#these people are traitors to our country and should be dealt with accordingly

[prncssguya]

i cannot believe what i just witnessed in the oval office. trump literally screaming at zelenskyy telling him “we hold the cards”, threatening world war iii, and accusing ZELENSKYY of “not being ready for peace”. jd vance interjecting with “have you said thank you once”. cannot overstate the level of contempt i have for vance and this entire administration.

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

Their Hero Academia – Chapter 81: Turning a Corner

Presenting the next installment of my on-going, nextgen, MHA fic! Earlier chapters can be found here

The instant Katsuki had asked to “borrow” Park for a bit, the Shiketsu students had erupted into chaos. Shida looked on the verge of panic, those extra limbs of hers twitching, while Tsuchikawa looked only slightly worried.  Shinji looked nervously between him and Park, but ultimately settled into a kind of hard look that mixed protectiveness of his classmate with a trust in Katsuki.

Smart kid.  Respectful too.  Always used his Sir’s around Katsuki.  Exuberant as his old man though, which meant he was best in small doses.

It wasn’t surprising that Tatsuma was the one who had a problem with it.  The giant girl stepped between Katsuki and Park protectively.  “With all due respect, sensei” she began, in the same way Katsuki had used countless times over the years, where no respect was actually intended, but the performative aspect of it was required, “I’m not sure I should allow you to be alone with my classmate.”

For fuck’s sake, what kind of monster did these kids think he was?  And sure, he’d spent more than enough time threatening to blow Villains apart, or shove their heads up their asses, or take out enough of their teeth that they’d be drinking from a straw the rest of their lives, but he wasn’t some psycho who’d explode at the drop of a hat!

Just because he was known for having a temper and this little brat had beat the shit out of his daughter was no reason to think he was going to enact some kind of brutal revenge!

“Sticking by your friend’s a good quality to have,” he said, holding Tatsuma’s gaze and not backing down in the slightest.  But neither did he put up any more of aggressive posture than he already was. He was here to build bridges, not burn them.  “Your classmates are lucky to have you looking out for them.  But I promise you, I’m not here to dish out punishment or anything like that.  I just want to talk.  We won’t even go far, in case you hear something that makes you want to come running.”

Tatsuma frowned, but dropped her challenging stance.  She looked over at Park, her eyes seeming to ask what do you want to do?

And that was the scary thing, wasn’t it?  Park hadn’t flinched, hadn’t budged.  She’s shown no fear whatsoever.  But she hadn’t shown any other kind of reaction either.  It was as though she was just resigned to whatever happened to her.  What the hell had they done to this girl?  Who the hell had done this to this girl?  Even with what he’d read in her file, it didn’t all add up to this.

“It will be fine,” Park said.  “There’s nothing he can do to me.”   That hasn’t already been done was left unsaid, but Katsuki heard it hanging in the air all the same.

He had worked with Heroes who fought traffickers and some of the worst scum the world had to offer, serial killers, rapists, and even cannibals.  Some of them managed to find the balance separate themselves from the job and live at least something like a normal life.  But some of them saw the worst and lost a part of themselves to it. Something inside them died.  You could see it in their eyes.

Park’s eyes were the same.

***

Park followed quietly behind Katsuki, stopping when he did once they got closer to one of the compound’s utility sheds. She remained stoic, almost uncaring, but there was an element of readiness.  He’d been on the receiving end of any number of lectures and chewing outs over the years. He knew what it looked like when you knew you were getting one of those.  This wasn’t it.

It was the kind of readiness where you were prepared to, at a moment’s notice, either physically defend yourself or hold yourself to a dignity that would not give your attacker satisfaction.  He had a brief flashback to being violently restrained and muzzled at his first Sports Festival.

“I am ready, seon seang nhim,” she stated in a neutral tone. She used the Korean phrase for “teacher,” which he vaguely recalled included not using the teacher’s name as it was considered disrespectful to show familiarity.

Katsuki frowned, briefly, but forced himself to keep a more professional expression.  As much as part of him wanted to tear into this kid for beating his daughter, that wasn’t something an adult did to a child.  It wasn’t something a teacher did either.  Katsuki would have to ask the damned hobo how he’d kept himself from killing kids like him.

“Okay,” he said, carefully. His anger rose up in him, like a threating to spill out like a bomb, but he forced it back down.  “I’m not going to lie to you.  I’m mad as hell.  And I’m not saying there wasn’t blame to go around.  But I want to hear your side of things first, before anything else.”

“There is nothing to tell,” Park explained plainly. “The arrogant one had us fight each other to demonstrate a lack of practical martial training as some sort of lesson in not becoming arrogant with our quirks. I treated it as I would any fight in the line of duty.” She tilted her head back at where Hokori and the other Shikestsu students still were. “By the instructor’s own logic, I acted accordingly. If anything, I exercised restraint.” She said all this was stone cold logic, but the expression on her face indicated she didn’t expect him to accept that logic.

Park’s description of Boost-Rush as “the arrogant one” nearly had Katsuki laughing.  If that wasn’t the truth!

“You get you’re a student, right?” he asked. He was trying not to be sarcastic, but some of that bled through. “There’s giving your all in training and there’s going all out in the field.  And even with that, there’s proportionality of a threat.”

His own words came back to haunt him again, ringing in his ears.  HE WON’T DIE IF HE DODGES!

That wasn’t who he was anymore.  Not most days, anyway.  He pushed that particularly unsettling memory down.  “Is that how you do your training at Shiketsu?”

She looked him straight in the eye. “No, I learned that by simply surviving in the neighborhood my parents were dumped in when they fled the Humanist bigots back home. They didn’t realize they would be even less welcome here. Some were very explicit in their disdain of our presence.”

She was speaking calmly, but there was the barest hint of a murderous rage in her eyes, simmering and growing steadily, the lid barely holding it back.

Katsuki knew all about rage. His is irrational, a fire that flares up like one of his explosions and takes out everything that’s nearby.  It’s a flashfire anger, lashing out at whatever upsets him, whatever perceived wrongs the universe or some specific individual has committed against him.  It’s rarely as justified as he’d like to pretend it is.

On his good days, he’s tamed his.  He learned to use it, fueling his actions in battle.  Outside of that, the worst he usually gets these days is yelling. There’s times, like earlier with Boost-Rush, where he did lose his control, and unleashed his anger on someone through violence.  But it’s not like before, not like when he was a child, where would sometimes vent his anger on Izuku for perceived slight of challenging his status as “top dog.”

He hadn’t been a rich kid, like Glasses or Ponytail or IcyHot.  But he’d been remarkably well off as a kid.  Nice neighborhood, never had to worry about anything.  The struggles this kid or others like her had faced, he couldn’t have begun to imagine.  And add being an immigrant on top of that…

“You had to fight just to survive,” he said.  It wasn’t a question.

She stared at him for a moment, then lifted her shirt slightly above her waist. This revealed the scar of a deep gash.

“That was at the hands of Japanese motorcyclists who objected to a “chon” being in their neighborhood.” She turned and exposed her lower back, which revealed a series of jagged scars. “A Zainichi gang leader ran barbed wire over my back for “drawing the Japanese back on us.”

She then kicked off her shoe, leaned down and took the sock off, revealing her little toe was missing. “And that was some of my own “countrymen,” gangsters who wanted me to join them for “solidarity.” I refused. They beat me, then cut that off as a reminder not to be a “race traitor.” And none of that accounts for the casual racism and hate from the “polite aspects” of society. A police force that doesn’t care unless the public outside knows about it, along with no pros to look after my people when this country offered “sanctuary” to us, so yes, Teacher,” she said in Japanese this time, but without the implication of respect. “I have.”

With great effort, Katsuki kept himself under control as Park went through her litany of injuries and injustices.  She was no older than Katsumi or the others, but in terms of life experience, may as well have already been an adult Pro-Hero for all the horrors she had seen.  No wonder she was so ready to strike out during simple training exercises.  The school of hard knocks had nothing on her.

It made his blood boil. Kids should get to be kids, not have to worry about gangs and their neighbors threatening their lives and bodies.   He knew that things had improved some in the last few years, but the Hero Public Safety Commission was still playing a light hand with making inroads to minority neighborhoods.  The really good Heroes went wherever they were needed, but they still played it light with actual Agencies.  That this shit was still happening and no one was really doing anything about it..!

“You got dealt a shit hand,” he growled.  “A kid, no, a woman your age, shouldn’t have had to deal with any of that.  But you survived and showed them you’re tougher than anybody who tried to kick you down.”

He gestured around, broadly. “Most of the kids here, they grew up with pretty cushy lives.”  He thought of Katsumi, when Eijiro had been beaten within an inch of his life.  Of Sato and his kid, when they’d lost his wife. Of Izumi’s infected with a debilitating influence as a means to hurt her grandfather.  Of the small, but still somehow too great a number of close calls, when Villains had tried to cross lines and come after their families.  Of the myriad others who had to worry about whether or not mom or dad was coming home.  

“Not always easy.  And not without their own tragedies.  But you’re operating from a whole different perspective.  Not one they’d understand easily, and not one you’re obligated to explain to them.”

Katsuki continued.  “I was an angry kid too.  Ready to take on anything and everything that pissed me off. I had legitimate issues that were driving my anger.  But I didn’t have real reasons for being angry. I invented them, lies I told myself about why it was okay to be so anger.  But you, you have real reasons.  And don’t let people tell you otherwise.”

He looked her straight in the eye.  “But you’ve got to use that anger.  Direct it at the right people.  And the people at this camp aren’t it.  Everybody’s here to get better.  Everybody’s here because they want to be a Hero and help people.”   He frowned.  “And yeah, my kid was ready to pick a fight with your classmate.  Or you.  She knows she screwed up.”  

It was a good thing he couldn’t share the details of this conversation with Katsumi.  She’d have been pissed at him for admitting that, even if it was the truth.  Or at least, an approximation of it.  She knew it was a bad decision.  Whether or not she’d internalized it as a screw up was a different question.

“I can’t change what happened to you, personally, or to your people or neighborhood.  My job’s to help put you on the best path to being a Hero. And I can’t do that if you’re treating your fellow students or instructors like they’re the enemy.”

He’d managed to get through that without yelling once.  Impressive. Maybe he was getting soft in his old age

She hadn’t gone to put her sock back on. Instead she’d listened to all of what he had to say. It was obvious she’d been expecting a variety of directions for this conversation to go: an angry lecture, threats, self-righteous condemnation, head-in-the-dirt denial, but hadn’t been prepared for acceptance or validation. Especially given his reputation for a short fuse and quick judgements. She’d paid attention to all of it, but had made no movements, nods, or sounds to indicate her stance.

When he finished, Park was quiet for a long time. Unknowingly she had begun to hold her cross in her hand, a thumb rubbing across the metal.

“I..I know, but..it’s so hard.” There was the tiniest of breaks in her voice, but she composed herself. She reached down to put her sock back on, probably distract herself from her conflicting feelings.  “I’m used to seeing enemies on all sides.”

“It is,” he agreed. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. Walking around with all that anger, even with plenty of therapy, it’s something I deal with every damn day. It’s something I’ve got to constantly be aware of, be on guard against.  I find healthy outlets.  Or, at least, mostly healthy ones.”

He thought back to some of the conversations he’d had with Eijiro over the years, questioning whether he was a good enough person to deserve love and family.  Of long talks with Izuku, about all the wrongs he’d done to him.  Of the making amends part of his therapy and the long time he’d spent grappling with realizing he’d been chasing after a goal without ever truly understanding what it meant.

“There’s days I don’t do that good of a job,” he said, finally.  “The internet’s full of clips from times I lost it.  But I don’t stop trying.”

Park had long since put her sock and shoe back on and was once more listening. She had resumed fiddling with her cross, but not quite as frantically as before.

“Outlets.” She spoke the word with a familiarity that indicated she had heard it multiple times before now. “My parents have tried to find such things for me. A friend of my father’s instructed me in Yongmudo since I was small. Such things have been known to instill discipline, peace of mind, and perhaps even an “outlet.” In truth it just gave me a means to start fighting back. I “want” peace, Teacher, but to strike at those who wronged you...feels very good.” She squeezed the cross, hard enough that he saw her knuckles turn white. She chuckled bitterly.  “Probably what drew them to me to begin with.”

“Them?” he asked, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice.  Was someone using Park?  It only took him a few seconds to connect the dots.  He may have been a brawler at heart, but not for nothing did he have an investigative record second only to Tintin’s.  “The Commission.  Dammit, I thought Hawks had all those programs shut down!”

Park gave him a confused look. “I’m not sure what you mean, but yes, your Hero Commission. I had been rounded up more than once by police for getting in fights with local thugs, but nothing on my record. So I thought anyway. One day a Japanese man in a suit knocks on our door and asks to speak with me. He knows who I am, apparently from the police, and asks me “How would you like to take them down legally?”

She sighed, crossing her arms. “Of course I knew these were the bastards who left us without Heroes to protect us. The same ones who unleashed Ignition on Chinese civilians. All the same, they were also the only ones who could arrange Pro protection in the future. I love my family, my community...if it meant working with them, then I would do it. Our neighborhood is poor, purposely nondescript, no way for the big schools to notice. So they arranged for my name to end up on Shiketsu’s radar.”

She shook her head, a rue smile actually crossing her lips. She said some words in Korean, caught herself, then said, “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I’ve only ever told my parents and Chie.”

“It must be my winning bedside manner,” he said, putting on a small smile of his own.  He was still going to give that bird-brained Deputy Commissioner a piece of his mind, even if the programs didn’t sound quite the same. It was still predatory as hell.  

“But that’s a good goal,” he said.  “Sounds like you’re doing it for the right reasons.”  Maybe a little revenge, but it still sounded to his ears like she wanted to help, to make a difference, more than she wanted to hurt.   She was sticking up for people who didn’t have anyone else.  Izuku’d like that.  “So I’ll cut you a deal…  You’ve got my permission to walk away from anything here, anytime you get too mad to function.  But in exchange, you’ve got to talk to somebody after, and you’ve got to stop trying to beat the stuffing out of my students.”

Park looked visibly shocked, the first time her usual composure had completely cracked. She was clearly not used to Japanese people in authority being on her side. For the first time since the conversation had started, she finally seemed to show her age.

“Teacher,” she stops, realizing she was using Korean phrasing. “Sanada Sensei in Shiketsu has actually been trying to get me to see their counselor. I have refused every time.” She seemed to think for a moment. “Maybe I should reconsider that.”

At the mention of beating up his students, she closes her eyes. They seem to vibrate a bit, closing them had been a means of hiding intense emotions. A hand squeezed her cross tightly. There was the very smallest hint of wetness to her eyes, but it was brief. Park opened her eyes again.

“I can do that.”

***

Isamu gulped, not for the first time.  Aizawa-sensei made him nervous on a good day, when he was just being his usual brooding self at Class 1-A.  He made him even more nervous when he was giving him direct attention, like what was happening now.  Like several other students, he’d been pulled aside for one-on-one, individualized or small group training.

“You’re getting good with your Quirk,” Aizawa said, flatly.  “Your father must have taught you well.”  Was it just his imagination or was there a little more warmth in his voice when he said that?

“As best he could, Sensei,” Isamu said quickly.  “Though he never got good enough with it for Hero work.”  Why would he say that?!

Aizawa gave him a flat look, one eyebrow slightly raised.  “You really want to dance around this, kid?  I know you know that I know.  Maybe not everything, but enough.  Your parents were pains in my ass, but they did good work.  Especially the Sky Egg.”

This wasn’t a surprise. But it was a surprise to be talking about it so openly.  Sure, he was the kid of a couple of Vigilantes, not Heroes like just about everyone else here.  And sure, Aizawa had worked with his parents multiple times, as had Midnight.  So it wasn’t like he really thought he was hiding anything.  At least not from them.   Deku had figured it out too.  And there were probably more people he hadn’t figured out.  But he hadn’t told any of his friends.  He trusted them, didn’t think it would come back to bite him in the ass.  It was just… something known but not talked about.

“Ah, thank you, Sensei.” That seemed like the proper response. And he didn’t even incur another round of foot in mouth disease.  “I’ll tell him you said that.”

Aizawa gave him a look. “You’ll do no such thing.”

Isamu gulped.

“All of which means I’ve got a pretty good idea of what your Quirk’s capable of,” Aizawa went on. “Yours is like his.  Almost identical, but subtly different if you know what you’re looking for.  I’m surprised Deku didn’t figure it out, honestly. But since you think you’ve got an identical Quirk, you’re limiting yourself.  He figured out ways to use his propulsion offensively and even for short bursts to launch himself, but you’ve already mastered all those tricks.  I’ve even see you firing repulsion blasts without having to brace yourself.  You don’t actually need three points of contact.  And I’ve seen you launch yourself during training too and steer yourself once you’re in the air.  So I want you to try something.”

There was, perhaps, a slightly maniac look in his teacher’s eyes.  “You’re going to fly.”

Isamu gulped yet again and his eyes went wide.  “Sensei?” He definitely couldn’t fly.  He could use a repulsion burst to launch himself and steer a little in the air, even keep himself from too bad of a landing, but he definitely couldn’t fly.   Could he?

Dad has said that he’d been able to slide through the air as a baby.  He’d even been able to recover something like it with boosts through the air. But that was really just not falling, not flying.  Wasn’t it?

He managed a nod. “Okay,” he said.  “I’ll try it.  What do I need to do?”

“Unfortunately,” Aizawa said, “I’m not allowed to just push you off the roof of the compound.  Sink or swim tactics work wonders.”

That was a joke, right? He had to be joking about that! Someone tell him Aizawa was joking!

His teacher’s expression betrayed no hint of emotion.  “So instead, what I want you to do is concentrate your power on pushing against the ground under your feet and the air under your hands.  You’ll need steady output from all four limbs to control it.”

Right.  He could do that.  He could do that.  He could probably do that.  He could possibly do that.

He took a deep breath and concentrated on his Quirk.  Just like when he was sliding along.  Energy out from his feet, energy out from his hands.   Steady, smooth, power.  

Nope!  Not steady!  Too much power flared from his feet and launched him into the air.  Cursed laws of physics!  Isamu cut his Quirk, but it was like trying to stop a bullet after it had already left the gun.  His arms and legs flailed uselessly as he launched skyward, until gravity began to reassert itself and drag him back down. Aizawa wouldn’t just let him go splat, would he?

Boy, was that a stupid question.  

So he had to save himself!

He scrunched up his eyes and concentrated on his Quirk again.   Steady, consistent, power.

Isamu felt the energy flow from all his limbs again, the pressure fairly equal.  Quickly, he realized he wasn’t falling.  His eyes snapped open.  His was only a few feet off the ground, but he was holding himself up in the air, unsteadily.  Trails of blue-white energy from all his limbs filled the air.  He kept his hands pointed carefully down, using them for stabilizing bursts while his feet provided the thrust.  

“Whoa!”  It was extremely unsteady.  His head was already beginning to hurt from concentrating so hard.  But he was doing it!  

And just as easily as it had come about, his concentration wavered and his power faded.  He hit the ground with a soft thump, landing on his butt. Isamu looked up to see Aizawa standing over him, offering a hand up, but also smirking knowingly.  Isamu took it.

“Good,” Aizawa said. “Keep practicing that.  I’ll send Ground Zero over later if you’re still having trouble.  His explosive-powered flight is similar.”

He needed to get very good. Immediately.

And he really needed a conversation with his friends.

***

Kimiko was fuming. Lunch had ended and they hadn’t even been able to begin the big shipping operation!  Even worse, it was entirely possible they wouldn’t get to do it at all! She hadn’t been able to tell what anyone was saying, but it sure looked like Koda and Aoyama had had a major heart-to-heart.  And since it hadn’t ended with any slaps or either of them walking away in tears, it was probably good news!

Which was, in and of itself, a good thing.  Koda definitely deserved all the happiness in the world.  She was probably the sweetest person that Kimiko knew.  And Aoyama was… not exactly a friend, but someone she was definitely friendly with.  Even if he didn’t particularly like Takuma, he was good people under the fancy-pants attitude.  Plus he loved listening to gossip and always had the best dirt on foreign celebrities. If they got together, it was a good thing!

But she didn’t know!  And since she didn’t have her phone, she couldn’t even share her speculation!  There was major league gossip going on and not only couldn’t she share it, but she didn’t even know the full story!

What was the world coming to?!

So many of Class 1-A was dating now!  Midoriya was dating Sora Iida, Takuma was dating Tensei Iida, Mineta was dating Yoarashi, Shoji had his girlfriend Shiryoku from the Business Course, Kaminari was apparently dating Monoma (What?  What was the story there?!  Why didn’t she know any details?!), Haimawari was dating Tetsutetsu, Koda and Aoyama were a maybe, and she was dating Kenta!

So that left… Kirishima-Bakugo, Kocho, Tokoyami, and Shinso, right?  Todoroki wasn’t interested in romance or sex, her loss, but Kimiko could respect boundaries. Sometimes.  And she wasn’t even sure what kind of people Shinso was interested in. He was only about six months younger than most of them, but he sometimes seemed like a kid by comparison.

None of which was relevant to the task in front of her.  Namely, personal medical training with the Metabolic Hero: Bioshock!

“Eri, ah, Doc Clock, sent me over files on everything she’s been teaching you,” Bioshock explained. “Including all the scores from your practice tests.  She’s definitely proud of you.”

Kimiko felt a smile spread across her face.  She’d actually really been applying herself to her medical studies.  Schoolwork didn’t come easily to her, but this was definitely worth it.

“So, pop quiz,” Bioshock said.  “Best way to treat a broken arm in the field?”

This one was easy. “If there’s bleeding, use a sterile dressing to stop it.  If there’s no skin puncture, use my Quirk to assess the extent of the break.  After either one, immobilize, construct a splint if possible.  Once I’ve gotten them to safety, ice packs can help with the swelling.”

He nodded. “Good.  And what’s the most important thing to keep an eye out for when doing search and rescue?”

She knew this one!   “Structural stability and my own safety. Don’t want to make a problem worse and I can’t help anyone if I need someone to rescue me!”

Bioshock nodded again.  “Good,” he said.  “And where in the body would you find a squeedily spooch?”

Panic gripped Kimiko’s heart as she realized she didn’t know the answer to that.  Squeedily spooch… squeedily spooch... what the heck was a squeedily spooch?!

She frowned as she realized he was struggling not to laugh.  “Hey!  That’s not fair!”  Her arms waved wildly through the air as she voiced her displeasure.  He was a teacher, so she couldn’t actually hit him like she would Kenta or Takuma, but… “There’s no such thing as a squeedily spooch!  You can’t just make stuff up like that!  What the heck is wrong with you?!  WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO ME?!”

The Rookie held his composure for a moment longer, before breaking into laughter.  “Sorry, sorry,” he said.  “I shouldn’t laugh, but I just wanted to see what you’d do…   Which reminds me, actually, I’ve got a theory about your Quirk…”

He was cut off as a shrill alarm cut through the air.  Bioshock’s face instantly went serious as he looked around.

“Perimeter breach!  Perimeter breach!”  An electronic voice sounded in the space between alarms.

“Come with me,” Bioshock said.  He was clearly trying not to let his worry show. “I’ll get you to the compound…”

If I can was left unsaid.

***

The second the alarms went off, the Rookies and teachers leapt into action, with a speed that would have impressed just about any Hero, forming a defensive circle around the U.A. students.    Uncle Kacchan set off small explosions on his palms, working himself up into the agitated state needed to sweat and use his power to its fullest.  Aizawa unraveled his capture cloth and lifted his goggles to cover his eyes.  Super-Ball dropped into a fighting stance, lightly bouncing on the balls of his feet, his rubberized features set into grim determination.    

Ravenous unleashed several of his Binging Balls, the chomping spheroids floating about him like small planets orbiting the sun.  Small puffs of thrust flared from Boost-Rush’s arm pipes.  Bezoar dropped to all fours, his canon emerging from his mouth as he swept the tree line.  Aunt Mahoro pulled a small metal cylinder from her belt, which expanded into a staff.

Aunt Mahoro looked back, as though wanted to assure them that it was going to be okay.  She waved a hand in their direction and the world went a hazy green.  She had to have cast some kind of illusion over the twenty-odd students, probably making the training field look like they weren’t there at all.  Most of them had been on the main grounds, working on their Quirks.  The Shiketsu students, Ojiro, and about a dozen others had been elsewhere on the grounds, receiving their own training.

“We’ll stop or hold off whatever it is,” Toshi heard Aizawa say. Was he imaging it, or was his teacher’s voice shaking?  “You’ve all got full permission to use your Quirks to escape or fight off anything that tries to stop that escape.  The other Rookies are either on their way or protecting your classmates.

As it was, Toshi felt his heart racing in his chest.  A quick glance around revealed a sharp divide in reactions.  Some, like Kocho, along with members of Class 1-B like the bat-like Koumori and Kaniyashiki looked worried, but not overly frightened. They probably even wondered if this was just a test or one of Aizawa’s famous “logical ruses.”  It was absolutely a reasonable reaction to the presence of danger.  But they were all also Hero-students, quickly pushing past it to at least take up basic defensive stances, some of them calling up their Quirks.

The kids who had Hero parents reacted differently.  There was fear first.  They’d all been told the stories of what had happened during their parents’ first training camp.  The injuries. The kidnapping.  The fact that the League of Villains had nearly killed so many of them.  Would have killed so many of them, if not for a lot of luck.  Haimawari too, was reacting similarly.  His experiences between the Internship and the incident on I-Island had stirred up a great deal of courage in his friend, but also shown him how bad things could get very quickly.

This was supposed to have been a safe place.  The world was supposed to have been a safer place. The worst Villains had been faced and defeated.  And yes, it still needed Heroes, still needed people to stand up and say “I am here!” in the fight against evil.  But the past was not supposed to repeat like this.  

Their parents had fought hard so that their lives would not be as filled with trauma.

Already, the Nomu incident has put a lie to that.   Was it becoming even more of one?  Some of them had been tested in that, scarred, made afraid.  Some of them had been spared, aware of the terror but not a part of it.  

The fears of the past rose up to claim them.

But beneath the fear was grim determination.  Katsumi was already scowling, putting herself in front of Izumi.  Asuka had deployed Frog-Shadow and she and Haimawari had both put themselves around Shota.  The Twins looked ready to take off at a moment’s notice.  Tetsutetsu had transformed her arms to metal.  One by one, everyone was activating their Quirks. Even Kocho was extending her wings.

“I don’t need you to protect me, dammit!” Kaminari snapped, pushing Monoma so that she was standing shoulder to shoulder with him, instead of behind him.

Monoma himself looked very pale.  If Toshi didn’t know better, he’d swear the other boy was shaking. He didn’t have any of his support items with him, Toshi realized.  “I.. I was just trying to…”

“Look,” Kaminari said. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m a big girl.”

If ever there was a sign of how seriously his classmates were taking this, it was that Mineta did not make a joke about Kaminari’s statement.  Even Sero was quiet.  This was deadly serious.

“Do you think we are really under attack, Toshi?” Sora asked.

“Quit yapping, all of you!” Katsumi snapped, before he could answer.  Toshi recognized her body language.  Feet planted, knees slightly bent, arms out, fists clenched.  She was spoiling for a fight.  That was Katsumi all over.  Always spoiling for a fight.  After the beating she’d taken, he suspected she was looking for a target even more than usual.  He hoped and prayed that she had the good sense to recognize the odds were very good they were outmatched.

“This is bad,” Fukidashi whispered.  The animated girl’s face had gone blue and covered with hashlines.  “The background music’s getting really scary!”

***

For just a moment, Katsuki was fifteen again.  An arrogant, hot-headed kid with too much rage and an inferiority-superiority complex he won’t even begin to really unpack until he’s failed his Provisional License Exam, and won’t have finished unpacking until…  Well, it’s a work in progress.  But he’s back there, more than twenty-five years ago, thinking that Villains—murderers like Muscular and Dabi, master criminals like Mister Compress, deathrow inmates like Moonfish—don’t stand a chance against his barely trained ass.

He was wrong.  So wrong.  He was captured, perceived as a Villain, with All Might unable to properly fight because he was there.  And then he had to live with the shame of having to be rescued.  Of knowing that Izuku would stage a rescue for him, when he definitely wouldn’t have done the same.  He’d have let those Villains have the “worthless Deku.”

The knowledge of how much of a shit child he was still fills him with shame.

But here and now, even broken and bowed, he will not allow the same thing to happen to his daughter and her classmates.  He’d be cold and dead before he allowed that to happen.

“Just heard from the others,” Mahoro said.  “Sandblast and Locksmith are with the Shiketsu students.  Petal Princess and Lady Luminous are with the other students, and my brother and his student are hooking up with them.  Everyone’s accounted for.”

Boost-Rush tapped the side of his helmet.  “Getting data from the security feed…whatever it is, it’s coming up on us.  It’s managed to evade or disable our entire security system.”

“Any chance it’s a false alarm?” Fujii asked.  The rubberized Hero wasn’t joking.  It was a genuine statement.  “Nobody should know the students are here.”

“No one was supposed to know the first time either,” Aizawa snapped.  “Don’t let your guard down.”  Bakugo had to give the hobo credit.  Even in his mid-fifties, he still looked more than ready to kick anyone’s ass who trifled with his “kids.”

“Not a chance,” Mahoro said. “Hatsume and Shield designed all of it. But if it’s not an attack on them, it’s an attack on us Rookies.”

Either way, it wasn’t good.

There was a rustling in the grass of the tree line and suddenly, something emerged.  At first, he didn’t see anything, until he looked down.

“What the fuck?”

It was a… dog?  A Shiba Inu, if he was any judge.  

“What the fuck?”

Not just a dog, he realized. A dog wearing clothes.  It had on a dog-version of a Shiketsu uniform, complete with a peaked cap that its ears were poking through, and a backpack.

“What the fuck?”

The dog looked around and seemed to smile.  There was a strange, human intelligence to his eyes.  Eyes that finally fell on Bakugo, the other teachers, and the Rookies.

“Hi!” the dog said. “I’m Hachi Inuzaki from Shiketsu! Sorry I missed the bus!  It took me forever to get here!”

Katsuki felt like someone had just punched him in the face.  Aizawa, Fujii, and the Rookies were equally dumbfounded.

“What,” he said, “and I cannot stress this enough, the fuck?”