Im suffering in organic chemistry now. Pray for my soul.

I'm normally not that religious, but organic chemistry made me believe in god. For now. When it's convenient.

/j

-SpiritOfErebus

…

There was a knock on the door, and Ema Akari stood up from her dining table.

It was Monday. Normally, her husband would have gone to work very early in the morning. Normally, she would have waved goodbye, packed him a lunch, and then prepared to go to her own job as well.

Today was not normal. Because, on Friday, he had gone missing. Thousands of people across the globe had gone missing simultaneously. It was the largest missing persons case… ever.

But, at the same time, if one thought about it globally, there were only thousands that had gone missing. Why did one of them have to be her husband?

Akari trudged over to the door, her slippers scraping along the slightly dusty wooden floors. The mop's bucket was half filled, and the mop was still haphazardly propped up against the wall as she had finally seen what had happened on the evening news.

Slowly, she opened the door.

"Yes, hello?" she said, dully.

"Hello." a black-haired woman said, wearing a suit and smiling. Something felt… off… about the woman. The look was a little off, and the smile was a little too happy. "I'm here to talk to you regarding your missing persons case."

Nevertheless, the woman wanted to help. Akari would take any help she could get. Everything will get better… right?

…

Rather than classmates getting involved in villain activity being the key talking point of the morning, attentions turned to the missing persons cases that Kiara had probably caused.

"It has to be a villain attack, right?" Kaminari declared "It doesn't make sense, otherwise."

"I don't know, kero." Asui said, expression neutral, yet still clearly thinking. "I think doing it across the globe is something that no organization can accomplish."

Asui was right. Kiara had made the disappearances happen, not because she forced each and every person to go to what were probably local churches or warehouses, but because the people wanted to go.

This was why Kiara was so very dangerous. The only reason that Hans was spared from a lot of the brainwashing was because Kiara… didn't want to.

Yeah.

That was it.

Back in the moon cell, he was under a command seal, not brainwashed.

"Hey, midget!" a familiar, angry voice shouted. "How does it feel to be the hero so weak that the villain just… let them go?"

"What?" Hans said, genuinely confused. "What do you mean? What do you mean I was just let go?"

"When you fought that smoke villain." Bakugo smirked. "You were just let go."

"Ah." Hans said. That was probably what it seemed like from the outside.

"Well, Iida and Ingenium were also just freed, as was everybody else."

"What kind of shitty excuse is that?"

"Bakugo-san!" Iida said, standing up and defending both himself, and probably Hans by proxy. "Whatever the result was, the villain was subdued. Letting villains reach the limit of their quirks is a valid way to defeat them!"

As the two descended into a normal argument… by their standards, Hans turned around to speak to Yaoyorozu.

"So, how did your internship go?"

"I actually learned about a lot of support items." Yaoyorozu smiled. "It was pretty interesting. Producing microelectronics was not something that I was used to beforehand, but with my mentor's aid in understanding more electrical engineering principles, I will be able to produce more complicated contraptions in the future!"

"Good, good." Hans nodded.

"Who did you intern with?" Todoroki, who just so happened to sit next to Yaoyorozu, said.

"David Shield." Yaoyorozu said, smiling. "He's an accomplished scientist on I-Island. How did your internship go, Todoroki-san?"

"...It was okay." Todoroki sighed. "I practiced more with my fire."

For a moment, they sat in silence. Todoroki's not-very-descriptive statement had somewhat killed the flow of conversations. Not wanting to remain in silence forever, Hans chose to speak.

"So…" Hans said, to break the silence. "About that local news story…"

"Oh, the disappearances." Yaoyorozu said. "It's not very local, though, is it? There were thousands of disappearances around the world. An exceptionally powerful villain must have done this, especially for the disappearances to occur simultaneously and not be reported until their loved ones noticed something was off."

"It has to have been a cult." Todoroki said. "It only makes sense that way."

"Why… would you think that?" Yaoyorozu said. "A cult that was able to amass thousands of members must have been discovered by investigative heroes."

"An influencer I watch said that." Todoroki said.

Hans looked at Todoroki strangely.

"...What?" Todoroki said. "Am I wrong?"

"You may be onto something." Hans nodded.

"You don't seriously agree with him?" Yaoyorozu said, flabbergasted. "A cult? In this day and age? With the base level of education that most people have these days, combined with the decrease in belief in the supernatural as a side effect of the social theory of quirk pervasiveness, nobody would believe in cults."

"You'd be surprised." Todoroki said, looking at Yaoyorozu. "Who knows? You could be in a cult without realizing that you're in a cult."

"I… I am not in a cult!" Yaoyorozu said, almost offended.

"Then why did you come out of a classroom about one month ago, confused about what month it was?"

"That was training!" Yaoyorozu gasped indignantly.

"Exactly." Todoroki said, staring at Yaoyorozu.

"Actually, it's a side effect of one of my quirk's abilities." Hans said. "I can create mental training sessions if I write the scene beforehand. Remember the thing during the sports festival?"

"Ah, yes. That." Todoroki said, putting a fist in a palm. "So that's why no time passes after you hit me with one of those things."

"Time did pass." Hans said. "But it's severely slowed down when you're in one of my quirk's created scenes."

"You can just… do that?" Midoriya said, turning around in his own seat, mouth open with surprise. His hands shot to his notebooks, and he began to furiously scribble in it.

"Can I… experience it?" Todoroki said.

"Well, I don't really know how to train your quirk." Hans sighed. "And it'll take a lot of preparation time that I don't really have. Besides, I don't feel like it."

Yaoyorozu smiled, for no apparent reason at all, and Hans gave her a strange look, before turning back to Todoroki.

"So, do you want to talk about the stuff that I've collectively said to you near the periods of the sports festival?"

"Sure." Todoroki said. "I am still a bit confused."

Soon, Aizawa shuffled into the room, and they were all dragged into the next exercise.

…

"A mobility exercise." Hans deadpanned, thinking back to the obstacle course race, the recommended exams, and the quirk assessment test. "Really? Again?"

"It is odd." Yaoyorozu muttered. "You'd think UA would have more variety in its exercises. Instead, all of them seem to be glorified races."

"Exactly!" Hans said. "We actually agree on something that's weird about UA, for once in our lives!"

"That is also odd." Yaoyorozu said, smirking slightly.

"Well, it's an exercise to rescue somebody." Kirishima said. "Too bad I'm going to suck at it…"

"Hey, don't give up so easily." Ojiro said. "Even if your quirk isn't perfect for the situation, you should still try, right? As heroes, we have to step up to face any situation."

"How generically shounen of you, Ojiro." Hans said.

"Thanks, I try." Ojiro said proudly.

As the first five people stepped up to the plate, which included Midoriya, the first round of the exercises was about to begin.

"Who do you think will win?" Yaoyorozu said. "There are a lot of people with mobility quirks in this group. Sero has the advantage in an urban environment, but Ojiro and his appendages would have a leverage advantage."

"It's obviously going to be Sero." Hans said. "But given the fact that Midoriya has had more time to train, he'll probably pull out something unexpectedly."

"His quirk doesn't really help with his mobility, though." Yaoyorozu said, thinking. "It's moreso about strength than speed."

"All Might is fast, isn't he?" Hans said. "Strength quirks actually just mean stronger movements in general."

Hearing the discussion, Ojiro gritted his teeth.

…

"And… Begin!" All Might shouted.

The five of them sprang into action. Across the urban jungle, the goal was to get to some place that was close to the far end of the training grounds. Iida chose to go on the low ground, taking his speed advantage to the maximum. Sero swung up with his tape, while Ashido used her acid to climb up at a relatively rapid pace.

Then, Midoriya shot past Ojiro with a super-strength empowered jump.

In the middle of his second jump to attain elevation, Ojiro looked at the receding green blur.

"I can't be falling behind now, can I?" Ojiro muttered, swinging up with his tail once more. "I may have won the sports festival race with teamwork, but am I really just going to… lie down, and watch him get ahead of me?"

Like Hans had said, maybe he did have the fate of a side character. Now, he was at the tallest point of the building closest to their starting point, but Sero and Midoriya were still far ahead of him, while Mina was somewhat behind. Iida was nowhere to be seen, running below all of them.

Taking a deep breath, Ojiro began to run.

"He may have the speed advantage, but I have precision." Ojiro thought. "I also have more leverage than him, so while he has more strength, I can use what I have more effectively."

Swinging along wouldn't give him enough speed. He would need to parkour.

Jumping off the highest point, Ojiro leapt from pipe to pipe, occasionally pushing with his tail behind him in order to generate more speed.

He was going faster now. The pipes were a blur, and the brick walls became mere flashes of red as he went onwards… and onwards… and onwards. He juggled balance rapidly, occasionally abandoning stable footing in order to continue going forwards.

Honestly, the competition didn't matter. As sweat slowly began to appear and his heart began to pound, Ojiro smiled.

The competition didn't really matter. All that mattered was that he was improving.

Still, he was a little happy when Midoriya tripped, before having to resist the urge to stop and make sure Midoriya was okay.

…After which, he felt a little guilty.

…

"This is quite the trip." Yaoyorozu observed. "Are you sure you can make it?"

"Well, I've picked up a couple new tricks." Hans said. Nursery Rhyme, floating behind him, bobbed up and down.

"Hey, dude, has your book always been like that? I thought it was a tablet." Kirishima said, investigating the floating artifact. The book shook angrily at Kirishima, but did nothing.

"Oh, it gained sentience." Hans said, before pointing at the indistinct, yellow and white blob in the distance. "Wow, Ojiro's really pulling ahead."

"...What?"

"Yeah, Ojiro's pulling ahead." Hans said. "Is it that surprising?"

"Your book has gained sentience." Yaoyorozu repeated.

"Is that really the weirdest thing in this world?" Hans said, raising an eyebrow, before pointing to Tokoyami.

"His quirk has sentience."

Hans pointed at his summons.

"They have sentience."

Then, he pointed at Jirou.

"She has electronic equipment sticking out of her face."

"Hey!" Jirou said indignantly.

"How does something mechanical even get into somebody's DNA?" Hans questioned. "It literally doesn't make sense. What's even weirder are the people with guns for hands or something. After all, our biology has no way of knowing what any of this stuff is. It's all genetics, right? Then how the hell did we carve mechanical things into our DNA?"

There was a moment of silence. Even Bakugo thought about the process, which was a rare moment of silence for him.

"...Memes?" Kaminari suggested, grinning.

"Dude, you played Revengeance?" Kirishima gasped. "I thought I was the only one!"

"Hell yeah. I've fried two consoles." Kaminari responded, pointing two finger guns at Kirishima.

"That's… not a good thing."

"No." Hans deadpanned. "Anyways, my point is that an aspect of my quirk gaining sentience, given the fact that other parts of my quirk have gained sentience, is not the weirdest thing in the world."

"Fair point." Yaoyorozu sighed. "So, your book is sentient now. Are there any implications?"

"You'll see." Hans shrugged.

"I apologize for asking more questions, but how can something gain sentience?" Tokoyami asked, dark shadow floating behind him. "It's not something that can be spread… right?"

Hans grinned, and said nothing.

"...Right?"

"They're almost done." Hans observed, turning back to the race.

"Right!?" Tokoyami half-shouted to the sky, his eyes uncharacteristically wide and panicked. As he was about to check inside his cloak for other instances of Dark Shadow, Hans began to explain.

"But, yeah. The book probably always had sentience." Hans shrugged, trying to come up with a bullshit explanation for why Nursery Rhyme was definitely a part of Hans's quirk and not actually the people-consuming villain from last friday.

"It probably slowly accumulated experience, given the amount of things I've written in it, and eventually reached a critical mass of experience."

"I see." Tokoyami said, sighing in relief. "So, my shadow won't gain sentience?"

"Not unless it already had sentience."

"...That's actually not very reassuring."

"Well, you can cope with the cosmic horror that is physics and biology in this world of wacky, zany superpowers." Hans said, walking up and patting Tokoyami on the back. Dark Shadow quivered before Hans's understanding of the supernatural and sentience, apparently sharing his owner's fright about there being more sentient shadows.

"It's my turn to perform UA's favorite activity. Racing."

…

"Before you taunt me, Bakugo, I already know I'm probably going to lose." Hans said, just as Bakugo was about to say something.

Bakugo closed his mouth, before turning and opening his mouth again.

"Before you say 'it's good that you know your place, midget', or something to that effect, I just wanted to say that your behavior is so foul that it's very predictable, at this point." Hans sighed.

Opening and closing his mouth a bit, Bakugo chose to say nothing, before clenching his fists within his oversized gauntlets and releasing them again.

"Are you ready?" All Might said, raising his flag.

Now, unlike a lot of protagonists in fiction, Hans felt absolutely no need to suppress his actual combat abilities. Since he was, by no means, anybody that could afford the luxury of hiding his powers and "surprising" the enemy with them, since his powers were all really, really weak, he really should try in these exercises, so that his classmates could know how much of an embarrassing loser he was… and account for that in their planning.

Or, well, even better, just leave him out of whatever they were planning.

Nursery Rhyme's noble phantasm was a different story, but it was very expensive mana-wise. And not applicable in this situation.

However, Nursery Rhyme herself (itself? could a book be considered a her? Hans was not going down this rabbit hole, no pun intended (get it, because Alice in Wonderland?)) was actually applicable.

Despite everything, she was a floating, physical form.

That could be exploited.

"You ready, Kirishima?"

"I mean, what can I do?" Kirishima said, his fist tightening. "I can harden my body and stuff. Since we're supposed to keep property damage to a minimum, I can't even punch my way through these walls or something."

"Exactly." Hans sighed. "Which is why we should all be training for specialized positions, instead of just generally training everything. I thought that an elitist society would account better for individual differences."

"But the point of being a hero is not caring about our limitations, right?" Kirishima said, pumping his fist in an effort to increase his determination or something. "What if we're put into an environment where we do need to run through the equivalent of an obstacle course rase? We can't just give up!"

"Well, part of having a patrol route is to avoid such situations." Hans said. "In fact, a big part of being prepared and being even just a police officer is specializations, in different areas or capturing different villains. This is why animal control exists adjacent to the police force system in some countries. It's… probably okay to suck at something that you're not naturally talented for."

Bakugo scoffed. "That's just because-"

"-You're weak." Hans said, finishing Bakugo's statement. "Only fucking weaklings would think about shit like that."

Bakugo fell silent. As did everybody else.

"Just… please, stop, Bakugo." Hans sighed. "The world doesn't revolve around you, and at this point, everybody knows what you're going to say. So, do everybody a favor, and stop talking."

A slightly sweaty All Might looked at the exchange and decided to finally start the exercise, just so he could separate the two.

As Bakugo blasted off, with roars about death or something, Kirishima ran into the urban jungle. Kaminari followed suit, his quirk entirely useless to the situation as well. All Might was able to speed off into the distance, way faster than all of them, and using her quirk, Jirou was able to probably echolocate All Might's position, which was honestly pretty impressive, given the fact that Bakugo was within five hundred meters of her.

And Hans? Hans became a sheet of paper.

Well, not really.

While, to all intents and purposes, Hans had disappeared to the observer's eye, he was actually tucked into Nursery Rhyme it/herself.

As Hans uncomfortably nestled himself into Nursery Rhyme's constantly existing reality marble, which was why Nursery Rhyme took so much magical energy to maintain, the book itself then began to fly. Since reality marbles did not have the concept of conventional weight, the addition of Hans into the tiny little compartment in the reality marble's unexpanded form didn't affect the book's speed at all.

What was the book's speed?

Flying at about five meters a second.

…Yeah, it really wasn't that fast. But at least it was flying.

That, in and of itself, was able to put Hans ahead of Jiro, Kirishima, and Kaminiari.

As Hans tumbled out of the book, massaging his knees and elbows for being trapped in a pocket in whatever the hell a reality marble's relationship to the actual world was, Bakugo once again, opened his mouth to say something.

Then, looking at Hans's expression, he said nothing, and looked down at his own gauntlets.

Was he really being too predictable?

…

Finally, Monday was over.

Despite today's multitude of races, the announcement that final exams would be happening soon, and the fact that after this day, there were four more days of soul crushing things known as math classes, everything was okay.

Bakugo was finally being quiet, thinking about… something… on his way out. Maybe it was Hans's statement about him being predictable.

Was that honestly the thing that affected Bakugo? Being predictable?

As Bakugo speed walked through the hallways and disappeared as he turned a corner, Hans slowed down his own pace so that Ojiro, Kirishima, and Yaoyorozu continued to walk forwards.

"Do you need to do something, dude?" Kirishima said, turning his head and grinning. "We can wait for you."

"It might take a while." Hans said. "I'm going to go talk to Todoroki."

Hans turned and looked for the teenager who had an expression that seemed like it was carved instead of just present on a normal, fleshy human face.

At last, upon entering the classroom, Hans realized that Todoroki had never left. Walking back to his old seat and staring out the window, Hans looked at the sun. It was still reasonably high above the horizon, but the tall buildings that surrounded UA made it seem like the sun was already disappearing.

"Beautiful day, isn't it?" Hans asked, trying to gauge Todoroki's mood.

"Why am I here?" Todoroki responded, straightforward and blunt.

"...You really don't know how to make conversation." Hans sighed. "So, that's the question you want answered?"

"Indeed." Todoroki nodded.

"I'd assume you want to ask why you are here in this school, rather than the much more nebulous and cliche 'why do I exist' question. It's more so probably questioning why you're here to be a hero, correct?"

Todoroki nodded again.

"You know what, I'm not exactly sure." Hans shrugged.

"You don't know? But you said all that stuff back at the sports festival."

"Well, yes, I did, but I was only making a point." Hans shrugged. "It's not like I'm you. Even though I generally understand you, I don't know every single bit of your backstory. Though, if you want, I can make an educated guess about what you want. Just answer a couple of questions."

Todoroki grabbed a chair, and sat down.

"Do you think what villains are doing is wrong?"

"Yes." Todoroki said. No hesitation.

"Do you want to be the one to stop them?"

"Well, I can do it." Todoroki muttered.

"That's not the question." Hans said, staring at Todoroki and his weird eye colors. One eye was blue, while the other was gray. Gray wasn't actually a good color for your eye to be, as it came with a variety of health risks, and could even indicate that you were blind on that eye. However, in the mystical world of anime, it probably didn't matter.

"...It's kind of become a habit." Todoroki sighed. "I've been taught that I should be doing it all my life, so not doing it feels… wrong. Do you understand? But I still don't know if I actually want to do this."

"Did you really do anything on your internship?"

"...I trained my fire." Todoroki said, holding up his left hand, before looking at it being tinted orange in the slowly setting sun.

"That's it?" Hans said, raising an eyebrow.

"Endeavor also wanted to try to catch Stain." Todoroki said, slightly resentfully. "But the Hero Killer never showed up in Hosu. Stain's been dormant for quite a while, too, so I don't really know what he was hoping for."

"So you don't actually have any villain catching experience?"

"Minus the USJ?" Todoroki said, thinking. "No."

"Well…" Hans said, thinking of something that he was doing that could also use a competent quirk user.

"How would you like to join me in getting some experience?"

"What kind?"

"An investigation." Hans said. "You were right this morning. A cult did cause the disappearances."

"A rival of yours?"

"What? You think I run a cult?" Hans said, raising an eyebrow.

"Aren't Kirishima, Yaoyorozu, and Ojiro part of your cult?" Todoroki said, nodding to himself. "So, you've finally made your move to eliminate the competition."

"Are you… being serious?"

Todoroki smirked.

"No."

The two sat in silence for a little longer. Together, they looked out of the window. Hans was amazed at the fact that Todoroki had a sense of humor. Todoroki… felt like his throat was a little dry. This was the longest conversation he had actually talked in for a while.

"...Hans?"

"Yeah?"

"When do we start?"

…

AN

I wonder who the mysterious woman at the start of the chapter is.

Now, it's time for "normal" "school" "life"in the fic. Definitely. Definitively. Totally. Absolutely.

…Probably?

Join the discord to get an accurate description of what the future may hold. Hopefully, its not going to be a hiatus.

discord . gg / s2uFUydRVd

-SpiritOfErebus