as she gestured to the table. "Sit down. I found some stuff, but it's not going to be pretty." Kaminari whimpered as he scurried over to the kitchen table, sinking into the chair and looking at her with baleful yellow eyes. Kyouka didn't react to the look as she slid into the seat next to him, putting her phone down on the table so he could see the screen. "I looked up UA and found this."

Shooting her a hesitant look, he leaned forward to read it and then squeaked in surprise, the color draining from his face. "W-what the hell!?" he sputtered. "UA's closed!?"

"Apparently," she confirmed with a grimace. That had been the most shocking discovery she'd made so far, a full ten minutes spent just skimming article after article about the event, looking for some hint it was a lie. Biting the inside of her cheek, she muttered, "It says it closed about four years ago after the entrance exam got attacked and a bunch of kids died...? I didn't read all the details, not enough time, but it looks like there was a giant scandal afterwards and a bunch of people dropped off the radar."

"What the hell," Kaminari whispered, staring at the phone in shock. That summed up her own feelings pretty well.

Sighing, Kyouka took back her phone and switched to another window. "There's a bunch of other stuff that's not right, either. Take a look at this." She put it back down to reveal a photo of an armored man with gold piping along his arms, smoke billowing from his legs as he carried a woman. Beneath it was the headline, "PRO HERO INGENIUM SAVES TWELVE FROM BUILDING COLLAPSE."

Neither of them had to voice what was wrong with that photo. Everyone in Class 1-A knew exactly what happened to their class president's older brother, how he had lost the use of his legs after encountering Stain. The fact the article had a date below the headline from just one week earlier sent prickles down their spines.

"This... this is ridiculous," Kaminari finally said, his mouth twitching into a nervous smile as he looked up at her. "I-I mean, this is just—this is just, y'know, impossible! Like, like some kind of joke!" He laughed anxiously as he ran a hand through his hair, the corners of his lips twitching even more as his eyes glimmered with barely-suppressed panic. "I mean, seriously. UA's closed? Ingenium's fine? Hosu? What, are we in some kind of alternate universe?"

"Not like I have any better ideas," Kyouka muttered lowly. That made him startle, his strained smile vanishing as he boggled her wide-eyed.

"Wait, seriously?" he asked after a moment. "You're—you're kidding, right? Just messing with me? Right?" His voice rose to a desperate whine towards the end, his mouth twitching in another anxious smile as his eyes silently pleaded for her to agree, to confirm she was messing with him and make some snarky comment about his gullibility. Kyouka remained silent though, her mouth pressing into a thin line, and his face soon fell once more. "No way... That's... Th-that's—"

He sucked in a sharp breath, his face crumpling into despair as he clutched at his head. "Th-this is insane! How would that even work!? Were we caught up in that mist-guy's mist again and sent here?! But we were in our rooms! Oh, shit, what about everyone else? Are they here too? Would they even exist here!? Oh man oh man oh man, I should have paid more attention in class! What do we do!?"

As he grew more and more panicked Kyouka just gave a frustrated sigh, bopping the side of his head with her fist. Kaminari yelped in surprise but fell silent, whimpering as he rubbed where she'd hit him. "Oi, calm down," she told him briskly. "I don't know if this is the work of a villain or what, but freaking out won't help."

Kaminari gave another small whimper but nodded, even as his lower lip wobbled with the obvious urge to resume his freak-out. Satisfied he wouldn't launch into another nervous ramble, Kyouka turned her attention back to her phone, switching to the window with information on the high school. "If those uniforms are ours, and I think they are, we're supposed to be students at Munakata High School. No Hero department there."

"I don't want to go to school though!" Kaminari whined before he could stop himself.

"Yeah, fuck that," Kyouka agreed without missing a beat, and the blond nearly fell off his chair at the lack of argument. She'd only considered the idea for a second before dismissing it entirely. Sure, they could get some more information there, but it would be too problematic. She had no idea who she might know there, didn't know her class schedule or what had been covered—she didn't even know where the school was. They had an address, sure, but they'd need to look at a map to actually find it.

Yeah, Kyouka really didn't need to deal with high school drama on top of this bullshit.

Of course, Kaminari probably hadn't thought that far beyond "classes suck." He visibly sagged with relief, slumping in his chair with a sigh. "Oh, thank All Might. I'm barely keeping up with the classes at UA, I don't think I can handle classes at a regular high school. Like, what if we had a test today? I don't even know what we'd be studying!"

"Don't worry," Kyouka assured him with a smirk. "You'd fail anyway."

"Yeah, I gue—" He stopped as her words registered and made an offended squawk. "Hey!"

Kyouka just smirked, getting up. "Anyways, we should start by figuring out what else is different. Get out your phone and start searching up stuff, I'm gonna find a notebook so we can start writing down a list."

"What should I look up?" Kaminari asked, pulling out his phone obediently.

"Anything," she deadpanned. "Seriously, I have no idea what isn't different. Everything I've looked up so far, the facts are totally different from what I remember." She tactfully decided not to mention All Might. No need to freak him out any more.

Kaminari chewed on his lip, his expression becoming determined. "I'm going to try to look up our classmates," he announced, and Kyouka felt her smirk become something more like a smile. Searching for their classmates hadn't even occurred to her in her shock over how much else had changed, but Kaminari had always been more socially-minded than her.

"Alright, you do that. I'll be back with a notebook in a minute." With that she swept out of the kitchen towards the bedroom, feeling her shoulders slump as she stepped inside. Almost reflexively her gaze flicked to the album cover propped up on her desk, her teeth gritting as she forced herself to quickly look away.

She didn't want to think about what it meant.

The League of Villains' (or, Villain Alliance, apparently) base felt like a giant maze, full of twisting hallways and an almost endless number of doors. Only a handful of numbers written on the walls in barely-noticeable marker next to a few doors—all in his own handwriting, Izuku noted—acted as any sort of landmark, each one corresponding to a room in the map in the (his?) journal. His room had been marked with a star and the number 14, but for some reason room 7 was on the opposite end of the floor.

By some miracle he'd managed to reach the hallway holding it without encountering anyone else, and immediately felt like he'd entered a prison ward. The air felt stale and stifling, the doors made of thick metal and containing sliding slots that could be opened to peer inside. Unlike the other doors he'd see so far, these had actual plates with numbers corresponding to the ones on his map.

This must have been used as a starting point for the map, he thought as he glanced around uncomfortably. It explained why room one had been in such a seemingly random location instead of, say, the entrance.

A few doors had the slots already open, and he glanced at one as he passed to see what looked like soundproofing material on the walls, as well as... a barred window? Izuku frowned, filing that detail away for later contemplation as he continued down the halls. (Why didn't he get a window?) His heartbeat seemed to slowly pick up pace as he passed each door before finally stopping before the one he wanted. The number seven stared at him in bold lettering from the metal plate, the so-called lucky number feeling more ominous than ever.

Heart pounding, Izuku took a breath and stepped forward, raising a shaky hand to open the slat. The metal groaned lowly as he pushed it, making him jerk his hand away with a wince while quickly looking around to see if the noise drew anyone's attention. The hallway remained empty though, and after a few moments he sucked in a breath and turned back to resume opening it, grimacing as the groaning noise continued.

Once it had opened at least an inch he stopped, rising on his toes to peer through the gap. It took less than a second of looking around the near-empty cell before his gaze lit upon a familiar figure on a cot in the back just beneath the barred window, his blood chilling as his eyes met furious red.

Kacchan.

Izuku felt a lump lodge in his throat as he stared at his old friend, caught between relief at seeing a familiar face and horror at seeing Bakugou in this mess. The other teen's spiky blond hair almost seemed to glow in the early morning sunlight streaming through the window above him, the effect extending to his white t-shirt and gray pinstripe pajama pants to give him an almost casual, peaceful look.

However, any calming effect he exuded was ruined by his eyes, which bore into Izuku with a burning ferocity as his lips curled back in a snarl.

"The hell do you want, Deku?" Bakugou spat, shifting to sit up straighter. As he did Izuku noticed his hands were trapped in bulky metal handcuffs in front of him, just like the ones he'd worn after he'd won the Sports Festival. The sight made Izuku's chest clench painfully, but more than that was the sheer rage in Bakugou's eyes. He'd seen Bakugou angry before—been on the receiving end countless times—but never had it been this intense.

"K-Kacchan," he whispered, and immediately Bakugou sprang to his feet, his face twisting with even more fury.

"Don't call me that!" he snapped, veins visibly bulging along his neck. "You don't get the fucking right, shitty Deku!" His harsh tone made Izuku wince, unable to hear anything but hot, burning hatred, so much worse than any other time Bakugou had insulted him. Even worse than the day he'd told Izuku to jump off a roof.

"I-I'm sorry," he whispered, leaning back. The motion caused his heels to lower flat to the floor and put the slot out of sight, and he grimaced before rising on his toes once more. "I—I don't—"

"Just go away," Bakugou cut in, sinking back onto the cot with a scowl. "It's fucking whatever in the morning, at least let me sleep in, dumbass." With that he flopped on his side and rolled over to face the wall, leaving Izuku to stare at him in silent horror. Part of him wanted to wrench the door open and drag him out of there, or to scream or plead with him to act normal, but any words caught in his throat. He felt paralyzed, unable to move as he just stared at his friend's back.

(Could he even call him his friend?)

Suddenly something black ensnared the slot's handle and slammed it shut, and Izuku jumped as he spun towards the source. "Wha—" His voice died before he could even finish the thought as he found himself staring at an unfamiliar girl.

She looked about ten or so, with black hair pulled into a small ponytail on the side of her head and a cherry blossom-shaped hairpin pulling her bangs to the side. She wore a simple black dress with a white sailor fuku and red ribbon, but what really caught his attention were her eyes. They looked like they'd been taken from a photo with inverted colors, the irises a nearly luminescent white and the sclera pitch black.

Izuku had seen plenty of people with eyes like that—hell, just look at Ashido—but something about this girl's eyes in particular felt... unsettling. They felt almost empty, void of light, far too flat for a child her age. It just—it didn't look right.

As he stared at them he almost didn't notice the shadowy tendril extending from her back towards the door, withdrawing and disappearing into the black fabric of her dress. The entire time she remained perfectly still, just meeting his gaze with a blank face.

"You forgot again," she said. She spoke in a factual manner, her voice quiet and totally devoid of inflection. Izuku jolted at her words, snapped out of his odd stupor.

"I... w-what?" he sputtered.

"You're having an episode," she clarified, still perfectly factual and flat. "Did you read the letter?" More alarm bells started ringing at the question, snapping him to increasing awareness and leaving him wary.

"Um, y-yeah, I did." His response came out more hesitantly than intended, probably a result of the unease curling in his stomach. The girl showed no visible reaction to his obvious nerves, her expression still and unreadable as her gaze seemed to bore into him. Wrong, some voice whispered in his head. Something's wrong with this girl. Frowning, he tried to ignore his discomfort and asked, "Sorry, but, wh-who are you...?"

The girl remained silent for a long moment, just... staring at him. Finally though she nodded and held out a hand. "Heiwajima Seiko." Staring at the outstretched hand dumbly, it took a second for Izuku to register she wanted him to shake it. He gripped it hesitantly but when they touched he almost gave a small jolt. Her hand didn't feel particularly weird or anything, but something about it just felt... off. He couldn't put his finger on why though.

That seemed to be a recurring theme with this girl, he thought dismally.

"I-it's nice to meet you, Heiwajima-san," he greeted politely, offering a timid smile. "I'm Midoriya Izuku."

"I know," the girl replied simply, and this time Izuku's flinch was more from embarrassment than nerves. She pulled her hand back and let it fall to her side before adding a simple, "Seiko." It took another second for him to register what she meant, but then Izuku blinked and quickly nodded.

"O-oh, I see. Seiko-chan?" He used the honorific questioningly, uncertain if she would approve. Seiko didn't voice an objection, so he assumed she did and pushed on. "What are you doing... here?" He gestured vaguely at the hallway around them, trying not to grimace too much. He was still hyper-aware that he was essentially in enemy territory, even if it seemed like he might not actually be an enemy here...?

Once again he had to suppress the growing jumble of confusion and panic welling up inside him. He'd barely been awake for a full hour, this was way too much stress for such a short time!

"I have nothing better to do," Seiko replied, and, well, at least he had a distraction from that mess.

"Nothing?" he repeated. "B-but, what about, school? Or..." He started to say "your family" but stopped himself short. If a child was here, she likely either had no family, or someone here was her family. Wouldn't be the first time a villain pulled their child into their line of work, and unfortunately it wouldn't be the last, either.

"I don't go to school."

"Right," he muttered to himself, scratching the back of his neck as he glanced away sheepishly. That seemed to confirm part of his thoughts, at least.

"Last night you went to bed early because you felt sick." The sudden topic change caught Izuku by surprise, snapping confused eyes back to her.

"H-huh?"

"You said you had a small headache," Seiko elaborated, perfectly flat and emotionless. "Everyone concluded you would likely want to sleep in today, so your absence from breakfast hasn't been viewed as suspicious. You should have another two hours before they start to worry and check on you. If anyone thinks you're acting strangely, you can play it off as still feeling sick."

"I... What?" It occurred to Izuku he'd been stammering a lot during this conversation, but he couldn't help it, too busy trying to wrap his head around what Seiko was implying. If he'd been feeling sick the previous night, it would match up with Shigaraki's comment earlier about breakfast and him feeling bad. Being sick with, say, a cold, would certainly give him an excuse for why his reactions might be a bit off, too.

It was useful, gave him the start for a plan of action, helping ground his nerves. Except... "Why are you telling me this?" he asked, his brow furrowing in confusion.

"It's a game," Seiko responded simply. "When you have an episode, we see how long it takes for other people to notice." She tilted her head slightly, the corners of her mouth twitching upwards ever so slightly into a small half-smile, closer to a smirk than anything. It was the first change in her facial expression he'd seen since he'd met her, yet her white eyes still held no visible glimmer of emotion to reflect the change. "It's fun."

She said it like another fact, her voice just slightly lighter than before.

Izuku stared at her before slowly nodding, exhaling quietly. "I... see," he muttered, which was only half-true. Everything about Seiko's demeanor still confused him, but this could work to his advantage. While his apparent amnesic "episodes" provided a convenient excuse for his confusion, he didn't want to use it right away. He wanted to get his bearings a bit more, and that would probably be best accomplished if everyone thought he was fine. "So, does that mean you'll help me, or am I on my own?"

Seiko's face smoothed back to its usual blank mask. He wasn't sure if he liked it more or less than the sort-of smile, both were unsettling in their own ways. "I'll tell you what you need to know if and when it becomes relevant. The only rule is that you cannot talk to anyone else about it or mention me," she added a little more lightly. Just a little. Izuku nodded, turning over her words in his head.

"R-right. Okay then. Don't mention the episode, or... you. Got it." He nodded, offering her an uncertain smile. "Thanks, Seiko-chan."

"I suggest you return to your room and review your journals," she told him. "We will speak again later, Izuku." With that she stepped towards the wall and black rippled across her figure, her white eyes seeming to glow before closing as she melded into the shadows. Izuku stiffened as she vanished, staring at the spot she'd occupied.

Well, I guess I know what her Quirk is, he thought distantly as he gulped. Casting a final glance at the door to room seven, he frowned and began the trek to return to his room, double-checking the map in the journal. He should probably read the journals before he ran into anyone else.

(It was only after he'd gotten halfway there that it occurred to him that Seiko had never blinked during their conversation.)

Sorry for the slight delay! It was another weird weekend and kind of threw me off. From now on, I'm going to be posting chapters on Mondays instead of Saturday. Mondays are almost always the same for me, so this will guarantee a timely release schedule! It also hopefully gives everyone something to look forward to at the start of the week.

On the note of today's chapter, we're introduced to one of my favorite characters of all: Heiwajima Seiko. One of my favorite tropes is apparently the "creepy child" trope, and Seiko fits it to a T. Not in appearance, but just in how she behaves. I can't say much more without some major spoilers, but let's just say her existence has some major connotations for the BNHA universe. I actually drew a quick reference of her, which you can find on my Tumblr, CannibalisticApple, under the tag "Seiko".

That's all for now, see you next Monday!