Chapter Text
There are, in Shouta’s opinion, few ways the training camp could have gone worse. A student or students dead. One of his co-workers dead. Mandalay’s nephew dead. Those are ways it could have gone worse.
But this comes damn near close.
Midoriya badly breaking his arms again (though he had successfully prevented Mandalay’s nephew from being killed and had literally punched Muscular into a mountain, making for an easy arrest). Uraraka suffering deep stab wounds, and Ashido having several nasty cuts. Tokage’s leg broken. Todoroki suffering severe heat exhaustion. Hitoshi’s wrist broken and collar bone shattered. Almost all the students suffering major injuries.
But possibly the worst? Beyond even the injuries and high chance one of his co-workers is a traitor?
Bakugou Katsuki and Monoma Neito being kidnapped by villains.
Aoi had been expecting the worst when her phone had gone off at a little after midnight. There was no way a call from UA at that time of night during the training camp, the training camp they were worried about a possible villain attack was going to be anything but bad news.
But even still, she had underestimated just how bad .
Her son had been kidnapped, the Interns had all been injured (very badly in three cases), the rest of their classmates had some degree of injury, and Bakugou had been kidnapped. Without a doubt there was a traitor at UA, and she’ll be interrogating people soon with Louis’s assistance. The only people she knew for sure weren’t traitors were Aizawa and Toshinori. Everyone else was suspect.
What’s worse is she can’t even go to the hospital to see how the kids are. Instead she has to do damage control with the Commission. Figure out how to explain how a training camp got attacked, and figure out frankly who to throw under the bus. Whoever the traitor is, she decides.
“Louis, let’s go have a chat with Kan, Aizawa, the Pussycats, and Nedzu,” she says, shrugging on her dress suit jacket again. She’d striped it off when she’d arrived at her office.
“Which first ?” Louis asks in French.
Aoi tilts her head thoughtfully. “Let’s start with Kan-sensei. He’s the person I’ve interacted the least with for all he’s Neito’s homeroom teacher, and I’m about to say something I normally would not. His Quirk is arguably a ‘villainous’ Quirk, and I could see harassment over the years over that could cause... something . If not him, then we’ll chat with Nedzu, then the Pussycats, and finally Aizawa.”
“Not Hikari ?” Louis asks.
“No, and you know why,” Aoi says, giving her bodyguard a flat look. “As is, I barely see a need for questioning Aizawa, not when he’s already had so many chances to do something with all the time he’s spent at the Warren and how often he’s spoken in your presence.”
“Do you need Danielle or I to do anything ?” Amelie asks, drawing Aoi’s attention. She’s been leaning against a wall the entire time, while Danielle partially sits on one of the tables in her office.
“Danielle will be coming with Louis and me, but Amelie?” Aoi’s smile is sharp. “I want you to go take a ‘walk’. Maybe see if Ragdoll want’s to go ‘walking’ with you.”
Her bodyguard, who’d spent much of her employment protecting her son smiles just as sharply back. She then leaves the office, likely to prepare and then go ‘walking’.
“Now, let’s go speak with Kan-sensei.”
(An hour later and Kan-sensei pinned under Louis’s boot, Danielle’s gun aimed at his head, Aoi just wants to sigh because really ? She really got it right on the first time?! She'll still speak with the others but...but she is very unhappy with this betrayal.)
Izuku wakes up and he feels like everything should hurt. Which means he’s getting the really good painkillers. Which means he got really, really hurt, but that’s not a surprise after feeling the bones in his right arm all but shatter when he punched Muscular and then kept on fighting.
After all, you have to keep going until you know everyone is safe.
After all, you have to keep going even if you know the person you’re trying to save has been taken.
“Izuku, you’re awake!” his Mom says, and can barely understand her, everything feels funny.
“Young Midoriya!” All Might says and wow he’s here but why is he here? Shouldn’t he be out saving people. “Young Midoriya, you were all in danger, I am not going to leave you here by yourselves.”
Oh he said that out loud.
“Room?” he asks, not sure if that makes sense.
“I only just arrived and asked Toshinori to stay with you until I got here,” Mom explains. “I was over at Commission headquarters working on something with Aoi.”
There is a not fuzzy part of him that hopes they were actually working and not ‘working’.
“Everyone else?” he asks, sort of slurring the words.
“Some of your classmates are badly injured,” All Might admits. “The ones who weren’t as badly injured or not injured at all are still here at the hospital since it’s the easiest place to defend.” He sighs and looks like he doesn’t want to say the next thing. “Monoma Neito and Bakugou Katsuki were taken. We don’t know where they are. Ragdoll lost track of them and suspects there was either a warper or teleporter involved.”
“The…” a phone rings and Mom stops. He guesses she answers it. “Aoi? What’s wrong? Aoi ? Calm down and explain.”
Izuku can’t see his Mom properly. He can barely hear what she’s saying.
All he can tell is something very, very bad happened.
Keigo’s hands are shaking and out of the corner of his eye he sees Steps punch a hole into the wall (he’ll need to pay for that to be fixed). Haruto is scowling, and his Mom is pacing.
Hikari remains unconscious and badly injured. Her wrists had been burnt almost all the way through, and per the doctor it would take months before she’d be able to safely use her Quirk again. The doctors had given her morphine and didn’t expect her to wake up within the next twelve hours.
The Interns are all in bad shape, and in a sense it’s due to their more extensive training. They’d been more heavily targeted by the villains or interfered in their classmates fights.
Or intentionally allowed themself to be captured so as to save another classmate.
He thinks he can guess Neito’s train of thought there. While according to Tokage it looked like both of them were being targeted, he’d still lured them further away from her so she could use her Quirk to flee. If he was being targeted it was most likely not over his Quirk, but due to his status as the son of the Director of the Heroics Commission. If she was being targeted it was most likely due to her Quirk.
Keigo does not want to imagine a noumu with Tokage’s Quirk after it being explained to him. He really does not.
“Have the students given reports yet?” his Mom asks, finally stopping her pacing. He doesn’t think she’s any calmer than he is, just better at pretending.
“Half of them are out of it on painkillers, another quarter are too freaked out, but the remaining students have,” Steps says. “It sounds...bad. Really fucking bad. Definitely someone leaked the location of the camp. I imagine Director Monoma is looking into it, especially since her son is one of the people to get grabbed. And it also sounds a lot like specific kids were getting targeted. Shouto managed to give a report, along with a pink skinned 1-A student by the name of Ashido Mina.”
“How bad?” Mom asks, and he’s glad she’s doing it and allowing him to have his internal freak out because he already knows the answers for at least three of the targets.
“From what they both said it sounds like Bakugou Katsuki, Uraraka Ochako, Tokage Setsuna, Monoma Neito, Midoriya Izuku, and Tokoyami Fumikage were the targets,” Steps reports. “Though Shouto thinks Fumikage may have been a target of opportunity. He was gone after a different way, and the villain who tried to grab him backed off quickly when Hikari popped up to beat the shit out of him. Like, that could just be because she’s a pro hero, but at the same time, none of the other villains backed off so quickly. Sounds like Ashido, for example, gave the villain who went for Uraraka some spectacular acid burns before she’d back off.”
“I’d say ‘ow’ but I have no sympathy,” Mom drawls. “Ashido is the girl who got badly cut up, correct?”
“Yeah. Based on the description of the villain it’s suspected she’s Toga Himiko, a seventeen year old serial killer,” Steps adds. “Uraraka was stabbed several times also during that fight.”
“A six year old? Did a successful report as well,” Haruto adds. “Mandalay’s nephew, the Water Hose duo’s son was attacked by Muscular, but Izuku intervened, and that’s when and why he punched Muscular halfway through that mountain. I’m honestly almost impressed by how Muscular survived that.”
“He might not have survived a certain someone else if Izuku had gotten maimed,” Mom snarks. “But is that why we’ve had to stop a little kid from sneaking into Izuku’s room four times?”
“Yup. That’s little Kouta,” Haruto verifies. He then smirks, an expression Keigo wasn’t expecting out of anyone anytime soon. “He also apparently punched Izuku in the balls on the first day of training camp.”
Keigo can’t help but snort at that.
“Izuku apparently just greeted the kid and got punched straight in the balls,” Haruto adds. “According to Mandalay when I spoke to her briefly earlier, Kouta has issues with people who want to go into heroics due to his parents’ deaths. I assume he views it as ‘they cared more about being heroes than cared about me’.”
Steps is grimacing and Keigo can guess what’s going through his head; his last fight with his spouse Chaya just before their death over something similar.
“Well, he is a little kid,” Mom says. “So that’s a fair assumption to make. I will admit I stopped being a vigilante in part because Keigo was born and I was afraid I’d get killed and leave him alone.”
Especially after his father died .
Keigo grimaces again. “We need to figure out what to do next,” he says. “Let’s go call Director Monoma.”
He grabs his phone and hits a familiar number. It’s picked up after only a ring.
“Do not leave the hospital and do not leave the kids,” she says, not even letting him get anything out. “Kan Sekijiro has been revealed to be a traitor. I am unsure how many other traitors there are. I can only be sure of you, the rest of the Aery, Aizawa, and Miruko, who is enroute.”
“Fuck.” That’s really all he can say. Fuck, fuck, fuck .
“Keigo?” his Mom asks, looking concerned.
“We have a problem,” he says shortly. “A very big problem.”
Wow. He just ditched you at the first chance, didn’t he?
Ochako stares out her hospital window, still stuck on the villain’s words from almost a day earlier. Midoriya had been her assigned partner during the exercise. She’d been hoping it would be a good time to talk, a good way to spend time with him again since he’s always so busy with the Interns and his cousin.
Then they were attacked and Mandalay ordered him to find Kouta.
Which. Okay. She gets it. Izuku is one of the only people who knew where Kouta was always running off to after dinner. But he’d run off, barely remembering to tell her where he was going, and then she got attacked barely a minute later by that creepy blood drinking villain.
If Mina hadn’t arrived when she did…
She looks away from the window and over at Mina, who’s now asleep on the other bed in the room. They’d both already given their reports to Aizawa-sensei and Steps, the Aery’s senior sidekick. Mina’s got bandages all over from the slashes from the villain. Slashes she’d gotten defending her.
She hates that Mina’s Quirk meant she’d have to get closer than was necessarily safe, but at the same time whoever that blond had ended up with what she hopes are very nasty acid burns. She never really thought about how strong Mina’s acid could get until that moment.
And she’d used that strength to come save her.
(Ochako’s cheeks are warm and she has butterflies in her stomach and she isn’t even sure why .)
Katsuki wakes up tied to a chair and with the hand-covered fucker from that day at USJ sitting in front of him. The bacon bastard who’d probably caused the massive forest fire leans against a nearby bar(?!) while what he suspects are other villains are standing around. The only other one sitting is a girl covered in bandages.
He can’t see her face well enough to tell if she’s in pain or not. She does almost seem like she’s pouting.
“Bakugou Katsuki, you must be wondering why you’re here,” Hand-face says.
“What the fuck am I doing here?” he snarls just as Hand-face talks.
“I’m glad you asked that,” Hand-face says, completely unphased. Disturbingly unphased because Bakugou remembers how unhinged he’d been at USJ. “We’d like to offer the real role you should be playing. The role of a villain.”
“Are you shitting me?!” Katsuki can’t help but ask, an almost hysterical laugh coming from his mouth. “I’m not going to become a villain! I’m going to be the hero who surpasses All Might.”
Bacon bastard snorts.
“Trust me kid, you’re too like Endeavor to ever do that. Might as well fit the role you deserve,” he drawls. “You’re going to always be looking at the backs of Midoriya and the other kids from the Aery and Warren.”
Katsuki flinches. Looking at Deku’s back is one of the worst things he can imagine.
“Fuck you,” he snaps instead.
“You accept or else we have another use for you,” Hand-face says, voice still disturbingly calm. His smile is manic. “I’ll give you a few days to think it over.”
Katsuki feels like vomiting. He knows exactly what Hand-face is implying.
Say ‘yes’, or be turned into noumu fuel.
Neito wakes up tied to a chair and feels like it says something about him that he isn’t surprised. Instead he just opens his eyes, looks ahead, and what the fuck. What the ever loving fuck .
Why does whoever is in front of him look like they have a potato for a face?!
“What the fuck is wrong with your face ?!” he demands, not even realizing he’s speaking French instead of Japanese.
“I don’t speak French, speak Japanese,” the potato faced man orders.
“No, fuck you .”
“Really?”
“Fuck you with a cactus .”
“Speak Japanese, I know you are fluent!”
“Not so long as this is pissing you off potato face .”
Neito grins sharply. He can guess who is in front of him, and why he was taken. But he’ll be damned if he’s going to make things easy for All For One. He’s going to be as obnoxious, as frustrating as humanly possible, and once he gets the chance, escape .
But first to keep frustrating him in French.