Author's Note: Yes, I'm continuing MHA from various points of view! I'm into Season 5-6, chapters 242-298 (Plus World Heroes Mission and Light Novel Volume 5) for this year, and I hope you all continue enjoying hearing this story from supporting characters. Sad the series ended, and plan to continue the plot in my own way once I catch up. In my mind it will go on and in any ways I want, as long as I keep doing this. Faithful fans unite!
An extravagant New Year's party was unfolding in the banquet hall of our family's mansion. It was a yearly to-do that drew over 300 guests from our family's elite social circles, and I'd dressed up to greet the guests in my finest kimono.
"I hear you're enrolled at none other than UA High, Momo," said a guest.
"You've heard correctly," I replied. "UA is the best institution around for instilling self-discipline, though I still have a long way to go."
Casual talk came easily to me; I'd been attending the family celebrations since before I could remember.
Perhaps this will come in useful someday, if I ever have to infiltrate a fancy function for a hero mission.
Since enrolling in UA, all my thoughts tended to go towards how what I did could be useful to my hero work.
Any moment now, I suspect…
Our family New Year's party always featured a presentation or performance by an artist or an entertainer, and it was one element I always look forward to.
I wonder what-
The lights suddenly dimmed, and spotlight shone on father, standing atop the banquet hall's stage. He looked, of course, quite put together in his finest business suit.
"Friends and family, I know this is a moment you've all been waiting for, but instead of the usual catered entertainment, we've hastily thrown together a special film for your this evening."
A film? Of what, I wonder?
I'd been out of the loop concerning this year's party since our school's decision to send us home for New Year's at all had been rather - last minute, given the League of Villains-induced security. The massive screen lowered over the stage.
"Put together by an academy award winning director, this short film chronicles the path thus far of our beloved daughter, from birth to present. I give you The History of Momo Yaoyorozu!"
"Huh?" I gasped.
The film's title appeared on the screen with a bam, accompanied by a dramatic sweeping soundtrack. The first scene appears to be about my parents falling in love, but I had turned and marched way to the side of the stage, where my parents stood with our head butler.
"Father! Care to explain the meaning of this?"
"Surprised, are you?" He grinned. "That school of yours didn't leave us very much time to put this together."
"Though I must say, the director was delighted at the opportunity," added mother with a broad smile.
"I'm not concerned about the details! I'm asking why you've commissioned such thing in the first place!"
"Because we want these good people to know just how wonderful you are, naturally!" Said father.
The film had moved onto a scene of me as a newborn, the audience 'awning'. I felt rather like mother and father had sat everyone down to look at my child photo albums. Even worse.
"That dormitory room they've stuck you in!" He said, and frowned. "It must be awfully cramped. I could hardly believe it when they forced you to mail all those boxes and furniture back home."
"Indeed," said Mother. "They only allowed us to send you a single cardboard box as a care package. Why, we could barely fit a collection of your favorite teas in there, let alone everything else you ought to have with you."
"And I take it you have to endure, erm, communal bathing? I suppose you're in desperate need of a private soak after so long, no?" Said father. His face lit up. "I know! We could have a spa built on the UA campus! Patrons could reserve bathing times, giving you some privacy and helping the students of UA to battle their fatigue."
"Oh, that sounds lovely, doesn't it?" Said Mother. "And how about a shopping mall to match? Then you could purchase whatever you might need at any time."
"Brilliant, my dear! Why not amusement facilities as well? Work hard, play hard, as the people say! I'll draw up the plans at once and bring the proposal to that diminutive principal!"
"Father!" I shouted. They stopped.
"Whatever is the matter?" I narrowed my eyes.
"I appreciate the sentiment, I do. But my UA experience is not lacking anything."
"But -"
"They say that home is where one hang's one's hat, even if that happens to be a - erm - cozy dorm room. And quite frankly, bathing with the other girls presents an opportunity for meaningful communication. As for shopping, yes - I may feel inconvenienced now and then, but the school store offers the essentials. And living in a dorm provides endless entertainment in the form of conversation with classmates. Every day I find myself learning new things from them. As it happens, I've been listening to a genre of music called 'metal' lately. It was my friend Jiro who opened my eyes to it - or ears, I suppose - while I've enjoyed the honor and privilege of introducing her to classical music, meager though my knowledge may be." I felt that little thrill of pleasure I always got when thinking about Jiro, and went on. "These seemingly trivial things add up to a valuable experience - and one that truly makes me happy. All of which is too ay - I'm quite satisfied with my life at UA, thank you very much."
They looked both shocked and dejected.
"Very well…we only have the best intentions, but I suppose we shouldn't meddle," said Father.
"Momo, I'm afraid we were so excited to finally have you back home that we got ahead of ourselves. Apologies," said Mother.
"Mother, father - oh dear," I suddenly feared I'd been too harsh.
"Miss Momo," said Uchimura, "Your parents are simply concerned about your first communal living experience, to the extent that they lose sleep over it. Do try to understand that."
"Is that true?" I asked.
"What sort of parents would we be if we weren't worried about you?" Said father.
"In fact," said Mother, "Your father has been musing about moving into a property next door to UA."
"You're one to talk! You've been in the habit of covering the bed with Momo's earliest matryoshka dolls and burying yourself in the pile."
"You want to talk matryoshka? I know for a fact that you sometimes speak to them, as if they were your own daughter!"
"When did y- you saw that?"
I smiled a little. Up on the movie screen, I saw myself playing in the gardens while my parents watched.
And now they're fighting over which loves me more. To make them worry so much, though. Clearly I must learn to be more considerate about these things. I shall have to grow competent enough for others to feel comfortable relying on me, so that they have no need to worry or fret!
I recalled then the kakizome assignment Aizawa sensei gave us. Why not jitsuryoku as competence?
"Momo?" Asked mother.
"Oh it's nothing, really. But I'm afraid I've missed a good portion of the film you made in my honor. May I watch it from the start, later?"
"Of course!" Said father.
"We can sit down with the staff for another screening," said mother.
I smiled weakly at the thought of another public viewing. There for everyone to see was me as a child, creating a Matryoshka doll for the first time.
…
My resolution to show more competence was sadly tested the next day, and not off to a great start.
The Majestic Hero agency was much as I remembered from my last Work Study. My mentor was standing at the head of the meeting room, shuffling through some paperwork for the upcoming presentation. There were boxes of snacks available for the employees, and some of the sidekicks I remembered from my past there waved and smiled at me. Across the room, Tokage was deep in discussion with Officer Mifune, and she gave me a nod. The nod seemed a little curt to me - not quite the effusive warmth I was used to.
I hurried up to Majestic, trying not to let my nerves show too clearly, and doing a rather poor job of it.
"M-Mr. Majestic, sir - I - I was wondering about - I'd heard about the - the suspicions surrounding the robbery on 12th Street? Is it true? What - what can we do about it?"
Majestic smiled at me, a warm, reassuring smile he often wore. One of his best gifts as a Pro Hero was his ability to make those around him feel confident that everything was going to be all right.
"Yes, Creaty. This news is most distressing."
I had heard about the robbery during my drive to the agency, escorted as all UA students now were by one of our teachers. Miss Midnight had had the task of escorting me. She had become in the last few weeks quite friendly to me.
It seems she'd been rather impressed by my performance in our class's Joint Training against Class 1B during our Winter semester, and had in a way taken me on as a student to oversee.
"You really showed your stuff that day, Yaoyorozu," she'd told me. "I'd like to help you along in whatever way I can."
"Thank you, Miss Midnight! I'll do my best!"
I'd been checking the news as we rode together towards my Winter Work Study at the Majestic agency, and had stumbled across troubling news. It seemed a bank vault belonging to my family had been burgled by a villain, and we had taken a rather substantial loss. I'd panicked and called father, who assured me that the bank was insured - our family would be fine, but the loss was not a monetary one. Bank clerks had been killed, property had been damaged, and the villain was still at large.
"This is horrible," I cried out, unable to hide my fear, even infant of my sensei. "They're saying - there's suspicion - that it may have something to do with the League of Villains. And not to mention the involvement of - of -"
I choked a bit. A hero, I knew, should not be so quick to panic. Miss Midnight reached out her hand and patted me on the shoulder, offering me a tissue.
"It's quite understandable, young Yaoyorozu, to be afraid. It is poor timing. But there is always a solution, I promise you. It is true, the League of Villains is still active, and the possible involvement of that villain is not reassuring. But," she smiled, "we are going to find a way to deal with them. I promise you, we'll get them in the end - together."
It is sometimes painful, looking back, to remember all the times Miss Midnight said those sorts of things to us.
In any case, I had come to my work study not with the cheerful and hopeful attitude a sidekick-in-training should bring, but in the midst of a rising and hard-to-stifle panic.
"We'll be discussing this new incident in today's briefing. It does change our plans for the next few weeks, which means your Work Study will be rather different than anticipated. It is a lot to ask of students, but from everything I've heard about you lately from your teacher Miss Midnight, I have a great deal of confidence in you."
"Thank you - I hope - I've been thinking through the incident, based on what I read, and I was thinking about what could possibly connect all these things together. The League of Villains, and your own nemesis, and our bank. Do you think - is it possible, with the weapons being used, the things that happened to the victims, do you think it's possible that the Detnerat company is involved?"
"Detnerat? The hero tech company?"
"Yes. There wasn't much, but in the footage I could see, the composition of the tools the villains were using - if you zoom in, they use the same gear as Detnerat's prototypes. I recognize them from experiments I've done with my quirk."
He was silent for a moment, staring at me. I began to wonder if my theory was mad.
"That's brilliant," he said at last. "I hadn't thought about that, but it really does explain…" He smiled at me. "Thank you, young Yaoyorozu. You've just solved a problem we've been puzzling over the last 12 hours."
I blushed, but decided not to disclaim. I'd recently been told I could be far too self-deprecating, and it was perhaps best to simply agree.
We all sat down for the briefing then, Tokage and I seated together. Officer Mifune took on the role of giving the police presentation.
"As you all may have seen on the news this morning, our old nemesis has acted again."
The slides began to show in front of us. I endured the images, as horrible as they were.
"The Twelfth National bank was robbed by a gang of villains using specialized technology and bearing the logo of the master villain known as Dr. Soken. Dr. Soken I believe most of your are familiar with, as the Majestic agency has had dealings with her in the past. Her true identity is still unknown, and she is responsible for a large number of unethical scientific experiments on a distressingly large number of victims. Her general endgame appears to be experimentation on quirks, to what aim it is still unknown."
The slides showed the Gang of four criminals, women dressed in gas masks, bandages over their faces, and wielding the weapons I'd noticed might be Detnerat weapons. The clip began to play again.
"Get on the ground! Your days of reckoning are here! Prepare to face your judgement day!"
The bank's tellers threw up their hands, crouched, huddled in fear. The villains stomped through, wielding their tech.
Tokage murmured to me, "They're pretty dramatic, huh?"
"Indeed. I wonder if there's a message intended?"
The clip continued as the villains forced the teller to empty the money into a bag. An unfortunate woman was attempting to reach for their phone to call 911, and the villain on the right hand side shot her with the gauntlet she was wearing. The victim crumpled to the floor, dead from a long spike through the chest.
"Hope that keeps you from getting any funny ideas."
The cash was emptied, and the trigger-happy villains shot at the teller too, who had been attempting to reach into his pocket. This shot fired a whip that curled around his throat and began to strangle him.
The third wielded another weapon and shot grey gas into the room, which caused the unfortunate customers to begin choking and writhing.
"Prepare for the end! You had the bad fortune to be the first test subjects for our boss's newest plan."
The leader was using a walkie talkie, and Officer Mifune enhanced the screen audio.
"Tell Dabi we've got the goods."
"'Dabi' is the moniker of a member of the notorious League of Villains," Mifune continued. "The League member who uses blue flame to attack, responsible for quite a few murders. Most recently, he attacked the Number One hero Endeavor in public."
I shuddered a little, recalling poor Todoroki's face watching that villain confront his father, after he'd nearly died in a villain attack, and nearly kill him. If not for the Rabbit Hero Miruko's timely intervention, my classmate would have lost…
"The effect on the innocent civilians by the gas was determined by doctors. It appears to be an experimental attempt to strip people of their quirks. There have been other incidents lately involving villains attempting to manufacture quirk removal devices, including another group linked to the League of Villains, the Shie Hasaiikai. Though that group was eradicated, this indicates the League has found another group of allies in their quest to find a means of eliminating quirks from their opponents. Needless to say, if either Dr. Soken or the League of Villains has determined a means to effectively strip quirks, they will become far more powerful threats than they already are. Given the Majestic agency's history with Dr. Soken, as well as our -" she glanced at me, "connection to the League, and to this bank, it seemed to the department best to bring the case to the you."
Majestic nodded and smiled at us. Coming after Officer Mifune's clipped and harsh way of speaking, he felt very reassuring.
"We have an opportunity here, my friends, to catch two birds with one stone - or two flies in the same web. And we have had a new breakthrough in the case already since this morning. Young Creaty," he pointed at me, "brought to my attention that the tech the villains were using has the same manufacturing methods as the company Detnerat. This may indicate the company's involvement, or the sales of powerful weapons out the backdoor; it is worth investigating alongside the League and Dr. Soken. We will start by following up on Leads concerning the villains. Creaty, Lizardy!"
We snapped to attention. "Yes, sir!"
"You'll be coming with me on patrol alongside Dr. Mifune. We'll be looking to the area nearby, while doing our routine work and tracking down what we can about the case. Ready?"
