Katsuki had never experienced such a tense shower in his life. The entire time, he had simply stared at the wall between the showerhead and dial, doing his best to focus on something, anything other than the dream. Though the details had been fuzzy, the shower stall looked close enough in his mind that he could tell that the encounter had indeed been in the bathroom on his floor. Katsuki half expected to hear the curtain pull back behind him at any moment and turn to see a naked, barely familiar young woman walk into the small space with him.

Every noise of the bathroom door opening, toilets flushing, and people brushing their teeth in the sinks behind him made him uneasy. Katsuki couldn't even bring himself to look down while washing his nethers for fear that he would start thinking about sex once again. Instead, he made quick work of doing the bare minimum to clean himself and exited the bathroom wrapped in a towel, his hair and body still dripping wet.

Daisuke was waiting outside of the dorm, leaning against the wall next to the door. Katsuki simply gave him a nod, which the other boy returned. Nothing needed to be said, and Katsuki was eternally grateful that the other boy hadn't asked him if he was feeling better or insisted on being inside while he changed. It felt like someone finally understood his need for space without having to be reminded time and time again. How could the others be so dense as to not get it?

Katsuki dried himself and changed into a pair of jeans and a plain black tee. There was no thought or effort behind the outfit, and he didn't care what anyone would think of it. Upon exiting the dorm with nothing but his wallet, phone, a spiral notebook, and two pens to take notes, he offered Daisuke another nod. The other boy returned it once again and pushed off the wall with his tail, finally speaking.

"Hey. You ready to go see Iida?"

"Yeah," Katsuki acknowledged. "Hopefully this is quick, and then we can just… spend the rest of the day preparing for tomorrow. I have no idea what to expect."

"Oh, we got an email this morning," Daisuke let on as they began to walk together. "Tomorrow's gonna be a bit… different from a typical day of class. Apparently, we're doing hero name selection first thing in the morning, then meeting all of the professors at an assembly, and then doing… something that Professor Aizawa refused to elaborate on. He just said we should all get some quality sleep and be ready for anything. Show up in top form."

"Hero name selection?" Katsuki asked, tensing up. "Already? I thought that was just… you know, when we started getting offers for work studies and whatever."

"Yeah, apparently not," Daisuke replied with a shrug. "I'm sure most people have been thinking about it since they were kids, so Professor Aizawa just wants to get it out of the way. I don't know about you, but I've got… nothing. Kan suggested I go by 'Blowjob', but that's not happening."

"Me neither," Katsuki admitted with a roll of his eyes. "And of course she did. Shit. I guess I'll start thinking about it tonight…"

"You can always rebrand before the end of the year," Daisuke reminded. "Not everyone keeps their initial name, so don't sweat it too much. I think they're just trying to put pressure on us early to see how we handle it."

"As if we're not dealing with enough pressure already," Katsuki grumbled as they reached Iida's door. With a deep breath, he knocked three times against the surface. "God, all of this sucks. Guess that's the job."

"That is the job, yeah," Daisuke agreed. "A lifetime of suck to try to make other peoples' lives suck less. I'm sure we'll have some good times along the way, too."

"I'm not," Katsuki muttered as the door opened to reveal Tenya. The bespectacled boy bowed respectfully and stepped aside, allowing the visitors room to enter. "Hey. Sorry. Something… came up."

"…I see," Tenya replied, sounding somewhat less than impressed. Even so, he hid his disappointment fairly well and managed to stay mostly neutral. "Such things happen, I suppose. Honenuki and I have been going over the footage from yesterday morning, when he found his mask filters up-ended."

"See anything interesting?" Daisuke asked as he closed the door to the dorm room behind himself and took a look around.

Tenya Iida and Juzo Honenuki's dorm was perhaps the most stereotypically spartan of the lot, and seemingly fully set up. Not a square inch was wasted or disorganized, the furniture was at seemingly perfect right angles, the walls were bare, and the bookshelves above and around each bed were actually filled with books. The TV stand had a large screen atop it, with the coffee table before it totally undecorated save for the accompanying remote. Everything was academic, undecorated, clean, and functional. Daisuke found it boring. Oddly enough, so did Katsuki.

Both boys made a mental note not to let their dorms reach that state.

"That depends on what you'd call 'interesting'," Juzo answered in a mechanically modified voice, still looking at the TV. Tenya's laptop was hooked up to the screen, showing off four separate security camera feeds with timestamps in the corners. "We haven't seen a damned thing out of place… and Tsu is in the lobby talking to seemingly nothing for the entire duration that Iida was out. Whoever touched my stuff, it couldn't have been Hagakure. Our door didn't open, close, or stall out even once, and I don't think Tsu is crazy enough to be talking to herself for that long."

Katsuki and Daisuke moved to take a seat on the couch opposite Juzo. He didn't look at either of them as Katsuki opened his notebook and began to copy down timestamps and notes.

"Well… what are the chances you just put things back upside-down and didn't notice?" Katsuki asked. "Nothing else in your dorm was touched, right?"

"It's possible," Juzo acknowledged. "I might've just been careless, I guess. Still, this doesn't bode well for your case. Iida filled me on your theory about Hagakure, and I was pretty much convinced until now. We didn't notice anything else out of place and did a full sweep of our dorm this morning."

"That still doesn't answer what happened to Mineta's journal," Tenya reminded as he sat down next to Juzo and picked up the laptop. "We haven't reviewed the footage from those timestamps yet."

"Well, let's get on it," Katsuki advised as he took down Asui and Hagakure's names. "Who left the dorm last?"

"Mineta," Daisuke confirmed as Tenya began to scrub through the footage. "Should be around… there."

Tenya stopped scrolling and let the cameras begin playing at double speed.

"We might be here a while…"

"Kick it up to five times," Katsuki advised. "At least until we see Mineta leave."

Tenya did as asked, keeping his eyes on the camera feed outside of the specified room.

"Very well…"

"Hold up," Daisuke advised, pointing at another quadrant. "Floating towel, seven o' clock."

Tenya slowed the footage back to playing in real time and rewound a bit as the group looked to the lower left screen. Right on cue, a floating towel wrapped around an invisible body and unoccupied pair of flip-flops appeared coming down the hallway. A second, smaller towel was folded in half, seemingly draped over an arm as the full set approached the girls' bathroom.

"That's her," Katsuki announced with narrowed eyes, making a note and drawing a line beneath it. "And Mineta is still in his dorm. Now we've got two doors to watch. Triple speed?"

"Triple," Tenya confirmed as the footage began to speed up. It wasn't long before Mineta did in fact leave his dorm and headed for the stairwell. "There he goes. Any of you see anything unusual?"

"Nothing," Juzo answered. "Hagakure's still in the bathroom. Been about 20 minutes."

"I mean, that's plausible," Daisuke pointed out, his tail lazily sliding back and forth along the floor. "Girls and their… girl stuff. You and I can keep an eye on the bathroom door. Kats and Iida, watch our dorm?"

"Got it," Katsuki confirmed as the footage continued to roll. The group sat in silence, watching for minutes on end as people walked up and down the halls intermittently… but nothing else seemed to change. "How long has it been in real time? I didn't make a note of when we started dividing attention."

"Just under an hour," Tenya answered as he moved to speed up the footage even more. "Nothing of note by the dorm. Anything by the bathroom?"

"She still hasn't come out," Daisuke said, sounding wary. "That's… I mean, she could be on the phone? Or hiding from someone? I don't know, this is getting weird…"

"Very," Katsuki agreed. "There goes Mineta back into the dorm room. Slow it down, check that the door doesn't behave weirdly?"

Tenya did as asked and Juzo spoke up once again.

"Hagakure's still in the bathroom. None of this makes any sense. She couldn't be sneaking in or out of dorms, at this point."

"Unless we just missed it," Daisuke reminded. "Should we go back?"

"We could," Tenya considered as he advanced the footage at even greater speed. "But I'm confident we would've noticed something by now. Here comes Bakugo, on his way to see you… and there go both of you, on your way to see me…"

"Rewind it," Katsuki ordered, suddenly feeling very stupid and making more notes. "Back to when she enters the bathroom. This isn't right."

"What, you think someone doctored the footage?" Daisuke asked. "That seems unlikely."

"No, I just…" Katsuki answered. "There's nothing weird going on, other than Hagakure camping out in the bathroom? She definitely isn't entering any dorms, no doors are opening or closing without people present… shit. Now I look like an idiot."

"I wouldn't go that far," Juzo protested, finally looking at Katsuki. Though his expression was hidden by the mask, he didn't sound like he was holding a grudge. "Scrub forward. When does she leave the bathroom? Something's definitely going on there."

"Agreed," Tenya echoed as he advanced the footage. "But who exactly is going to confront her about how long she was in the bathroom? That would be… awkward, to say the least. It isn't as though she can teleport. Her Quirk is a known factor."

"Yeah…" Katsuki agreed, watching as the bathroom door remained closed. He saw Kyoka enter and exit and noted the time, but no one else came by to use the space. Finally, around midnight, the door opened and a towel floated out from beyond the door, another seemingly wrapped around Hagakure's invisible hair. "There. Fucking midnight? What the hell was she doing in there?"

"…midnight," Tenya confirmed. "That's… something is wrong. Very, very wrong… but we know where she was all this time. Could she have been making calls to her family in the bathroom for privacy? I do know she's been having issues at home. That seems an odd move, but most of us were out for the day, and there are only four girls on our floor…"

"For hours?" Daisuke asked. "I mean, maybe, but… I don't like this at all. It's not like we can really bring it up, either. What are we gonna do, have someone follow her into the bathroom and see what she's doing? Monitoring the door opening and closing is already gonna seem creepy as hell if we bring it up to her…"

"This is a dead end," Katsuki said, frustrated and throwing his hands up. "I should've never brought it up. Maybe Mineta's journal just fell. I don't know. We're all on edge right now, we're all…"

"Wait," Juzo interrupted, watching Tenya move back and forth through the footage. "Go back? To when Kyoka exited the bathroom."

"For what reason?" Tenya asked, though he did work to rewind the recording. "What did you see?"

"Look at her face," Juzo pointed out. "Half speed."

The group watched as Kyoka exited the bathroom, looking over her shoulder and back into the space. She seemed deeply unsettled, as though she was afraid of something behind her. In an odd, unnatural motion, Kyoka bent down and rubbed at the top of her bare foot before wiping it on the carpet of the lobby and backing away from the bathroom door. Her mouth opened and she said something, though the camera footage had no sound to reveal it. Kyoka hesitated for a moment before wiping her hand on her thigh and turning to walk away toward her dorm at a brisk pace.

"…we've got a lead," Daisuke said, turning his head to look at Katsuki.

"Do we?" he asked. "Could be totally unrelated… and we can't just go and ask Jiro what happened. Bringing in a fifth person in on all this seems risky and probably unnecessary. We haven't found a damned thing."

"No more risky than getting this footage to begin with," Juzo considered with a shrug. "I say we ask her. We're already in this deep."

"…and be the four creepy assholes who were monitoring her bathroom usage from here on out?" Katsuki asked with a sneer. "I'm out. I actually like Jiro, and this is clearly a dead end. I'm done."

"Do you?" Juzo teased. "Good to know."

"Not like…" Katsuki started, growing frustrated. "Whatever. Think what you want. I'm not bringing this up to her."

"I'll do it," Daisuke offered. "The problem's mostly with my dorm, and I can probably get her to understand why we were looking. Even if we didn't get much from this exercise, I think we're on to something weird happening in the dorms. I don't know about you guys, but if something's going on, I'd rather get to the bottom of it early than let it fester for weeks or months."

"Agreed," Juzo said. "I'll come with you. I don't like having my gear messed with, and while it's possible it was my fault… I don't think it was. I've learned to be pretty meticulous with maintenance. We'll keep you guys updated. Keep combing the footage?"

Katsuki let out a dramatic sigh as Daisuke and Juzo stood up.

"Fine… but I'm not wasting more than another hour on this. We've got classes tomorrow and more important things to be worried about."

"Fair enough," Daisuke agreed. "We'll be back before then, assuming we can find Jiro."

"Good luck," Tenya offered as he watched the pair exit the dorm. Once the door was closed, he turned his attention over to Katsuki. "This worked out nicely, I would say. I wanted to speak to you privately, and now we have ample time."

"About all this?" Katsuki asked. "Look, I'm sorry, alright? I really thought th-"

"No," Tenya interrupted as he started to rewind the feed back to the beginning. "Well, yes, but more so about One for All…"

Author's Note:

This one goes out to all the people trapped with shitty families on this dumbass holiday. Hopefully this chapter can entertain you for at least 15-20 minutes.

Next time, we jump back to Mirio's crew for a bit…

-RD