I was late uploading this, as if you also follow me on Ao3, then you would have read this like 4 hours ago, but for same damn reason, the site either refuses to accept my upload claiming it's 'not an accepted file format' which is BS, or it gives me Gatewat time out screen. So I just used a previously saved doc here and transferred the stuff to it, which I just know will bite my in the ass later.

This was written back in December when I took an altered approach to planning. As I had the time to write this but not the pressure to post, I decided to write out some chapters and focus on planning for the stuff that comes after.

"Text" – Normal speech

'Text' – Thought

"Text" – Quirk Spirit speaking in the human world

"Text" - Attacks

"Text" – Radio/Communication lines

"Text" – None Japanese speech

(text) – Subtext/meaning behind a spoken word

Chapter 31: Light at the End of the Tunnel

"Just 20 seconds, that would be easy, " Todoroki said as Vlad finished explaining the plan. He had to admit it wasn't too complicated, but it should get the job done. As if to disprove him, the creature's body mutated once again, growing a fourth arm from its shoulder blade, bone sticking out like a blade as it let out an unholy screech, slamming the weapon down where they had just been standing.

"You just had to jinx it, didn't you?" Honenuki yelled as he and the rest dodged the attack, but that would make things a little more complicated.

"Focus on the fight, keep each other safe, and buy Aoyama time!" Vlad reminded them.

"Sir!" The students replied as Yanagi levitated a piece of debris large enough for Todoroki to stand on. Jumping on, he knelt to keep his balance as she few it over towards the Nomu, whose other additional arm sprouted another bone sword in a burst of blood and flesh. The dual-haired colored boy chose to ignore it, or else he gagged as he was brought close enough that he could lay his right hand on its side.

The Nomu was quick to react, its body shifting as smaller hands came out to grab him, to do what he didn't know. But they were too slow, and ice burst out, spreading across its body. Todoroki pushed his quirk to freeze it all the way to the bone. The beast screeched as more of its body was enveloped in ice, flesh rapidly cooling to below freezing, slowing down its regeneration and mutations.

"It's done," Todoroki called back as he was carried away. He would have thought that enough, as well as that over half the beast was frozen, but it started proving that his ice wouldn't be enough, a notion that angered him more than he let show.

"I apologize for this, but this will see you laid to rest." His part done, Shiozaki was next as her vines came bursting out of the softened earth around the creature, wrapping around its frozen limbs and squeezing, the thorn-covered vines digging into the ice, which started to crack and buckle before with the sound of a glass shattering, she smashed through, severing limbs and leaving behind frostbite riddled stomps, the Nomu letting out a pained screech which had her reeling, hoping that this was the only means they had as if not, she couldn't bare the thought of causing a living creature sure pain.

"Let's hope that this is enough to bring it down." Uraraka used her quirk on herself, removing gravity from her body before her legs started to glow, her boots struggling to contain their raw power as she leaped forward. She aimed for the creature's chest, still frozen over but cracking as whatever mutated regeneration it had started to handle the ice. Pulling her first back, her arm started to glow, and she swung it as hard as possible.

"Smash!" she cried out as she punched through the beast with an explosion, tearing through frozen muscle, bone, and organs as she burst out its back. Her arms and legs were useless, but Yanagi and Kodai were lucky enough to catch up.

The size manipulator took the chance to toss pieces of debris she picked up into the ghastly would before increasing its size. It clocked up its regeneration as its organs were now being crushed by the boulders left as they tried to regrow. But even then, they witnessed its body continue to mutate and adapt, the boulders slowly being broken up and crushed as its organs pushed them out of the way.

Others wouldn't just let it heal, as the Nomu started to slow. Kamakiri continued dashing around the now injured and slowed monster, leaving behind more cuts and gashes on its limbs, which Rin fired into. Even as its body started rejecting entire pieces of itself to escape the agony of his scales, it left more wounds for him to target.

"This is the stuff of nightmares!" Kirishima yelled as he and Tetsutetsu continued the attack, both now shivering in disgust, horror, and adrenaline as they, much like Kamakiri, were close enough that its blood spilled on them. The two just kept repeating in their heads that it wasn't a man, it wasn't an animal-it was a thing. A thing that had to be put down.

"It's time!" Aoyama called out, now hard to look at with how bright he was, his blades held at the ready. Honenuki didn't need another command as he hardened the earth, trapping the wounded and still-healing beast. The Nomu was so weak that while it struggled long past the point that any living creature would have died or just given up, it didn't have the power to break free.

With the rest either pulling back or being carried by the rest, Aoyama focused his attention on their foe—a monster that should have never been made and should have never suffered. But he understood that life could be cruel and unfair to even the best of people.

All he could do right now...was give it rest.

"House of light!" he called out again, but this time, the light didn't come from his blades but separated from his bright form. It shot out towards the Shishiha, flying over the creature, where, like before, it burst into dozens of small lights that flew around the Shishiha, creating his mirrors.

But this wasn't all of it, as those mirrors acted as focusing mirrors, light building up into their centers like lasers glowing brightly. "Burst!" Aoyama called out, and as one, the mirrors unleashed their barrage, the blasts searing deep into the beast, some hitting as far as bone, some cutting off its more minor wounds. The rest flinched as the smell of burnt pork hit their noises, some throwing up at the smell.

Aoyama swept but kept composure. For a moment, he wished he had a quirk that wasn't so painful, that he wasn't fighting this alone. But it was necessary. The others had done a great job; he just needed to do a little more damage so that he could see its corp.

'There.' He thought, spotting it through the raving mass of flesh so desperately trying to stitch itself back together. He even saw its other quirk, the two close enough that a single strike should do it.

His form ceased its glow as Aoyama sent all his light and power into his blades, which burned like stars in the midnight sky. "Solar Saber-!" Aoyama swung his saber downward, creating a slash of blue moonlight tinged with yellow sunlight. Still, the strike didn't travel but stayed in place. It seemed to glow larger, brighter, and more unstable as Aoyama continued it, risking it all with an attack he hadn't used before.

When the crescent was as big as the beast, and others worried it would backfire on them, Aoyama pulled back his rapier, focusing all his remaining power into its very tip as he thrust it towards his crescent. "Helios's Chariot!" Aoyama poured all he had into this attack, as the moment the tip of his rapier touched the crescent, they realized that it wasn't a slash like his other strikes but a giant bow.

A bow fired off a giant burst of spiraling yellow and blue light so bright that it lit up the entire USJ, shining even through the dome as everyone had to look away or else be blinded. The Nomu didn't even have a moment to breathe as the bolt of arrow-shaped light pierced it, flesh, blood, and bone burning up as it screamed louder than before as the two quirks at its core were engulfed in the light.

They held up for a few seconds, but they were soon consumed like the flesh around them as the blast continued through them, streaming through the USJ; anything caught in its way was consumed by the unyielding light of the sun and moon, blinding anyone that turned to look at what the disturbance was before the arrowhead crashed into and through the walls of the frost zone, only when it pierced through some ice covered buildings of its frozen interior did the blast at last, dissipate.

When it finally ended, the plaza was left silent, the area still bright as if light molecules lingered in the air around them. Vlad and Aizawa, while speechless, turned their attention to the Nomu, ready to try something else-

The beast wasn't regenerating. The strike had burned a hole nearly the size of its chest cavity. Where there had been flesh, bone, ice, and debris, there was now nothing. It was as if Aoyama's attack disintegrated all of it. This time, the beast wasn't trying to fight; it didn't even screech or cry but instead let out a pitiful grasp and whine before it slumped forward, its arms falling still.

"Was…was that it?" Honenuki asked.

"I think so…" Iida replied, as they kept their eyes on the beast, but even when Kamakiri hesitantly approached and kicked it, it didn't so much as flinch.

When he gave a thumbs up, the students felt relief crashing down on them. "We did it…we fricking did it!" Sero cheered.

"Oh, thank God, the damned monster finally went down!" Mineta cried as that was too scary. What kind of villains just had something like that lying around.

Yanagi took a breath, relieved that the worst of it was over. "That was good work…"She turned, only to fall silent at what she saw. "Aoyama."

The rest also turned, seeing that Aoyama still stood, but that was all. His form had dropped back to normal, and so did his blade, though it was dull as if it hadn't been polished to clean in years, while Aoyama's skin was pale as a corpse; his eyes starred but didn't see anything.

Dropping his blade, he fell forward, where he was quickly caught by Yanagi. "Aoyama!" the girl fretted over him, worried sick for their classmate. As Aizawa came up, he gently pushed her aside so he could inspect the boy. First reaching for his neck, he waited until he felt a pulse. It was weak, but it was there. Putting his ear to his mouth, he could also hear him drawing slow, labored breaths.

"He's alive. This must be the quirk exhaustion he was talking about." The man sighed, concerned for the boy's general health, but at least he had a fighting chance.

"That's a relief. Now, what do we do about the rest of the villains?" Iida turned in confusion; they hadn't even bothered restraining the villains that remained in the plaza.

"You got to be kidding me! I'm not fighting after that!" One immediately surrendered, hands in the air as they got down on their knees, others following.

"Yeah, I didn't sign up to fight with a literal monster from my worst nightmares!" Another declared as she went further and laid on her stomach, her four arms out to the side.

"I'll take prison over fighting against any of you." Another surrendered without a moment's hesitation. They were told there would be freshmen who could barely handle themselves in a fight, and not only did that prove false, but they saw most of them fight an honest-to-god monster. Shigaraki sure didn't tell them it could do that either.

The students and heroes alike watched as every villain still awake in the plaza surrendered. "Damn, that's a let-down." Kamakiri sighed as Vlad led Honenuki around, the boy using his quirk to bury the villains up to their waists as, yes, they weren't fighting back, but one couldn't be careful.

"We just fought a literal monster and barely won. That's enough excitement for a week." Sero told Kamakiri, falling on his butt in exhaustion as that…that was more than he thought hero work would ever be.

An explosion from the entrance drew their attention. The students were too exhausted by everything else to react to see All Might not smiling as he entered. "I heard what was happening from Tokage…"

The symbol of peace looked around and saw the corpse of the colossal Nomu, the damage to the area, and what looked like every villain he could see was already defeated, surrendering, or restrained. If not for Thirteen's condition, he would have assumed that things hadn't nearly been as dangerous as Tokage had told him as she flew towards the main campus. "What happened here?"

Aizawa was tired from the day they just had, and he had so many questions that he had no answers, with a snarky response. "You're late, All Might."

News of All Might's arrival did more to end the crisis than the man himself. With most of the USJ back under the control of the students and their supervising heroes, whatever villains remained could read the writing on the wall and surrendered as well. By the time Nezu and other heroes arrived to support All Might, they mainly handled arrests.

Despite that victory at a time when none were expecting to fight, none of the students felt like celebrating. They had been escorted out of the facility as police now swarmed all over, taking in villains and recording whatever evidence that they could find; leaving the students to their devices, they quickly shared stories of where they had been sent, what they did and who they fought, with those who remained at the stairs. Those from the plaza got the most attention as they explained why Thirteen, Aoyama, Yaoyorozu, Uraraka, and Midoriya weren't present.

"Shit, I thought things got bright there for a moment. You mean to tell me that Aoyama did all that?" Jiro asked.

"Saw it with my own eyes, nearly went blind doing it, but I saw it," Sero replied, his helmet on his lap as he sat on a bench, contemplative.

"If only we got there sooner, maybe-" Monoma started, but Kamakiri stopped him.

"Not even. I don't know what those two were doing, but…" He sighed, as he wasn't sure what he saw from Aoyama; the sparkly bastard went and turned into a sun and fried that fucker. "Look, not even ice lover Todoroki could keep that thing down long. Whatever those two did, it was the only thing that seemed to hurt it."

Todoroki was so out of it that he didn't glare at Kamakiri for his slight. Instead, he focused on his right hand, his face twisted with…something they couldn't say, and frankly, no one had the emotional energy to wonder what he was going through when they were all trying to unpack things.

"I hope that I never have to use my quirk in such a manner again." Shiozaki hugged herself, as she knew it was needed, knew she was the only one, but…she couldn't unsee it. She couldn't stop hearing the ice crack and shatter and the screams that followed.

"Same, that…that wasn't manly at all." Kirishima hugged her close; the boy had several wet towels that he and Tetsutetsu used to clean themselves up after the literal blood bath they endured.

"You think that they'll be okay? Midoriya looked pretty banged up." Komori asked as she and her group arrived just in time for Midoriya to be loaded into an ambulance. The boy lay out on his back as they worked on his injury.

"(Kero)," Asui bemoaned, seated next to Hagakure. "We did what we could to stem the bleeding, but it was an intense cut." She replied as she had done all she could, but Snipe's lessons hadn't begun to cover treating wounds like that. Hagakure had helped when she arrived, but there had only been so much the two could do for such a massive gash from hip to shoulder.

"Then there was Thirteeen…" Tsunotori added that she had been horrified when their teacher's quirk had been turned on her. If she hadn't turned it off when she did….

"All we can hope for is they're in capable hands at the hospital." Tokoyami crossed his arms to hide how much they were shaking, as today had just been a mess. Rescue training they were promised, and instead, they were thrown into a fight for their lives. The villains at the plaza might have been the first to surrender. Still, the ones they'd been up against had been the last, mainly because they had already defeated two-thirds of them.

Someone coughed into their hands, drawing his and the rest of their attention. They saw that it was one of the police officers, dressed like one would in any late-night cop drama, complete with a fedora and beige trench coat. In his hands, he had a clipboard, his eyes going from it to them every now and then before he nodded.

"I'm sorry, but I wanted to make sure you were all here. Things are pretty chaotic without a student going missing, " the man told them, and the students waved it off.

"Sure, man, you do you," Kaibara told him, with the man being patient and understanding that they might not be in the best mood to deal with him.

"There's more. I would like to ask you some questions and get your recollection of things while they're still fresh." He requested that they start working on this as soon as possible.

"Before that, sir, about those that had to be taken away…" Hagakure asked, nervous when he turned his attention to her but too concerned not to speak up. "Has there been any news?"

The detective sighed. Truthfully, he had expected such a question from them. How could they not be concerned after the day they'd had? He hadn't even spoken with Eraser and Vlad yet, but based on the colossal corpse of a frightening beast that they needed to wait for a specialized team and equipment to retrieve, he could guess that what they saw was less than pleasant.

Looking over them, he saw that while young Ms. Hagakure had been the one to ask, it was a sentiment that they all had to some degree, especially those who had been present for the events that put those injured in the hospital.

"I can share what I know, but please remember that I don't know all the details yet." The detective started, and he explained things only when he saw them all nodded. "I'll start with the minor conditions. Ms. Yaoyorozu was merely exhausted from using her quirk, and I heard she could return him by evening. Aoyama is a more…severe case, as while they have him in a room with plenty of light, it's a slow recovery, so they expect to keep him overnight."

Asui let out a sad croak. "I knew it was the right move to stop her. Yaomomo still wanted to use her quirk to create medical equipment when I was treated Midoriya, but I turned her down." Hagakure gave her some comfort, as she had agreed with her, and made sure to watch the taller woman to ensure she didn't push it. She had already done more than enough.

"Are the doctors sure that it was just quirk exhaustion with Aoyama? We've seen him overuse his quirk in training, but that was…" Yanagi started but frowned as she looked away. Those who had the plaza looked equally unsure of it, as Aoyama looked like he was near death after that, frankly, star-level release of light.

The detective shared their concerns, though it was more than that as he still lacked details, only the barest of context clues, and they were painting a confusing yet disturbing picture. However, while his investigator instincts were ringing, his experience with witnesses also kept that in check, as it would only throw a wrench into things if he got too aggressive and the students clammed up.

"Uraraka's injuries looked to be the worst, but they were injuries that Recovery Girl could see to without issue. she called and said that she expects the girl to be so exhausted after the healing process that she'll spend the night at the hospital." He reported that the girl, from what he heard, had been fully awake when she was taken away and, if nothing else, scared of what Recovery Girl would do to her for breaking her arm again.

That humorous tidbit of info didn't help when he went to the last of the student causalities. "Midoriya took a pretty bad cut to his back, one that hit some important blood vessels, but his ribs kept the worst damage from his heart and lungs. Recovery Girl believes that after a quick surgery to close up the injury, she can have him healed up and back home by tomorrow afternoon."

Midoriya had been unconscious and near unresponsive, with signs of quirk exhaustion as well. Still, he decided to keep that to himself as if not, he might have to reveal that if not for Hagakure and Asui's efforts, the boy could have bled out long before help arrived. Lucky for them, the hospital had a ready and vast supply of donor blood to replenish what he lost.

"Thirteen suffered severe lacerations to her back and upper arm, which, while the most serious out of their injuries aren't life-threatening." Thirteen had been the only other person lucid when she was taken away, the pro being calm under the situation, taking more time to study her injuries as she had never used her quirk like that on others, much less herself.

Thankfully, his words seemed to have an alleviating effect on the mood, which had been tense. Still, with no news of deaths or long-term injuries, the students allowed themselves a moment to relax. Stress bleeding out of them as some not seated fell to their knees or butts. "Oh, thank God." Shiozaki clasped her hands together in prayer.

"Man, I was worried there. Things were just…and then he was just laying there, bleeding all over the damn place." Tetsutetsu struggled to put it into words as Tokage sent an arm around him, pulling him close with a shaky but clear shark tooth smile.

"Hey, chin up, Tetsutetsu. Your neighbors are made from tougher stuff than you thought." She told him, with the white-haired man nodding as he wiped away his tears.

"While it was indeed a fearsome experience, through wit and the devil's luck, we managed to leave, if only not all on our two feet," Kuroiro noted.

"Okay, now I'd like to speak with you one at a time. It should be short, 3 minutes each, and then you can return to class to decompress. Is that passable with you all?" the detective asked, with the students nodding before he looked at the list he had been provided and went with the first name on it, calling Ashido so that they could speak by one of the squad cars.

When they arrived, he pulled out a recorder and placed it on the vehicle's hood. "This is a voice recorder, which I'll use to keep an audio record of this conversation. I'm currently speaking with Ashido Mina of U.A.'s first-year hero course. My name is Tsukauchi Naomasa. I am a detective working with the police. Do you, Ms. Ashido, acknowledge that this is being recorded and consent to such?"

Ashido looked at the thing. Sure, she had seen something like that in the cop shows she typically saw on TV. "Yeah, it'll probably be better than reading this later."

The man nodded. It was standard procedure with witnesses, and while some might skip it, he made it a habit to be by the books, at least with stuff like this. "Okay, can you tell me how things started? To give a baseline of events, how they were meant to happen, and how they did happen?"

Ashido frowned but didn't refuse as she tried to put her thoughts into words. "Sure, well, there's not much about the trip here, but when we got here…"

"What a mess. I can't believe that we let them escape after they made such a mess." Inside the USJ, the staff looked over things as the police gathered evidence, took pictures, and otherwise sectioned off spaces for further examination. This was a part of law enforcement that they, as heroes, typically left to the professionals.

"That is on our heads if we have been more aware during the fight." Vlad sighed as he and Eraser stood with the pros who had been free to lend aid when the call came through. The rest had stayed on campus just in case of a follow-up attack. The staff, much like All Might, had been thrown for a loop when the emergency that Tokage breathlessly told them about was largely resolved by the time they got there.

Though there were still plenty of questions and concerns around the attack, as All Might might have brought a definite end to the crisis, it still has lingering effects. Both teachers who were present were distraught by the fact that while they came out with little more than scarps and bruises, their colleague and several students had to be carried out on stretchers.

"I would still like to know how that fight went down," Present Mic stated, pointing towards the elephant in the room. "And why do we have a kaiju corpse bleeding all over the plaza."

Around the Nomu, the police had already sectioned it off. Still, even from where they stood at the top of the stairs, they could tell that it was a massive creature, with its bottom half still in the earth thanks to Honenuki's quirk; they'll need to either get the boy back to liquify the earth once more or bring in tools to chip at it to free its corpse. The beast was complex enough to look at with all its protrusions, limbs, additional ears, noses, and mouths, but its many scars only added to the horror, including the one that took it down, a gaping hole where most of its torso should have been.

"The League's leaders called it a Nomu and said that it was a bioengineered weapon to fight All Might," Vlad reported, frowning as he recalled more of that brat Shigaraki's bragging. "He also claimed that it had more than one quirk."

At his words, the other 4 teachers turned to him, all of whom were surprised by such a statement. All Missing how their 4th member, Nezu's frame jolted at the statement, his beady eyes growing fearful momentarily before he hid it behind a veil of calm. "A bold claim."

"He seemed quite eager to share that fact when Midoriya accused him of it. Speaking of him and Aoyama, there is something there." Aizawa replied as he had been willing to ignore it in the heat of the moment and focus on the more rational subject, but now that things had cooled, they had to address those two.

"How so?" Serenity asked.

"Midoriya came in swinging and spoke with Shigaraki; he was the one that figured out that the Nomu had two quirks," Eraser started but paused and shook his head. "No, Shigaraki freely surrendered that piece of information. Midoriya was able to, for lack of a better description, see the Nomu's quirk and called it stolen, with Shigaraki's response heavily implying that was correct."

"How can a quirk be…stolen?" Snipe asked. The very idea just seemed impossible. This time, Aizawa saw how their boss flinched at his words and narrowed his eyes. Nezu knew something, and he wasn't saying what it was, but he would bet that it had something to do with the validity of stealing a quirk.

"I have no idea, and the only ones who can tell us are either our escaped villains…or Midoriya and Aoyama, as it can't just be chance that both their quirks were the only ones that seemed to do lasting real damage to it. It was even immune to Erasure." Vlad told them, as their typical ace in the hole was all but useless against it, those two students said something about its body just being a 'shell' at that point.

That and the two immediately going for the kill before any of them even knew what that…thing was, with such certainty that it was just a living tool, was another question.

Nezu hummed on that, his mind racing with possibilities and theories, some disregarding almost as fast as they were formed, others lingered, and most centered around the timing of when those two got their quirks. Quite late in their lives, quirks that both required support items that could be altered and now evening recognizing something as impossible as a quirk's origin? He would need to solve this puzzle, but first, he needed to find more pieces.

"I see, that is concerning. However, we need not treat them as villains with this. Regardless of how strange their situation is, they're our students and fought like everyone else to save lives and stop this threat." Nezu stated

Far from U.A, in the middle of a busy town, sat a nondescript building. It was clean if a little plain, the type someone could walk past every day without ever glancing at it. Inside the building, however, lay a bar that was well stocked, but with the time of day, it was empty of clients or even a bartender.

A familiar black portal formed in the middle of it, and Shigaraki came out, irritated about how much their plan had blown up in their faces. "Dammit…those useless gutter punks couldn't even keep those stupid students busy! And Nomu…nomu was" Shigaraki couldn't even finish his sentence with how pissed he was.

"What the hell was that?!" He decayed the closest thing to them, which happened to be a bar stool. The seat turned to dust as he turned his ire towards the TV placed at the end of the bar. "Master, you gave me a defective Nomu!"

"Defective?" The TV responded with a deep, calm voice yet carrying an undercurrent that left anyone wise and wary. There was no picture, just audio, though neither he nor Kurogiri didn't believe that they were the ones being watched.

"The Nomu seemed to have a malfunction, sir. During the fight, it became mutant and grew in size before attacking everything. We escaped in the confusion." Kurogiri explained.

"It was those brats! The ones with the stupid swords! They were messing with Nomu; they could hurt it even with its super regeneration and triggered some secret 2nd form!" Shigaraki raged as he wished he had even just another second with those bastards. He would have decayed their throats out and watched them suffer as they died.

"Impossible; we never used quirks that could alter size or mass with that experiment." Another voice spoke up from the TV, dismissing their explanation.

The first voice wasn't so quick to deny things. "You said it started doing this after some students got involved?"

Kurogiri nodded. "That's right, sir. I believe the first was called Midoriya, and the second Aoyama. At least, that was what the others called them." He reported that the schedule they acquired didn't have details on students or names, just that they would be there.

"Midoriya…Midoriya…." The second voice repeated, mulling the name over.

"Have you heard of him before?" The first asked, curious.

"Not him, but I'm familiar with the name…oh yes, that I remember. She was one of my interns; she was a bright pupil with some interesting theories on quirks. She took a job at I-island before I could have her snatched up. If I remember correctly, she had a son, but he was quirkless." The second voice remembered. A shame, too, though not surprising when one recalled the quirks of his parents. It would have been ideal if he had developed some sort of pyromancy-style quirk, which they could have studied, but those were a dime a dozen.

The first agreed with him, though he hadn't heard that the doctor knew someone who got a job offer to I-island. It was a shame, as odds were, she was still there, well out of his reach. "Oh, that is high praise coming from you, doctor. But I doubt that you're referring to Midoriya or her son, Kurogiri."

"No, this Midoriya was around the same age as the rest of the students and had a quirk, sir. A powerful one at that." Kurogiri replied, though the boy's quirk was odd: being capable of switching between fire, ice, and lightning. Was it an emitter style that mimicked elemental power? Or something else? Either way, he was sure the researcher's son and the boy they saw shared a name. That was all.

"We didn't even get to fight the Symbol of Peace…all that was for nothing!" Shigaraki slammed his hand into another bar stool, decaying it till its top snapped and fell with a slang. Kurogiri silently going to collect the dustpan and broom to clean up the mess.

"Calm yourself, Shigaraki. It might not have gone how we wished it to, but it was a valuable learning experience for us. Rest up, gather your strength, and take this as a chance to refine your plans. Should you fail again, you repeat this till you come out on top." The first voice soothed the hand-covered villain's ire as he turned to the screen, his eyes having a reverence for the speaker.

With his student's full attention on him, the voice continued so that one could hear the smile they must have. "And remember, if you ever need help, I am here."

Next chapter should be out on January 20th.

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