Tomura sighed running his thumb over one of the keys hidden in his pockets.
Today was supposed to be fun, he didn't get to do many main story quests with Sensei since he got hit by All Might's surprise raid so he was very excited to see him.
But...
He was bored.
Painfully bored.
He'd left his devices at home since he wanted to go back into the main quest without any distractions, something that made his grinding more productive in his sessions with Deku.
He went through Giri's portal and found himself in the small living area that he'd come to know as where Sensei had been staying, Sensei sitting on the special chair the doctor made for him that held all of the life boosters he needed.
Going there was… an experience.
For some reason the house felt much less welcoming, which he didn't quite understand since the areas graphics weren't that different from Giri's bar.
Tomura tried to shake it off as that weirdness he felt when he returned to his older games and couldn't remember anything about the map and his higher perception and intelligence levels adding to the odd air of the place.
However, the quest was for lore gathering it seems. Sensei had wanted him to watch the annual special event with him, though it was clearly a perception check since he wanted Tomura to describe the events for him.
Which… wasn't a bad quest all things considered, just a touch dull all things considered.
However made sure not to voice this thought since he was probably still only in the beginning of the main quest's storyline and had just done a lot of grinding on Deku's side story.
So, Tomura settled in and took out his lore keeping book and flipped it open to a blank page.
"Tomura, what is that in your hands?" Sensei asked.
Confusing Tomura for a second until he recalled Sensei and him hadn't spoken beyond quick check-in's to maintain their relationship level.
So, Sensei hadn't known about his leveling up, updated skills and new inventory items.
"It's my lore keeping book, Greenzilla suggested keeping one for Noir's island and I've found it useful for other things too." Tomura answered easily enough since it was true.
They had been going for some of the harder quests in Nori's island that he couldn't take without a party before and keeping a physical book of the things he needed to do was easier to keep track with.
And sure he was probably more open to the idea since Deku was also constantly writing in his own books but Greenzilla was the one that prompted the idea.
Sensei... hummed, tapping one of his fingers on his cheek from the hand he held his face in.
"I see, how insightful of you Tomura." Sensei replied after a moment.
Tomura pursed his lips, his brows furrowing.
Sensei's reaction was not what Tomura expected and Tomura felt somewhat disappointed by it.
Perhaps his perception wasn't at a high enough level yet but for some reason Sensei… didn't seem to be that happy or impressed by him starting to keep records.
Deku on the other hand praised him for his initiative and rewarded him with the current set of gloves he was sporting, ones that had a +12 dexterity and the normal quirk debuff that kept him from destroying everything he touched.
And maybe it was just the lag but Sensei's words felt… patronizing somehow? But Sensei wasn't doing that surely, it had to be some kind of feedback from the rebreather he was wearing that caused his dialog to come out wrong.
Tomura turned the T.V. on, already set to the right channel and the cartoonish wait screen bobbing cheerfully and stating that they would be watching the first-year festival in a few seconds.
Then they were greeted by the narrators of the event, there were always two and the first was a constant, Present Mic was a touch too hyper for him but Deku was right he was a good NPC making white-noise to grind too.
Hawks though was a surprising second narrator but he was looking forward to getting more data points on this hero.
There was the average generation of random student NPCs, none of them really catching his eye but the second hero class was only three characters and Tomura wondered if they would be stronger than the average student mob.
But when Deku was introduced next Tomura nearly dropped his pencil from how startled he was.
"Ah, the famous Deku-Sensei I've heard so much about... what an unexpected twist, hm Tomura?" Sensei commented.
Tomura swallowed then said "The DM role is a great way to see this NPC's alignment leanings." hoping that it would be the right choice to keep any suspicions at bay.
Sensei hummed again and Tomura guessed that was the best outcome he could have hoped for, he really didn't want Sensei to know about Deku and didn't want to hint even accidentally about encountering Deku.
And there was the uncomfortable crawling of his skin as he was forced to once again acknowledge that Sensei would probably get rid of Deku as soon as he could.
A fact that he found harder and harder to swallow each time he thought of it.
So instead, he focused on the lack of reaction from the crowd, because he could feel comfortably angry at those heroes that were ghosting Deku IRL.
But then the NPC from the hero class stepped up and due to the mix of random events lining up just right got one of the rarest cutscenes with an NPC's that had a chaotic lawful alignment as she called out the heroes.
Tomura couldn't help being endeared to the NPC as she went out of her way to defend Deku from the heroes, one that could see the bullshit and call it out was a rare thing to find in the heroes.
Deku had said there would be some true paragons in the bunch of NPCs and it looked like he was hard at work reinforcing their minds.
Before he could revel in the NPC's dialogue though Sensei gave a displeased hum and Tomura glanced back at Sensei a touch wary.
"That girl shall be a problem." Sensei said and Tomura's brows furrowed again.
"What do you mean, Sensei?" Tomura asked and Sensei chuckled reaching out a hand to ruffle his hair.
Instead of the expected warmth that anyways came from the action before now and Tomura's stomach twisted.
"Characters like that Tomura tend to be outspoken and they always cause us problems, better to snuff them out before they leave the ground and have a following of like-minded people." Sensei explained to him.
"What kind of problems?" Tomura asked, he already had an inkling but thinking about it made his guts churn.
Sensei threw a grin his way, one that held more teeth than Tomura remembered.
"Don't worry about it Tomura, I'll smooth away any wrinkles she causes, just pay attention to the screen." Sensei told him.
It was much harder to brush off how condescending that line from Sensei was.
Tomura did as Sensei asked though and turned back to the screen and watched the NPCs carefully, noting the characters weren't using their full move pool but was able to note what the rest of it was.
Deku had taught him how to read the motions enemies went through and if his fighting record was anything to go by, then he'd gotten very good at battlefield predictions.
And that made it even easier to figure out good strategies with and against certain quirks in the short time they were on screen, how useful they were overall.
This year was noticeably less harmful to the students, most likely because Deku set a much lower damage field for the students than the other DMs, something that unsurprisingly disappointed the heroes in the background.
Sensei had always called the Sports festival a legalized blood match.
But even though Sensei said this was a show of how depraved people had become he too seemed to be disappointed with the lack of bloodlust the students had and that they weren't actively using their quirks.
It isn't long before the festival ended, and Sensei shooed him away so he could talk with the doctor about something.
As Tomura walked out of the room feeling like a child sent to his room, then he exited the hall he was greeted by the rest of the facility which was clearly more suited for the doctor's experiments.
Something he normally wasn't hung up by but recently it seemed he found a newfound discomfort with the idea.
Looking down he saw one of the doctor's Nomu summons hopping along its way, it was no bigger than a corgi, with purple skin and six eyes surrounding the exposed brain and a foot long tongue hanging out of its mouth dragging on the floor underneath it.
Tomura knew that the size of the Nomu usually hinted at the age of the person used in the creation of the Nomu and that the small Nomu was most likely a very young child before the doctor got ahold of them.
The image of a child being twisted into the animal like Nomu it was now made his guts twist and Tomura swallowed turning away from the Nomu and walked down the hall quicker.
Ending up in the labyrinth of Nomu in cages, which wasn't helping him avoid the uncomfortable thoughts of Sensei and his doctor warping children.
So he tried to think of something else and opened his lore books flipping through the pages of his writing, the occasional drawing and doodle accompanying his notes, until he came to one of his earlier drawings of Deku as a game character.
Tomura felt his stomach drop and immediately closed the book warily glancing around to see if anyone could have seen his book. He couldn't believe he'd been foolish enough to take one of the books that had Deku in them to where Sensei was.
A croaking groan drew his attention and Tomura saw a turtle-like Nomu and a thought occurred to him and turned to his hand.
Maybe he could try and touch a Nomu, most of them used to be quirkless and he might still be able to touch them.
He cautiously approached the caged Nomu and removed one of his gloves, then reached forward hesitating slightly with his hand hovering over the nomu's head.
Then he lowered his hand.
And the nomu's flesh remained as it was, scales and skin different from Deku's own but still intact.
With his hitched breath Tomura felt relief as he stroked the nomu's head, its groaning quieted down.
The knowledge that even if Deku was turned into a Nomu he'd be able to still play with Deku's hair without the boy falling apart from his quirk was one of great relief.
Maybe Quirkless ally was a trainable skill? And all of his physical interaction with Deku had leveled the skill up so that he could also touch Nomu without hurting them now.
Stepping away Tomura saw another Nomu with a thick furry coat and he wanted to feel that one too, placing his hand on the neck of the horse like Nomu.
But this time he felt give as the nomu's flesh gave way and he quickly pulled his hand back finding it wet with blood.
Disbelief flooded Tomura.
He turned back to the Nomu and saw the hand shaped spot slowly healing over proving that his quirk worked on this Nomu, but why?
Why did one Nomu fall apart and the other didn't?
Tomura could count at least four quirks in both of the Nomu so they both were made from the quirkless and therefore they should have both fallen under the safety of his debuff right?
He racked his mind looking for an answer.
Until he remembered that Nomu were a created race and not a natural one, and there were two ways to make Nomu.
Either directly by Sensei or by a gene treatment by the doctor.
Perhaps that made them into two sub-classes of Nomu?
One that was protected by his debuff and the other that wasn't, the only question was which of the two was safe? Sensei's Nomu or the doctor's?
A ring from his forgotten phone broke Tomura out of his thoughts.
Tomura wiped the blood off of his hand and answered the call, the ringtone being that of Greenzilla.
"Someone must be dying if you're calling me." Tomura tried to joke, Greenzilla usually texted him after all.
The silence on the other end made him pause.
"Zilla?" Tomura called after a minute.
"Chase can you come meet me? Right now?" Greenzilla asked, a seriousness to his tone that peeled away Tomura's previous humor.
"Yeah, what's up?" Tomura questioned.
"It's about Miles, I'll text you my location just get here as soon as you can." Greenzilla told him before hanging up on him.
*Miles?* Tomura thought his heart skipping a beat.
A ding from his phone showed he got the text from Greenzilla and Tomura read it quickly before calling up Giri for a portal.
Sensei had already dismissed him, and his party needed him.
For anyone who's curious, Tenko can only safely touch the Nomus made by AFO.
This is because when AFO 'gives someone a quirk', it is just adding the genes that make up a quirk and therefore, leaving the person still a two-toes biologically but one with mutations from '"natural" evolution.
The doctor, on the other hand, needs to use the 'base' quirk gene everyone has as a backbone in a person to add the created quirk copies and then later turn them into Nomus through a complicated series of gene splicing, making them no longer two-toes.
As 'mutations' to a two-toes wouldn't raise alarms to the Decay quirk since no two humans have the exact same genome, hence why Izuku, who has a mutation for green hair, wasn't killed for not being a vanilla human like we are.