Chapter Text
Target: Bakugou Katsuki
“This is ridiculous,” Aoi growls. Piles of paper sit next to her tablet and computer, all but burying her desk. She can barely perch her cup of coffee on the desk. “How could Saito, Senju and Todoroki all be this incompetent!?”
“Well, let’s look at what they did with Kiyome and Keigo,” Inko points out. “We shouldn’t be that surprised they’d do something dumb.”
“But dumb enough to miss the mass resurgence of interest in Destro and his Meta Librartion Army lunacy?” she demands, incredulous. “There’s incomptent and then there’s this . How do you miss the resurgence of a terrorist organization ? At least with the League of Villains and All For One it can be justified on how All For One himself has always been a boogie man figure, but Destro was a pretentious, public lunatic!”
It’s tempting to hunt down Todoroki Ryu and Senju Madara to ask either of them how they could miss this, but at the same time she’s not sure it’s worth the effort. Senju no longer lived in Japan. He and his husband had emigrated to Australia five years ago for some reason though based on some of Saito’s notes she suspects the answer to that is ‘blackmail’.
Todoroki...well, she’s genuinely a bit surprised he’s still alive, especially after All For One killing Saito and the Takamis. Senju’s survival she can brush away as him no longer being in Japan to begin with. She keeps expecting to see something in the news about how retired hero and former Director of the Commission Todoroki Ryu was found dead of ‘natural’ causes. Then again, the man had gone senial (supposedly) and lived in a nursing home. At that point All For One may not feel it’s worth the effort.
“To be fair, some more advanced history and ethics classes do have ‘Meta Liberation War’ as required reading. I had to read excerpts for one of my law classes,” Inko says. “And there’s been a resurgence in more ‘historic’ criminal organizations in general in the past few years. It’s part of why you worked with the different schools to adjust their summer training trips.” Inko takes a sip of her tea. “You could just acknowledge you’re stressed over the kids being on one of the trips.”
“I am , but this is also concerning,” Aoi says, grimacing as she takes a sip of her cold coffee. “I can’t figure out the when or why of all the ‘historic’ villain organizations starting to make their comebacks.”
“Aoi…”
“It’s just...I just feel like something’s about to happen and I hate that I don’t know what .”
Target: Monoma Neito
“Do you four have any ideas how to deal with growing resentment between the majority of the students and the Interns?” Shouta asks as he sits down with Kan, Hikari, and all four Pussycats.
“How bad is it? I definitely saw some glares but…” Pixie Bob trails off, looking at where the Interns are sitting separate from their classmates.
Again.
“Bad,” Kan says bluntly. “And Shouta, it really isn’t helping that you’ve been training Shinso at the Warren. That just makes it worse since it makes it look like UA is favoring the interns.”
“I’m pretty sure at this point UA is favoring the interns,” Hikari points out. “At least, that’s also how it comes across at both agencies. Same for Shiketsu with Camie and Inasa. Are you certain you guys aren’t?”
Shouta grimaces, since it’s possible that unintentionally they are.
“If we are, we aren’t doing it on purpose,” he says. “But we need to figure out how to smooth things over so the class doesn’t explode over it. What’s unfortunate is that we can’t get all the students internships like what is going on at the Aery and at the Warren.”
Most agencies simply had no interest or no funding for something like it. Director Monoma hadn’t expressed any interest in offering Commission funding to agencies to encourage these sort of internships (just additional funding for provisional license internships since the limited number there was a real issue). Even additional after school training wouldn’t equal it, because most of the teachers were still active, professional heroes and needed to take patrols.
“Maybe a place to start is to have all of the Interns partner up with a classmate for tonight’s exercise rather than with another Intern. Say something like Monoma and Tokage, Kendo and Ibara, or Midoriya and Uraraka,” Kan suggests.
“That would make sense,” Shouta agrees. “It’s probably been a mistake constantly having the Interns team up together.” It also meant they weren’t getting experience working with ‘unfamiliar’ heroes. “So let’s figure out who to pair up with who.”
Target: Tokage Setsuna
“Uraraka, can I talk to you about something?” Midoriya asks her, scratching at the back of his head. It’s the first time he’s spoken to her on his own in over a month. “It’s kind of important.”
“Okay,” she chirps, bouncing up from where she’s sitting next to Mina and Tsuyu. “What’s up?”
“I, um.” He grimaces. “Alright, please, please don’t get mad at me over this, okay?” he pleads. “It’s just. Keigo, sorry, Hawks, made a suggestion to me about my hero name.”
Ochako feels her stomach drop and she suspects she already knows what he wants to talk to her about.
“Does he want you to start going by Fledgling?” she asks.
“No, but most of the Aery does like to refer to us as fledglings,” Midoriya says with a small grin. “So many bird nicknames. I think half the staff think my name really is Kiwi.”
“So are you going to go by Kiwi?” she asks, teasingly, but still kind of hoping he’s not going to say what he thinks he will.
“No, but. Um.” Izuku lets his shoulders drop and gives her an almost pleading look. “Hawks, my Mom and my Aunt all suggested I use something other than ‘Deku’ as my hero name. They all agreed that the idea you had was cool and made sense, but it was also really complicated for people? That unless it was explained to them, it just made it sound like I was calling myself an idiot. Which from a PR point of view looks really bad.”
“Oh,” she says softly, and it stings. Since really, he’d change it because it wouldn’t be...okay, as future heroes they do need to worry about how people view them but still. “What are you thinking of going by then?” She’s grateful her voice sounds calm even though she doesn’t feel that calm.
“I don’t know yet,” Midoriya admits. “I just wanted to let you know and apologize about how I’m not going to use Deku after all.”
“Are you certain you don’t want to use it?” she asks, hoping he isn’t.
“I am,” he says firmly. “My Mom, Keigo and Aunt Kiyome all made really good points about why I shouldn’t.
“Do you think I could meet your family at some point? We haven’t spent any time together since everything happened at Hosu and you got so busy with your internship,” Ochako says as Midoriya starts to turn around to head back over to where the other Interns are. Now that the conversation is done, time to split away from everyone else again it seems.
“Yeah, of course! But um. Uraraka, if my Aunt ever asks you why you want to be a hero, never, ever mention to her that you wanted to do it because you wanted the salary.” Midoriya grimaces. “She has a really, really low opinion of people who do.”
“Your cousin is an incredibly wealthy hero who was able to immediately start his own agency out of school,” she says flatly. “And I know exactly how expensive that is.”
“Hawks was sponsored,” he explains. “That’s the only reason he was able to do it, and he’s honestly not that wealthy? Most of the money he makes goes straight into the Aery and into paying his employees and stuff like that. The agency is a general agency so he’s got a lot of expenses.”
“What do you mean by a ‘general agency’?” Ochako asks.
“The Aery does everything, from regular villain apprehension to rescue work. Most hero agencies are specialized, but a few like the Aery and Endeavor’s agency do everything,” Midoriya explains. “Which makes things a lot more expensive, since there’s a lot of complicated insurance stuff and you need a lot of staff.”
“Oh,” Ochako says, because that’s not really something that’s ever occurred to her before. Not even necessarily the costs behind running an agency, which is silly. Her parents run a company; she knows a bit about the office end of that. “So that…”
“Everyone, I need your attention now,” Aizawa-sensei says, interrupting them. “You should all be done or just about done with your dinner. You’ll have three hours of ‘down time’ and then at midnight we will have a ‘Test of Courage’ for almost all of you to do. For those of you who require remedial lessons, you will be doing that instead of the ‘test’. Everyone come to the main training grounds at eleven thirty and we will divide you into teams.”
“I’ve got to go finish eating and clean up,” Midoriya says, giving her an apologetic look. “But I’ll make sure we figure out when we can meet up and hang out!”
“Okay!” Ochako says. She watches him head back to the other Interns and isn’t entirely sure what to say next.
Instead she sits back down with Mina and Tsuyu and wonders how the teams will be set up for the Test of Courage.
Target: Uraraka Ochako
Sekijiro watches all the kids split up, his students heading for the woods, Aizawa’s preparing just outside. He glances down at his watch and it’s almost time for things to start.
“This is irresponsible,” Hikari says bluntly, making him glance over at the scowling woman.
“Director Monoma and Principal Nedzu both signed off on the exercise,” Aizawa points out. “Ragdoll has Search focused on all the students. They need to do ‘big’ training sessions like these. If you’re worried about Tokoyami, you’ve said it yourself that he’s gotten good control over Dark Shadow over the past few months. He should be fine.”
“It’s because I’ve trained him that I worry,” she says. “Dark Shadow still takes over at night sometimes.”
“Well, if it happens you can help us get him back under control,” Aizawa says firmly. “Just calm down Hikari, it’ll be fine.”
They all watch as the kids enter the woods and everything starts.
They watch and see the exact moment everything goes to hell.
“Noumu!” Hikari snaps, pointing to the massive and monstrous creature suddenly in the sky. She flicks her wrist and summons and orb of light, illuminating the area around them.
“Shit,” Sekijiro hisses.
“There’s people that aren’t us in the woods!” Ragdoll shouts.
“ Fuck. ”
“Mandalay, tell all the kids to get out of the forest. They have full permission to fight back, but they need to retreat and return to the lodge now,” Aizawa orders. “The lodge itself needs to be put on lockdown and...Mandalay? Shino , what’s wrong?”
“Kouta is out of the lodge right now,” Ragdoll says grimly. “I think he went to his little hiding place after dinner.”
“I’ll tell Izuku to find him,” Mandalay says. “He took food to Kouta there last night so he should be able to find him. And he can Side Step him back to us.”
“Good. Now we need to…”
Sekijiro flings himself away as a sudden blue inferno divides him from the other heroes. A noumu slams into the ground and he spots three villains lunge for the others, dragging them into fights.
He has a different problem.
Dabi’s ghastly grin is illuminated in blue-hot flames and Sekijiro knows everything is about to really get started.
“Kan Sekijiro. So nice to meet you. I’ve got a few questions for you.”
Target: Midoriya Izuku
Warning(s)
- The Aery and Warren Interns are to be treated with care. Assume they are on par with a just starting out pro hero rather than First Year students.
- There is an unknown hero also traveling with the UA students. The identity of said hero was unknown by our source as of last available contact. Suspicion is that the hero will be an employee of the Aery.