#in case any fnaf security breach fans are trawling the tags

[thatforgottenbasilisk]

Security Breach

Words: 2684 (AO3)

Originally Posted on 8/8/2022

Summary:

Case #XXX2211: Statement of Aizawa Shouta, regarding a student's disputed identity. Original Statement given 22 November, 2XXX. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.

My seventh bad things happen bingo entry! Prompt: Stolen Identity

 (based on this post of mine from 12 billion years ago)

The tape recorder is clicked on.

Statement of Aizawa Shouta, regarding a student's disputed identity. Original Statement given 22 November, 2XXX. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.

I'd like to think that I know my students. By this point in the year, I should hope I do, given how long I've had to work with them and their individual quirks, strengths, and weaknesses. I've got enough of a read on their personalities, by this point, that when one of them started acting out of character, so to speak, I took note.

Bakugou Katsuki is not the type of student to pull pranks. He is also generally a very honest person, more honest than most of the students I've had. Knowing these two facts, in combination, led to an instant reaction that might not have been usual for most teachers.

It was only three weeks ago that this happened, that everything unusual began. Most teachers would have assumed that Bakugou was pulling a prank, at that point. Following that, perhaps an exaggerated reaction to a fight. Considering what I knew about him, as well as the things that this homeroom in particular has experienced, I was more inclined towards the more concerning answers- a possible nervous breakdown, for one.

What else could I think, when one day out of the blue, an honest student begins to insist that one of his friends is not who he seems to be?

Kaminari Denki has always had blue hair, blue eyes, and a quirk that allows him to create an antigravitational field around himself. He generally uses it in order to make himself float, and propel himself through the air at high speeds in order to put more force behind his attacks, though he has shown the ability to lift nearby objects with it. He's also a bit of a serious student, with a very deadpan sense of humor, not unlike another student of mine, Todoroki Shouto.

He and Bakugou have been friends since just after the Sports Festival, I believe, though it might have been later. They know each other well enough, and the class as a whole knows that they know each other well enough, that I'm fairly confident when I say everybody in the room was surprised when Bakugou asked who was sitting in Kaminari's seat.

When Kaminari simply responded with a look of confusion and an assurance that he was sitting in his own seat, I expected a scoff of anger or denial, something to support the idea that there had been an altercation of some sort the night previous. I did not expect him to glance around at everybody else, before asking again, "No really, who are you?"

This was definitely unusual. I might have expected something like this out of Sero or Ashido, but not Bakugou. When I simply raised an eyebrow and asked him to stop interrogating Kaminari over his own name, he asked me if he was being pranked. By this point, most of the class had recovered enough from their surprise to either admonish him for wasting time on a joke like that, or else simply ask why he didn't recognize one of his own friends. He seemed to let go of it by that point, and I started class, as usual.

I was still concerned, especially considering the way that he kept glancing at Kaminari, as though he expected somebody else. If Bakugou continued to seem like he was under the impression that Kaminari was not, in fact, Kaminari, I was prepared to send him to speak to Hound Dog, in order to assure him that none of his friends were impersonators of any sort. He seemed to drop it, though, and I was prepared to allow the matter to fade, until a week later when he asked if he could speak to me after class.

I told him that he could, and so when he sat across from me at my desk in my office I was prepared to hear some kind of tirade about Kaminari. Some kind of vehement argument about how he must have been replaced by the villain Toga Himiko or somebody similar, because of this or that or some tiny detail that he deemed uncharacteristic of his friend.

I did not expect the almost hesitant, "Do you really think that- that stranger is Kaminari?"

I wasn't quite sure how to respond. I've dealt with a lot of situations, none of them similar enough to this. He seemed well and truly convinced that his friend was not who he said he was. Still- he might have been just gearing up for an argument supporting the Toga Himiko theory, so I asked why he was convinced that there was a stranger in the class.

Apparently, according to Bakugou, the "real" Kaminari Denki is a bit of an idiot with a powerful electricity quirk, nothing like the studious boy with a mediocre antigravitational quirk that I've known for the whole year. I'd never met anyone of the description that Bakugou was giving me, and I suppose that must have shown on my face, because he interrupted himself with a simple-

"You don't believe me, do you?"

He seemed invested enough in this- I hesitate to call it a delusion, given some inconsistencies that were found later on- this perception that he had spoken of. He seemed convinced of it, so wholly that for a moment I thought he'd been hit with a quirk or something that made him think so. Else, I was going to send him to Hound Dog for something much more serious than I'd initially anticipated.

"I believe that you believe what you're saying."

This might have been the wrong thing to say, if what happened next didn't give his argument an unexpected bit of merit.

He made to stand, seeming indignant, before he stopped himself and sat back down. He took a deep breath, and rubbed both of his hands over his face. Finally, he asked a question that seemed like it was a non-sequitur.

"Does he have any team-up moves with anyone else?"

He doesn't. Kaminari is currently the only student of mine without any kind of team-up move with any of his classmates, which is something that I- I can't believe I never noticed. With an outlier like this, I should have noticed, right? Looked into how his friendships were going, if he seemed to be distanced socially, since he was clearly less in tune with the rest of his class than they were with each other.

Again, the answer must have shown on my face, because he continued,

"Tell me, Aizawa, why I've never used an explosion to launch him even faster across the battlefield? A combination of our quirks like that would've been incredibly useful, and damn near intuitive to think of, so why has it never happened? Why do you consistently pair him up in quirk training with people like Kirishima or Jirou, people who work best with strong emitter-type quirks like mine, instead of someone like Uraraka, whose quirk supposedly matches up very well with his, or someone with a brute-force quirk that would complement his subtler quirk better than the tanks that he keeps training with?"

I couldn't answer any of those questions. I couldn't. I always pair students up for reasons, good ones, never randomly, so why could I not think of even one to support Kaminari's pairings? All of Bakugou's suggestions were logical, moreso than the current arrangements, and the lack of his own quirk being used as propulsion- even before- was something strange in hindsight.

He barely stopped for a moment, before asking that final, damning question.

"Why has everyone he's fought with this week seemed completely unused to his fighting style?"

I had noticed that, and believed it unusual. Kaminari wasn't doing anything differently from his normal fighting style, though everybody around him seemed to anticipate completely different moves. When they'd slowed down, Kaminari's sparring partners seemed to know his style well enough, but when they moved quickly enough that most of his opponents depended on muscle memory, it was... brutal. They would move directly in the way of a hit, all claiming that they expected it to land somewhere else, or they would move to dodge a punch that never came, again all claiming that they expected one.

There was no outward reason to expect a sudden change in style like that, none at all. That week, having Kaminari training with the rest of the class had set them all off-kilter, though I doubt that all of them noticed.

This spoke of something being wrong. Bakugou's theory might not have been entirely incorrect- though I doubt that there could possibly be a single quirk powerful enough to alter all memory and evidence of someone to reflect someone else, and it seemed to be quite a bit of effort if it was an organized attempt at infiltration. There was merit to the idea that something had changed about Kaminari, though, especially considering the quirk of Toga Himiko of the League of Villains.

It would not be inaccurate to say that this type of quirk is common enough that the concept of another villain being in possession of something similar would be quite believable.

I was going to say something about looking into it, bringing this evidence to Nedzu, but he'd already started digging in his pockets for something, I didn't know what, not yet.

Finally, he pulled out five physical photographs, clearly having been taken with one of those retro-style Polaroid cameras that are coming back in fashion for some strange reason. He laid them all out on my desk, facing me.

They all contained the same person that I'd never seen before. He had mostly blond hair, with a single black lightning bolt dyed in, and he was always smiling brightly in the pictures.

In one, he was squeezed between Sero and Ashido in a photo that had clearly been taken in the dorms. In another, he was in what looked like a very casual-looking hero costume, with Bakugou also in his hero costume- and he was giving Bakugou bunny ears in the photo.

In another, he was sitting on Kirishima's shoulders in the hall just outside the 1-A classroom, both of them in first-year Hero Couse uniforms.

I didn't get much of a chance to look at the other two, because Bakugou took the photos back the moment I reached out to touch them. He seemed very protective of them, unwilling to let them too far from his person.

"Those are the only photos left of the real him."

At that point, I didn't know if I could believe him. I still don't, not really. The photos might have been altered, maybe, though I sincerely doubt it. Physical photos are difficult to manipulate after they're printed, especially to the degree that they would have had to have been, to look as realistic as they did.

I had no idea who was in them, I had never seen that boy before in my life, though what scared me most was the tiny, almost inaudible voice in the back of my head that seemed to say, "Of course Kaminari took goofy pictures with his friends."

That- the pictures did not show him. Kaminari Denki was not in them, I don't know why something in me seemed to think he was.

"Everything digital is gone. Everything but the stupid Polaroids Pinky took with her camera that she used for a week then forgot about. I had to sneak around to get all of these, I think- I think there was one more, but that- that thing that isn't Kaminari probably destroyed it by now. So this is all I have left. Nobody even remembers him anymore, so I'm not letting anyone touch them, not ever."

I understood the instinct, to protect the remnants of who you've lost with everything you've got. I've done it myself.

All of this, together, painted a picture that I didn't want to see. Somebody must have had the power, or the connections, to impersonate a student and get into UA with almost no one the wiser- all the while, the real student was missing with almost nobody to miss him.

I don't know what made Bakugou immune to the alterations, but I'm just thankful that he was. I alerted Nedzu to the situation immediately, but it was too late.

Kaminari Denki was gone already. The impersonator, I mean. Vanished without a trace. One moment, he was on one of the security cameras, the next, he'd walked out of frame and into thin air.

He's been officially missing for two weeks. We haven't alerted anyone to the theory that he was an impersonator of some sort, though Bakugou did allow one of the photographs to be scanned so that the other- the real- Kaminari could be reported missing, under a different name, of course.

We're currently looking for any information on this situation, or something similar, so even though it's a bit of a long shot, I came here. I had other business in the vicinity, of course, I'm not travelling internationally just in the vain hope that maybe you know of a ghost or something that did it, but... if you do know of a ghost or something that could do this, my contact information is on the paper I gave you, as well as the contact information to the school. Just say you've got information on Kaminari, they'll patch you through to the principal.

I hope that there is some way to reverse this. I don't like knowing that all I remember of a student is actually the villain who pretended to be him.

Statement ends.

- Tim found this Statement in a previously sealed box, filled entirely with statements, real and fake, that were all written in non-European languages. This one in particular is entirely in Japanese, which I do not speak. I'm not sure who sealed the box, or even who filed all of everything in there, given that this Statement in particular was given only a few months ago. It might have been sent here from the Institute in China, though I haven't seen any records that indicate as such. I'll need to ask Rosie for confirmation.

- There was contact information in this folder, for one Aizawa Shouta, with the explicit instruction to contact him or the high school, UA, if any additional information is found. We- I- know exactly what happened to the student in question. Would it be unwise to tell them to call off the search? They won't find Kaminari. He's long dead.

- Of course, we don't know if that particular incident was caused by the same Not-Them that took Sasha, or if there are more of them running about. As loathe as I am to think it, I'm personally leaning towards the latter. It seems to have gotten what it wanted, though, so it shouldn't be tempted to go back, right?

- There's no guarantee that anybody at the school will believe me, but I think I might still say something about it. It's the decent thing to do, instead of leaving all of them in the lurch for the rest of their lives. I won't go into specifics about the Stranger, of course, but this was an individual monster. Given that a Statement was given here at all, I think that they might have accepted that monsters exist, and besides- I don't think that knowing the name of the thing will attract it to come back.

- I'll ask around, see if anyone else agrees.

The tape recorder is clicked off, before it is clicked back on.

- The decision was unanimous, so I called the number that was given and gave a somewhat abridged explanation of what exactly had happened to the boy in question. The reaction was... understandable.

- At least they have some photographs of the real Kaminari. Thank god for Ashido's Polaroid camera.

- End recording.

The tape recorder is clicked off.