Archive of Our Own

It's a perfectly ordinary Friday. The weather is nothing unusual, their classes have been uneventful. Tenya is particularly relieved to finally be caught up on the assignments he fell behind on last week when a case at his internship with Manual went longer than planned.

Still, Tenya finds himself slightly distracted from Midoriya's chatter as they collect their food in the cafeteria at lunchtime. He is beginning to be concerned that he has misspelled one of the words in the subtitle of his essay for Present Mic's class, because he can't, at the moment, remember if gray is spelled with an "e" or an "a" in American English. He makes a note to memorize it properly later so this doesn't happen again. Present Mic probably won't care, or mark him down for it, but that's no excuse to be sloppy. Learning a foreign language is important, after all, or they wouldn't be doing it here at UA.

When he and Midoriya get to their usual table, with Todoroki a few steps behind, Tenya pauses. Uraraka and Tsu are seated, and Tsu has an arm around the other girl's shoulders.

"Hi, guys," Uraraka says, and she straightens up in her seat and wipes her eyes on the back of her wrist.

Tenya puts down his tray and hands her a handkerchief, because it's only polite.

"Thanks, Iida," she says.

"Are you all right?" He asks, because while she obviously isn't, that's what you say in situations like this.

"I'm fine," Uraraka insists, and then she blows her nose into the handkerchief. She blows her nose very, very loudly. He must make a face, because she smiles, just a little bit, eyes still watery. "I'll wash it before I give it back to you," she says.

Midoriya sits down across from her, and Todoroki sits next to him. Tenya takes the seat at the head of the table, where he can see everyone’s expressions clearly.

"You're okay?" Midoriya says.

It's not quite a question, the way he says it. He looks between her and Tsu, and then at Todoroki. Tenya feels like he's missing something, but he feels like that a lot, and he’s sure his friends aren't doing it on purpose.

"I'll be fine," she says, which is not the same thing she told Tenya, and implies that she is not, at the current moment, actually fine.

"What happened?" Tenya asks, and starts separating the pickled vegetables from the cafeteria's bisected plate, moving the vegetables into an extra bowl so he can portion rice and curry out evenly on the two halves of the plate.

"Mineta," Tsu says grimly.

Midoriya immediately looks upset; Todoroki pauses before taking a very deliberate drink of his bottle of green tea and glancing around the cafeteria.

“Again?” Midoriya asks.

“It’s not a big deal,” Uraraka insists, and blows her nose again, nearly as loudly as before. For someone as petite and cheerful as she usually seems, she can make astonishing amounts of noise.

Tenya considers what she just said, and how red her eyes are.

“It might be a big deal if you’re still thinking about it,” he offers. It certainly seems like she’s still upset about it, no matter how contradictory what she’s been saying has been.

She gives him another watery smile.

“He just grabbed at me after class yesterday,” she explains. “I shouldn’t be overreacting like this, you know?”

Tenya frowns.

“Did you tell Aizawa-sensei?” He asks. “Surely he would —“

“Aizawa-sensei won’t do anything,” Tsu says, interrupting him. She does this fairly often, and Tenya doesn’t usually mind: she’s direct, and plain-spoken, and easy to understand. But there’s an edge to her tone that’s not usually there, today.

When Tenya blinks at her, she shrugs and continues.

“Mineta’s still a student in our class, isn’t he? It’s not the first time he’s done something like this, and it won’t be the last. Grabbing Ochako isn’t even the worst thing he’s done.”

Uraraka wilts visibly at Tsu’s side, and Tenya straightens up. But then Tsu pats Uraraka’s hand.

“It’s still bad,” she continues. “I don’t mean it that way. You should be mad about it. But you know he’s gotten away with doing worse things, and the teachers haven’t done anything”

Uraraka nods, and dabs at her eyes with the sodden handkerchief. Tenya hands her a second one, wondering if he’ll have time to run over to the dorms to get a replacement after lunch. He could get there and back very quickly, and it’s not technically against the rules. They’re allowed to use their quirks on the UA grounds.

“It’s not a big deal,” Uraraka says, and straightens her shoulders in a way that Tenya recognizes from the Sports Festival.

Something of his disbelief must be visible on Tenya’s face, because Midoriya speaks up.

“We don’t have any proof, anyway,” he says, and shrugs. He seems almost apologetic about it.

Todoroki pauses beside him, bottle of tea halfway to his mouth, and nods.

“But it’s against the rules,” Tenya hears himself say.

He can practically see the student handbook in his mind, and there are at least three rules that would apply to groping a classmate.

Tsu shrugs, and Midoriya looks confused.

“We don’t have proof,” he says again, as if Uraraka’s word somehow would not count as proof. Tenya can feel his own confusion building.

Tsu tightens her grip on Uraraka’s hand.

“It wouldn’t do any good,” she says. “Like I said, he’s done worse before, and in front of teachers.”

Tenya blinks at her, and opens his mouth.

“It’s all right,” Uraraka interrupts. Her voice is firm, steely. It's the tone of voice that makes some of their classmates back down in a fight, that makes Bakugou grin in anticipation when the two of them are sparring, the tone that presages property damage. “I don’t want to make a fuss, all right? I’m fine. It’s not a big deal.”

Tenya isn’t sure that’s true, but it’s clear there’s nothing else he can do right now without offending her, so he just nods.

“Thanks for the handkerchiefs, Iida,” Uraraka says, waving them both at him.

“Do you always carry two?” Tsu asks.

If one of his middle-school classmates asked that, Tenya might expect derision. Tsu just sounds curious and unwilling to beat around the bush, the way she always does.

“I do,” Tenya says. “They’re useful in a variety of situations, after all, and take up very little space!”

Conversation turns to other items that might be useful to have on hand, and then to a discussion of pockets on hero costumes. Apparently Uraraka’s costume had no pockets at all when it was first designed for her, which Tenya finds utterly baffling.

"I wasn't very specific about what I wanted," she says.

Tenya thinks back to their first costumes and realizes how much some of his classmates' outfits have changed.

"It wasn't as bad as Todoroki's first costume," Tsu says, and Tenya lets himself smile when he sees Todoroki isn't offended: his first costume was pretty striking, after all.

The rest of the day passes normally enough. Tenya and Ashido are paired up in a rescue test against Sero and Koda, and manage to rescue the fake civilians despite swarms of insects and an unusually aggressive raccoon.

After his habitual Friday evening agility-focused workout, Tenya does his paired regimen of cool-down stretches before returning to the dorms. Once there, he places his gym bag in his room, retrieves his shower caddy and towel, and goes downstairs with a dressing gown over one arm to take a much-needed shower. He's silently pleased to get that all accomplished within the expected time-frame, and without any unexpected classmate-related shower incidents.

Tenya is fairly sure Kaminari has never intended to electrocute anyone via the pipes, no matter that it has nearly happened three times since they all moved in. At least Sero accidentally grabbing Tenya's towel with a loop of tape has only happened once.

Once back in his room, Tenya checks his notebooks and his schedule to see what work he has due in the next week. Saturday is still a school day, but Friday nights are when Tenya sets up his schedule, because Saturday nights are for packing and traveling back to his internship in Hosu.

Friday nights are also when he calls Tensei.

Some of his classmates seem to think Tenya's closely-kept schedule is strange, if Ashido's comments about the value of spontaneity and Sero's comments about the importance of relaxation have been intended as Tenya suspects. But none of them outright make fun of his desire to plan in advance, or know what to expect of the hours of his day, which has been a nice change from some of Tenya's former classmates at Soumei. Here at UA, they all want to be heroes, and they all approach it in different ways. Besides, for all his explosive temperament, Bakugou keeps far earlier hours and is more aggressive about defending his bedtime than Tenya would dare to be.

At seven o'clock on the dot, just as he's closing his planner, Tenya's phone rings.

"Hello, nii-san," he says, and sits down at the head of his bed and leans against the bookcase just a little bit, tucking his legs up under him as much as he can without jostling the exhaust vents on the backs of his calves. They're still a little sore, growing back after the tune-up Tensei told him about.

"Hello, Tenya," Tensei says. He sounds much the same as ever, warm and comforting as he was for all of Tenya's childhood.

"How have you been?" Tenya asks.

As is so often the case when he talks to Tensei, he actually means it: he's genuinely curious, not just performing a routine conversational obligation.

"I think it's my job to be worried about you," Tensei says, but he laughs a little bit. "I know, I know, you asked first. It's been a busy week. Two of my former sidekicks caught a bank-robber -- did you see it on the news? It was really good teamwork between Springboard and Glaze. The robber had a knife-like quirk -- like that kid in 1-B you mentioned? Was it Kamakiri?"

Tenya smiles, impressed by his brother's memory for personal details. Where Tenya has to drill names, quirks, and faces into his memory, Tensei has always had a knack for it.

"Yes," he agrees. "Springboard and Glaze have been patrolling together, then?"

It's a good combination: Springboard can add elasticity to solid objects, which she uses to aid in mobility, and Glaze can alter the texture and opacity of most minerals, including glass, which makes his quirk perfect for environmental control in an urban setting.

"They have been," Tensei agrees. "The robber had a knife to the cashier's throat, but Glaze was able to fog the glass barriers and windows over enough for Springboard to sneak in, and they disarmed him without incident."

Tenya can hear the pride in his brother's voice. He knows Tensei has been keeping the Ingenium Agency open through sheer willpower, waiting for Tenya to graduate and step in. It's a lot of work, but Tenya thinks the distraction involved has probably been good for his brother. He's usually cheerful, now that he's not loopy on oxygen anymore, but sometimes the smile didn't quite reach his voice. He's seemed better recently, and Tenya is deeply grateful for that.

"What about you?" his brother asks, and Tenya pauses.

"I'm concerned about a friend," he admits. "She was upset at lunch today."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Tensei asks.

Tenya pauses, weighing his options, and Tensei doesn't push, doesn't interrupt the moment of silence, just waits as seriously as he ever did when Tenya was a kid. Tenya doesn't want to betray anyone's confidence, but he could use advice, and Tensei understands people so much better than Tenya ever has on his own.

"I think so," he says, finally. "Uraraka was upset about disrespectful behavior from a classmate. She said he grabbed her after class, but I'm not sure that was all that happened. She was very upset before we arrived. But I don't know what to do about it," Tenya admits. "She said it wasn't a big deal, but she used both of my handkerchiefs."

"Well," Tensei says, and it sounds like he's choosing his words carefully. "It's her call. It happened to her. Uraraka is the one with the gravity quirk? Uravity? Based on the sports festival she seems like someone who can take care of herself."

He pauses again. When he continues, his voice is noticeably softer: so much so that Tenya checks the volume on his phone, turns it up, and still almost misses what Tensei says next.

"But it might not be a bad idea to keep an open ear," he says. "Nemuri always said she just had to get used to it, that people think they get to touch female heroes, but that doesn't make it alright. It reminds me a little of something that happened recently."

Tenya is still listening carefully, and the volume is turned up enough that he can hear breath catch in Tensei's throat.

"You know some of my sidekicks who moved to other agencies have taken shifts at the Ingenium Agency?"

Of course Tenya knows this: Glaze is one of those, though he'd only left a few weeks before Tensei's injury, so his return had been pretty seamless. But Tenya thinks this might be one of those moments when someone is speaking circuitously, and is working around to what they actually want to say. Tensei doesn't do it often, so Tenya will have to listen even more carefully. This will be important.

"Yes, nii-san," Tenya says, when Tensei doesn't keep talking.

"Right," Tensei says. "You've got a good memory, Tenya. Well. Most folks have been pretty good about things, but. Flashpoint was in town earlier this week, and she came by the agency to catch up over lunch. We went to the cafe down the block, the one with outdoor seating? They keep a table clear for me these days. And, you know, my wheelchair's power system and quirk integration has been a little glitchy recently, so I was operating it manually. Apparently it was too slow, so she took hold of the back and pushed me across the street without asking."

Tenya takes a sharp breath: he has pushed his brother's wheelchair, in the hospital a couple of times, and when he's been asked. A couple of times he's pushed Tensei at quirk-enhanced speeds to test the limits of the new prototype the support company is working on, to their mother's amusement and their father's horror. But Tenya's also done enough research online on his own to know that touching someone's chair is like touching their body, that you ask first, that you back off.

"She insisted I should be grateful for her help," Tensei is saying. "I don't think I'll be inviting her back for another team-up."

He laughs a little ruefully, as if this is a funny story and not a violation of his autonomy, not intensely disrespectful of a professional hero who had given Flashpoint a chance as a sidekick when other agencies thought she was too volatile. Tensei gave Flashpoint the chances that led to her professional career and she reacted like this?

Tenya bristles internally but bites his tongue, because Tensei is still talking.

"That kind of thing happens more often than I expected.”  His voice is a little softer now. He almost sounds… unhappy.

It's strange to hear this tone again: Tensei has been so determined, so positive during his recovery, ever since asking Tenya to carry on Ingenium's name into the next generation of heroes. He's been even better recently, since getting more sidekick patrol pairs set up and since getting the new prototype chair that gives him more mobility. But remembering this interaction with Flashpoint seems to have stripped some of that away, and Tenya makes a fist, suddenly, vividly angry on his brother's behalf.

"It's not the same as what happened to your friend, but--" Tensei pauses. "Well. Maybe this Mineta kid knows what he's doing, how it affects your friend, and maybe he doesn't. What you can do is believe your friend, and believe that it matters when she tells you she's upset."

His voice catches a little bit, and Tenya finds himself holding his breath.

"She should get to choose about that kind of thing," Tensei says, and then he must force a smile. "So keep an open ear, okay, Tenya? Let her decide, like you did at lunch. You said she used both of your handkerchiefs? You're still carrying two?"

Tenya lets himself be teased, and then his big brother moves the conversation on to his schoolwork, following their unwritten script of conversational topics. They hang up at eight pm, as they always do.

Tenya feels less settled tonight after the call than he usually does.

Tensei has faced his share of challenges: anyone who loses the use of their lower body is going to have a hard time. They’ve talked about the challenges and frustrations of physical therapy, about the details of getting a wheelchair adapted for his brother's quirk, about the possibility of other mobility aids like the ones Ectoplasm uses.

But Tenya still didn't expect it to be like this. He didn't expect his brother's former sidekicks to see Tensei differently, to ignore his wishes. He didn't expect them to see him as someone helpless, as a victim, or a thing to be moved around without his consent.

He wonders all of a sudden if that's it, if Mineta sees the girls in their classes that way, as things he can touch whenever he wants. Looking back at his behavior, running through his obsession with body parts, with spying, it seems obvious. Tenya only wonders why he never noticed it before.

Tenya uncurls his legs from beneath him, thinking back on their conversation at lunch, the objections everyone raised.

"We don't have proof," Midoriya had said, and he was right, in a way: they didn't have the kinds of proof that would be required to prove a pattern of bad behavior, and Mineta could surely argue his way out of any single accusation. If they want to make a difference, they'll need to build the foundations of a solid case.

Tenya looks at his class notes, his carefully laid-out planner and its projected allocation of time for this evening. He should be doing history homework now, researching pre-quirk space exploration timelines. He decides to be reckless and postpone his homework to tomorrow: he has evidence of malfeasance to compile.

* * *

The first thing Tenya does is pull his copy of the UA student handbook off the shelf. Koda had been visibly confused the first time Tenya pulled out his hard-bound copy to confirm the rules about dorm pets, and Shoji had blinked at him in a way that usually indicated confusion when he'd seen Tenya looking up the rules about in-room appliances for Sato. Perhaps getting the UA rules printed and bound was unusual, but Tenya had wanted to be sure he could reference them easily, and it's a comprehensive enough set of rules that paperbound copies would have fallen apart under any kind of sustained reference.

Tenya honestly has his questions about where some of the rules came from ("No student shall set any element of a bathroom's furnishings or other structural elements on fire, with or without the use of a quirk" is weirdly specific) but he has enough of it memorized to figure out which sections will be of the most use.

By the time he stops to get ready for bed, Tenya has compiled the most relevant rules, a list of Mineta-related incidents he can remember, and a tentative scheme for color-coding them by types of infraction represented. He puts everything in a folder, and makes a note in the border of his planner to remind himself to pick up a ring binder and both lined and dot-matrix pages to fit in it before he returns from his internship with Manual. He's going to need to be able to move pages around as he organizes his thoughts, so a ring binder is the most logical choice.

Saturday's classes are without incident, unless you count Kaminari shorting himself out, or Bakugou nearly taking the tip of Shouji's uppermost left arm off with a blast, which Tenya does not. Kaminari hasn't shorted himself out so dramatically in several weeks, but Ojiro sits with him and lets him pet the tuft at the tip of his tail while his brain reboots. Bakugou's control is good enough that he diverts the majority of the explosion, and thankfully Shouji has proven his ability to re-grow the ends of his extra arms.

Besides, Aizawa didn't erase their quirks or twitch as much as a finger toward his capture weapon, so he must not have been worried about either incident. The only time Aizawa tensed up was when Midoriya's green glow stuttered for a moment, but the weird black tentacles didn't manifest again, and Hagakure used the distraction to knock Midoriya's feet out from under him and win the match, so it had all been fine. After everything that's happened to their class so far, Tenya is trying to take his cue from their teachers and mentors more often: they have much more experience with dangerous situations. His class may have more villain experience than any other UA students, but they are, after all, only students.

Tenya isn't sure why he brings the folder of notes with him to his internship. Still, on Saturday evening he finds himself placing it carefully in his backpack along with the homework he will need to do in the early mornings and evenings, when he's off-duty and done with the required agency paperwork.

It's when he's on patrol with Manual Sunday afternoon that Tenya realizes he has a unique opportunity: Manual is known for handling more of his agency's paperwork than many heroes. Endeavor certainly doesn't handle forms directly, and Best Jeanist, for all his emphasis on attention to detail, has ranks of secretaries. Even Tensei didn’t do most of his own paperwork until recently, and he still asks his former sidekicks about some of the procedural things. He’s told Tenya more than one story about filling out the wrong form, doing tasks in the wrong order now that he’s not on patrol.

Manual, though, works a route with low rates of violent crime and more focus on longer-term investigation than many heroes. If there's anyone in Tenya's life who would know how to structure an investigation into illegal behavior, it's him.

Tenya thinks about this for a little while, as they walk. Finally they finish chatting with the elderly lady, Sato-san, who makes a habit of crossing paths with Manual every week to keep him up to date on all the local teenagers. She’s very nosy, and Tenya suspects the kids in question dislike her quite a bit for her prying, but she seems genuinely concerned about crime rates, and it’s no trouble to nod along while she talks, and thank her for her time.

Manual watches her walk off, tiny and determined, iron-gray hair in a tight bun, and smiles a little bit after her retreating back.

“That was well done,” he says, glancing at Tenya. “She’s started to trust you, I think.”

Tenya blinks, glad his hero uniform hides his face. He’s not sure what expression is appropriate right now, but it’s probably not blank shock.

“Thank you,” he says. “I’m just following your example, Manual-san.”

Manual laughs, and rubs the back of his head with one hand, a sheepish gesture.

“Not sure how much I have to teach you, really,” he says. “Your brother’s doing better these days, right?”

And that’s a perfect opening, if Tenya’s ever heard one.

“He is,” Tenya says, and restrains his desire to talk about his brother’s recovery: there will be time for that later, surely. “But I think you sell yourself short, Manual-san! I’ve learned a lot from you.”

Manual smiles, and Tenya is grateful to have the chance to work with him. He may have chosen Manual’s agency for its location when he was hobbled by his desire for revenge, but it has worked out better than he could have imagined.

“I actually had a question,” Tenya continues. “And I think you’d be able to help?”

Manual waits for a moment, then nods.

“Sure,” he says. “Hit me.”

“I’m curious about the steps involved in building a well-documented case against a non-violent offender. One that will stand up in court. Are there ways to get evidence of illegal behavior that work better than others?”

Manual looks at him, eyes just as keen as they were on Tenya’s first internship.

“What’s this about?” He asks.

“Nothing, I hope,” Tenya replies, and it’s not exactly untrue: he does hope it ends up being nothing. He’s just pretty sure that’s a false hope. “But I’m realizing how little I know about setting up a proper investigation, and I want to know how to do it by the book, what the rules are.”

Manual smiles a little bit at that.

“By the book, huh,” he says. “Well, I think I can help with that.”

Tenya doesn’t give any identifying details, but by the time they finish a thankfully-uneventful patrol, he has a mental list. They return to the agency, where Manual chats with the sidekick on duty, and Tenya clocks out. He removes the Ingenium uniform one piece at a time, checking each for scratches or dirt before putting it in its case like a particularly complex three-dimensional puzzle. Then, clad in his compression suit, he takes the back stairs up to his assigned room, where he showers swiftly, dresses in comfortable clothes, and settles down at the small table he uses as a desk.

According to his planner, he ought to be doing homework for Midnight’s class right now. Instead Tenya pulls out the folder of notes, finds a blank page, and starts writing up his conversation with Manual.

The first step in investigative hero work, Tenya writes, is documenting a pattern to predict future crimes. Manual said that even behavior that may not be explicitly illegal can be a warning flag, and can be part of a pattern of potential escalation. Tenya thinks back through Mineta’s interactions with the girls in their class, and believes he can see how that works.

After he’s outlined the conversation, made a few notes for future inquiry, and put the page in the front of the folder, Tenya pulls out his art history textbook and sets a timer so he won’t miss dinner if he becomes too focused.

Tonight Manual brings two of his sidekicks over to eat with Tenya, which is unusual: most of the time he eats with his homework in front of him, though he doesn’t explicitly schedule work during meals unless he’s very far behind. It’s just a convenient excuse for the others to give him a bit of space.

“Iida’s determined to learn about investigations,” Manual says, and grins as the three of them settle into chairs around the small round table. “So, it’s time to recap that gambling case for us!”

One sidekick, Split, smiles almost excitedly, while the other looks a bit alarmed. Still, the two of them answer Manuals’s initial questions readily enough. By the time Tenya has finished his meal, he’s started asking his own questions and has learned about how the two of them took down a back-alley gambling ring that operated almost out in the open, hiding in plain sight. The sidekicks head off for their evening patrol and Tenya nods at Manual.

“Thank you,” Tenya says, because it's polite to thank people for kind gestures. He finds he means it: bringing the two of them by Tenya's table to share their experiences before their patrol was more than just a kind gesture, it will probably be helpful.

“Gotta teach you something,” Manual says, and his smile gets a little more genuine. “Besides, it’s good to see you this excited about doing things by the book, kid. You know I’ll help if I can.”

Tenya nods, smiling a little bit in response, and Manual heads off.

Tenya feels a bit guilty that Manual is so pleased to see him following rules, but he also knows his mentor has good intentions towards him, and good reason to act the way he does. Rebuilding the trust his misguided quest for revenge cost him is just the consequence of his own past actions.

Tenya cleans up his meal tray before returning to his room to stretch carefully. His exhaust pipes still ache a bit, but not enough to be worrisome. Then he sits down at the room's small desk and reads for English class. When his alarm beeps, he puts the book down, washes his face, changes into pajamas, and lays out his futon neatly parallel to the longest wall. He sleeps deeply, and wakes without remembering his dreams.

The next two days are familiar, part of the new pattern of Tenya’s life now that he’s doing a work-study. Tenya gets up early, exercises in the agency gym, showers in his room's en-suite bathroom, does schoolwork, eats a balanced breakfast, and goes on patrol with either Manual or a senior sidekick. They get lunch from a different street cart each day, chat with locals, and when Tenya returns he fills out any incident paperwork. Then he does more schoolwork before and after dinner.

If Tenya ducks out before Monday's patrol to buy a binder, paper, and clear plastic sleeves, that’s only a small deviation from his schedule. And if he finds himself rushing his schoolwork to steal time to fill out a timeline of remembered incidents, witnesses, and cross-referenced UA student handbook rules, well, that’s no one’s business but his own.

By the time Tenya is back in the dorms on Tuesday evening, he’s fairly proud of the patterns he’s isolated and identified. Mineta accidentally trips and grabs Momo's skirt to prevent himself from falling. Only Sero's quick intervention keeps him from pulling her over, or yanking her skirt off-kilter. Tenya frowns, making a note to add that to his growing list. Meddling with other students' uniforms is against the rules, as is unwanted physical contact.

Tenya frowns, but he makes small-talk with his classmates on his way in and even helps Kaminari find his often-misplaced phone. Even with that delay -- somehow Kaminari's phone ended up in the shared kitchen's freezer -- Tenya still unpacks his backpack and schoolwork tidily before it's time for bed.

* * *

When Midoriya calls out to him at lunch the next day, Tenya is pleased to see that Todoroki, Uraraka and Tsu are already present. They often sit together, but he had been wondering how to gather everyone to show them his work without making a production of it. This, he thinks, will work nicely.

Tenya sits at the short end of the cafeteria table, as has become his habit, with Midoriya at his right, and Todoroki on Midoriya's other side. Tsu is to his left, and Uraraka beside her. There is space for a sixth person opposite Tenya, but today that seat is empty.

Tenya pulls the binder out of his bag and puts it on the table, flips through it a bit, rotating it to Midoriya’s angle to show off the timeline, the color-coded types of rule violations. Midoriya leans over, and rifles through, clearly grasping the organization system swiftly: he always has had a head for strategy, for sorting information and prioritizing the most essential bits.

“That’s well organized,” Midoriya says, finally, sitting back.

Beside him, Todoroki leans in, and then Tsu, reading it upside down from across the table.

Tenya feels relief wash through him: he’s done something right, after all.

Todoroki looks up, visibly impressed, and Uraraka and Tsu glance at each other, expressions harder to read as Tsu flips the binder around so the two of them can read it.

“So,” Tenya says. “You said we needed proof to do anything about Mineta’s behavior.” He gestures at the binder. “Let’s go tell Aizawa-sensei.”

Tsu and Midoriya both start talking at the same time, then stop, looking at each other, wide-eyed and, perhaps, Tenya thinks, surprised.

“Go ahead,” Tsu says, and makes a small ribbeting noise. Midoriya nods.

“It’s well organized,” Midoriya says. “I like the color-coding. But none of that is evidence. It’s allegations. We need solid proof, or it doesn’t matter how organized we are.”

Tenya feels his heart sink.

“What if we did have proof?” He asks. “We’re heroes. We can’t just sit back and allow such injustice!”

Midoriya nods, but Todoroki, Uraraka and Tsu look unconvinced.

Then there’s a blur of pink at the end of the table opposite him, and a flash of light off goggles as Hatsume Mei pops up, seemingly out of nowhere. Tenya chides himself for poor situational awareness.

“You need proof?” Hatsume demands, leaning over the table propped on her left hand, spinning the binder to face her with her right. There are grease stains on her biceps and Tenya is certain she is not wearing the regulation uniform.

To Hatsume’s right, Uraraka and Tsu gape; to her left, Todoroki blinks. Midoriya, between Todoroki and Tenya, has a carefully blank expression on his face, the way he does when he’s trying not to mutter in speculation, when his thoughts are moving too fast to keep in.

“Excuse me?” Tenya asks, trying to keep a level tone of voice.

He understands why Hatsume behaved as she did in the Sports Festival, and it would be unkind to hold a grudge. It would also, as Power Loader told them, be exceedingly unwise to alienate such a talented support designer. He still finds himself feeling uncharitably towards her more often than not.

“Proof!” Hatsume says. “I was going to ask Midoriya about any alterations to his gloves, but I got curious about what had you all looking so serious, so I zoomed in.”

She taps her temple. Her pupils contract like cross-hairs. A vision quirk, then: he should have remembered that. He should have guessed that she'd be far too curious. Tenya forces himself to focus again: she’s still talking.

“…that sticky kid’s a jerk, and he made Sora-Chan cry. Sora-chan lends me her spare wrenches sometimes when mine get melted. So if you need hard evidence? I’m in.”

Midoriya is starting to look interested, which Tenya takes as a good sign.

"Take a seat," Midoriya says. "Tell us how."

Hatsume grabs a chair from the empty table behind her, spins it around, sits on it backwards and props her arms on the back, grinning at Tenya from the foot of the table.

"Well," she says, and her expression becomes more focused, and somehow almost feral. "I've been learning to program a little bit, for some of my babies. And sometimes I get bored between lessons, and see what systems are around. And it turns out the hallway and classroom cameras are really badly secured! I've been poking around in them for a while now, watching gym practice so I can get better ideas for support items!"

Uraraka and Tsu exchange a look, and lean in, looking curious.

Midoriya nods. He almost looks hopeful now. At his side, Todoroki frowns.

"How does that help?" he asks. "We can't guarantee something will happen while you're watching. Or anyone else is watching. Don't we need witnesses? For proof?"

Hatsume grins.

"I'm not watching live," she says dismissively, as if that should have been patently obvious. "Power Loader-sensei gave me a key to the small computer lab for late-night work. He said it was so I'd stop breaking the blow torches and setting off the smoke alarms in the main workshop and waking him up after midnight. I thought it would be boring, but it turns out the programming classes he set for me are going to be handy for a lot of my babies!"

Todoroki just looks confused, but Midoriya nods.

"So you've hacked into the stored recordings," he says, deftly dragging her back on track before she can describe any of her support items in more detail.

"Yep!" Hatsume says. "I mean, nobody uses the gym at two am, so the live feeds were pretty boring. But that means if you can tell me when and where, I can get the footage for you. I'll have to figure out how to save it, but that'll be fun! I wonder if there are underground heroes who need hacking support? I could build a baby that would get into a system..."

"Maybe start with something that saves a selected bit of video to external storage?" Tenya suggests, trying to break the problem down into its component parts. Something occurs to him, then, based on his conversations with Manual's sidekicks. "And -- with all of its associated metadata intact?"

Tsu nods in what is probably approval.

"Sure, sure," Hatsume says.

She leans forward, tipping the chair up onto only two legs as she makes a grab for the binder. Tenya bites back an instinctive reprimand: she's not in his class, for one thing, so he's not her class rep. And besides, they're at lunch, and there's no rule against sitting as she is.

Hatsume flips through, skimming the incidents he's compiled, and frowns.

"That's it?" she asks. "Just the sticky kid?"

Uraraka blinks at her.

"What do you mean?" she says. Beside her, Tsu is starting to look grim.

"He's not the only one," Hatsume says. "I'm on board for getting the evidence to get him expelled, for sure. He made Sora-chan cry, and that sucks. But ..."

Midoriya grins, and his whole face lights up with it, like he sees something the rest of them don't.

"If we're going to do this," he says, and catches Tenya's eye. "We should do it properly, right? Plus Ultra. So. Hatsume-san. Who else?"

He grabs the binder, a pen, and flips to a blank sheet of paper. Tenya bites back another protest, and then realizes that Midoriya is leaving space for the notes Tenya will add later, and is formatting the notes he's taking very nearly the way Tenya would have done.

It turns out there are several management and gen-ed boys who harass girls to one degree or another, and another boy in the Hero track, in year two, who's known to bother the support course and gen-ed girls in particular.

"Upper year support course girls have to be alone with the boys sometimes for fittings and costume work," Hatsume says, shrugging. "Or when Power Loader-sensei gets called away on account of something exploding. So, you know, the older girls keep track, and they keep us informed."

Tsu nods.

"A whisper network," she says. "My brothers and their friends do something like that."

Tenya blinks.

"Surely it would be more effective to report them?" he asks.

Uraraka looks at him like he's just said something exceedingly dense.

"Iida," she says. "When we told Aizawa-sensei about Mineta, he told us that the world is full of people like Mineta and heroes have to deal with worse provocations on the job. He said it was good practice for keeping our tempers, and the press will be much more annoying."

Tsu nods confirmation.

"Midnight said the same thing," she adds. "Well. Not about the press. I think she likes them more than Aizawa-sensei."

Tenya thinks that's not hard: Aizawa clearly hates everything about the press. He has sometimes wondered which came first: Aizawa's decision to be an underground hero, or his aversion to the media. But that's not important right now: he wrenches himself back on track.

"But if they break the rules?" he asks.

Todoroki laughs, and it sounds more bitter than he has in months now.

"Someone has to believe you," he says. "And care enough to enforce them."

Midoriya's expression does something complicated, but he nods.

"So we need proof," he says. "And Hatsume-san can get it for us! Which is great!"

"I can get the video," Hatsume says. "I'll figure it out by Wednesday! Who needs sleep!"

Midoriya shakes his head at her.

"Keep sleeping, Hatsume-san," he says. "This isn't a sprint, and you'll think faster and program better if you've slept."

It seems to be the right thing to say.

"Fine," Hatsume says, sounding grudging even as she smiles brightly.

Tenya really doesn't think she'll ever make sense to him: she sounds unhappy, but looks sunny and pleased. The conflicting signals are really confusing.

"In the meantime," Hatsume says. "Keep out of the purple kid's way? Power Loader-sensei says we girls just need to stick together. You can do that, right?"

Tsu frowns.

"So he doesn't stop them, either?" she says, and brings a hand up, pointing a finger at her mouth as if she's about to gnaw on it. "Is there a single teacher in this school who steps in when they see this happening?"

Maybe it's because she's so blunt; maybe it's the repetition; maybe Tenya's been thinking about this for a while and it's finally sunk in at long last.

But that phrasing rings in his ears.

Is there a single teacher in this school who steps in? Tsu just asked. And she's right.

None of their teachers -- pro heroes all -- role models, educators, and sworn protectors -- will stop one of their students from groping or harassing their classmates, from making them cry.

None of their teachers -- pro heroes all -- adults who have risked death for them -- will enforce these rules, even when the rule-breaking happens directly in front of their eyes.

Tenya feels something snap in his mind.

Something in his model of the world shatters, and he can feel it buckling, like a diorama whose supports have been removed, like a house of cards about to fall.

His friends are still talking: Tenya tunes them out.

Their teachers -- seemingly trustworthy adults -- can't be trusted in this regard.

Tenya shakes his head, trying to clear it.

The foundations don't settle back into place; things don't go back to how they seemed to be, just a few short moments ago.

"That kind of thing happens more often than I expected," Tensei had said, hadn't he.

So even Tensei didn't know everything about this kind of thing, not before his injury.

Maybe, Tenya thinks. Maybe they don't see the pattern. If that's the case, they can fix this. Tenya can fix this. They just need more documentation. Hatsume can get the video: they can get reports of other incidents for other repeat offenders. They can get proof.

And -- well -- not everyone reads the rules the way Tenya does, or memorizes them. Sometimes even adults don't know the fine print, Tensei's told him that before. It's fine. Tenya will make it fine. He'll read the rules, and he'll cross-compare, and he and his classmates will make their teachers see the problem.

Finally Tenya forces himself to focus on the conversation again, rising out of the depths of his mind like surfacing from underwater, like removing earplugs.

Midoriya is taking notes, laying out a strategic plan of attack. Tenya scans his notes to catch up, glad he can read even at awkward angles.

It looks like Tsu and Uraraka will talk to the other girls Hatsume knows and get information: times, dates, places. Hatsume will get the video files. Todoroki and Midoriya will skim the video for timestamps and write up incident descriptions. Tenya sees himself listed for "data compilation" and "heroic school handbook cross-comparison."

"Can you ask Yoarashi for a copy of the Shiketsu handbook?" Midoriya asks Todoroki, who frowns, then pulls out his phone and sends a quick text message.

"Done," he says.

"Okay, great." Midoriya says. "Ketsubutsu's handbook is online: Iida, you can print that, right?"

Tenya nods.

"Why do we need those?" Tsu asks. "We can't hack their cameras, and even if we could, that would make this too big, wouldn't it?"

Midoriya nods.

"We need to show a pattern of behavior that violates heroic norms and rules," he says. "And that means it can't only be UA's rules they're breaking. So if Iida can find the parallel rules from the other top program, the one with the strictest rule book, that's Shiketsu, and also from a top-ranked school known for its looser rules, that's Ketsubutsu, and show that this behavior violates all of them? It makes a better case."

Tenya privately thinks that this is setting things up for a much stronger case than they're going to need. But he's been curious about the other school's handbooks for some time now, and it's nice to see Midoriya invested in this project. His pessimism earlier was uncharacteristic: this determination and drive is much more like the Midoriya Tenya knows.

Looking at the list, and the amount of paper Midoriya has already used up just taking notes on this discussion, Tenya sighs.

He's going to need a bigger binder.

* * *

The next several weeks pass far more swiftly than Tenya would have expected.

Todoroki gets a copy of the Shiketsu handbook without any difficulty, and Tenya decides to only print the relevant parts of the Ketsubutsu handbook, which is quite short compared to the other two schools' rules. Cross-compiling and categorizing types of infractions is satisfying, even if there are a handful of incidents that don't appear to be covered by the Ketsubutsu rules.

Uraraka and Tsu gradually manage to get a list of incidents, though not all the girls they talked to appear to have been entirely forthcoming about their experiences.

And by the first weekend after volunteering herself to help them, Hatsume has not only figured out how to save the hacked footage, but has built a video review gadget that, to her great satisfaction, only explodes once after she hands it over. She looks mildly irked when Todoroki returns it to her at lunch the next day still encased in ice, but not enough to prevent her from then looking at him speculatively, as if considering using a fellow student as an ambulatory fire-extinguisher.

Once segments of video are watchable, Midoriya and Todoroki take to curling up in one or another of their rooms with a laptop, or Hatsume's ever-improving series of video-review babies. Midoriya takes notes while Todoroki narrates, and they appear to get it down to a fairly flawless system, if the quantity of notes Midoriya provides Tenya are any indication.

For his part, Tenya starts putting the incident descriptions together with the triple sets of rules he's compiled, putting everything together and cross-referencing file names, time-stamps, and handbook section numbers. Where provided, he lists the recommended consequences or punishments for infractions.

By the time he's worked to the end of the descriptions Midoriya has written up, Tenya is fairly sure Mineta should have been expelled a half-dozen times over, the other heroics course boy nearly as many times, and the gen-ed and management boys are, at best, and with the most lenient possible interpretations of the rules, on very thin ice.

That evening, Hatsume joins them in the dorm.

There aren't technically any rules about cross-course socialization under the brand-new dorm system, but then, there are very few dorm-specific rules just yet, beyond the obvious code of conduct and the rules they've unofficially implemented about things like food labeling in the shared fridges.

So Hatsume might not be supposed to spend her free time in the heroics course dorm, instead of in the support course dorm. But because there are so few rules, they're not breaking any written rules by having her visit. Tenya thinks that will have to be good enough for now.

Sato baked an enormous chiffon cake earlier, for the whole class, and Hatsume had gravitated to it almost immediately, grabbing a huge slice for herself. Then, to Tenya's surprise, she'd made up a tray for the whole table.

"Okay," Hatsume says, sitting down and taking a huge bite of cake. "Oh, this is good! Sato," she hollers across the room. "This cake is amazing!"

Sato looks up with a smile. Yaoyorazu is leading a study session, but everyone else seems to take Hatsume's presence for granted by now.

"Hatsume-san," Midoriya says, pulling her attention back to their table.

"Right," she says through a mouthful of cake, then, thankfully, swallows. "Well, I've gotten all the videos I can get. Those last two bits -- the ones from a few years back? From the upperclassmen's rumors? I can't get anything that far back. There's some kind of hardware error message. So I'm out of things to pull!"

Uraraka and Tsu exchange a look, and Tsu nods, putting down her own empty plate.

"We are too," she says. "Nobody else is going to talk to us, if they haven't already."

Todoroki and Tsu both seem unsurprised by this turn of events.

Tenya puts down his half-finished cake to flip through the binder. By now it is color-coded, tab-divided, sorted by the order in which rules occur in the UA handbook, and cross-referenced with a table of contents and a rudimentary index.

"We have proof now," Tenya says, gesturing down at the binder. "So. Who do we give it to?"

Midoriya blinks at him, but Uraraka speaks first.

"But what happens after that?" She asks. "If everyone we name isn't expelled immediately, it'll be bad, won't it? And their friends will be really mad at us for getting them in trouble."

Tenya looks at her, surprised. He hadn't thought that far ahead: getting the proof had been his goal: after heroes gather information about crimes, they often hand it over to the police, who make the ensuing plans.

Hatsume hums, seemingly absorbed in the fine-scale tinkering she's pulled out of one of her pockets. Tenya has noticed that she seems to focus better when her hands are busy.

"Even if they are all expelled, and the rules are changed, their friends will retaliate," Tsu says. "They'll be more careful, and they might not go after you boys, because you're too fast, or your quirks are too strong, but ..."

Here Tenya has an answer, at least.

"Retaliation is explicitly against the code of conduct!"

Tsu looks almost sad, like she can't believe he said that; Midoriya laughs. It's a bitter sound, jarring coming from someone Tenya thinks of with a smile on his face.

"I don't know what kind of teachers you had at Soumei," Midoriya says. "But if doing this research has shown us anything, isn't it that what the rules are on paper doesn't matter if they're not enforced?"

Tenya sits back, flummoxed.

Tsu leans forwards, phone in hand. She's pulled up a photograph of her younger siblings. Her brothers have even more obvious frog-like aspects to their quirks than she does. The bigger one doesn't have hair at all, or particularly human-shaped ears.

"My younger brother started being bullied pretty badly when he started middle school this year," she says. "And my parents noticed. They stepped in, they called the other parents, they did everything you're supposed to do. The teachers stopped seeing it. When my parents made a fuss about that, the kids just got more inventive. He eats lunch on the roof now most of the time."

Midoriya looks between her and the picture on her phone.

"If it's really bad," he says.

Then he pauses, takes a deep breath, like he's not sure what he's going to say, or like he's screwing up his courage to keep going. That's unlike him, Tenya thinks: Midoriya stops to think, pauses when his thoughts run faster than his words, but he's never shown a lack of courage. Indeed, he often has far too much of it.

"There's usually a bathroom that's out of the way," Midoriya says. "Tell him, if he sits up on the toilet with his feet pulled up so they can't be seen, they probably won't find him before he's finished his lunch. It's better if he's quiet, and his food doesn't have a strong smell to it. Onigiri are easy to stick in your pockets and eat fast, and they're filling. And that's a better bet than the roof, especially if -- well -- depending on what kind of fencing they have?"

Tsu nods. Hatsume's hands pause for a moment before she pulls a tiny screwdriver out of her hair and keeps doing whatever it is she's doing.

"I want to think it's different here," Tsu says, putting her phone away. "No one cares about my tongue or Shouji's arms or Tokoyami and Dark Shadow. But Aizawa-sensei could expel Mineta any time he wanted, and he hasn't yet."

"And Aizawa-sensei has expelled a hundred and fifty-four students since he started teaching at UA," Midoriya adds. "But not a single person from our class. By now we should be down at least eight students! Some years we'd be down to only two remaining. In one case we'd all have been expelled by now. But this year? We're all still here. I can't figure out why."

Tenya looks at him, shocked.

That's a serious deviation from Aizawa's past patterns, and as much as Tenya is grateful they haven't been expelled -- he cares about his classmates, after all they've been through together -- he's uncomfortable with such a significant deviation from past patterns. It's unpredictable.

"What if once he expels Mineta he just keeps going?" Uraraka asks, looking almost panicked. "He might expel any of us. And anyone else who got kicked out would blame us for getting him started! We can't tell him."

"Besides," Midoriya adds. His tone is too casual. "He might think we're the bullies. Six of us against one classmate? Even with the other boys? It wouldn't be very heroic of us to pick on a classmate, or on the gen-ed or management track students."

Tenya tries to make sense of that and fails entirely.

"So we don't give it directly to a teacher," Todoroki says. "I don't trust the other heroics course teachers as much as Aizawa, and you've ruled him out. Can we give it to Nedzu?"

Midoriya shrugs.

"Same problem," he says. "He'd find out it was from us. He's too smart not to figure it out."

Hatsume perks up.

"I'll make a baby to deliver it," she says. "Then we won't show up on the cameras!"

Midoriya laughs, and he seems genuinely amused for a moment.

"Hatsume-san," he says. "Then he'd find out even faster! Your babies are distinctive."

Hatsume seems to take this as a compliment, because her eyes all but sparkle. Again, though, her demeanor and her tone of voice make Tenya's head spin, because her reply is almost sulky in tone.

"Okay, fine," she says, and slumps.

"We can't just do nothing!" Tenya says, putting a hand on the binder, looking at the hours and hours of work and research it represents, the number of nights he stayed up a half hour too late, the number of assignments he completed well enough to maintain his place in the class ranking, but not to the utmost best of his ability. All that time, all that effort: it can't have been for nothing.

"Well," Midoriya says. "We could leak it, get it published online. I've done some digging, and I know which platforms would pick it up. But Aizawa-sensei hates the press: he'd definitely expel us if we did that. And they might just deny it all, and Mineta might be fine."

Uraraka goes pale.

"No press," she says. "No, Deku. My parents would be so worried about me. We'd -- we'd never be heroes after that, and I need to get my license. I -- it's fine. I can't get expelled over this. It's fine."

"They can't expel us for telling the truth," Tenya protests, but he doesn't think he quite believes himself.

Todoroki looks him dead in the eye, and his gaze is somehow chill and forbidding in a way it has never been, even before he was willing to talk to his classmates, before Tenya knew that he likes soba a ridiculous amount and dislikes orange and red fireworks, prefers the white and blue ones.

"Remind me who took down Stain in Hosu?" Todoroki asks. "The truth is no guarantee of safety. You should know that by now, Iida."

Tenya takes a deep breath. Todoroki is right: the police hadn't told the truth then, and it had been kindly intended, perhaps, but the end result was the same: a perversion of the facts in the service of convenience and heroic reputations.

"But all this work," Tenya says, feeling the weight begin to press on him. "We can't just let them get away with this many infractions!"

Todoroki looks almost confused for a moment, or perhaps he's sympathetic: even when he's not doing his best to appear emotionless, he's hard for Tenya to read. It's something they have in common, Tenya thinks, though he wonders if perhaps he has more practice at working around it than Todoroki does.

"We could bring it to Nedzu and threaten to publish it if they don't take steps," Todoroki muses.

Tenya sits bolt upright.

"That's blackmail!" he exclaims, before he slams his mouth shut. That was very nearly too loud. They can't draw too much attention while they're working on this, even if their classmates are accustomed to the common room being rowdy, and to ignoring anything that looks like homework.

"It might be effective, though," says Tsu, and Todoroki nods in agreement.

"We would have to hold back enough information to have a lever in case of noncompliance," Todoroki says, and he sounds entirely serious about this, and like the idea of blackmailing powerful people is not a new one to him.

Midoriya looks conflicted.

"He's too smart," he says, finally. "There's no way we could trick him, and I don't think any of this is big enough to be the kind of leverage we would need. Sorry, Todoroki. It's a good idea, just not for Nedzu, you know?"

"Besides," Uraraka chimes in. "Even if we did blackmail the principal and get away with it? If all these guys got expelled at once, there would be retaliation, wouldn't there? And people would find out it was us."

Hatsume puts down her screwdriver with a soft click.

"Then what can we do?" Tenya demands. He wants, suddenly and desperately, for his big brother to be here. Tensei understands people: he would know what to do about this. "We can't just do nothing!!"

This time, his voice is just a little bit too loud.

And while their classmates aren't terribly concerned about noise, Aizawa pays more attention. So of course he walks into the room just as Uraraka claps a hand over Tenya's mouth.

That gesture is probably what draws his attention.

Aizawa sighs, shoulders visibly falling, and slopes over towards their group of couches. Tenya watches him approach, feeling like a prey animal in a nature documentary, or worse, like he's frozen in place by Stain's quirk again.

"What's going on here?" he asks.

Midoriya mumbles, Todoroki stares, and Uraraka peels her hand away from Tenya's mouth with an apologetic grimace.

"An unofficial group research project," Tsu says, which is frankly better than Tenya would have come up with.

"I'm helping with computers," Hatsume adds. "Oh, hey, sensei. Can I ask how your capture weapon is manufactured? Who has the contract? I'd love to pick their brains about --"

Aizawa puts up his hand, and she actually stops talking. Then he lowers himself to a crouch in front of the low table, and pages through the binder, starting with the table of contents and going through the entire thing, though he appears to skim the section summaries rather than reading the whole thing.

"Unofficial research project, huh?" he asks. He stands, and runs a hand through his hair. "Are you five and Hatsume the only ones involved?"

Tenya nods, glad to find he can move even that much. Across from him, Midoriya is frozen in place; beside him, Uraraka is quivering very slightly.

"All right, Problem Children," Aizawa says. "I'll be taking this overnight. Meet me at the Principal's office an hour before your first class period begins. And Hatsume," he adds. "As glad as Power Loader probably is that you're not blowing anything up right now, I think it's time for you to return to your dorm for the night."

He picks up the binder and walks out of the room without another word.

Uraraka makes a very faint sound like a kettle boiling in another room. The air above Todoroki appears to be wavering slightly, as if it's not sure if it's hot or cold, which is, frankly, a bit alarming. Tsu watches Aizawa leave, and Hatsume sighs.

"Well," she says, uncharacteristically subdued. "I'll see you in the morning."

And she gets up and walks out without another word, leaving her miniature tools and what looks like a tiny set of powered wheels on the table.

Moving on auto-pilot, Tenya gathers her things up and puts them in a bundle in a handkerchief, tying it up securely so that nothing gets lost or misplaced. He feels distantly, guiltily relieved that the decision is out of their hands, and deeply satisfied at the organization of the binder. Whatever happens next, they've done their best, and it's out of his hands.

Midoriya blinks, and seems to shift in that instant from a smaller version of himself into crackling life, as if he's just activated his quirk, though he's not glowing green.

"Okay," he says. "Everyone get your backups. I have all of Hatsume-chan's video files on a drive."

Tsu blinks at him, wide-eyed. Uraraka just looks confused.

"Your notes," Midoriya says. "You have backups, right?"

Tsu shakes her head, and Midoriya sighs.

"Tsu," he asks, like he's explaining something very simple. "How many copies of his homework does your brother bring to school with him?"

Tsu cocks her head to one side.

"Two," she says.

"Because?" Midoriya asks, in the tone of someone drawing out an obvious answer from a slow student. Tenya is far too familiar with this tone of voice being used in regards to social situations. He finds he still dislikes it intensely, even directed at someone else.

"Because he needs a backup, in case someone takes the first copy away from him," she says. "But --"

Uraraka looks between them.

"Tsu," she says, as if she's putting pieces together. "Your brother who's being bullied always has backup copies of his homework."

Tsu nods.

"And Deku," Uraraka says. "You have backup copies of all the video files."

Midoriya nods.

"And all of your notes, I bet," Uraraka says, and she's starting to look almost angry. Tenya feels lost: a glance at Todoroki reveals that at least he's not the only one who is missing something here.

Midoriya makes a face at her that Tenya can't interpret, but she sighs.

"Okay," Uraraka says. "So you've got backups."

"We can post it online," Midoriya says. "If we leak it first, we control the spin, and we can get our side to the press first. This isn't as good a time of day as posting in the morning would be, but it's not as bad as it could be."

Uraraka leans over across the table and puts a hand on his arm.

"Deku," she says. "Izuku. We're not putting it online tonight. We should talk to Nedzu first."

"Aizawa-sensei would have expelled us just now if he were going to," Todoroki points out. "He's not indecisive, and he saw enough to know what the binder is. I agree with Uraraka: we should wait."

Midoriya appears to almost be vibrating in place, only Uraraka's touch holding him to the chair, keeping him from flying off into space.

"Midoriya," Tenya tries. "They're right. We should wait until we know what's going on."

Surely, he tells himself. Surely they can trust Aizawa. He almost died protecting the rest of the class at the USJ, after Tenya bolted off to get help. He went on national television to defend them in the eyes of the world, and dealt with the press, despite being an underground hero.

Surely, Tenya tells himself, they can trust Aizawa.

But he hasn't expelled Mineta yet despite his rule-breaking. And in doing that, he's behaving differently this year than he has in the past, and breaking patterns. Tenya has always liked patterns: they tell him what to expect from the future, from social interactions, from the world around him. Looking around at his friends right now, Tenya has no idea what to expect tomorrow.

After a few moments, they all stand to go up to their rooms, Uraraka and Tsu hand-in-hand in the elevator, Todoroki and Midoriya side by side as they head to the stairs. Tenya tidies the table on auto-pilot, putting the empty cake plates in the dishwasher and washing the tray. Hatsume's little invention clicks quietly in his pocket.

When he finally closes the door into his own bedroom, Tenya still feels sick with dread.

* * *

Tenya gets up to his usual alarm, eschews his morning workout, and showers swiftly, feeling nervous the whole time. It's not the usual unsettled feeling of skipping his morning routine: it's dread of the unknown, of what might happen next. He's not sure if he's more uncertain about what Aizawa and Nedzu might do, or more worried about what his classmates might do in response.

Tenya's hair is still faintly wet when he makes his way down the stairs. He sees that Aizawa is sitting slouched on one of the couches in the common area, as if to prevent any of them from sneaking out, from skipping their early morning appointment with the principal.

As he waves, and heads into the kitchen to get a glass of orange juice, Tenya can't help noticing that Aizawa does not appear to have the binder with him.

Todoroki is next down, prompt and pressed. He is not visibly unsettled. If anything, his expression is more flat than usual. Tenya wonders, suddenly, if that might be a tell, and if so, what that might mean. He takes another sip of orange juice, putting that idea aside to consider later, lest he get distracted, lost in his thoughts.

Uraraka and Tsu appear at the same time, and Midoriya thunders down the stairs a few moments later, though he comes to a halt at the door and enters at a more sedate pace.

"Okay, Problem Children," Aizawa says, and stands.

They follow him from the dorm straight to Nedzu's office in the early morning light, cutting across familiar, well-trodden campus paths. When they get to the hallway, Hatsume is standing outside the doors, bouncing slightly on her heels. Tenya notices that her fingers are twitching.

Aizawa taps the door, and it opens on its own. He gestures them forward. Midoriya goes first, then Todoroki, Tsu, Uraraka. Tenya hangs back, though it feels cowardly, and hands the small bundle of his handkerchief to Hatsume.

"You left this last night," he says to her. "I thought you might want it."

She blinks at him, then gives him a huge hug, grabs the parcel with her left hand and shakes his hand enthusiastically with her right.

Aizawa coughs.

"Yes, sensei!" Tenya exclaims, and drags Hatsume into the office: she's still hanging onto his hand.

The binder is on Nedzu's desk. There are new sticky notes and sticky tabs at the edges of the various sections. There are several tablets propped up: they appear to be displaying relevant video clips.

Midoriya is seated directly across from Nedzu, with Uraraka to his right, Tsu beside her. Todoroki is on her far side. The part of Tenya's brain that has started cataloging such things notes that Todoroki is in a position from which he would be able to provide ranged offensive support, with no one at his back.

Tenya pulls Hatsume over to sit on Midoriya's left, and Aizawa leans against the wall across from him, slouching, his arms crossed over his chest. He looks exhausted; he looks bored. He looks like he might actually be exhausted, now, though, and Tenya is quite sure he's alert despite the facade of disinterest.

Nedzu opens the binder to section 3-c, which is where Tenya compiled rules about and infractions related to unwanted touch.

"Aizawa tells me you're responsible for this impressively robust compilation of documented rule-breaking," he says. "The organizational schema is quite impressive, if a bit within-the-box."

Midoriya, to Tenya's right, is vibrating very slightly, almost as if he's hovering over his chair. Tenya glances over: he is actually seated properly, so it must just be nerves. Uraraka looks faintly sick.

Aizawa clears his throat and glares at the principal.

To Tenya's surprise, Nedzu turns to look at him. After a brief, entirely non-verbal exchange, Nedzu sniffs in reply, then turns back to face the six of them.

"None of you are expelled, and none of you will face retaliation or negative consequences for compiling this information." Nedzu says, as if it's tiresome to state the obvious. "If anyone makes trouble for you, you'll tell Aizawa, he'll tell me, and I'll take care of it in the most effective way available to me."

Nedzu's grin is, Tenya thinks, more than slightly terrifying.

"There are many options available to me that are not available to you," he says, and then his grin turns almost wicked. "I would not recommend, for instance, discussing potential blackmail in a room you have not checked for cameras!"

Midoriya and Todoroki go entirely still. Tenya isn't sure either of them is breathing.

"On that note," Nedzu continues. "Hatsume, I want you to make time in your schedule for private programming lessons with me. Your efforts were well enough done for an amateur, but you left some very obvious traces behind. That would have gotten you caught in a professional context."

Aizawa appears to relax a bit as Nedzu keeps speaking, though Tenya notes he still has all of them -- especially Midoriya and Todoroki -- in easy line of sight. He usually does that, though, and usually has his back to a wall, just as both he and Todoroki do right now.

Tenya forces himself to focus.

"Now," Nedzu continues. "As I said, the quality and organization of your documentation is impressive. If you would please walk me through the process? Iida-kun, I believe this is largely your handwriting?"

Tenya takes a breath.

Ordinarily he might be surprised that the principal knows his handwriting, but he's too worried about whether he can frame this properly to allow himself distractions. That goes in the box for later, too.

"Yes, sir," he says, steeling himself. Heroes take responsibility for their actions. He has a provisional license, he goes on patrol: if he screwed up, he can take the fall for it himself. He'll have to admit what the others did: Nedzu as much as just told them he's overheard their conversations, and lying would be useless as a consequence. Not only would it be counterproductive, it would risk losing any potential trust and goodwill.

"It was my idea," Tenya says. "I cross-compiled infraction types from three student handbooks and categorized by how victims were affected. I already had the UA handbook and Ketsubutsu's handbook is available online. I asked Todoroki to ask Yoarashi for a copy of the Shiketsu handbook. I assigned Hatsume to hack the cameras and recording storage. Uraraka and Asui agreed to interview students to determine likely dates and times of incidents. Todoroki and Midoriya reviewed the footage that Hatsume pulled for them and wrote synopses of the incidents in question. It was my idea, and my investigation. I'm the one who started it, and I take full responsibility."

Nedzu steeples his fingers.

"Was it, now?" He says. "I wonder, then, that you didn't just tell one of your teachers, Iida-kun."

Tenya takes a breath. It is true: left to his own devices, he would simply have told a teacher. It was the others, Tsu and Midoriya in particular, who had pulled him back from alerting an adult, from trying to follow what he would think of as the proper channels.  

"I thought proof would be helpful," Tenya says, and it sounds weak even to him.

"It certainly could be," Nedzu says. "But then --"

"Which teacher?" Midoriya demands, interrupting the principal. "None of them care enough to make Mineta stop. He's been doing this all year, since our first day of class. Midnight laughs at it. All the other teachers just ignore it. The other guys in the binder are just as bad, even if they're sometimes sneakier about it."

He glares across the desk at Nedzu. Tenya holds his breath.

Nedzu keeps his attention on Tenya.

"You could have brought this to any of your teachers' attention immediately," Nedzu says, as if Midoriya had not spoken. He cocks his head to one side. "Instead you compiled this impressive dossier, enough to get any of its subjects expelled several times over."

He turns his gaze on Uraraka and Tsu, and his gaze gets sharper.

"I understand each of you has submitted testimony to this project," he says. "It might seem retaliatory, you know. Revenge against an unpopular classmate. Especially since you've stepped around all the usual channels and not reported it."

Uraraka shrinks; Tsu puts an arm around her waist and pulls her close, glaring at Nedzu. Tenya suddenly wonders whether rats eat frogs, or vice versa.

"Revenge?" Midoriya demands

He gets to his feet and leans forward, placing one hand on the desk. He's moving slowly, deliberately, as if he needs to avoid making any sudden movements, as if each motion is happening through quicksand, through conscious willpower. He draws Nedzu's attention away from Uraraka and Tsu.

"What do you mean, the usual channels?"

"As I said," Nedzu says. "You could have brought this to your teachers' attention immediately."

"The teachers who ignore it?" Midoriya demands.

He leans in closer, and the way he frames himself means he's standing between Uraraka and Tsu and the principal's line of sight, as if he expects to have to shield them from bodily harm.

"Or maybe the ones who say it's not a big deal? Or did you mean I should report it to the ones who know it's happening and call it part of our real-world training?"

Tenya sees Aizawa blink. A look of something like confusion crosses his teacher's face, so swiftly he's not sure he didn't just imagine it.

It almost looks as if Nedzu starts smiling, just a little bit, though it's hard to tell.

"Why would we trust you to fix it?" Midoriya demands, voice cracking just a bit. His hand, planted on the desk, is shaking just a bit. "Give me one good reason we should have trusted any of you to do anything."

"We're your teachers," Aizawa says. His voice sounds softer than usual.

"So what?" Midoriya spits. "You weren't stopping him."

Midoriya glares at Nedzu, then back at Aizawa. There's something that might be a tiny bit of green sparking at the edges of his fingers.

Oh, Tenya thinks. That's a bad sign.

Beside him, Hatsume stops fiddling with the tiny wheels of the project he'd handed her. Uraraka stands up, as does Tsu. Tenya pops to his feet, and hovers, uncertain where he will be of most help.

Hatsume looks at all of them, and stays seated. Todoroki does too.

Aizawa opens his mouth again, and Midoriya cuts him off. He's shaking, almost head to toe.

"I trust you to save my life, Aizawa-sensei," Midoriya says. "You're a Pro Hero. It's your job to save our lives, and you're good at it. But you don't stop Mineta. So we had to try, because he's hurting people. That's what heroes do. They help people. And they stop people from getting hurt."

"You're kids. That's what your teachers do," Aizawa says.

Tsu makes a sound that might be a laugh; Midoriya's expression closes all at once, like a storm shutter coming down over a lighted window, like a door being slammed.

"Sure," he says. "When they see it happening. It's amazing what teachers don't see, though, isn't it. What's just a bit of fun? What builds character? Harmless pranks and life experience add up, Aizawa-sensei. Funny how it's never the kind of boys in that binder who end up jumping off a bridge or a roof because of too many harmless pranks."

Todoroki makes a small sound.

"Izuku," he says, and Midoriya closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

Uraraka, Tenya sees, has tears running down her cheeks. He pulls out his second handkerchief for her, the first one still crumpled in Hatsume's lap, stained with bits of grease. He was in too much of a hurry this morning to replace it properly.

"I'm sorry, Aizawa-sensei," Midoriya says. "I might trust you as a hero, but I don't trust teachers."

Aizawa looks as stunned as Tenya feels.

There's a moment of silence, during which Tenya hands the handkerchief to Uraraka, and pulls them all back to their seats. Uraraka buries her head in Midoriya's shoulder, and he awkwardly pats her arm, looking somehow both utterly confused and dangerously protective.

"So," says Tsu, breaking the silence. "What happens now?"

Tenya is deeply grateful, in that moment, for her lack of tact.

Nedzu cocks his head to one side.

"Well," he says. "I'll be keeping the binder. I'll examine the evidence compiled, and if the allegations end up being correct, a larger investigation will be launched."

Tenya straightens in his seat, feeling a frisson of outrage: he didn't falsify evidence!

"If that very public and administratively-led investigation finds evidence of wrongdoing," Nedzu says. "Well, then, the boys in question would have to be expelled, and the code of conduct reviewed and perhaps streamlined. Iida-kun, I might ask you to annotate and reorganize a copy of the UA handbook thematically, just in case."

Nedzu glances at Aizawa.

"There might be wider-ranging consequences," he says. "Particularly regarding intervention training and enforcement, but that's rather more of a question for me to discuss with your teachers."

He smiles, and it's a dangerous smile, all sharp teeth and malice. Tenya is glad, for a moment, that he's not one of their teachers: something tells him that will not be an enjoyable conversation.

"I've had rather enough of UA students getting hurt on my watch," Nedzu says. "I'm glad you brought this to my attention, even if it wasn't entirely your intent."

Aizawa nods, and pushes himself off the wall.

"Get to breakfast," he says. "And I think I need not tell you all to keep this to yourselves."

He makes eye contact with Midoriya, Todoroki, and Tenya in particular.

The doors open behind them, and Tenya escorts everyone else out. He glances back, and sees Aizawa sitting in one of the chairs in front of Nedzu's desk, shoulders slumped, watching a video playback on one of the tablets, while Nedzu points at a page in the binder.

The doors shut.

"Well," Tenya says, because he doesn't know what else to say. "Breakfast?"

* * *

Breakfast is largely quiet. Uraraka keeps sneaking glances at Midoriya, who persists in steadfastly ignoring any attempt to discuss the meeting. After three attempts to start conversation about classwork, internships, and finally, the weather, Tenya gives up.

Aizawa walks in the door at the start of the homeroom period, declares it self-study, and walks back out. Several other teachers do the same. Tenya drafts his next English paper, works forwards in his math textbook, and attempts to keep himself from coming up with increasingly dramatic and catastrophic potential outcomes from the morning's meeting with Nedzu.

All Might shows up to lead heroics class alone that afternoon, and instead of taking them out to a gym or a training ground, he pairs them up for a research presentation.

When Mineta leans toward Uraraka, his assigned partner, and smashes face-first into her breasts, Uraraka hits him with her quirk, leaving him weightless. Then Tsu breaks away from chatting with Sero, and slingshots him into a wall, hard. She nods, and Sero tapes him in place before Uraraka releases her quirk.

Mineta shrieks in rage.

"You traitor!" he yells at Sero. "I just wanted to squish --"

A piece of tape flies up and covers his mouth.

"What the fuck?" Kaminari exclaims, looking up from where he's been watching Dark Shadow take notes. "That's a bit harsh, isn't it?"

The other girls circle up behind Uraraka. The classroom suddenly feels much, much smaller.

"He deserved it," Tsu says. "We'll let him down when he's sorry. When he's really sorry, not just when he whines and pretends he won't do it again." She looks up. "It might be a while."

Bakugou stalks over, palms popping, and Uraraka squares her shoulders.

"Who are you to decide that?" he demands.

And then Midoriya is there between him and the girls.

"I think they have more of a right to decide about this kind of rule-breaking than we do, Kacchan," he says. His tone is careful, calm, the way it usually is when he's talking to Bakugou, like he's calming a skittish wild animal.

"Now," All Might says. "If everyone could calm down! I'm sure young Mineta didn't mean any harm! And you can't break more rules just because your classmate did!"

Midoriya whips around to face him, and the expression on his face is incredulous, too complicated for Tenya to parse.

"Didn't mean any harm?" he demands. "What kind of anti-bullying policy is this? Tenya," he says, not looking away from their teacher, "What rules did Mineta just break?"

Tenya thinks back.

"Several," he offers. "Mostly it would be a violation of several rules in section 14-2-C, depending on whether his target was physical contact with her clothing, with her breasts, removal or destruction of Uraraka's uniform blazer or top, or, I suppose, if he was simply inattentive to the degree he has claimed in the past, it would be a violation of section 4-5-A in the heroics students sub-section, for not taking training exercises seriously."

"And Sero, Uraraka and Tsu?" Midoriya asks. "What rules did they break by stepping in?"

"14-2-D," Tenya admits. "But potentially excused by provisions for restraining those intending harm to fellow students, which are in, hm. Appendix 2-C."

All Might looks a bit confused. Tenya didn't expect him to have the handbook memorized, but it's a bit disappointing that the former Symbol of Peace doesn't even know which sections relate to which kinds of offenses.

Bakugou growls, and Midoriya glares at him before locking eyes with All Might again. He speaks without looking at Tenya.

"And Mineta does this kind of thing all the time," Midoriya says. "Sexual harassment is a form of bullying, isn't it?"

Tenya nods.

"Yes," he says. "It's explicitly listed as such."

Midoriya nods.

"So," he says. "Where's UA's famous no-bullying policy, huh?"

"What the fuck, Deku," Bakugou shouts. He steps between them, palms lighting up with small pops. "Who's harassing anyone? What are you making such a fuss about?"

Midoriya lights up green, hopping back and away from the other boy, hands going up reflexively.

"I thought UA was going to be different," he says, glaring at Bakugou. "It was supposed to be different now, Kacchan."

Uraraka steps up next to him, and Tsu on his other side, all three of them framed against Bakugou, with All Might standing thin and shrunken like some kind of ignored referee.

"Back down," Uraraka says, and her voice has the steel in it that Tenya has heard from her so rarely, that comes out when she fights seriously, when she's not going to back down.

This time, Bakugou doesn't grin in response. He looks from Uraraka over to Midoriya and then to Tsu. Then, surprisingly, his hands go limp.

"Yeah," he says. "Okay. I got it."

Midoriya doesn't power his quirk down until Bakugou is halfway across the classroom, watching him go like he expects the retreat to be a trick, a feint, like he's expecting a punch to the face.

Oh, Tenya thinks, hearing Midoriya's plaintive words again. "It was supposed to be different now, Kacchan." He remembers Uraraka asking Tsu about her bullied brother making double copies of his homework, and Midoriya about making double copies of his notes, how Midoriya gave alarmingly specific advice about how Tsu's brother might avoid his middle-school bullies.

Oh, Tenya thinks. Oh shit.

Tenya feels himself shut down, unable to process everything he thinks he just realized, not in a classroom full of his fellow students, not in front of any other people at all. He pushes it all aside, along with his curiosity about Todoroki's uncanny ability to keep a straight face, along with his worry over Nedzu and the binder.

All Might sets them independent reading for the rest of the period, and Mineta stays taped to the wall the entire time. Tenya doesn't chide anyone for leaving him there, and doesn't stop to be sure he's let down before leaving the instant the bell rings for the end of class.

He would usually stay to supervise clean-up, but Tokoyami is on shift today, and he's responsible. And, perhaps more to the point, Tenya feels like if he doesn't get to his room and behind a closed door soon, he's going to shake to pieces.

He doesn't use his quirk to get back to his room faster, but it's a near thing.

Tenya unpacks his school bag on autopilot, lays out his planner. It's a Friday: he needs to set up the next week, get ready for his internship, make sure he has everything prepared.

He sits at his desk and stares into space, allowing himself to try to think through the things he's been putting aside, the things he wonders he didn't see before, the things he, perhaps selfishly, wishes he still didn't know.

The phone rings some time later with Tensei's ringtone. Tenya blinks: if Tensei's calling, that means he's missed dinner.

"Hello?" he says, picking up the phone and crawling onto his bed.

"Tenya," his brother says, and his voice is warm, and just a bit concerned. "Is everything all right?"

Tenya laughs.

"I --" he says. "Nii-san, I don't know."

Tensei sighs.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asks.

And Tenya knows that it would be okay if he didn't want to, and wonders who Midoriya is talking to, tonight, if anyone, who Uraraka and Tsu's brother talk to. It feels almost wrong to have this kind of support, when he's sure others lack it.

"Yes," Tenya says. "Nii-san, yes, I do. You remember my friend, Uraraka? We -- we found proof. It was -- it was more than just Mineta. And we organized it all. But Nedzu got hold of the binder, and I don't know what he's going to do with it. And," he pauses. "And I think Midoriya was bullied in middle school. By Bakugou. I --"

"Tenya," his brother says. "Take a deep breath for me?"

Tenya does. And then another. And a third one. He doesn't feel better, exactly, but he does feel less like he's on the edge of shivering out of his skin because of it.

"Nii-san," he says, finally, unable to put all of the rest of it into words. "It's just -- it's not fair."

"Tenya," his brother says to him. His voice is so full of sorrow.

Tenya immediately feels ungrateful, foolish. This is his brother who is in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, and Tenya is complaining about high school disagreements? He must be a terrible person.

"Tenya," his brother says again, and he doesn't sound angry, or disappointed. "The world isn't fair."

Tenya sucks in a breath that might almost be a sob.

"I know," Tensei says. "Tenya, I know. I'm sorry. Do you want to tell me about it?"

And Tenya does.

By the time they hang up, nearly a half hour later than usual, Tenya feels hollow, but lighter for it. He still has no idea what's going to happen as a result of their meeting with the principal, but he knows they did the right thing, standing up for their classmates, documenting what they did. Now it's out of their control.

Tenya stays up too late that night, laying out his planner for the next week, building in buffer time for talking with friends, for talking with Tensei after his internship finishes. When he finally climbs into bed, he expects to lie awake, but sleep claims him almost immediately.

* * *

Tenya expects Saturday to be all self-study again, so the teachers can confer with Nedzu. Things take time, after all: Manual told him that about investigations. After the patience required to gather evidence, there's another kind of patience, of waiting for the outcome.

Breakfast is subdued; Hatsume is nowhere to be seen. Tenya finds he has gotten accustomed to her, to the stream of consciousness descriptions of gadgets and support items, the questions about quirks and heroic training and internships.

Tenya gets to the classroom a few minutes earlier than is his norm, and finds Aizawa already there, standing at the front of the classroom. He's not even in his sleeping bag, which is really very strange. Tenya nods at him and goes to his desk, where he lays out his planner and tries to catch up on the scheduling he didn't finish last night.

Everyone else files in gradually.

No, Tenya realizes. Not everyone. Mineta is nowhere to be seen.

And then Shinsou Hitoshi walks through the door and takes Mineta's desk.

Midoriya gives him a grin and a thumbs up as he passes; Yaoyorozu gives him an encouraging smile. Shinsou is clearly attempting to keep a blank expression, to be stoic, but he's not as good at it as Todoroki: Tenya can tell he's nervous, on-edge, worried about how he'll be received.

Kaminari and Ashido share a glance, and Hagakure clearly turns all the way around in her seat. Before anyone can say anything, the loudspeaker crackles with static.

"Drama queen," Tenya hears Tsu say, as Jirou flinches.

Principal Nedzu's voice rings out.

"Good morning, students and teachers of UA!" he exclaims. "Some of you may have noticed empty desks, or new faces! Several of your former classmates were found, after robust investigation, to have violated the UA code of conduct egregiously and on camera. They have been expelled at my direction. My decision is final, and will not be amended. Any dissatisfaction can be brought to me directly!"

He makes a sound that might almost be a giggle.

Several of Tenya's classmates look at each other, lost.

"If you're curious about which rules they broke, I suggest you re-read the student handbook, paying particular attention to section 14," Nedzu continues. "Bullying must not be tolerated from future heroes, or in those who support them, or who will go on to be pillars of our society, as you all will be. Sexual harassment, likewise, will not be tolerated."

Tenya looks out across the classroom and sees the tension in Bakugou's frame as Nedzu keeps speaking, listing the specific rules broken that led to expulsion, and announcing the revision of the UA handbook.

Aizawa stands at the front of the classroom the entire time, motionless.

"I understand," Nedzu concludes, "That by not addressing this earlier we have lost your trust. We will attempt to regain it! And now, back to your homeroom teachers!"

Aizawa looks nearly as grim as he did when he faced down the press after their summer training camp went so badly awry, when Bakugou was kidnapped. Tenya might feel sorry for him, but he remembers Midoriya shaking with anger yesterday, with the belief that teachers didn't help everyone, that Aizawa wouldn't stand up for them.

"I'm sure you have questions," he says. "And I'm sure you won't want to ask them all directly. There is now an anonymous question box just inside the classroom door, and I will answer any question that goes in the box, on any topic."

He glances around the room. Kaminari is grinning.

"It's rigged to either explode or spray you with ink if you tamper with it," he adds. "Don't test it or try to take someone else's questions out unless you're willing to lose eyebrows or be neon purple for a week."

He sighs.

"You all know Shinsou Hitoshi. He was approved to join the heroics course after your joint training exercise. I would tell you to behave yourselves, but he's met you."

Shinsou slouches deeper into his seat.

And then Aizawa goes into what seems like a normal list of announcements.

When everyone has settled down a bit, he looks around.

"I understand the loss of a classmate can be surprising," he says. "Trust me when I tell you that Mineta more than earned his expulsion. If I hear about any mimicry of his behavior, or anything that even hints of retaliation against those he harassed --"

His hair floats, and his capture weapon stirs around his neck. Someone makes a small "eep" noise, though Tenya can't tell who it was. Only Shinsou looks unmoved.

"I will not expel any of you lightly," Aizawa continues. "But harassment of your fellow heroes is not something we can afford to take lightly, especially under the current conditions. Do I make myself clear?"

There is a chorus of agreement.

After that, to Tenya's surprise, classes proceed almost as normal until lunch.

When Tenya slides the hallway door open, Hatsume is there, bouncing on the balls of her feet. She clearly has not slept: her hair is more wild than usual, and she's covered in smudges of what looks like several colors of ink. Her hands are full of folders, each a different color.

"Iida-kun!" she exclaims. "Oh good, help me find everyone. Where's Hagakure?"

Hagakure leans around the door.

"What is it?" she asks, and Hatsume shoves a folder at her.

"Costume ideas!" she announces. "I have one for everyone!"

By 'everyone' Tenya realizes, she means all the girls in class 1-A. Hagakure pulls them all back into the classroom, and shoos all the boys out.

Tenya and Midoriya share a baffled look, and then they head down to lunch.

When Hatsume appears again, she has Yaoyorozu with her in addition to Uraraka and Tsu.

"Hatsume-san says the costume redesign was your idea, Iida-kun," Yaoyorozu says. "Thank you for thinking of us."

Tenya blinks, startled. He doesn't remember this at all.

"It was," Uraraka insists. "You were so surprised that my first costume didn't have pockets, it got me thinking harder, and I talked to Mei-chan, and it all started there!"

Yaoyorozu nods again, and Tenya nods back, and she heads over to sit with Jirou and Hagakure and Ashido, who are all looking at designs while they eat.

"Good timing with the distraction," Midoriya says to Hatsume, when they're all seated.

"I've had the plans for ages," Hatsume says. "But approval for redesign is an annoying amount of paperwork, and Power Loader won't let me learn how to do it yet by myself."

"But why today?" Todoroki says.

"Nedzu's idea," Hatsume says. "It's a distraction. This way the boys will be too jealous of new costume designs to be mad at Shinsou."

Todoroki looks intrigued, but Midoriya nods.

"That makes sense," he says.

"Yeah," Hatsume says. "Anyway, Power Loader-sensei told Thirteen a while back that Vlad King accused Aizawa of favoritism for training Shinsou in the first place, so I guess Nedzu wanted to make sure that didn't become a problem."

Tenya blinks at her.

Midoriya looks intrigued, Todoroki looks blank in a way that probably means he's surprised.

"Really?" Uraraka asks.

"Oh yeah," Hatsume says. "And Power Loader told Midnight after that, he was pretty sure Aizawa wasn't expelling anyone this year, even Mineta, after he started working with Shinsou, because didn't want Vlad King to accuse him of clearing a seat for his Gen-Ed trainee. It sounded like he thought Aizawa was pretty pissed about it."

Tenya stares at her, uncertain how to put his concerns into words.

"How do you know this?" Tsu asks, and again he's thankful for her directness.

"What?" Hatsume asks. "Oh. I usually have hearing protection on, and I'm in the lab all the time working on my babies. I figure if they don't check if I'm wearing my ear protection before gossipping, it's hardly my fault."

Midoriya grins, wide and almost gleeful.

Across the cafeteria, something sparks. There's a small boom and Midoriya goes stiff for an instant.

"Don't you fucking dare, you shitty extra," Bakugou hollers. "You heard Nedzu and Aizawa-sensei!"

He's hauling at Kaminari, who appears to be attempting to grab Jirou's folder away from her while she fends him off, ear jacks raised to strike. Bakugou's voice is loud enough to be heard by nearly the entire cafeteria. Tenya wonders if that's intentional. Thinking quickly over their last group training exercise, over how staunchly Bakugou plans out his exercise and sleep regimen, he decides it must be. He's making this obvious, making a declaration.

"You're not going to do anything to anyone, or I'll blow you up myself. We're heroes in training, not assholes like that shitty purple kid! You want to get expelled, too?"

Uraraka mutters something under her breath, but Midoriya smiles.

"I think," he says, looking around the room, at the people staring at Bakugou, at the girls from class 1-B who appear to have their own sets of folders on their tables. "This might actually work out."

* * *

A week after Nedzu's announcement, Aizawa sits at his desk and looks at the notes the kids of class 1-A have put into their classroom's new anonymous comment box. They range from the completely reasonable to the absolutely absurd, and he's already tired just looking at them.

"They're your Problem Children too, you can answer some of these damn questions," Aizawa says, not looking up as Yagi comes into the room, and shoves a stack of questions his way.

Yagi comes over, steps light, and then sputters out a stammering reply as he reads them.

Looking more closely, Aizawa takes pity on him. Those questions are mostly from Kaminari, by the handwriting, and mostly jokes or lewd innuendo. He's going to have to shut that down so they take the mechanics of anonymous reporting seriously.

Aizawa privately thinks that asking your gay married teacher questions about the mechanics of sex with women is irrational, but then again, most of them haven't figured out he's married at all. He briefly considers pulling in Hizashi, who is at least bisexual, but the novelty of a guest speaker would encourage more joke questions. Also, and more to the point, hearing Hizashi answer sex questions knowing he's talking about the two of them at least some of the time would be very embarrassing for Shouta.

"We have to answer every question or Nedzu will find some way to make this worse," Aizawa reminds Yagi. "Why don't you take the ones on heroics policy and also the typed list."

That list, which appears to have been compiled in a standard font on a dorm computer and printed on a school printer, contains a plethora of questions about enforcement of domestic violence and child abuse laws and statutes of limitations / time before charges can no longer be pressed. Aizawa has his suspicions about those: maybe Yagi will finally open his eyes if he has to answer them, maybe not: it frees up Aizawa to handle the other questions.

They work in a companionable enough silence for a time.

The next day, Aizawa opens homeroom by answering all the joke sex questions in an absolutely deadpan tone of voice while making eye contact with the class exactly as much as he usually does. When he's finished, he makes a snap decision, based in large part on how bored Kaminari looks, and how likely he seems to do it all again if Aizawa doesn't take drastic action.

"I might add that it's exceedingly illogical to ask a married gay man about sex with women," he adds.

Several gasps echo; Aoyama almost falls off of his chair. Midoriya nods, and appears to make a note of something in one of his notebooks; Shinsou just looks bored. Iida, trying to quiet the class down, only adds to the noise.

"If you're serious about such questions, submit them and I'll pass them to Recovery Girl and have her come give a presentation when we reach critical mass. That will not be a punishment, and it will be more informative and efficient. If, on the other hand," he says, "you're attempting to embarrass me? Please reflect back on the last dozen questions I've answered. If I get more such questions, I may set you all an essay on whether repeatedly adopting identically unsuccessful tactics is either logical or heroic behavior."

He takes a look around the room, which seems to be torn between shock at the details of his personal life, and displeasure at the idea of another essay.

"I might also suggest you reconsider your choice of hobbies, if needling a pro hero is your idea of fun," he adds. Then he looks straight at Kaminari. "I'd also definitely reconsider your choice of identifiable writing implements."

He nods at the class, and lets Yagi take the podium to start answering his set of questions.

This fic has been converted for free using AOYeet!