Nexus: Heroes Will Rise

by tmb1112

Universal borders have been erased and beings from thousands of universes now live on the same world: Nexus. In the first Saga of Nexus, Awul was saved, but the mysteries of Nexus remain. Now our heroes sail across the sea to Aebrith to search for lost loved ones and save the world. MCs from DBZ, KH, Soul Eater, FT, Blue Exorcist, Bleach, 7DS, OP, Ben 10, SAO, HxH, and many more!

117. Nexus HWR 16-9 School's Out

Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail, My Hero Academia, Powerpuff Girls, DBZ, One Piece, Star Vs TFOE, Gundam, Assassination Classroom, X-Men, Avatar TLA, Magi, Chowder, The Simpsons, Star Wars, Hunter x Hunter, Archer, Marvel, or any of the other properties you may recognize characters and settings from in this chapter... except for one this time. I do own Death, a fanfic about My Hero Academia which I do not own, but the OC from that story that I've spent the past several years writing is my own... ;) FORESHADOWING!

Nexus HWR 16.9 School's Out:

"I know you feel it's still too soon," Jura Neekis said as he stood outside the front gates of a wall that spread for miles in either direction of him. He could not see over the wall, and even when he was higher up in the ship he used to get there, he could see nothing thanks to the cloaking mechanisms in place on the wall. Inside of its boundaries he only saw a giant empty grass field with small mountains around it, but Jura doubted even the geography was as it seemed within those walls. He stood in front of three people who did not look happy to see him, even if the small figure in the center of the three was smiling.

"Jura-san," the short white creature began. It had the face of a bear, the paws of a dog, but the furry creature most resembled a mouse. On its small white face was a dark scar going down over his right eye diagonally with no fur growing over it. Nezu skipped the formalities and continued, "Have you come for the children?"

"Just to look, today," Jura replied. Though his expression was grim and his words sounded apologetic, the dark looks on the faces of the two men standing behind Nezu did not change.

"What are you looking for?" Shota Aizawa questioned. He was a scruffy man with stubble all over the bottom of his light-skinned face. His black hair was long and unkempt, falling down his back and over his shoulders with bangs that dropped down into the middle of his face over his nose but stayed out of his eyes. He wore black clothes but had gray bandages wrapped around his shoulders and neck all the way up to his chin which made him look all the more scruffy. Aizawa's eyes were half-closed, but he had a pair of yellow goggles pulled up on top of his head ready to be brought over his eyes at a moment's notice if he needed to use his Quirk.

"Exceptional students," Jura replied. "I will not lie to you, heroes." He said firmly, standing his ground despite starting on a line of conversation he knew they did not want to hear. "We believe you've held your students back from graduation because emotions are getting in the way."

"It's not just about graduating," Aizawa said in a low voice, sounding annoyed as he brought it up. "They can graduate and still become heroes-"

"But that is not what you are looking for, correct?" Nezu asked in his high-pitched, almost squeaky voice. Jura shook his head, and Nezu frowned before saying, "You wish to recruit our students for the exterior Squads."

"Elite Squads," Jura corrected.

"Which operate on the exterior of Resistance boundaries," Nezu continued without pause after Jura made his correction. "Therefore, they are exterior Squads. They perform the most dangerous missions, missions that are not always heroic in nature."

"We will take into account their training and personalities when they are assigned to teams. You know that mission assignments are determined on that," Jura said, keeping a respectful tone even as he made the reminder he was sure the mouse hybrid did not forget.

Nezu hummed and continued to frown. Ectoplasm breathed out and some white fog came out of his mouth. This third person meeting Jura at the entrance gates had stayed quiet so far, but his exhale was not a silent one and it released a gaseous substance around in front of him that lingered for a few seconds before dissipating. Jura glanced over at the teacher whose body was covered in a thin black material, who had yellow lines cutting up his costume underneath the large trench coat he wore, only to disappear under his helmet to keep his head looking fully black. Only Ectoplasm's eyes and mouth stayed white which gave him a somewhat monstrous appearance, especially for a man meant to be a hero. Jura did not back down at their unwavering dark looks, and he turned back to Nezu who had a more thoughtful look on his face than the others. "I know, you think it is too soon," Jura said, repeating what he told them when he first arrived and saw their hostile expressions. "But we're losing. We are losing this war, and every day more land is taken from all sides."

"The state of the world doesn't change the fact that they're not ready-" Ectoplasm got cut off as Jura darted a powerful look in his direction.

"It must," Jura said. "Their training must coincide with the current state of the world. If they go any slower than what is required by their environment, we are all doomed." Jura looked over into Aizawa's eyes and continued, "I am here today to seek out the most promising members of this school. We have sent more and more children here since establishing the Hero School, but rarely any ever graduate. Inside your walls are the hopes of billions."

"And you want to drag them out of school and throw them on the front lines," Aizawa said in a monotone voice, though he did narrow his eyes at Jura. "If you need more soldiers, I'll join a Squad."

Ectoplasm darted his gaze to the side and Nezu looked behind him with a surprised look as well. "I'm worth a hundred of those inexperienced, unprepared children. Just me will be enough."

"Unfortunately, that is not an option," Jura said, and Aizawa's eyes narrowed more. "As there are more students here than ever, we cannot accept the loss of a teacher, especially when there are so few of you remaining." Jura's words struck a harsh cord but also a necessary one, and Aizawa leaned back while frowning deeply as he knew what Jura said to be true. "Your lecture halls are filling. There are students who have been here for years who-"

"Who act as heroes when the interior is attacked," Nezu said.

"That is the biggest problem," Jura said. He shook his head at their expressions and said, "The few students who have graduated this academy are the most beloved heroes of Leam and the associated Resistance nations. The refugee cities praise them as the only ones who keep any order in their worlds that have been full of so much chaos. You send your best students out to see what your alumni do, act as they do, and receive the same attention and praise as they do. You're teaching them to want that type of life when they graduate, and that's not why they are here."

"That life is a good-" Ectoplasm got cut off, but this time by the principal.

"However, it is a lifestyle that will no longer be applicable in the real world very soon," Nezu countered his own staff member's complaint. Then the mouse-man sighed and turned his back to Jura. He started for the gates while the two heroes behind him looked at him in surprise.

Aizawa lost his surprised look after a second though, and he muttered, "He's just here to look today, but tomorrow-"

"When Jura-san returns to Resistance Headquarters, I will accompany him. I will do everything I can to ensure that no unprepared student is sent into battle," Nezu said.

"What if they don't listen to you?" Ectoplasm asked. He did not keep his voice down, and he glared at Jura after saying it as if giving a warning.

"Then there is nothing we can do," Nezu replied. The darkest man there spun back to the principal of the Hero School in surprise, but Nezu did not break stride. "This school was built by the Resistance under my suggestion, but as the principal I am not actually in charge of this establishment. Jura-san was very respectful to wait so long for us to open the doors for him."

Aizawa hated to agree, but he muttered as he walked behind Nezu, "The training equipment, supplies, strength enhancements, the Resistance puts a lot of effort into this place for little results. Sooner or later I knew they'd stop asking, and start making demands." Aizawa's expression darkened and he said, "I didn't think that day would come this soon though."

Ectoplasm growled in agreement. The hero from his old world was also a teacher, and the idea of sending his students into war was not one he took lightly.

The gates of the Hero School opened inwards. Jura followed after the two teachers and the principal, a deep frown on his face after the conversation he just had. It is difficult for me to be the tough Commander. I did not feel comfortable with Hiei or Kiryuin coming here though. I feared they would sweep up the entire school. Still, I must not let my own emotions get in the way. I must truly search for the best and brightest in this academy to bring into the fold.

Jura walked through the gates, and the air in front of him shimmered and changed. He knew the cloaking system was there, and he just kept walking as buildings started appearing before him. All of the grass that he had seen on the other side of the gate vanished. Instead, he walked down a flattened dirt path with wide lakes on his sides that stretched from the walls to a few hundred yards away where the path he was on connected to a giant dirt field.

On the field just beyond the water, Jura spotted dozens of students. He did not see any teachers who he would have recognized, and Nezu explained as they walked forward down the path. "The fields you see ahead are for the students' independent training. The ones you see right now are students who have free periods."

"Free periods," Jura repeated, his voice sounding disapproving.

"As much as you want them to be future soldiers," Aizawa started. "For now, they're still children and teens, and this is a school."

"They do have very strenuous schedules, six days a week," Nezu said. He continued to explain with a smile on his face, "All of the students understand that they will be called upon one day. They know the responsibilities that will be put on their shoulders, so even during their free periods and day off, many of them take that time to further advance themselves." The high-pitched, unfazed voice of the principal had Aizawa calm down a little, and he just gazed around the field at his students there. He checked most closely the ones he would be nervous about the Resistance recruiting.

"They look quite skilled," Jura said. "You have done marvelous jobs teaching them," he complimented.

"You are too kind, Jura-san," Nezu replied. "It is only half thanks to the effort of the teachers, but the students themselves must receive due credit."

"I see," Jura said. He nodded while watching children who could have had time off but were instead sparring with each other or training their various powers. "It is a good work ethic then that your school instills in them," he said.

Nezu opened his mouth to mention how the students could be this determined on their own, but he closed it and decided to allow Jura to compliment them. The respectful man seemed to want them to accept it, and Nezu wondered if that was because Jura was one of those who argued for increased funding and support of the Hero School. "Thank you," Nezu responded, hoping that Jura would continue to support their school as long as it produced results like what he was currently seeing.

"Shall we sit in on a class?" Nezu wondered as they neared the end of the path. Beyond the first huge dirt field was a round building several stories tall with windows lining every floor. Jura looked closer at the building and could tell it was meant for lecture classes where the rooms inside would be curved farther from the middle with all the students sitting on the outsides. He looked to the right of that building and saw a four story, more rectangular building that he suspected had smaller classes in it. He could see children in the windows of that building, young ones from the looks of it, though he was pretty far away and could not tell for sure.

Jura looked the other way and saw four very tall buildings lined up on a street that also had a few food stops and clothing shops on it. Dorms, Jura thought as his eyes scanned up the tall buildings and he saw curtains covering many of the windows, some clothes hanging out to dry on balconies, and even a few kids who must not have had class at the time. Those students were not using their break time to the best extent of their abilities and Jura's expression furrowed at the sight of it. Results. Not all of them will be perfect, but there will be results.

"No," Jura finally responded to the mouse-like principal. "I would like to see your most advanced training facilities."

Aizawa frowned deeper at that, while Nezu nodded and told the Resistance Commander, "Of course." Aizawa stared off around the right side of the giant rounded building ahead of them. They would go between it and the rectangular school building full of smaller classes that were more personalized and consisted of mostly electives. Aizawa thought grimly to himself, The best of them spend the most time in the advanced training hall. Jura suspects that he'll find the strongest students in there, and he's not wrong. The underclassmen don't feel as big a sense of urgency. The ones who know that any day they could be called out, who have the most experience already, they're the ones who take the hardest classes which take place in that hall. And during their free time too, as long as there're no classes going on, they're always in there. Unfortunately, I'm sure many are in there right now.

As they walked between the large lecture-hall building and the longer one full of smaller classes on the right, Jura turned and watched a game of baseball going on behind the long school. He turned from the small game to the building next to it, and he asked interestedly, "What classes go on in there? The class sizes must be small."

"Yes, no class in Career Hall is over thirty students in size," Nezu replied.

"You have enough teachers for that?" Jura asked in surprise.

"Most of the teachers are not ones you know," Nezu explained. Jura looked confused, and Nezu continued while leading past the buildings. "Not all of our students wish to be heroes. Not all of them want to fight in wars forever either. Many are here because they know their powers will help in this tumultuous world, but they also hold onto the hope that when the wars are won and the world is a safe place, they can enter the fields of their choosing. Some of our students want to be artists, some engineers, others want to be politicians, world leaders, and yet others want to follow in their teachers' footsteps and educate future generations."

Jura nodded his head along with Nezu, a more thoughtful look on his face than the two dark heroes thought he would have. "Just because we are asking a lot from them, does not mean we should expect them to give up on their dreams." Jura agreed in a firm tone. "These classes do not take away from their training?"

"No one can train all day," Aizawa replied, though his tone was the calmest it had been with Jura since he arrived. "Practical training can only last for so long, even if we are cramming and rushing them to be stronger. Of course they have other classes that pertain to studying the current state of the world, the wars of the past, science and math as well. If they were only allowed to have classes that we forced them to take though, we could not keep the morale of the students as high as it is."

"I have noticed that," Jura cut in. "All of your students have smiles on their faces. Those training out in front of the building on our left were determined and focused, but I could tell they do not carry the same burdens as most people I see on Nexus. Their minds are not full of the horrors of this world. And those who have seen them look to have overcome their darknesses while here," Jura mentioned the last part because he knew it would be wrong of him to assume that none of the children had their own issues and hardships since arriving on Nexus.

Aizawa nodded at what Jura said, but his expression darkened as he thought about many of the students in the largest building of all the Hero School that they were now walking towards who Jura would not have said the same thing about. The building was rounded like the lecture hall, but it was a bit taller, over twice as large in circumference, and it had a dome over the roof. The building was a deep black color unlike the white and beige buildings around the rest of the school's campus. Beyond the building, Jura could see different kinds of geographical features spreading around the landscape all the way to distant perimeter walls. There were small mountains, rocky cliffs, rivers and lakes, he even saw tall skyscrapers in one section. Must be a training area for an urban environment, Jura thought with a hum, as he knew there was not actually a city over there. He focused back on the training hall ahead of him and started walking towards the thirty foot tall white doors that looked out of place on the building made almost entirely of hard black steel.

"Strange design," Jura said as they neared those front doors.

"It'd be a fire hazard otherwise," Ectoplasm said. Jura looked at him wondering what he meant, and the teacher continued, "The walls of the building are meant to withstand the attacks from our strongest student. If there is an emergency, breaking down the front doors may become necessary if the other ways out are blocked."

"I see," Jura said. His gaze lifted above the doors they were approaching. He stared at the yellow plaque over it labeled, 'All Might Hall.' Jura paused as they reached the building and said the name aloud. The others turned back to him, and Jura said while looking down at them, "He was an inspiration."

Aizawa sighed and Jura became confused at the response. But he never could become the Symbol of Peace he wanted to recreate on this world, Aizawa thought. Aloud though, he said, "That he was."

"Let us go inside," Nezu said. He spun with a smile on his cute face, and Ectoplasm walked up next to him to grab the doorknob which was not too high up but would have been slightly difficult for Nezu to reach. The regular doorknob only opened a partial normal-sized door from the larger one meant for giants. Nezu walked in and his teachers followed, and Jura walked in behind them only to let out a small gasp at the amazing building before him.

The massive interior housed much more than an advanced training room or gym as Jura had expected based on funding descriptions. He entered right onto a balcony that overlooked the main interior of the building. He could see all the way to the walls on either side and far to the opposite side as the entrance he came through. High up above him was a flat black ceiling lower down than he knew the roof to be. The domed building had several floors, but just the first already had Jura stunned.

The room he looked down into was split into five sections. The largest section was rounded and took up the center circle of the floor. A third of the room's total area in the exact center circle was risen higher in elevation than the other sections around it. There were ropes around the edge of the section, and Jura could see it was meant as an arena even though no one was currently fighting on it. Bright lights shone down from the ceiling where there were panels attached to the hard black steel. Jura looked up at them because he was wondering if there was only one more floor above them, or if this training building had as many floors as the lecture hall, or more.

"The personalized training equipment you put orders in for," Jura began.

"And which you so kindly provided," Nezu continued for him before pointing a finger on one of his dog paws straight up. "Are on the third floor. That floor is personalized for students. Those who put in the requests for their own training gear were given rooms on the third floor equal to one hundredth of the area of this building."

"There are more than a hundred students at this school," Jura said, wondering how they addressed this problem.

"Not everyone needs their own training supplies," Aizawa responded. "Some of them like having rooms to train in private, but they can use their own dorm rooms or the vast wilderness around us for that. Only the ones who made cases for why they needed special equipment and how it would help their powers grow were granted them."

"I understand," Jura said. "And as for the non-specific training mechanisms? The kind we only have at Resistance Headquarters, and here, to prevent their designs from getting into the wrong hands." None of them wanted their enemies getting huge boosts in power from training equipment their allies had invented. Some people would say it was only equipment, but the results that certain gear and machines could give people were no joking matter.

"Second floor," Ectoplasm replied in his scratchy low voice.

"That is what we call the 'Gym,'" Nezu began. "We should go up there now if you would like to see some individual students in action." Nezu lifted an arm to the right where there was a staircase not far from them. There was a square pad next to it and a panel in the ceiling above, and the mouse and men walked over to the lift and stood on it instead of climbing the stairs. "Floor 2," Nezu said once they were all on, and the pad rose up in the air towards the panel that opened for them.

Jura looked out over the floor one last time as they rose into the ceiling above. Around the empty arena in the center of the room, the other four sections were full of people. There were clearly classes going on at two of the sections, large classes with several dozen people in them each. One of those was occurring on a grassy area where rain was falling constantly from devices hanging from the roof, a darker area that the light from other sections had trouble flooding into. The children there were sitting down in a circle around a teacher on her knees with a fake cadaver in front of her as they all got drenched. Jura wondered if the class was on how to deal with injuries in intense conditions as he thought he saw the woman teaching CPR, though he did not look too closely. The other class he saw was on a dirt section that had mounds sticking out of the ground all over the place. Behind those mounds were metal wires that were moving fast with monster-shaped panels sticking off of them. The wire would slide one of the monsters across the floor, and the armed students standing in a horizontal line close to the center of the room would have to wait for the best moment to shoot, since the mounds of dirt blocked their targets from view the majority of the time.

On the sections where there were no classes, the ones closest and farthest from the entrance, Jura saw a few individual students training hard. There was a rock wall on the side of the room opposite the balcony he had walked in on, blocking the black wall he expected was still behind it. On that wall he saw a young man in a white gi using only his thick tail to climb up what looked like the flattest and hardest-to-climb section of the wall. On the rocky area that made up the rest of the section, Jura saw one girl with long earlobes sitting cross-legged and meditating, and another girl with orange hair smashing her huge fists into a rock pillar that was shaking but not breaking from her might. The section closest to Jura was hardest to see since he never walked up to the balcony's edge and looked straight down. He did see that it was a steel surface though, and he spotted robots moving around close to the center area though staying in their section.

"This is an amazing place," Jura said. The teachers at his sides looked in to see the man smiling as he rose his head in anticipation of what he would see next.

Ectoplasm lost the annoyed look he had had since meeting this man. We've been here training these kids for years, so we're used to this place. I see the outside world though. We all see it when we do our hero exercises in real cities, or when we're called for aid or protection in the interior. As much work as it is for everyone here, this place is much better off than most Resistance lands these days. I'm not surprised he's happy to see places like this still exist.

Jura. The way he mentioned All Might, he must have fought in the Second War of the Gods. I mean, we all did, but guys like All Might, Endeavor, Sasuke, and Tien, they never stopped. This Jura is the same rank as Sasuke. He's a hero in his own right. Leading the Resistance at a time like this, I'm stunned he can still smile genuinely like that. Aizawa's lips curled up a small amount, It's better he's here than any of the other Commanders. After thinking it, Aizawa's grin dropped back down right away as they were about to reach the next floor. He knew that this floor would show off exactly what Jura came for, and he decided he did not want to lose his hostile attitude towards the man whom he would be arguing with in a few minutes.

Back downstairs, a thick-tailed teenager who reached the top of a rock climbing wall glanced down at his left wrist as the watch on it started beeping. Ojiro pulled a small earpiece out of his gi's inner pocket and put it in his right ear before tapping on the watch's answer-call icon. "Have they finished the evaluation yet?"

"Ah- no. That's not…" Hagakure's voice hesitated on the other side of the line showing that his question was not what she was calling him for. It was all that was on Ojiro's mind, but he sweatdropped himself as he did not greet her or ask what the call was for before blurting out that question.

"Oh. What's up?"

"I was talking to the others about the mission. They wanted to hear all about it. Where are you?"

Ojiro wiped some sweat from his brow than rolled his shoulders out. I could use a break. "Heading to the cafeteria."

"Oh! I've got time for lunch. Alright, we'll meet you there. See you in a few!" Hagakure hung up and Ojiro took back out his earpiece.

He had been looking off the top of the rock wall back into the middle of the room. Ojiro turned around though and headed for the hallway that wrapped-around the first floor's large training area. As he was walking around the room, two boys on a metal surface looked up from the deactivated robots they just took down. A couple of the robots had not been fully turned-off, but they were stuck to the floor by long pieces of Tape or small purple Pop Off balls so they could not chase after the teens as they headed off.

Ojiro looked to his left as a piece of Tape stuck to the wall just above the inside of the hallway. Sero swung through the gap in the middle of the wall of the training floor and landed next to his friend. Mineta quickly scaled up the wall below him, pulling Pop Offs from the cluster of purple balls instead of hair that he had on his head and using them like ice picks that he used to help fling himself up. He flipped over the inner edge of the hallway where there was a railing that spectators and teachers could watch the training from. "Ojiro! Wait up," Mineta ran up after the blond who had started walking again. Sero came up on Ojiro's right side while Mineta jogged up on his blond friend's left.

"You guys want to hear about the mission too?" Ojiro wondered.

Sero bounced his eyebrows interestedly at him while also wondering who else Ojiro was about to go talk to about it. Mineta nodded his head rapidly as well. "I didn't even know you were back. But you looked so focused out there when we arrived…" Ojiro nodded his own head with a far-off look in his eyes for a second. He had been in the zone in the cliffs section training hard to the point he had not even noticed his classmates from back on his own world and still on this one had arrived at the dome.

The three of them headed out of the training area and started walking for one of the other main facilities where the massive student cafeteria was located. On the roof of one of the dorms that had a view over the All Might Hall training dome and the rest of the central facilities, another blond-haired teen in the same class as the three he caught a glimpse of down below was on a phone call. He was laying back on a chair and talking into the headset that wrapped over his hair and split the black lightning bolt in his hair down the middle with the headband. "…Oh yeah! Ojiro and Hagakure are okay. They both made it back here in one piece. I don't know how their mission went, though probably not allowed to talk about that over the radio anyway. I know you were worried about them. Even if you didn't call me back after my last voicemail, or the one before it. Give me a call back soon or I'll have to ask Midoriya to go check on you so we know you're okay. It'll be like your mom coming to check on you. Bet the guys at your precinct would all get a kick out of it! Hahaha, haha, alright. I've got some shit to do. Call me back, Bakugo. Don't be a stranger."

Kaminari Denki tapped a button on the side of his headset. He stood from the lounge chair he brought to his dorm's roof to get a nice tan. Then he stepped up on the ledge and hopped off the roof. He put his right hand behind him and pointed slightly down. Kaminari magnetized himself to the support beam inside of the wall and put some opposing force on his body to keep his fifteen-story descent to a slow enough speed that he did not hurt himself. His friends a quarter mile away looked over at the sight of someone jumping off a roof, but they relaxed as they saw the slow speed that Kaminari was dropping.

"Yo! Tailman!" Kaminari shouted towards his classmate he had yet to talk to since their arrival back at school. "You grabbing lunch?!"

Ojiro wished Kaminari was not shouting so loudly his way, but the right corner of his lips farther from his friend did lift up for a second at the sound of his chosen hero name shouted out like that. Kaminari grinned himself as he was jogging their way and swore he saw that smirk even from a distance. He seems to be in a good mood at least, Kaminari assured himself with a more relieved look as he headed in Ojiro's direction. Good. I was worried… Not every mission is a failure. Most work out. Or at least most they send us on. It's why we're all still… Kirishima-

Kaminari shook his head around. He grimaced though while his friends had the backs of their heads to him and were still heading towards the cafeteria for lunch that he was going to join them for. If Kirishima had survived that day, I bet Bakugo wouldn't have left. He's not that far though. And working at the refugee city- or New New York as they're calling it now, isn't a bad gig. I wouldn't mind it. He's a "hero" by rep only though. Those cops made him a part of their Police Force when he quit school… Or they offered him the gig first and that's why he quit. Don't know which was really first. I still haven't gotten that out of him.

"Ojiro! Over here," Hagakure waved to her partner from the recent mission who nodded back and gave a small wave but did not head her way yet. He acknowledged that he knew where she was sitting, but he still needed to grab food first with the other boys he arrived with.

"Hey Mung Daal! Sup Schnitzel! How's it hanging?" Kaminari asked the chefs behind the counter.

"Rada rada, rada rada rada," Schnitzel replied back to Kaminari who nodded along and then laughed at the joke to the annoyance of his friends who never knew when he had the time to go learn how to speak 'Schnitzel.'

Hagakure sat back down with the others eating with her already after Ojiro and the boys walked onto the lunch line. "Sorry, where was I?"

"All over the place," Komori Kinoko replied in a deadpan tone to the storyteller who was all over the place with her recounting of the mission.

Ashido laughed lightly at Komori's reaction that made Hagakure tilt her head to the side in confusion as she had not realized she was jumping back and forth to different points in time making it impossible for them to follow the series of events that occurred in her mission two nights ago. Good thing Ojiro's here, the pink-skinned girl thought while looking back towards the lunch line and the boys who had come in. Ashido's small smile lowered back down flat as she looked at the four of them, imagining a spiky-haired redhead who would have been in that group if he was still around. Her gaze dropped at the thought of her middle school classmate, and the pain doubled at the thought of another with black hair who she pictured with him for a second before both faded from her mind.

Cheer up, Ashido scolded herself as she noticed Star staring at her from across the table. Star Butterfly looked in concern at the pink girl across the table from her who was her best friend at this school. Ashido glanced back up and flashed a smile at the bubbly blonde then they both looked back at Hagakure who tried to explain in clearer terms the chaos that occurred at the end of the Gala in the Clouds.

Tsunotori Pony nodded her head along in amazement with Hagakure's story. A lot of the Class B girls from their own world were at the table. Many of them were at this school, but many others were no longer with them. A few of their classmates were elsewhere like Bakugo from Class A, like Honenuki Juzo who had joined a clandestine unit of Resistance soldiers which not many of them knew about. His ex-girlfriend Pony knew about his current activities though, and Tsunotori found her smile faltering as she heard about the "success" of their mission that Hagakure was summarizing it as. Being successful means they're going to recruit you for more missions out there. At least your mission was to save a life. Not, end one. Like Juzo's job…

Tsunotori turned her head and tried to get her mind off of what she knew Class 3-E's mission objectives entailed. She and the other girls moved around a bit to allow the boys in their classes to sit with them. "Was it really as crazy as Toru's telling it?" Star wondered in amazement towards Ojiro who hesitated at the bubbly girl's sparkling eyes at how amazing the epic mission sounded.

"Uh," Ojiro started.

The one noise he got out made Hagakure spin to him and humph already. Ojiro pulled his head back more in surprise, only to hold up his arms telling Hagakure to wait. She was too quick though, "Ojiro had too much fun! He kissed Tiplee sensei to make his cover more believable!" Hagakure smirked while looking back out the corner of her eyes at Ojiro. Time for revenge! Hagakure knew he had already apologized to her, but she smiled at the awkward look on his face as he was glared at by some of the girls, and Mineta who bit down on his shirt as he thought about the beautiful alien Jedi who Hagakure was talking about.

"Uhh, she kissed, me?" Ojiro offered up in his own defense.

"Yah!" Mineta could not keep his mouth closed and exclaimed that as he was even more jealous of him now.

Mineta definitely wouldn't have been able to maintain his cover, Ojiro thought. Guess we really were prepared then. So I think it was a good thing they picked us for the mission? Ojiro sat down with a thoughtful look on his face. "It went well," he said with a look back around at his friends. He gave a small smile and nodded with a look back at Hagakure who nodded fast with his assessment.

"You threw stealth out the window though, huh?" Ashido wondered with a smirk back at Ojiro.

The boys who had arrived with Ojiro and had not heard about the mission at all yet looked to him wondering what that question was about. Ojiro sweatdropped again and picked at his food for a second. "Yea-aahh… Stealth could have, been better," he admitted.

"Wasn't our fault though," Hagakure quickly defended them. "Ant… Our teammate was the one who alerted the guards. Though…" she trailed off again while glancing hesitantly at Ojiro who bowed his head a bit more while questioning his own assessment he just made of their success.

Ojiro scratched the side of his face. I could have played that better. I acted like way too much of a big shot. I panicked, I guess. That wasn't smart. It was really close actually. Way too close. We nearly died again-

"Ojiro started arguing with Princess Kougyoku right in the middle-" Hagakure was too excited to hold it back, even though she had been waiting for a full three seconds to let Ojiro bring that up himself. He bowed his head a bit more in embarrassment that Hagakure was just blurting out everything about their mission. All hope of hiding what they had done had long been thrown out the window though, so there was no point in hiding what had happened as he doubted anything they talked about could help their enemies even if it made it all the way back to them somehow. They were not instructed to keep quiet about their mission either, and so Hagakure took that as a signal that it was fine to tell everyone everything about it.

Sero's jaw dropped at what Hagakure started to say before cutting herself off. "The Ren Princess?" Sero wondered in disbelief. "She was there?"

"That, was a surprise," Ojiro admitted.

"No one knew they were going to show up. Kougyoku and Kouha just-"

"Ahhh, Kouha," Komori and Ashido sighed and cupped their chins in their hands. Ashido's cheeks somehow got even more pink, while Komori's blushing cheeks were more noticeable.

Kaminari glanced at the two of them with his left eyebrow lifting up. "He's our enemy, you know?"

"Doesn't mean he isn't dreamy," Komori countered dreamily.

Ashido coughed and cleared her throat though, sitting back up and whistling as the boys gave her similar looks wondering why she was fan-girling over enemy royalty. She looked back at Ojiro and questioned, "We heard about it from Hagakure's point-of-view, kind of, but what about you Mr. Ladies Man? What happened? Tell us everything."

Everyone around the table refocused on Ojiro who took a bite of his food and quickly chewed and swallowed it. He could tell he was not going to be able to eat for a bit after that bite, so he wanted to get it in now before he started retelling the story of their exciting field test.

Back at the All Might Hall, a girl who had been quietly sitting cross-legged down on the first floor was on a transporter pad up to the third. Jirou Kyoka stepped off the pad and started walking down the hall towards one of the special training rooms full of requested equipment that she could always find her best friend in. There was even a couch in that room as Yaoyorozu barely ever went back to their dorms to sleep, instead crashing in her workspace. Jirou was happy that couch was there though, as it gave her somewhere to sit and lay back on while hanging with her friend like she was about to.

She showed up at Yaoyorozu's room and buzzed twice, then waited a second, before buzzing twice more. "Door Open." Yaoyorozu called out. The door slid open for Jirou who stepped in and walked straight for the couch to stay out of her friend's way while Momo quickly moved around one of her counters and slid open a drawer she pulled a tool out of instead of Creating another one of the same tool. She was busy Creating something else that she pulled out of her glowing chest with her free hand after grabbing the tool in her other. "Hello Kyoka. No class right now?"

"I've got free," Jirou told her friend. "You know that- well, I doubt you know what time it is anyway. Or the day, for that matter."

Yaoyorozu did not have the time to pause and check her watch. She just hummed in agreement with Jirou's guess which made her shorter friend roll her eyes while sitting back on the couch that Momo would not even deny it. "I was just meditating down on the training floor. Thinking about, stuff." Jirou turned on the couch and lay back, putting her hands behind her head as she rested it on the armrest. She stared up at the black ceiling above them that was blast-proof, not that Yaoyorozu's room specifically needed that kind of protection… most of the time.

Yaoyorozu turned the tool in her left hand and grabbed with her right too for second to twist tighter. She dropped the tool and turned the weapon over and watched a glowing blue bar start filling up, then it stopped halfway, and then it dropped back to an empty bar again. Yaoyorozu pressed a button next to the energy signal a few times. She bit down then picked up a nutrition bar off her counter next to the strange-looking three-barreled firearm she was working on. The food bar was one of a hundred scattered around the room for her to grab at any work station she might be at. She peeled the wrapper and bit into it while swinging her other arm in front of her face where her goggles showed her a holographic display that Jirou could not see.

Yaoyorozu slid her index finger around the blue keyboard that only she could see in midair before her then tapped on the address bar at the top. 'Opti' she typed in then tapped on Optimus Prime's name that appeared on the drop-down menu of different addresses. 'Kiry' she typed another four letters then picked the top name of Commander Kiryuin Satsuki to add to the group message. She sent her message out to the two of them and then took another bite of her power bar. The piece they had me make is malfunctioning. The theoretical schematics make sense but it's not working as the inventors intended. I triple-checked the designs and it's not an error on my end. "What were you thinking about?" Yaoyorozu wondered while sliding her whole hand to the side and disposing of the holographic clutter between her and her friend she glanced over to for a moment.

Jirou looked out the left corners of her eyes towards Yaoyorozu who made eye contact with her for a full two seconds, before spinning and rushing over to one of her other experiments that dinged loudly to signal she could continue work on it. Jirou sighed at the busy work life that her friend had, but a half-smile grew a moment later at what Momo had asked despite being so busy. She's always busy. Not like coming at any other time wouldn't be interrupting her. Jirou knew that if she could only talk to her friend when Yaoyorozu was not busy, she would never talk to her friend again. So she did not worry about how fast the other girl was moving around the room, instead just talking to her normally. Jirou talked to her in a way treating her like anyone else and not as one of the most important people at this school who was currently in the middle of several high-priority tasks that others were too anxious to disturb her from.

"I was thinking about Heaven and Hell," Jirou told her best friend who nodded along while checking on another of her projects. The power bar she had just bit into was also an energy bar on top of being full of the nutrition she needed to keep on Creating without pause. Yaoyorozu curled and uncurled all her fingers then shook them out as she felt the energy surge through her like a shot of caffeine. She shivered then glanced back towards Jirou who wondered while staring up at the ceiling, "Did you… see anything? Because I just remember it going dark. And, no one really talks about it."

"We all know that Heaven and Hell are real on this world though. Maybe they were on our world, maybe not," Jirou continued. She turned sideways where she lay on Momo's couch and stared towards her friend who hummed and nodded along with the philosophical question Kyoka was posing to her. "But then why didn't any of us see anything? Do you think, the Gods knew he was going to bring us back, so they didn't bother sorting us out into Heaven and Hell-"

"I'm sure we were all going to Heaven," Yaoyorozu countered her friend who sounded stuck thinking on something Momo had not even considered herself while thinking on that event. "So that's not the reason. But, maybe they did know… In my mind, it has always been due to a time delay. That our souls had just not left the mortal plane yet. I believe Zach had a time limit. We never knew much about his Quirk, but it made sense based on what we did see of it. So perhaps even on our own world, the soul only lingered in the body for a short time and that was why his power only worked for a certain amount of time after death." The eighteen year old girl suggested it as a reason, then she frowned deeper and looked away from her friend and back to an experiment she pretended to focus on. Zach. If you were still here, I could ask you these things myself. I wish we had seen you, before that horrible day.

---

FD + 300

"You all need to RUN!"

"Is that…"

"Zach?!"

"Oh my God… did we just die?" Ashido looked down at her hands while still sitting on her butt. She was in the same place she had collapsed, and she was staring in terror at her hands that still had blood on them. The second she saw her old classmate in front of them, she realized what that gap of time actually meant for her.

Over a hundred others were still getting up around them. Some were shaking each other awake as many had passed out after being revived. Those in Class A who looked ahead of them though between where they had been revived and the enemy forces, watched in awe as the black cloud surrounding that humanoid dark figure ahead of them grew larger and larger.

In the distance over his head they could see the billowing black smoke still rising from a city under attack. Giant airships surrounded that city and were firing an endless barrage down onto it. The plains ahead of them were Scorched and flaming. Wrecked Resistance ships littered the landscape along with fewer of the more massive enemy ones that were larger than ten aircraft carriers from their own world mixed into one. The devastated land in front of them was a graveyard of both ships and men.

Midoriya Izuku stood up just behind that growing dark cloud that he stared at with trembling eyes. "Is that you, Zach?" Midoriya wondered in a hoarse voice.

"Hey! HEY KIRISHIMA!" Bakugo shook the body of his friend behind Midoriya on his left side. Deku glanced back and over towards them as Bakugo screamed at their classmate to get up. Bakugo spun and yelled towards that dark monster, "OI! Why didn't you-"

"I can't bring someone back who I've revived before," Zach Sazaki's voice came out softly but echoed behind him to his classmates from his own world who had never seen him on Nexus before today. His head turned sideways and he glanced back through glowing red eyes at the teens behind him. Bakugo's eyes bulged at that response then looked back down with tears filling his enraged eyes at the look of his lifeless best friend's face. Zach shifted his gaze from Kirishima himself back onto Deku, then past him and onto all the others sitting up and staring towards him in shock. The sixteen year old had not seen most of them for a long time before coming to this world too. And the last one to have seen him was the curly-green-haired boy closest to his back who remembered leaping towards him and reaching out as a Nomu was dragging him through a portal during the Villain Training Simulator incident. Their eyes had last met that day and now met again one year later.

In the summer of their first year at U.A., their classmate had disappeared. Shortly after his disappearance came the emergence of Lifebringer, a villain who was going around reviving people with the assistance of Kurogiri and the League of Villains. That was until the VTS incident, after which no one had heard from him since. Then on New Year's Eve that year of their first year in high school, they had all disappeared and popped up on Nexus. In that time, all of Class A had met up with each other. All except for the one person who had not been at their New Year's party that night they all vanished. That same person appeared before them now and separated their class from the main force of the enemy army that had been pushed back by their allies to two miles away from the dead who Zach had just revived.

Zach watched in despair though as their allies who had regained some ground fell one after the other against the forces that had butchered his old friends. His eyes scanned over the landscape beyond them. He looked to the burning city. He looked to their burning forces and destroyed ships. Then he looked to the enemies whose numbers seemed endless. They stretched as far as his eyes could see. Giant red zeppelins. Massive airships with fighter jets and mech soldiers flying off of them. And tens of thousands- hundreds of thousands of ground soldiers going as far back as the horizon. "You need to get out of here," his voice came out low.

Other Resistance members were coming to that same conclusion. There were evacuations coming out of the city closest to them to the north. Survivors of the various battles stretching all the fields in front of them were running the other way. Zach moved forward though despite what he just said. "Zach! What are you talking about?!" Kaminari shouted while stumbling forward towards that huge dark form that he knew for sure now was his friend from their old world.

Zach's body was growing even more in size. It doubled in mass. The dark form bulged all over and grew to sixty feet tall. A giant black leg stepped forward out of the cloud of darkness. His right arm ripped out of the side of the dark pillar of Death he had grown into. A massive black broadsword expelled from his grasp and formed a tip that dragged on the darkening floor as he marched away from them. "Retreat!" Zach roared at the top of his lungs.

"Everyone pull back!"

"All Might is down! We need to go!"

Midoriya spun his head to the right while time slowed down in his head. The others behind him gawked towards that scream of panic from other Resistance soldiers fleeing on foot or on smoking speeders that they were evacuating whoever they could on. Some Resistance gunships flew over their heads moving south, and one of them had two missiles flying after it that were about to take it down. A giant black sword slashed up in the air and extended five times in length to cut through those missiles that exploded and ripped apart the Death sword. The slash did manage to save the gunship though and the fleeing people on it.

"GET OUT OF HERE!" Zach screamed. Out of his sixty foot tall back, a pair of giant black wings ripped out to either side of him. He flapped with a one hundred foot wide wingspan that stretched in front of all his old classmates. "Midoriya. This is not the final battle. If you all die here though, it will be. This world needs you. So please, run. Get the others to safety." Zach's head turned sideways one last time. His pained red eyes glanced back on those classmates he was so happy to see again despite the agony he felt when he first arrived to find them massacred on the battlefield.

"What are you kids doing here?!" Some of the students looked up and stared in shock at the bloody mess of a man who just dropped off a fleeing airship in front of them. Aizawa shouted at his students who he was shocked to see, "It doesn't matter. We're evacuating the area! The battle is lost. We need to retreat-"

"Aizawa sensei. Is All Might really…" Midoriya stumbled towards his teacher who grit his teeth at the question but shook his head at the boy before him in a motion telling Deku that now was not the time. Midoriya looked farther past where all the Resistance were fleeing though, and he stared at a distant army that was moving their way now to push them even farther back. "All Might," Midoriya whispered.

"Zach! WAIT!" Jirou screamed as that giant black form lifted off the ground with a flap of its wings.

Aizawa had heard this thing screaming for their retreat and saw it protect one of their fleeing gunships so he had not paid much attention to it yet. The fact that all his students were on this battlefield on the front lines was a much more pressing concern… He froze though. Aizawa felt chills down his spine. His eyes bulged and his head turned to look back and up at that giant creature of darkness. "Sazaki?" Eraser Head whispered in disbelief.

"Get them out of here. Sensei," Zach flapped his wings behind him and shot off without another word.

He flew like a missile over the landscape. His giant form stayed low to the ground. Wind pulled with him and smoke pushed out to the sides before swooshing after the massive form of Death that swung both arms out now with huge swords in hand in front of his wings. While all of the Resistance pulled back and evacuated from the surrounding battlefields, one person flew at the enemy armies that had all combined in this counterattack. The Fire Nation symbols along with the Ren Empire's, flanked either side of the most massive army straight ahead of Zach that those forces had allied with. The largest armies of Alvarez marched his direction. A giant black dragon dropped out of the sky below the clouds and a dark-haired man standing on top of it pointed his arm forward.

The Shields of Spriggan and Tartaros Demons attacked. Hundreds of airships from the allied nations against the Resistance dropped out of the sky and flew towards the dark creation flying right back at them. Hundreds of thousands of enemies all targeted one enemy who rushed at them to give the Resistance time to retreat.

"We can't let him do this!" Yaoyorozu screamed towards her teacher while other ships lowered down around them to evacuate the children out of there.

"You aren't even supposed to be here!"

"Get on the ships! Everyone here will risk their lives to save you if you don't get on!"

Bakugo and Midoriya dropped down on their faces as their Quirks were Cancelled right when they tried to rush the wrong direction. Eraser Head wrapped the two of them up in his special bandage weapons and tugged them back to him. "Sensei! Get off me!" Bakugo roared in rage. Eraser Head could see one of his other students whose limp body Sato Rikido lifted up with care and a look of pain that caused tears to flow down his face. Aizawa's eyes shadowed over, and he dragged Bakugo and Midoriya back to an airship landing behind him while Sato carried Kirishima to their same ship. "GET OFF ME!" Bakugo roared.

"I can't let him- not again," Deku whispered to the side towards his teacher who saw that look and grit his teeth even harder but did not budge. "Sensei. He'll die," Midoriya gasped.

"He knows that," Aizawa muttered. He dragged them back on the ship that lifted off the ground and up in the air with other transports fleeing back to the south. Their clothes are covered in blood and ripped up. None look to be injured. It was Sazaki. He revived them all. You idiots rushed out here and got yourselves killed. And you want me to let you back out to die again? Aizawa stared out the side of the gunship and back to the north, still holding back his two most reckless students who he bet were the ones who convinced the others to all rush out into battle with them.

Aizawa's thoughts stalled out and his shaking eyes grew massive. Everyone else on the retreating ships who were not busy focusing on flying them out of there, stared back to the north at a fight that most thought would not last a few seconds. The one who had flown out there to stall for them was not down yet though. As attacks flew through him, and the ground exploded around him, they heard a monstrous voice roar out from the battlefield where that dark creature of Death grew even more in size. It bulged, growing larger and larger as Zach Sazaki killed his enemies on the battlefield and grew stronger by the second. Some of the enemy armies that had considered going around him to chase down and fully destroy their fleeing opponents curved back in on his sides and surrounded him.

Gray Fullbuster staggered to the door of his fleeing gunship and looked back over his bloody shoulder into the distance he was fleeing from. He grabbed onto the open doorway with his right hand coated in the blood of his fallen friends. His eyes shook in fear as he looked back towards the dragon and the mage on top of it who rose up into the sky with a dark enemy rising up in front of them and transforming into the shape of a dragon himself. Whoever that is, just saved all our lives. Or, he saved those of us remaining. Gray clenched his eyes shut thinking about how many bodies of Resistance soldiers he had run past on his way to the airship sounding the sirens of retreat. They pushed so far north. I thought, this Resistance would win. I thought nothing could stop us!

Yaoyorozu Momo looked back inside the same airship that had landed again after picking up Gray to get some of the revived students onto it too. She stared back from the same doorway she stepped up to and right next to Gray inside of. Her massive eyes trembled in shock at what she was seeing out there. They were getting too far that it was almost too far for them to see the fight any longer. The sky was dark out in the north above where the two black dragons clashed once more before disappearing from sight. Zach. No…

---

Present

"If he was still around, maybe he'd know the answer," Jirou said softly as she and her friend thought back on that day. Jirou lowered her gaze down herself while sitting up with her legs off the side of the couch. The Battle of Marzipan City. We heard the teachers were falling on the battlefield, and we stole a gunship and rushed out there thinking we could actually help turn the tides. What a bunch of stupid kids. Jirou squinted her eyes more and curled her shaking hands over her knees at the painful memory.

Yaoyorozu shook her own head while walking over to a construction bench on the far side of the room as the doorway that Jirou had entered from. She tried to shake the bad memory from her thoughts as well, but she added in a soft and nostalgic voice, "Zach was so strong that day. After only 300 days on this world. He was, incredible."

"And he still couldn't revive Kirishima," Jirou added. She shook her head quickly after saying that, afraid it sounded like she was talking down about him which she did not want to be misconstrued as doing by her friend. "But he held off Emperor Spriggan and all his armies on his own. He protected the retreat long enough that we all made it out of there. So we owe him double for that day."

He really saved our lives twice in one day, Yaoyorozu thought. And he saved the two of us even before that. Yaoyorozu smiled softer at that nostalgic thought of a time back on their own world. Her look got more serious again, He told Midoriya that this world needed him, but he said it needed all of us too. I've held those words close to my heart for the past year and a half. And I will not stop fighting until we've proved him right. This world needs us. It needs us to get stronger. It needs us to bring victory to the Resistance. Yaoyorozu reached both hands up to her chest and the glowing white light that emerged there. She Created a pair of parts needed for a powerful armor set she was building. The extremely strong metals made loud clanks when she dropped the heavy pieces onto her workbench.

Outside of her 1/100th area but not directly in the hall so they would be able to see him through the glass, Jura Neekis watched the girls through the monitors in the circular center of the third floor where there was a spectating area. Many of the specialized rooms were currently occupied, and Principal Nezu was explaining to Jura what Yaoyorozu was currently working on which he had hummed and nodded along with interestedly. His attention shifted to one of the other screens though, and he motioned towards it with a nod.

Nezu typed away and made the screen closest to them slide away. That security feed showed Jirou walking up to Yaoyorozu's side to help her out with something, and the shorter of the girls' left earlobe extended out with the headphone jack on it curling around the wrench she handed to her friend. As that screen moved away, another monitor lowered itself in front of the teachers and Resistance Commander who stepped closer in a way unsettling to Aizawa who grimaced deeper at the way Jura stared in awe at the boy on screen now.

"Midoriya, Izuku," Jura said while examining the figure in that training room closely. He looked at an indicator on the bottom of the screen and his eyes bulged as he read it a second time in his head after briefly looking past the number and not processing it at first. "Is that number, correct?" He wondered with an uncertain glance down to his right at the mouse-like principal who nodded while watching the screen himself. "One hundred times, Nexus' gravity?" Jura said in amazement while looking back at the screen and the boy who bounced around the dark room made entirely of their strongest steel to keep his power contained.

He's moving so fast even at that gravity. I was amazed at his movements before even seeing how intense his training really is. That he's this strong, and still stuck at a training site, Jura's lips curled down into a frown that got deeper the longer he watched the rapid and skillful movements of the student who was clearly one of the most powerful at this school. He's known throughout the interior. Deku, they call him. He's been on enough training missions inside Resistance borders to have a reputation as one of the strongest at this school. And yet we've received no reports of his progress. He's never been on a graduating list. Even though, he's eighteen years old now. Jura's eyes shifted back behind him to the two teachers who were giving him dark looks at what he was clearly thinking about.

"What held you back from graduating him with the last class?" Jura wondered at the faculty behind him.

"He wasn't ready," Aizawa replied curtly.

"For, what?" Jura asked back, his voice as blunt as Aizawa's just was.

The standoff had begun. Jura asked the question flat-out and stared into Aizawa's eyes for a moment before looking down into the eyes of the school's principal. "That young man, has no business still being at this school."

---

"Hi Willie!" Hagakure called out towards the giant mechanical lawnmower that Groundskeeper Willie was driving the opposite direction as her and Ojiro were walking.

"'Ello there ya' invisible lassie! Wonderful weather we're having!"

"He's in a good mood," Ojiro commented with a small smile while glancing over his shoulder at the speeding lawnmower that drove off over the grass field to the side of the path they were walking down. He lost his smile when he looked back towards the administrative building ahead of them that they had been summoned to.

"As you should be too," Hagakure remarked to the boy at her side. She spun around and walked backwards next to Ojiro and just in front of him so she could watch his face. "You did great! You should stop worrying so much about it. We accomplished our mission-"

"And I nearly got us arrested," Ojiro mumbled. The more he had talked about the mission, the more he felt like Ant-Man had done all their work for them. All I did was make a fool of myself in front of all those Cooperative members. Apparently I acted so suspiciously that they all tried stopping me, then I started fighting and- and I argued with the Princess of the country we had infiltrated. How did I think that was a good idea at the time?

"But we got out of there," Hagakure reminded him.

"You got us out of there," Ojiro reminded her right back. She flashed a bright smile at the praise he gave her, but her smile lowered a bit as Ojiro shifted his gaze away. "I just… made it so we needed to run away. I don't see how anything I did helped in our mission, ultimately."

"That's enough of that," Hagakure called out. She spun back around while Ojiro turned to her and followed the more upbeat girl who retorted to him after a few seconds, "You're being hard on yourself, Ojiro. You did way better than you think you did. Trust me, the teachers are sure to see it the same way…"

Inside of the disciplinary-action room where teachers would meet with students who had broken rules to pass down punishments on them, five teachers sat behind the desk higher up than where the two teenagers were standing. They were assured that they were not in trouble and that the room itself was also used for evaluations and certain presentations. Ojiro felt more like it was the punishment room though, and he tried to keep his gaze up and with a serious expression on his face even as the girl at his side kept turning her head sideways and giving him anxious looks.

"…that leads us onto another point that you did wonderfully, Hagakure," Irina sensei continued to the young girl she smiled down at specifically. "Your information gathering skills were not even considered for this mission. That it was your eavesdropping on the conversations of the top VIPs at the Gala that led you to learning the location of that advanced stealth jet, eavesdropping which you took upon yourself despite it not being part of your mission description, is incredible. You listened in for important information and it came back to help you in the most pivotal of moments."

"Commandeering such a vehicle in order to get your comrades out of the danger they were in," Rex nodded his head. The clone of Jango Fett sat in a suit and tie that he wore to work each day, unlike Irina Jelavic who had on a stylish white top and matching short skirt. "I was surprised to hear you made that play. Surprised, and impressed," Rex added.

"Your Perfect Stealth has come up far," Meleoran praised his student who he spent a lot of time with personally training in her ability. The Chimera Ant who looked a lot like a large chameleon with short curly blond hair smiled down at Hagakure. "I would say that it is now proven as good as my Perfect Plan. Perhaps, yours is even better. Due to you remaining invisible to sight even when you breathe."

Rex and Irina both nodded in agreement with Meleoran's assessment there. "Getting that ship was an added bonus that we never expected on this mission," Rex admitted to the girl he stared down at and through her head. "Our scientists are already reverse-engineering it to improve our ships with the best stealth tech that the Ren Empire has produced."

"Ant-Man was already called away on another mission, but he said that tech should help him as well moving forward and wanted us to pass on his thanks to you again," Nejire mentioned. The youngest teacher on the panel had originally come to the school when she heard about the teachers who were operating it and recognized so many of them from her own hero high school she had been a senior at back on their world when they arrived here. Nejire had decided to help out as a teacher though rather than enroll and had been at the school overlooking the education of people not much younger than her ever since. "And I think that gratitude is more than deserved," Nejire added. The twenty-year old woman with short light blue hair falling just above her shoulders held a thumbs-up for her younger friend Hagakure who smiled wide at Nejire's proud look that almost made her feel as good as the way Meleoran had praised her.

Ojiro felt like his stomach was doing somersaults though as he stood next to his classmate while she was continuously praised for her part of the mission. "What seems to be wrong, Ojiro?" Tiplee wondered down to her student who looked back at her on the far left of the panel of five teachers who all focused onto the boy now who got an even more anxious look on his face as Tiplee pointed out his uneasy feeling.

"Nothing… sensei," Ojiro started in response. He kept up an intense look as he readied himself for whatever the teachers were going to say to him next after all this praise they gave Hagakure. He glanced to the right and down the line of teachers who were all facing him now. His nerves somehow got worse than they were for most of the time that he had been at the Gala two nights prior just from standing there under the teachers' gazes. "I, wish I had been as much help, as Invisible Girl. Hagakure really saved the mission for us-"

"You did too-" Hagakure tried to interrupt and defend her friend who was feeling way too down about this.

"Ojiro," Tiplee started to the young man whose frustration was clear to all the teachers. "I do not know what you are talking about. Yes, Hagakure went above and beyond the parameters for this mission. But you did as well." Ojiro lifted his head back up after looking down for a moment there. He looked into Tiplee's eyes in a more hesitant way, since she had been there with him and should know that that was not true. She seemed surprised at the sight of that look on his face though doubting that she was telling the truth. "I would not say this to you just to make you feel better, I assure you," the Jedi Master told the boy who opened his eyes a bit wider then nodded so she would not think he was doubting her anymore.

If he had to take what she was saying as the truth though, it confused Ojiro even more. "But I… I failed my-"

"No one could have guessed that Princess Kougyoku would suddenly decide that she wanted to rescue Mansherry herself," Irina countered with a small chuckle of her own at the harsh way Ojiro was apparently taking this. Irina looked towards Tiplee who had already given a detailed report to the rest of them as had Ant-Man, and Irina smiled back towards that boy who really was being much too hard on himself. "The Ren Empire have the most slaves of any Cooperative nation. That Kouen's own younger sister had a problem with it, or that she would be there in the first place, were variables that none of us could have predicted or prepared for. Any better than you could have."

"The minute they showed up, your preparation practically went out the window," Rex agreed. "So what it came down to in the end, was how well you were able to adapt and improvise to the situation."

"But…" Ojiro started. He hesitated as he did not want to counter the teachers when they were apparently praising him. He curled his fists though at his sides because he still felt their praise was undeserved the harder he thought on their mission. "But I improvised poorly," he said in frustration at his own actions. "I, rose my voice at the Princess. Kougyoku, that is," Ojiro added, as there had actually been a few Princesses at the mission. "And drew the ire of several powerful people who targeted us, because of me."

"Ojiro," Tiplee started. "Had you not done exactly what you did, I doubt our mission would have been as successful as it was. In fact, I know that it would have gone much worse." Ojiro stared at her in surprise for saying such a thing that he wondered how it could be true. "You see, you went further than I would have. I wanted us to begin our retreat earlier, as I believed that with Kougyoku's bid that there was nothing we could do. That was the moment in which I had pretty much given up on our chances of rescuing Mansherry ourselves."

"You continued trying though," Tiplee continued to the boy who she lifted a small smile down at that the other teachers matched. "You did because you did not want to give up even when it got hard. I wanted to back off because we were in danger, but you went farther and put your own life at risk because our mission was worth it. Because, you did not want anything bad to happen to Mansherry." Ojiro's eyes grew wider and shook at what the Jedi was telling him. "Had we left earlier when I would have made the decision to, Hagakure would have seen that we were on our way out. She would have seen us slipping away without making as much of a scene, and so she likely would not have gone for the enemy's ship to instead try to slip away with us to our original extraction point."

Hagakure spun to Ojiro and then back at the teachers who she nodded fast at in agreement that she would have done that. It was only because they were in danger that I knew I needed to do something else. It was all improvising at that point, but if they weren't right in the middle of it I would have just gone along with the original plan!

"No one knows what 'could have' happened," Nejire continued down to Ojiro. "For all we know, what you did was the exact thing you needed to do. You kept trying because it was your mission's primary objective. Because there was a person at risk of still being stuck in slavery who you were there to save. You followed your heart and continued to push to try and save Mansherry even when it meant that you had to draw attention to yourself and make a dangerous gamble."

"And had you not moved towards the stage while arguing with Kougyoku," Tiplee added to him. "Then Kougyoku may not have feared that Mansherry was in danger of being taken during the confusion. Kycilia would not have opened the cage so that Kougyoku could take Mansherry. Scott could not have thrown the enlarging disc into the cage to turn Mansherry into a giant. The chaos that luckily set off due to the thief and the arms' dealer, was added to by the people you upset through what you said and what you did. Malchior turned into a dragon because you slammed him with your tail. Azula was ready to attack us because you pissed her off when you continued betting over her on Mansherry. Every action you made in that room," Tiplee continued to the boy looking more amazed each second as he thought back on that night in a different way now. "Led us closer and closer to the conditions necessary for the kind of perfect victory we pulled off."

Tiplee went on, "You were calm enough that no one was certain that you were intentionally creating havoc or that we were a part of the chaos at all. You could have just really wanted to win the auction on Mansherry, and the intruder, the arms' dealer and fake auctioneer, Mansherry's giantization, it could have all just been coincidence- which for some of it, it was. Your own confusion and surprise that you either acted out or allowed yourself to show when you really were surprised, convinced our enemies that you really were as caught up in the chaos as everyone else was." Tiplee leaned back in her seat. "We went in there as actors. And throughout all that chaos, all the unexpected events and panic, you kept a cool head and remained focused on our mission."

"Your improvisation matches Hagakure's," Rex agreed with a stoic nod of his head.

"In front of so many people? Cooperative Lords and Royal Families? Powerful Shields of Spriggan too," Irina shook her head in amazement. "I would say that your ability to improvise and continue acting while in front of so many enemies, deep in their territory, is the more impressive improv. Surpassing your teammate's. No credit taken away from Hagakure's amazing feats, but there is a difference when you are under the constant watch of your enemies. You were able to handle the pressure of that attention and still carry out your mission. You managed this despite being out in the open and knowing that every action you made and every word you spoke could put you and your team in danger."

Ojiro felt that pressure suddenly crash on him again and he just nodded his head slowly while feeling the responsibility and crushing weight that he had managed to compartmentalize during the mission itself so as not to get caught up on it. "I think," Meleoran began. Everyone looked in towards the Chimera Ant sitting in the middle of the evaluation panel. "Both of you had great instances that we can observe where your decisions in moments that you could only improvise- as we had no way to plan for them, made for the victory that you pulled off. Ant-Man carried out his secondary objective, and admittedly he accomplished the primary one as well, but it was due to the opening that you made, Ojiro, that he was able to rescue Mansherry. And it was thanks to your quick thinking, Hagakure, that you managed to bring in the quick extraction necessary before Kycilia's forces could properly mobilize or coordinate their response."

"A Ren stealth ship. The Tontatta people's Princess," Irina listed off. She paused and added with a palm lifting, "Whose rescue also assures their allegiance now that they have been freed from Donquixote Doflamingo's oppressive rule in Dressrosa." Irina continued on her list, "Blueprints to Cloud City on the southern border of the Ren Empire that will be vital to future missions there, including the eventual offensive against that nation. Which if we continue to have victories such as these, will be sooner than you think." Irina smiled in an optimistic way at the teens who stared at her with huge eyes at what she was suggesting.

"Mansherry has agreed to assist the Resistance as much as she can after being reunited with her Tontatta friends, who are apparently a warrior people ready for battle as well," Tiplee told the students who turned towards her. "She has been transferred to Resistance HQ where she is assisting at the Basement General Hospital. Her Heal-Heal Fruit, her warriors, and the allies of her kingdom, are all rewards of the mission. Not to mention her life, that the two of you helped save," Tiplee added as the most important thing to the teens who smiled back at her together in agreement with that sentiment.

"Your field test, when reported in to Resistance Headquarters," Tiplee continued. "Sounded to the Resistance Commanders more like the mission of an Elite Squad that was, 'Accomplished to the degree of success we expect from the Elite Squads alone.' Their words, not mine." Hagakure's jaw dropped while Ojiro stared with even wider eyes at Tiplee now. He was still awaiting the section of the review where they made a rebuttal on their praise to tell them what they could still work on, but that portion of the review was not sounding like it was actually coming now.

Ojiro turned to the girl next to him, and Hagakure glanced back his way while barely holding back her excitement. He sweatdropped but smiled at the girl he had a feeling was going to burst with that excitement the second the two of them left the room together. When the two looked at each other like that in such proud and accomplished ways, it made Meleoran lower his own smile and gain a more sad and darker look on his face. He and the other teachers wiped those looks from their faces right away before dismissing the teens who looked back at them and saw only their proud looks again.

The students left the room and the teachers chuckled to themselves at the sound of Hagakure's shriek of glee as she immediately started rambling to Ojiro about how well that went and how he had nothing to worry about after all. They could still hear her when she said that last part, and the teachers' laughter faded away. They each looked at one another in darker ways.

"Commander Jura showed up here just a while ago," Rex brought up. He leaned back in his seat and then looked off to his right and the end of the panel where Tiplee was seated. "Guess your report, really made an impression."

"I just told the truth in it," Tiplee replied. "Jedis do not lie. However, I do, feel the same way," she assured her fellow teachers. She looked over towards Rex who she had fought alongside back in the Clone Wars before her death. They had both returned to their primes as apparently the Clone Wars had occurred a long long time ago in their universe before they were brought to Nexus. "Our mission was a complete success beyond what they asked us to do."

"Those kids stepped up," Irina added. She sighed and rested her chin down in her hands. "Which is what we want them to do, as much as we wish they didn't sometimes."

"Yeah," Nejire cocked her head and kept smiling though while she looked at the other four teachers. I'm really glad. Seeing that all the teachers care so much about the kids here makes me wonder if I really need to stay sometimes. I want to keep helping, but I also don't want the students here getting recruited if they're not ready to join the Resistance. My joining could keep them in school for a bit longer. As for those two though, Nejire looked back towards the door herself. They are ready.

Inside the main training facility at the Hero School, Jura Neekis was arguing fiercely with the faculty standing against him. The four of them had made their ways back to the elevator platform they had risen up to the third floor on. Jura wanted to see the individualized training rooms on the third floor but the majority were empty at the moment. Back on the second floor there was a class going on with a large number of students though who Jura was going to examine closely here, something he did not hide from the teachers who spoke against what he was suggesting.

They could not stop Jura from bringing them back down to the second floor though to what the staff had called the Gym. "Many of these students are more highly trained, and stronger, than soldiers we have on the front lines."

"But they are not soldiers-"

"Why? Because of their ages?" Jura countered back at Ectoplasm. "Do you know how many children and teenagers are on the Elite Squads? Did you know the leader of Gamma Squad is 7 years old?"

"That's ridiculous," Aizawa stated. He was not questioning the validity of what Jura just told them. He was just calling it what it was: ridiculous.

"No. She is strong. A smart fighter, and a good leader," Jura countered back at Aizawa who looked surprised by the strong retort. "Her age doesn't matter to her, nor to her comrades." His looked remained dark as he stared down Aizawa then back at Ectoplasm as well. "The world we live in does not allow us to sideline powerful fighters even if they are too young. Blossom and her sisters were super heroes on their world. Yet Deku, is stronger than her. He has experience. He is an adult. You keep him here though under the pretense of needing more training. He. Is. Ready."

Jura turned and looked into the Gym they had lowered back down into. The second floor of the training hall was wider than the floor above and had fewer separated rooms so it was a lot more open. There were huge pieces of equipment lining the walls and in rows throughout the room though. High-tech but standardized training equipment lay scattered about for the use of the students. It was training equipment developed by the Resistance and brought here for the sake of training its inexperienced, weaker, and younger soldiers before sending them out on the battlefield.

The Resistance owned the facility. The school itself was a Resistance compound. Jura's declaration that Deku was ready was a statement made by a higher-ranked official in the Resistance. A member of Resistance command. A Commander himself. The teachers could protest all they wanted, but Jura was not questioning whether or not Deku was ready this time. He stated it and then looked through the room towards other students who mostly had their backs to him. They were facing their teacher who they sat in front of while he described some of the augmented-reality training simulators with full motion-capture capabilities that they were going to be using today.

The teacher was also seated and looking back over the heads of his kids for a moment and across the Gym towards his colleagues at the school, and towards his comrade in the Resistance. Jura's expression remained grim as he looked towards Professor Xavier who lowered his gaze back down to the students of his class. He had a teaching aide behind him who had on a pair of goggles that had just one long red lens going over his eyes. A swirl of blue popped up out of thin air next to the teaching aide, and Nightcrawler leaned in and whispered something quietly into Cyclops' ear before teleporting back away again.

Scott looked around at the students and gave them looks telling them to focus on the Professor which they did. Once they were looking away from him again though, Cyclops lifted his gaze and glared towards Jura in a harsher way of his own. So few mutants are at this school already. If he takes those three, we'll have none here. So many went with Magneto when he declared the free homeland for mutants. Most didn't know the kind of man he was on our world. Saving espers from him, kids with Quirks, it was successful. The sub-species of mutants we are though, the ones who knew Magneto, we could barely save any of those kids and bring them here. He got them. Phoenix, messed with their heads. She must have for so many of them to have followed Magneto as blindly as they did. She was influencing all their thoughts. She still is, now that she's the one in control.

Jean…

Jura turned around away from that class when Professor Xavier told the kids to stand up to get ready for a dive into altered reality. When they got up, Jura realized just how short the class ahead of him was which he could not tell when they were seated. He kept his face from flashing in any regret however even as he looked away from the preteen students to the three standing behind him. Each of them had the harshest glares on their faces that he had seen since arriving. They think I'm considering even those children, which I don't blame them for after bringing up the Powerpuff Girls.

If they are up here in the Gym though, Jura countered his previous thoughts that he realized might be getting too soft while under the disapproving gazes of these faculty members. They may be some of the strongest students at this school. That will not be up to me to decide though. I won't do that. Not yet. Jura took in a deep breath. "This school has not paid off the investment that the Resistance put into it. You understand why that is an issue, correct?"

"We brought these kids here for a safe place to learn, and to train," Aizawa countered the Resistance Commander he stared straight into the eyes of. "And they are kids."

"That means, very little," Jura shook his head in response to the scruffy teacher. Aizawa opened his mouth back up and Jura lowered his chin, putting his foot down while looking far harsher himself than he had since arriving on the premises. "Deku alone was training under conditions that most in the Resistance would find impossible to handle. He has become extremely strong, using gravity tech of the Resistance."

"That was built in-house," Nezu offered back. He lifted up a small mouse paw and said, "Another of those you were impressed by upstairs was Yaoyorozu. Her work is vital to the continuation-"

"I am not talking about Creati," Jura countered quickly. "She is a special case. She is the exception though, not the rule." Jura said that firmly and frowned at the mouse man principal for trying to use that when he knew Mr. Principal was smart enough not to think of him as a buffoon. "Deku is training at 100 times Nexus' gravity. Yet you, Eraser Head, would argue about his immaturity. The 'weaknesses' of your students," Jura looked towards Ectoplasm who had countered each compliment he gave a student with something they still 'needed work on.'

"You suggest some kind of inability to fight in the kinds of circumstances that will be demanded of them in the field," Jura went on. "But the soldiers we currently have are not perfect, and your counters only work if that was what we needed: Perfection. That is not what the Resistance is waiting for."

"If Deku," Ectoplasm began. He had to bite down after starting as Aizawa glared towards him. The darker teacher continued though despite Eraser Head's silent protest, "Really wants to…"

"That, is the biggest concern of mine," Jura spoke in a far darker tone now while narrowing an angry glare at Ectoplasm who froze and opened his glowing white eyes wider at the Commander. Nezu also looked down for a moment in regret at what Ectoplasm just did unknowingly. Jura glared at that teacher and stated, "By suggesting such a thing, you can no longer hide it. You are ready to graduate Deku. You believe he is ready for graduation." Jura glared back towards Aizawa who kept glaring back at him, then he narrowed his gaze down at Nezu who had continued looking at the floor frustratedly.

"The Resistance has been waiting for you to graduate students first before recruiting them into our ranks. That is about to stop," Jura threatened the faculty before him. "It is not just Deku. Tailman and Invisible Girl carried out a surprisingly high-difficulty missions better than I can imagine any of our other teams handling it with all the unforeseen variables that took place. Those are not the two strongest here after Deku, but they were ready for the mission."

"Mature. Capable. Skilled." Jura listed off the qualities of the students. The report on them had led the Resistance High Command to a very difficult conversation leading to his dispatch here. He folded his arms over his chest, "I can no longer wait. We cannot. In the past 6 months, over half of the Resistance's Elite Squad members have been killed or captured. We were in a bad state after the Third War of the Gods, and half of our Elite soldiers since then have fallen."

"You have had two graduations in that time. Your students do not choose to join the outer squads though. They do not take part in the Resistance's counter-offenses. Instead, they chose to move into the interior to become heroes. To protect the cities and bring peace to our regions. Noble goals. Doing fine work. And not what the Resistance created this place to be," Jura finished in a stern tone suggesting that this was about to change. "We are operating fewer missions with less qualified teams with fewer members on them. Multiple squads have fewer than 5 members left and are still operating as if they are fully operational!"

"Not all of our alumni go into the interior," Aizawa brought up while glaring daggers into Jura's eyes.

Jura paused for a moment. I should have said a 'vast majority.' He is right. Jura let out a heavy breath after a second of staring back at Aizawa who would not change his unwavering and dark expression. It was due to those few who had not gone into the interior that Aizawa and his colleagues remained defiant against Jura's arguments. "We cannot allow our losses, to prevent us from sending anyone else," Jura responded in a low voice.

"Jon was my comrade. A good friend," Jura assured the faculty who did not need to bring him up to them as he believed they might in a second. "And Lexa is a brilliant Commander as well. But they were both known as 'Commanders' on their worlds too." Jura's voice got harsher again as he glared at the group before him. "They only spent short times at this school for training in other-worldly powers before returning to duties as leaders. I know you graduated them as much because you knew how prepared they were, as it was because those two would not have stayed for another semester anyway. They would have refused, so your school graduated them to bump your numbers. That is how it has often gone."

"They were ready for graduation-" Ectoplasm started.

"As are many of those still here right now," Jura retorted. "You cannot keep these fighters here forever."

"The end of the war is coming soon," Jura continued. His tone became darker and more ominous at that statement that shut up the teachers for a second. His eyes were focused and intense as he said, "If nothing changes, we will be defeated. We have been given a second chance. More time in the face of that seemingly imminent end. Son Goku's reappearance on Aebrith has changed things. It has lifted morale." Jura rose a small smile himself but his eyes remained dark even as he mentioned it. "He has brought friends with him. Natsu Dragneel, Monkey D. Luffy," Jura listed off others in that group who had already accomplished great things for the Resistance since their appearance on the continent.

"But they are not the Resistance," Jura continued after a moment and his lips flattened back out. "And I do not know if we can maintain their momentum. What they have given us is some time though. A chance to rally our forces. We can prepare to fight back again." Jura turned and glanced back through the Gym towards Xavier's class and around at some other students training up here using the amazing equipment the school had been provided resources for. "The north is in chaos," Jura spoke softly. "We need to take back our flanks and retake the coastlines."

Jura glared back at the men before him. "The world is becoming more connected. Potential allies across the ocean are unwilling to ally with Leam despite being trading partners, because our fight looks lost when their ships are boarded ever more frequently by the Emperor's forces. Lagann Island has separated from the Resistance because it feels like hope of defeating Arachne is gone. The Wizard King brazenly extends his Great Wall north and these is nothing we can do to stop him."

"We are on our own," Jura declared. "And the walls are closing in."

"The way things have been can no longer continue," Jura told the teachers as an order to them. "Not semesters. Nor trimesters. The terms need to be under two months." His opposers opened their mouths immediately but Jura was not finished yet, "And many students need to graduate in these graduations. We don't have the time to play pretend any longer," Jura said louder and as if daring the teachers to argue back that that was not what they were doing. "You will hold strong fighters back until the day the Cooperative knocks on your door and burns this place to the ground. By that point, no one will be able to help you, and this facility will fall."

"So instead of wait for that, you're threatening to take the kids now-"

Jura's presence knocked Ectoplasm backwards. The mage in front of them released his aura and it knocked Aizawa's hair blowing back behind him, while Ecotplasm leaned away from the brunt of the force hitting him. "I am a Commander of the Resistance. This is a Resistance training facility." Jura's declaration was something they all knew but that the Commander felt he needed to remind them as Ectoplasm called what he was doing a "threat." Jura bit down in frustration but then continued in a lower voice while his aura returned into his body, "You must obey my command, or I will allow Hiei to be the one to come next time."

Jura seethed through his teeth while standing still in the same stance he had been in before releasing some of his aura in the anger that came over him at Ectoplasm's tone treating him as the bad guy. "I am doing everything I can." His frustrated eyes darted down to Nezu's that looked much more understanding than his faculty members who were not appreciating enough what Jura was trying to do for them by giving them so many chances here. "It is time for you to accept that, and work with me," Jura's tone was pleading towards the end of his sentence as he looked into the principal's eyes for some look of acceptance to coordinate this with him. "I do not want to make these decisions myself. Your cooperation however, is not a necessity."

He did not come to antagonize these teachers. They were all on the same side, but Jura glared back and forth at the two men closer to his height who were glaring back but holding their tongues as best they could when Nezu lifted up a hand for both of them to stop. "I am here to help you," Jura repeated. As many times as he repeated it, those he was arguing with found it hard to believe such a thing. They did listen though as he continued, "Other Resistance leaders wish to come here and shut this place down. Recruit all of the students who they believe are preparing for war anyway and should be here at this school for that singular purpose. It is only the thin line of myself and you teachers here who keep all those students from becoming soldiers tomorrow."

"We are training them in the midst of a war closing in on your training facility. You need to understand that," Jura said while looking into his most ardent opponents' eyes. "I need you to understand where I am coming from. It is crunch time. They will be here soon. This is not my fear alone. It is consensus. It is an unfortunate reality. And you all know it."

Jura looked down to Principal Nezu while finishing his speech. Nezu nodded his head. "You are correct, Commander Jura. If we let emotions continue to get in our way, we do not help anyone. Not our students nor the people they wish to protect themselves." Ectoplasm and Eraser Head looked inwards in shock as Nezu conceded to the Commander. "I assure you a graduating class of 100 students in the coming graduation, which we will move up the schedule of to the end of this month. The first month, of our new dating system."

Jura let out a breath of relief and his shoulders lost some of the tenseness in them. That is something I can pass on to the others and show I got results. It is not what they all want, but it is something tangible. And it will make a difference, Jura did not lift a smile yet and hesitated even in his own thoughts while nodding back at the principal. "Thank you, Mr. Principal."

Jura's gratitude suggested he was not going to argue with the number and try to haggle it higher. Aizawa and Ectoplasm each ground their teeth as they wished Nezu had started with a lower number then as Jura might have accepted something like 90 or 80 too. Jura turned away from them though and so could not see their frustrated looks get back to pissed-off as Jura continued, "That 100 number, will have to be replicated in the following graduation as well. Of a term lasting for 30 days."

"Adding more on now…" Ectoplasm started.

"30 days is not enough time to give them any proper education-" Aizawa was cut off as Jura continued what he was saying.

"...If we make it that long," Jura finished. The other two frustrated teachers arguing against him closed their mouths. Jura did not add that final part to be dramatic. The way he said it suggested he thought there was a good chance they would only be getting one more graduating class out of this school before the Resistance crumbled. The idea that their fight might not last another two months shut up the teachers who wanted to argue but crashed into a harsh realization themselves at that very moment.

The world we're trying to protect is gone, Aizawa looked to his right and imagined the outside of this building. The school grounds full of smiling faces of children who they had helped and educated on such a terrible world, burst into flames in his mind's eyes. It's due to the peace we've endured here since the Third War of the Gods, when us teachers were last called on. The Resistance isn't going down with a bang though. I always assumed there would be a Fourth War of the Gods once our strength recovered. The Resistance just lost more and more strength though. There was no recovery like after the Second War. Just more defeats.

If it's really that bad out there, then, Ectoplasm looked down at the floor. They've done a good job at keeping that evil at bay so that these kids could train in peace. And since we were here, we've enjoyed that peace that almost no one else has for so long. That time is over though. Yet, the class we have to graduate now at the end of this month… Are they really ready? Last time they went out there, they got massacred. As much training as they've undergone since then, I- I still don't know if it's enough.

Jura will make our concession sound like a victory to the other Commanders. He will talk up the 100 we graduate, and so I must ensure that those 100 are ready to do more this time. Nezu released a deep breath of his own in reluctant acceptance. A class of students we raised to be heroes. We will send them out to join the Resistance's army. The ones who we have held back. Who push as hard as anyone to join the fight. Who we have convinced to remain here in order to be of "real use" to the world once we've deemed them ready for graduation.

Deku is their leader. Nezu thought while glancing up towards the ceiling and imagining the boy training as hard as he could upstairs. He convinced the others to stay. To train until we believe they are ready. He took their failure in the Second War of the Gods to heart. Accepted his weakness and inexperience better than most. And he believes that when he is finally ready, that he can change the tides of this war. His friends believe it. They will follow him. It is time to set him loose on the world.

The teachers led Jura back to the exit of the school after he curtly told them that he had other matters to attend to. Nezu spoke to Jura throughout their walk back to the gates about the specifics of graduation and how they would grade the students to ensure a full graduation class. Jura accepted Nezu's conditions as long as he was still able to go tell his comrades about his success here today. There were no pleasantries at the gates. The teachers and principal believed Jura in that he was one of more flexible Commanders to work with, and they appreciated the room he did give them in this matter, but they were not happy with him at all and so the group split with only hard feelings between them.

"We must cram as much training as we can into the chosen 100 before graduation day arrives," Nezu stated once they had watched Jura's ship lift off and fly away. Others in the school's faculty had come up behind the group near the gate and looked to their principal with intense looks that grew darker at what the mouse said which told them how the meeting had gone. "Determine which of your students you believe could graduate now. Remember that they will be going straight into combat upon graduation. And focus on training them more than your other students. Be hard on them. Encourage them, but do not pull your punches. Their enemies will not."

"We will move up graduation to Day 30 C.E." Nezu announced to his staff who had gathered at the gate. "100 of our students must graduate on that day. With another 100 a month after that. Resolve yourselves to this new reality, and don't forget," Principal Nezu smiled at them all. "This is not boot camp. If we continue to believe that the Resistance will one day win against the Cooperative, then we do not give up our values to become a military school alone. This is still a school. Educate and train. Both are necessary for transforming our students into well-rounded and adjusted adults. Protect them, knowing that protecting them may mean being harder on them than you have in the past. Ready them for the world outside of these walls. The war is here."

"'…The war is here.'"

Kaminari leaned back on the wall behind him and whistled. "Wow, way to be dramatic, Mr. Principal." He joked to lighten the tone of the room full of his classmates in a building close to the gates where a dozen of his friends had gathered with Jirou who stealthily followed the teachers and Commander Jura out of the training hall. The group of students in a room close to the gates had listened as Jirou repeated what Nezu was saying aloud to the rest of them as she eavesdropped using her long earphone-jack earlobes that she plugged into the wall closest to the teachers.

"He's not being dramatic," Iida scolded Kaminari for the light tone he took on the serious issue. "We will be among those who graduate a month from now."

"Obviously," Kaminari agreed back at him though still with his hands locked behind his head and looking more relaxed despite the serious topic. "We should honestly be out there already. We're gonna be the best of the Resistance soon as we join."

"Someone's cocky," Jirou remarked back towards him.

"As long as we're on the same team, I'm sure I'll be safe," Kaminari told the girl who unplugged her jacks from the wall and turned to him with risen eyebrows. "I'll feel safest on a team where we know exactly where all our enemies are. You'll protect me, right Jirou?" Kaminari asked the girl who could not tell if he was joking or not but still felt like smacking him with one of her Earphone Jacks just to be safe.

"Those of us who are confident like Kaminari should request to be part of the graduating class," Kendo Itsuka mentioned to the others who had been in a different class than her back on their own world. She had come with them though to eavesdrop on the teachers in what they suspected was a very serious conversation with the Resistance Commander which she needed to pass on to some of their other classmates now. The others looked to Kendo wondering what she was saying, and Kendo added, "The teachers think it is their prerogative to decide which of us are ready to join the fight. We can make it easier on them by telling them directly that we are among those ready. If you are not afraid, Kaminari, we should tell them that we are prepared so as to ensure our positions on the list and protect our classmates who are not as prepared mentally for this."

"Hey hey, didn't say I'm not scared," Kaminari countered Kendo who looked back at him in surprise for saying that while waving his hands up in the air. "But," Kaminari continued. He smiled at her and tilted his head to the side, "That does sound like a good idea. I'm in. Let's not do it today though and let all the teachers know we were eavesdropping. They'll either tell us or imply what's going on soon, and that's when we should go for it."

"Sneaky," Jirou remarked towards him.

"Says the one who called us so she wouldn't be alone in getting in trouble if she got caught," Kaminari called her out. This time Jirou did swing out an Earphone Jack and hit the boy who fell backwards off the desk he was sitting on but laughed while he was falling. "Which one of us is the sneaky one again?" Kaminari laughed towards the girl with reddened cheeks who turned away frustratedly that he could tell her real reason for inviting others to come eavesdrop with her.

"The important thing," Iida began again and made his classmates look back towards the tall boy with engines sticking out of his calves. "Is that we prepare ourselves with renewed fervor before graduation comes. Make use of the facilities here. Train your hearts and minds as well as your body in preparation of what may be asked of you out there. Not as heroes, but as soldiers of the Resistance. It is where we are needed first before we can consider any future beyond the war."

"You got it, Class-Rep-san."

---

A/N Thanks for reading! If you're wondering, Zach Sazaki is my OC from the fanfic Death that I've been writing for the past three and a half years and who I added in during the flashback this chapter. He has the power to kill instantly and (Spoiler alert for those of you who haven't read that fanfic), revive people who have died only once before. Unfortunately it looks like he is not alive in the present on Nexus, just like All Might, Kirishima, and many many others who have fallen in the various wars of the past on Nexus. Just like the Main Character group is taking a month to prepare for their next moves, the Hero School is granted a month to ensure a class of 100 graduates to join the fight against the Cooperative! Anyway, I realized that I forgot to do a list of characters at the end of last chapter even though I introduced so many new ones, so I'm going to make the list down here and include the new characters from this chapter as well! Thanks for reading, hope y'all enjoyed, and 'till next time!

Magi: Kouen Ren, Kouha, Kougyoku, Djinn Equips, Leraje, Koubun Ka, Rakushou

Gundam: Gihren Zabi, Kycilia, Johnny Ridden, M'Quve, Zeon

Star Wars: Cloud City, Tiplee, Tiplar, Force, Rex

Archer: Barry Dylan

Avatar TLA: Fire Nation, Azula

One Piece: Yonji, Devil Fruits, Mansherry, Luffy, Leo, Tontatta, Doflamingo, Nami

DC Comics: Catwoman

Teen Titans: Malchior

My Hero Academia: Deku, Bakugo, Aizawa, All Might, Aizawa, Ectoplasm, Nezu, Yaoyorozu, Ojiro, Jirou, Kendo, Sero, Mineta, Ashido, Hagakure, Sato, Kirishima, Bakugo, Kaminari

X-Men: Cyclops, Professor Xavier, Nightcrawler, Magneto, Phoenix

Powerpuff Girls: Blossom

Fairy Tail: Natsu Dragneel, Zeref, Spriggans, God Serena, Brandish

DBZ: Goku, Lord Black (General Black from back in Red Ribbon Saga XD)

Final Fantasy: Rufus Shinra, Ultima Weapon

Carmen Sandiego: Carmen, Player

Star Vs TFOE: Star Butterfly

Simpsons: Groundskeeper Willie

Hunter x Hunter: Meleoran

Assassination Classroom: Irina

And... that might be it. I don't know for sure. There are a lot. Anyway! Oh yeah...

Star Trek: Dilithium Crystal!

-Hold on. Got a review before I could post this one:

Smlluffy67 chapter 116 . 2h ago

ITS A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE YESTERDAY A NEW CHAPTER AFTER 2 YEARS ON MY BIRTHDAY OF ALL DAYS AND A NEW CHAPTER TODAY AND ONE OF THE BEST MCU CHARACTERS IS ALIVE AND DOING WELL LETS GO

Hey! Saw this review and how excited you sounded so I decided against waiting until tomorrow for the next update. (For me it's only 9:30pm right now). I hope you had a great birthday. Glad you liked Ant-Man's appearance! And hope you enjoyed another new chapter! Sorry for the long wait! :) Happy Holidays!