Titanium Soul
[CHAPTER 13]: Expatiate
In Which a School Bus Seeks an Honorable Death
EXPATIATE (v): to move or wander about intellectually, imaginatively, etc., without restraint.
Class 1A sat nervously in their seats as the bell of the first day of classes rang out through the school.
They sat still and unmoving, eyes on the dull yellow sleeping bag laying against the front wall of the room. Their teacher was known well for his demands of punctuality and efficiency, and to see him lying there, to watch the wasted seconds tick away… something was wrong.
So they sat silently, anxiety building up in even their most stoic members.
Finally, Kaminari broke. "Should we, like, wake him up, or…?"
He was answered not by another classmate but by a ceiling panel sliding aside. A flash of black descended from the darkness of the space above, landing neatly on the sleeping bag and surveying the class with bloodshot eyes.
"Good," said Aizawa. "He bought the decoy."
"Who…?" asked Shinsou dubiously.
"Don't ask. To speak his name invites his attention, and we only have so much time." Their teacher pulled a small remote from his pocket and clicked it.
The back wall hissed and slid open, revealing 20 neatly numbered cases set into hidden compartments.
"These are your Hero Costumes, labeled by seat number. Take yours, and follow me at a distance of roughly 12 meters. Quietly." His gaze swept across them, a grim look on his face. "We only have one shot at this."
Anxious, confused, and desperately trying to be stealthy, Izuku snuck through the halls of UA alongside the rest of his class. Their teacher led them into a small janitor's closet, only to pull back a wall panel and reveal a secret tunnel. They crawled and scooted and shimmied their way through, then waited for Aizawa to slip out of the wall vent on the other end and signal their path clear.
"Shouta… why are you using the secret passageways?" came the voice of Present Mic from the left of the vent.
Kendo's hand snapped out to grab the back of Kirishima's shirt before he tumbled out of the vent after their teacher. The redhead sent back a furtive thumbs up as thanks.
"I had to swing by Snipe's office to pick up some paperwork while the kids went to the orientation speech," lied their teacher without missing a beat.
Shinsou pulled his phone out of his pocket and, with a finger to his lips and an exaggerated wink at the rest of the class, hit the record button.
"Taking the hallways from your classroom to Snipe's office is shorter than using that secret passage," Present Mic responded flatly.
"I'm anticlaustrophobic," said Eraserhead. "I feel more comfortable in tight spaces. The hallways here are just so tall, it's hard to deal with sometimes."
Jirou had to shove her fist halfway into Kaminari's mouth to stop him from giggling.
"We have worked together for over twenty years and this is the first I'm hearing of it," came Present Mic's skeptical reply.
"You see this? This is why men's mental health is so stigmatized," Aizawa shot back quickly.
Jirou snorted at that, and Kaminari shoved his fist into her mouth in vengeance.
"I'm telling you something very deep and personal about myself and I'm met with nothing but dismissal and suspicion," continued Eraserhead loudly. "You've hurt me deeply today, Hizashi. I'm going to sulk in front of this secret passage and give you the opportunity to get out of my line of sight before I call HR."
Present Mic sighed. "As tempted as I am to call your bluff and make you call Hound Dog, I have my own class I really should be supervising right now. Just know that Nezu knows you've already done your little Apprehension Exam before school started, so you have no excuse to not be at his speech."
"You'd be surprised at how resourceful I can be," said Aizawa.
Present Mic coughed.
"And by that I mean I'll be there," their teacher haltingly continued, "because. I have a lot of resources. To get there. From where we are right now."
Present Mic sighed again and slowly walked away.
"Okay, he's gone," whispered their teacher after a moment. "Come on, we're almost out."
"Should I get the next one?" asked Shinsou as he smoothly slipped out of the vent grate. "Because listening to that was kind of painful."
Aizawa thought for a moment. "Good idea. You're with me, everyone else keep your distance."
With Shinsou and their teacher in the lead, the class wove a circuitous path through the halls, eventually finding themselves slipping past the Support Labs and into one of the engineering bays.
As the door shut behind Kaibara, the bay was plunged into complete darkness for a moment. Then, with a click and a surprisingly gentle hum, one of the vast garage doors rose to let the morning light into the room.
"Took you long enough, Sensei." Mei called down from the roof of one of the many buses parked in the area. A small control panel rested in her hand, connected to a wire that dangled from the bay's ceiling.
"We met some minor delays," Aizawa admitted. "You've done your part?"
"And then some," confirmed the inventor. She knocked on the roof of the bus twice, and the doors hissed open. Where one might have expected the steering wheel of the vehicle to rest, the upper portion of one of Mei's utility drones jutted out instead.
"All aboard~" a rough, tinny voice called out from the console.
"Finished hot-wiring it in about fourteen seconds," she continued. "Then I got bored and made some more comprehensive upgrades; next time you have a surprise spy mission for me, at least make it interesting."
"Duly noted," accepted their sensei. He turned to the rest of the class. "Get in."
"I call the back seat~" Kaminari called out as he rushed up to the doors.
"Oh, no you don't!" Kaibara flung himself into the bus after him.
"Let us not be hasty! We need to enter this vehicle in a calm and orderly manner," shouted Iida as he took position by the door of the bus. "Now everyone please, form two single-file lines-"
Aizawa put a hand on Iida's back and firmly guided him up into the bus next. "Quickly," their teacher stressed.
After a hurried boarding, Izuku found himself in a seat towards the front, next to Jirou. She nodded silently at him, then turned to stare out the window with one earjack plugged into her phone.
Aizawa stood in the center aisle of the bus. His gaze flicked across each student, then he sighed. "Hatsume, you were included in the 'get in'," he called upwards.
Loud footsteps on the roof moved towards the front of the bus, before Mei swung in through the driver's side window and into the associated seat. With a whispered word to her drone, the bus started up and began trundling out the garage bay.
Aizawa opened his mouth to begin talking, but was cut off by that same tinny voice.
"Good morning passengers! This is your captain speaking. The time is 0912 AM. The weather is SUNNY, WITH A CHANCE OF SHOWERS IN THE AFTERNOON. We are expected to arrive at our destination in SEVENTEEN MINUTES, FORTY-TWO SECONDS, EIGHT MILLISECONDS."
Aizawa turned to give a flat stare at Mei.
"Please note that this vehicle has TWO emergency exits. Take a moment to locate the nearest exit to you. It is recommended to fasten your seatbelts at this time- ERROR: THIS VESSEL IS NOT EQUIPPED WITH SEATBELTS. PROJECTED CASUALTY RATE: 98%. It is recommended to fill out our personal injury waiver at this time-"
Mei thumped the drone chassis in front of her. After a few seconds of garbled, fast-forwarded audio, it belted out a final "Thank you for flying with HATSUME INDUSTRIES™".
Aizawa let out a slow, bone-deep sigh before stepping back out into the central aisle, one hand up on the support bars. "Now, you kids might be wondering what's going on right now."
"We're ditching orientation because you don't want to go, right?" asked Kuroiro.
"We're 'ditching orientation'," Aizawa quoted, "because the six hours of standing in a field listening to a speech could be better spent preparing you for the rest of your life."
"Six hours?" asked Tokage disbelievingly. "No way orientation is six hours."
"I had Mic time last year's speech. Six hours on the dot," their teacher confirmed.
"Principal Nezu is one of the greatest minds of our generation! Surely the wisdom he can impart on us would be worth the time?" asked Iida.
"Read the student handbook," Aizawa deadpanned. "And you know what? That's everyone's homework. A three page book report on the student handbook. Due in a week."
"Does that include Hatsume?" Shinsou asked helpfully.
"Don't make me turn this car around," threatened Mei.
"Yes," Aizawa smirked.
The bus came to a stop outside one of the large, walled-in training sites that Izuku recognized from the entrance exam. SITE D, the massive letter stenciled on the walls declared.
"Alright, we're here-" Aizawa began.
"We have arrived at our destination," interrupted the bus. "The time is: 0932 AM. My estimate was TWO MINUTES, EIGHTEEN SECONDS, SEVENTY-FOUR MILLISECONDS off. Please disembark so I may seek an honorable death."
Aizawa frowned and turned to Mei. "Is that something we have to worry about?"
Mei reached up into the mess of wiring that was the union of drone and vehicle. "It'll be fine," she said confidently. "We just have to make sure nobody leaves it on unsupervised from now on." With a few yanked wires, the bus' engine cut out. The speakers let out a final distorted "my blood must run in penance…" before falling silent.
"Sure," accepted their teacher with almost inspiring grace. "Everyone off, before it wakes back up or something."
Moments later, Aizawa led the group of teenagers towards the central gate of the training site. "Anyways. Over the past week, you've all been honing not only your Quirks, but your understanding of your Quirks."
A few dirty glares were shot in Izuku's direction. He winced and scratched at the back of his head.
Aizawa cleared his throat. "Today, we're going to be taking a look at what that means in practice. I've prepared a few simple exercises that should build familiarity with Quirk usage in actual environments; we'll be starting the year with the cityscape training sites, before moving on to more specialized areas."
He stepped up to a small keypad by the gate and quickly punched in the code.
"Our first stop will be the on-site locker rooms," he explained as the massive gate rumbled open. "We'll meet up back at this gate to begin the first maneuver-" he cut himself off as he finally looked in through the gate.
Rather than the desolate cityscape Izuku was met with the last time he was here, the gate opened directly into a gigantic open-air auditorium, complete with seats packed with hundreds of UA students and a single massive screen behind the central stage; a screen that showed the smiling face of Principal Nezu.
"Ah! Class 1A, how kind of you to join us," the principal's squeaky voice blasted from dozens of loudspeakers. "We were just about to begin the orientation!"
"Ah," said Eraserhead as he turned to face into the auditorium. The screen quickly swapped to a close-up of his own face, and he took a single step back. "Um. Yes. Thank you for, uh, waiting for us. We got… lost."
"Indubitably," agreed the principal. "Consider me impressed with the speed with which you made it here; I only sent you the updated location a few minutes ago."
"Yes, well, um. Plus Ultra." he eventually managed to force out.
"And in this case you truly have gone beyond," Nezu nodded to himself, back on the screen. "It's wonderful to see our faculty living up to the motto of this august institution. Now, if you could see your class seated in their designated spots, we may begin."
"Hello! I am Nezu Nedzu, Principal of UA High School! Am I a mouse, a dog, or a bear? Regardless, I'm giving a speech! Now, now, where to begin? Well, nowhere but the beginning, I suppose!
"The year is 2072, and the planet is dying. The lands are ravaged by drought, storm, and floods on a scale never before seen. The seas are rising and the forests are dying and the skies above us begin to burn- only to be stymied by what is, frankly, a miracle.
"A baby in China is born with a brilliant glow; she is not the first child to be born with a Quirk, but she is the first of whom the world has taken notice. Over the next twenty years, children will awaken powers that had only previously lived in fiction- and it is their actions that will breathe life back into a dying world.
"The Druid of The Amazon, who single-handedly restored the rainforests of South America. Glaiax, who re-froze Antarctica in a twelve-year campaign. Roaring Fjord, who struck down the Vile Bezos with a spear forged from the entirety of the Pacific Garbage Patch. Genesis, whose work you may still see by simply looking up, as the Skyfish we know today are the descendants of her efforts to purify the Great Chinese Smog Cloud.
"These are the people we remember as the First Generation of Heroes. These are people who saw a problem with the world and, with neither permission nor obligation, stepped up and said, "I can fix this." And it is in their footsteps that we follow today."
"There's no way he has six hours of this," mumbled Shinsou quietly.
"Don't jinx it," Jirou hissed back.
"Come now," Iida said at full volume- before Setsuna's detached hand clamped over his mouth. "This is important information that we need to pay attention to!" he continued with a muffled voice. "The principal of this school has taken the time out of his schedule to speak with us. If he is not owed our attention then he is at least owed our respect! Please take an example from Hagakure-san, who has been just as attentive as me this entire time."
"Uhm, Iida-kun?" Mina whispered. "I think Hagakure is asleep."
The class all turned to look at Hagakure. The seemingly empty uniform sagged against its chair unsteadily, slowly expanding and contracting with its occupant's breath.
"I'm sure she simply has bad posture…" Iida attempted to convince himself.
Hagakure swayed, then fully slumped over, draping herself across her neighbor Kodai. Who was also asleep, apparently.
"I dunno why you guys are so upset," Izuku said at 5% volume. "This is cool stuff."
Iida nodded while everyone else within earshot turned to glare at him.
"...now deep in the throes of the Second Dark Age, Japan is reduced to an anarcho-feudalist state ruled by dozens of proto-villainous shogunoids- as I'm sure we all remember from History class. At this particular time, the nearest arbiters of true justice are the roving bands of vigilantes that eventually became the blueprints of our modern Hero system.
"Enter Umeida Asuka, one such vigilante known as Whisper. Her Quirk was simple; it allowed her to speak into the ears of a certain number of people she'd touched before- at any distance. Deep in the forests of what we now know as Musutafu after a rescue gone bad, she found a vault. Clearly built before the Quirk Riots, fully self-sufficient and able to sustain hundreds of people.
"She found the safest place in Japan. And she shared the news.
"Vigilantes flocked to it in droves, refugees and loved ones in tow. Soon, hundreds took shelter within, and this quickly became the largest congregation of vigilantes Japan had ever seen. Nestled safely in the heart of the earth, these proto-heroes taught each other what they knew. Shared tactics and strategies and skills and information, practicing into the dead of the night.
"But the vault wouldn't stay secret forever; so they made plans. And when the villains came for them, they were ready."
Mei nudged Izuku's side, and he quickly minimized the dozens of wikipedia articles open in his mind to look at what she was pointing at.
In the next section of seating over from them, Momo had a chessboard up on a small stand, and seemed to be playing against her neighbor Uraraka.
"Amused; Miss Yaoyorozu has checkmate in 28 moves," HERoS commented quietly.
"See, look, even Miracle Girl is bored over there. She's gaming, Zuzu," complained Mei.
"Someone's gaming?" Kaminari's head twisted around fast enough to give him whiplash. "What are they playing?"
"Chess," Mei spat out derisively.
"Hey," protested Izuku. "Don't diss chess. It's a classic that can trace its roots to centuries before the Quirk Riots, and it's survived that long for a reason."
"Yeah," mumbled Jirou from behind them, "because supervillains wont shut the fuck up about it."
"Fuck you, you fucking spaghetti-earlobed ass motherfucker" said Bakugo, "Chess is awesome. I bet you just hate it 'cuz you're shit at it."
Jirou glared at him. "Seriously? Talking shit about my mutations? What the hell are you, Quirkist?"
Bakugo glared back. "What the hell are you, chess-ist?"
"Ladies, ladies, you're both pretty," snarked Shinsou. "Now shut up and listen to the damn speech."
Both Jirou and Bakugo immediately turned to glare at him. "Fuck you," they said in unison.
"...by this point, the people of Vault had long since proven resilient to any traditional attacks, fending them off with clever stratagems and creative Quirk use. Unfortunately, the villains had learned from this.
"Over the next two months, an army of armies would muster at the gate of the Fortress of Vault, led by a villain remembered only as 'The Butcher'. Despite the moniker, the Butcher was primarily a strategist; it was under his command that their forces split into dozens of specialized squads, each with complementary Quirks and individualized tactics.
"It is these methods that finally, truly turned the page on pre-Quirk military tactics and ushered in the age of Quirked Combat. But the Butcher's most enduring innovation was something else entirely;
"A list of 10 names. 10 individuals, whose Quirks and methods meant that Vault would always stand strong. The ten heroes whose survival was utterly critical to the resistance, and whose deaths would irrevocably cripple its efforts.
"This list came to be known colloquially as 'The Butcher's Queue', and it would last far beyond this final battle.
"For the first ten hours of the Last Battle of Vault, it was a threat. It served as a reminder, a promise, that our enemies knew what kept us safe and would peel away each layer of armor with cold, cruel precision.
"Over the following eight, it was a challenge. The Butcher himself, alongside 6 allied warlords, entered the fray. Blood flowed freely down his blade, and it was only the loss of the very arm that held it that forced his retreat- a blow that our defense paid dearly for.
"In the final five hours of the battle, it was almost a mania. Our opponents flung themselves into our weapons, willing to pay a hundred lives for a single name to be scratched off that list. It was, to their disappointment, an exchange that never came to fruition.
"And when, in a fit of desperation, the Butcher finally used his Quirk? When, lost to the depths of bestial rage, he feasted on fallen allies and enemies alike, and grew into a creature who dwarfed the Fortress' highest towers?
"It was then that he discovered his folly. Because among the Heroes that struck him down stood one that had not been on his list. A woman he knew only as Whisper. Her Quirk could neither harm nor protect, and she had not stood on the battlefield even once.
"But she had stood vigil over the fight, watching from the top of the tallest tower. And her words had danced through the ears of all who stood against him, listing his habits and weaknesses with an intelligence as cold and clever as his own.
"And with the Butcher's dying breaths, his Queue became a cry of rebellion. Seven warlords brought their armies to kill ten heroes, and not a single one had fallen. All of Vault's safeguards stood tall through those blood-soaked twenty-three hours, felling villain and monster alike.
"Over the next hundred years, that list would be warped and reclaimed into our modern Hero Ranking Billboard; this is the legacy that each of our Top Ten carries with them.
"And Vault? It took the name of the watcher who guided its people through its greatest trial. Umeida Asuka, the First Principal of UA."
"Huh," said Shinsou quietly. "So she's kinda like, the first Underground Hero?"
Izuku's face twisted. "I don't really think so? Just because before this point, all Heroes were Underground Heroes, since the dominant force in the country wanted to kill them? So I'd say those Ten were more like, the first Limelight Heroes?"
"Holy shit," Kaminari whispered. "Shinsou, were you paying attention to all that? Are you some kind of nerd?"
Shinsou shrugged. "I got bored enough that I started paying attention. Congratulations, actually. You all are more boring than the orientation speech. I should get you guys trophies or something."
"Hey!" protested Kaminari. "It just got really quiet once everyone else fell asleep! Setsuna left to go play chess with 1B," he gestured to the eyeless, earless, and handless body sitting next to him, "Midoriya and Iida are both actually paying attention, and Hatsume keeps trying to siphon electricity from my Quirk!"
Izuku eyeballed her latest contraption and frowned. "I don't think he emits an electrical field passively, Mei. You need to startle him into using his Quirk."
"On it, Zuzu!" Mei grinned manically from beneath her goggles and began fishing through her pockets.
"Don't help her," Kaminari whined.
A/N - The HPSC paid Nezu 5000 USD to add that line about the Hero Ranking Billboard.