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“Welcome to Ground Beta,” Shota begins after silencing the rowdy class with a sharp glare as usual. “I’m sure you’re all familiar. Today, you will be starting an exercise that’s brand new on the curriculum. The concept is the same as always, heroes versus villains, but there is one major difference that sets this exercise apart from any other you’ve taken part in before. Today, we have an actual villain for you to fight.”
Of course, that raises a riot. Shota sighs. Haven’t they learned by now that all their questions will be answered, if they just shut up and let him finish?
After another glare that threatens detention for the rest of the year, things get quiet again.
“Taskmaster is both vigilante and villain, in that he has both aided licensed heroes and opposed them. Most famously as a villain, he fought Endeavor head to head and came out the winner, putting Endeavor in the hospital for two months, nearly killing him. As a vigilante, however, he single-handedly wiped out the Shie Hassaikai and their operation to create a quirk destroying drug by experimenting on a five year old girl and her quirk, delivering her safely to the police. As far as we understand, he works after his own internal moral compass, with no regards to whether his actions appear heroic or villainous. Nezu was able to initiate contact with him some time ago and after some negotiating, Taskmaster agreed to act as villain for us during this exercise.”
God knows why anyone thought any of this was a good idea…
“Taskmaster has had six hours to prep here, and even longer to plan. You’re going in blind. Each of you has a roll of capture tape, a set of cuffs, and a communications device. Provisions are stashed in logical places around the grounds. If Taskmaster tags you with red paint, you’re dead and out of the exercise. The exercise continues until either all heroes are dead, or Taskmaster is successfully captured and delivered to one of the marked police stations on the grounds. That is all. Any questions?”
#
Izuku folds up his towel and places it parallel to the short side of the dining room table.
Next, he spreads out a blanket taken from the apartment’s fully furnished living room and lays it out on the table as well, similar to a table cloth.
With a few quick snaps and clicks, he has removed his sniper rifle from its carrying case and fully assembled it. He folds out the stands on the front end of the barrel, placing the feet on the towel, and resting the butt on the blanket. He opens the window and uses the zoom function in his helmet to check on one of the flags he posted during his prep phase. He makes a note of the wind direction and speed.
While climbing up to lay on the table on his front and taking the rifle up to his shoulder, he uses the wind direction and speed, combined with the power of his rifle, bullet weight, and shooting distance, to calculate his trajectory and aim position.
Izuku lifts his helmet and places his eye to the scope.
There’s Aizawa and his gaggle of do-gooders. Hm, and Bakugo, of course. Which one to take out first… Hm… Decisions, decisions.
Let’s go for the little perv and save the girls that worry.
Izuku finds the grape boy in the crowd, then adjusts the angle of the gun.
He opens his left eye.
#
With all the necessary questions answered, Shota steps to the side. He pulls a small red flag out of his pocket and holds it up high.
“Exercise starts when the flag hits the ground. Everyone get set.”
#
They all get ready to scatter.
Aizawa lets go of the flag. The fabric slowly sails downwards. The heroes’ eyes are all glued to it. So is Izuku’s.
But he’s a villain.
The rules don’t apply to him.
Izuku squeezes the trigger.
Recoil slams into his shoulder.
As calculated, just as the flag reaches the ground, the perv is splashed with red paint and flung backwards.
Izuku doesn’t watch them scramble. He quickly gets up and starts his clean-up.
Rifle, back into the case.
Towel, back on the shelf in the bathroom.
Blanket, back to being draped over the couch.
Chairs back in place around the table, and all the table settings are swiftly returned to their places, looking as prim and proper as if he never touched them.
He even shuts the window before he heads out.
This is going to be fun…
He brings the map of the grounds up on his H.U.D while moving down the stairwell (retinal control is a beauty). Nineteen dots have scattered in all directions, with the twentieth making its way slowly off the playing field. Names appear next to the dots. Hm, predictable groups.
Izuku pauses by the front door of the building. He waits.
A row of rapid explosions signal Bakugo tearing past him, alone.
Once the noise is over, Izuku slips out of the building. He climbs into the car waiting on the curb, crawling in and hiding on the floor of the backseat. He reconnects to the network he established during the prep phase. A third of the cars spread out across the grounds start up, including the one he’s hiding in. He input the map layout of the grounds earlier and, simply put, magnetized the cars to it. They all veer into traffic and begin to swerve around the streets, placed under the control of the driving AI Izuku may or may not have ripped out of a videogame (what’s it matter, not like the cars know they’re not in a videogame).
His own car runs on a modified version of the same code. It will mimic the patterns of the other cars but with Izuku as its focal point. Basically, it’s his moving HQ, and if he leaves it, it’ll establish a safe distance and circle him, then come when called.
He checks on the trackers. As expected, the already splintered class scatters wider in an attempt to follow the cars and find their target. One or two actually pass right by him but write the vehicle off since there’s no one inside it, or so they believe, at least.
Izuku studies the map. He pulls his sidearm from the holster on his thigh and bumps the button for the closest window with his elbow. He mounted a miniature camera in place of the sights on the gun for just this scenario. He rests the barrel on the edge of the door once the window is down, and watches the camera feed in the corner of his HUD, eyes flickering back and forth between it and the map. He’s about to cross paths with another one.
Ashido Mina.
Three.
Two.
One.
Izuku squeezes the trigger.
The pellet gun pops on firing but is quickly drowned out by Ashido’s squealing.
Two down, eighteen to go.
He withdraws the weapon and closes the window.
This is fun.
Izuku looks down at the small, flexible screen attached to his left gauntlet. His programs are ready; he types in the launch code.
The speakers scattered all through-out Ground Beta (school issue, for announcements and such, he just hijacked the signal) start blasting out sounds only a select few can hear. Firstly, a pulsing sound mimicking a heartbeat, to confuse auditory trackers like Jirou and Shoji; secondly, a frequency only audible to animals and insects, often used in non-lethal pest deterrents, to cut Kouda off at the knees. Izuku peers through the car window and watches with glee as any birds in the area make a run for it.
He watches the map. Who can he take on next…
Ah, Hagakure Toru.
He won’t be needing any specific gear to deal with her, but closest to her is Todoroki, so he will need one or two toys.
After grabbing the necessary gear from the stockpile stashed in the car, Izuku hits the streets. He turns on the infrared filter. Though invisible to the naked eye, Hagakure still produces body heat; not so invisible. He pinpoints her on the map, and moves towards her. Hm, low situational awareness; seems like she’s lost, going by the chatter he can hear from her even from a distance.
He waits for her back to be turned.
He takes a deep breath.
He dips his gloved right hand in the pouch of pigment on his hip.
He turns off the infrared.
Izuku dashes out of cover. Hagakure forgets any meagre training she’s had so far and seems to do nothing but squeal.
Izuku throws himself to his knees as he approaches, sliding out the momentum, and trips her over an outstretched arm. She hits the ground with an all-mighty groan. Faster to move, Izuku gets on top of her and finds her neck with his pigmented hand, pressing her face into the cement.
“You’re dead,” he tells her, his mask distorting his voice in an ever so lovely menacing way. “Invisibility is a shit gimmick, but hey, at least you’re decent bait.”
“Wait, what-“ she attempts, but he squeezes her neck and shuts her up.
“Dead people don’t talk.”
“Invisible Girl!”
There he is.
Todoroki swings wide around a corner, sliding at frankly impressive speeds on a path of ice which grows before him as he moves.
Izuku knows his next move. He’s gotten a bit better at actually prioritizing the rescue so he’ll try to go for Hagakure; he’ll make himself a ramp and launch himself at Izuku, betting heavy that Izuku’s going to dodge out of the way. Once he does, Todoroki will smooth his landing with another ramp, scoop up his classmate, and bolt for a safe distance. Once he realizes she’s dead, though, he’ll drop her and come back swinging.
Izuku doesn’t dodge.
He raises his hand and squeezes it into a tight fist.
Napalm gushes out of the emitters along his knuckles, and the sparker strikes.
Todoroki is engulfed in flames.
“Shoto!” Hagakure cries.
Izuku opens his fist, which stops the spray, and squeezes the girl’s neck again.
“You’re dead, so shut up or I’ll shut you up,” he bites before getting up.
Todoroki was blown back by the blast, laying in a crumpled heap in the street. Izuku taps at his gauntlets and redirects his cars; he’s not here to actually kill anyone.
Unfortunately.
Though he seems a bit singed, Todoroki looks fine. He tries to get to his hand and knees, to then get up, but Izuku can’t have that, can he?
He draws his sidearm and pops the kid six times. Todoroki groans, slumping to the ground again.
“Huh. Four down in, what? Less than ten minutes?” Izuku comments, holstering the weapon again and summoning his ride. “And you’re supposed to be heroes? Hm. Shameful, isn’t it?”
“That’s not fair!” Hagakure cries. “You could’ve killed him!”
Izuku scoffs. “Fighting fair is for idiots and dead people.”
The car swerves around the corner; Izuku takes over steering with his gauntlet and mask, just to make sure the car doesn’t run over either of the two corpses. It screeches to a halt nearby.
“Don’t worry,” he tells the other teens as he heads to his ride. “You won’t have to wait very long for the rest of your class to join you. I give ‘em two hours, tops.”
He climbs into the car and lays down like before.
He hands control back to the program once the car has passed the two students, turning his attention to the map instead.
Hm, look at that. A group is converging on Todoroki’s last known position. Easy pickings.
Izuku finds the modified assault rifle in his kit, slotting in a magazine of paintballs. He gets up into the backseat, standing up through the sunroof. Full auto.
They get a chance to see him coming; they spot him just as the car comes around the corner.
He starts firing.
They scatter like roaches in all directions.
However, there aren’t too many people that can out-speed a bullet.
He takes out all six of them in quick succession.
He makes sure to aim for Iida first since among them, he’s the only one with a hypothetical chance of actually out-running a bullet if given the right motivations.
Let’s count off the casualties, shall we?
Mineta, Ashido, Hagakure, Todoroki, Asui, Iida, Kaminari, Kirishima, Koda, Sato.
Ten down. What’s the time? Yup, just about ten minutes. Not bad, if Izuku could say so himself.
According to his map, the rest of them are still scattered far and wide. Eager to show off everything they can do and take on a real villain all on their own.
Izuku shuts the sunroof and clears his weapon.
There’s lots more fun left to be had.
He aims the car at a tracker, then settles in to prepare for a fight.
Mashiro Ojiro. Another predictable one. Born and bred in karate, so he’ll be the easiest actual fight. Karate, like any particular style, only has a set number of moves; if you, like Ojiro, drill only those moves, then an opponent like Izuku, who knows those moves and many others, can out-maneuver you, if, of course, he studies the opponent and predicts them correctly (which Izuku is well-known to do).
After watching the security feeds for some moments (Ojiro appears to be setting up something of a base for himself to prepare for an attack, hoping to gain the upper hand by fighting on his own territory as opposed to unknown terrain), Izuku enters the boy’s chosen building.
Izuku predicts:
Ojiro will lie in wait and remain on the defensive, forcing Izuku to make the first move. Once Izuku is in his territory (the third floor of the building), Ojiro will attempt a sneak attack to catch Izuku off guard and subdue him with as little fight as possible. He’ll attempt to cuff Izuku and wrap him in the capture tape.
This will all fail.
Why?
Because Izuku has already seen through his poorly crafted plot and will turn it against him.
Izuku reaches the third floor. Instead of silently closing the stairwell door, he slams it. That’s Ojiro’s signal.
A few silent moments pass.
Ojiro leaps into sight, cuffs held high. He looks shocked; he expected someone taller.
Izuku shoots him six times in the chest.
Ojiro crumbles to the floor with a groan, holding his chest.
“Karate is stupid and so are you,” Izuku tells him, plain and simple. “And a tail isn’t enough to call yourself a hero.”
Izuku heads back down the stairs.
An alert pops up in his HUD. Someone else entered the building.
Tokoyami Fumikage.
He must’ve had a vantage point and spotted Izuku’s entrance. Good work, Izuku will concede. Shame to cut it short, but such is life.
He removes the flashlight on his belt as he moves down the stairs. Tokoyami is lingering in the lobby; he’s hoping to block Izuku upon exit.
Careful to aim the beam away from himself, Izuku lights the flashlight. Using the tracker and map to pinpoint the enemy’s location, he comes out of the stairwell with the flashlight held over his sidearm.
Dark Shadow shrieks and shrinks away when struck face-first by 200 000 lumen. It leaves Tokoyami wide open to receiving six shots in the chest.
“You know, the name Dark Shadow really broadcasts your glaring weakness.”
Izuku walks over them out of the building.
Alright, map, who’s next?
Ah, yes, the Yaoyorozu girl.
A base-builder, like Ojiro, but on a higher scale. With her quirk (and her neurotic streak), she’ll have gone overboard with it.
Izuku taps into the speaker system again; specifically, in Yaoyorozu’s building.
“Oh, sweet Momo,” he hums to her while jogging towards her building. “Still Daddy’s little disappointment?”
That’s the neurotic type; a little talking is all it takes to kill them.
“Does Daddy even know you’re at U.A, or is he too busy to notice?” Izuku goes on while entering her building and beginning to climb the stairs. “Or maybe he just doesn’t care. I know I wouldn’t, if I was your dad. No, there are much more interesting things to devote yourself too. Like, say, all his misstresses.”
The HUD lets him know when he’s level with her tracker. He moves silently across the floor towards her.
“Does mommy know yet?”
She’s right this door. If he’s read her right, which he has, she’ll have frozen up.
Izuku kicks down the door, dodging the obvious capture tape trap, and fires.
Yaoyorozu cries out with pain.
Hm, she’s got a rather impressive set up, but it didn’t do her any good, did it?
“If all it takes to kill you is bringing up mommy and daddy’s rocky marriage, maybe you should reconsider your career choice before you get killed for real.”
Izuku turns around and heads back downstairs.
Seven left.
Aoyama, Uraraka, Shoji, Sero, Jiro, Shinso, and Bakugo.
Well, Aoyama’s a coward so that’s an easy kill. Probably holed up somewhere hoping the rest of the class will do the work for him.
Izuku has no trouble tracking him right to the storage closet he’s hiding in. The idiot didn’t even block the door from the inside, or lock it.
Izuku pulls the pin on a smoke bomb (red) and tosses it inside.
Ten seconds later, Aoyama staggers out completely covered in red pigment.
“Cowardly heroes get other people killed. Quit, or get ready to count the bodies of people you were too afraid to save.”
Five of the remaining six have clustered together, Izuku finds when he consults his map while climbing back into the car.
Bakugo is the odd one out, of course. He’s clear in the other side of the grounds, based on both the map and the echoes of explosions. Knowing him, he didn’t even bother to put in his ear piece at the start of the exercise.
The rest of them, however, seem to have gotten wise to the situation and decided to team up.
Izuku studies the map.
Uraraka, Shoji, Sero, Jiro, and Shinso.
They will have gathered any debris they could find and floated it using Uraraka’s quirk, with a net of Sero’s tape rigged from across the building roofs to keep them from disappearing completely. Shoji and Jiro on the ground; Shoji for close combat and Jiro for mid-range support. Shinso and Sero on the sidelines watching for any opportunity to catch Izuku. Once Izuku’s on their street, Uraraka drops her debris, aiming to block the exits, then comes down to join the fight.
Izuku stops the car before it reaches their street. He aims it, and any other active cars in the area, at their location. The cars begin streaming in; they move back and forth, swerving around the block over and over trying to reach their intended location but having no permission to stop.
Armed again with the assault rifle, Izuku peeks around the corner. He scans for targets. One. Two. Three. Four. And five.
He takes them out in quick succession.
Tapping his gauntlet, the cars all screech to a halt.
“It was a decent plan. You guys just suck.”
He taps his gauntlet.
The cars scatter and his ride slides up to the curb in front of him. Izuku climbs inside, leaving the dead behind.
He checks on the speaker system, turning off the counter measures he had running; no need for those anymore. He lets the system project his voice instead.
“Katsuki Bakugo,” his distorted voice sounds from just over three thousand speakers at once. “Last man standing. By design, mind you. I didn’t want any interruptions when we meet. And right now, you’re thinking something along the lines of of course I’m last, no extras to get in my way is all the better to let me kick this villain’s ass. Well, let’s see about that, shall we? Town square, center of the grounds.”
He cuts the feed.
The distant echo of explosions rapidly grows louder.
Izuku has just enough time to reach the square and send the car away, before Bakugo reaches the square.
“Howitzer Impact!”
Literally shouting what move you’re going to use is the dumbest idea heroes ever had.
Izuku tosses a slim metal disk on the ground. The device deploys a bubble of pure energy, with a diameter of some twenty feet.
The massive blast explodes around him but the shield holds strong, as designed.
There is the tell-tale popping and crackling of Bakugo keeping himself afloat somewhere above.
The smoke clears.
Izuku relishes in watching Bakugo’s smirk turn sour.
“Care to try that again?”
And of course, Bakugo takes the bait.
“Howitzer Impact!”
Izuku lets it play out.
The second boom does about as much as the first; i.e, it makes a mess of the area but doesn’t actually affect Izuku.
“Now that you’ve used up those ugly ass gauntlets,” Izuku shouts to him as the smoke begins to clear. “-how about you come down here and show me what a hero you are?”
Bakugo takes the bait, of course.
He comes in fast and only avoids breaking his neck on the shield because Izuku deigns to disable it before he collides with it.
As always, Bakugo can be read like a book.
Izuku simply steps out of the way of the fist coming his direction. Bakugo throws punches and kicks and little bangs here and there, but Izuku sees them coming from a mile away.
“Stand still, you fucking extra!” the boy roars while swinging and missing.
“You couldn’t hit me even if I did,” Izuku comments, bending backwards and catching the ground with his hands, conveniently dipping under another small explosion.
He steps over himself and out of the back-bend, incidentally smacking the blond in the chin with one of his feet. Bakugo staggers backwards.
“Let’s try it, shall we?” Izuku decides as he stands back on his feet, clasping his hands behind his back. “Hit me.”
Bakugo doesn’t need to be told twice. And obviously he comes in with a wide right swing, palm open and crackling.
Izuku catches his hand with his own, smothering the explosion before it can begin.
Bakugo smirks like he actually achieved something for once in his pathetic little life.
The left swing is just as wide as the right.
Izuku catches that too.
Bakugo tries to wrestle free but he fails.
He tries to kick.
Izuku shin-blocks the kick and basically cancels it out. Except. His shin guards are made of a high density lead-titanium blend, double wrapped in triple-weaved Kevlar. He’s pretty sure that’ll break at least a few toes, even with steel-toed boots on. Bakugo falls to a knee.
He still tries to wrestle free.
Izuku grips him tighter.
“Did you know, I’m wearing a set of robotically enforced hand braces?” he comments casually. “That means, my grip strength is sixty times than that of an average adult male. That means, Bakugo, that I could literally crush your hands, right now, and end any hope you have of ever being a hero.”
That gets Bakugo’s attention.
He freezes. He stares up at Izuku’s unexpressive mask with wide eyes.
“I know everything you did to Izuku Midoriya,” Izuku says, the dark, distorted voice doing nothing to hide his rage. “He was your best friend. Your brother in everything but blood.”
“Stop,” Bakugo hisses.
“He adored you. He worshipped you, Kaachan.”
“Stop!” Bakugo shouts.
“But you turned on him. You bullied him relentlessly, for years. You left spider lilies on his desk in second grade, Kaachan. When you were eight, you told him to his face that no one loved him, no one wanted him. You said he should just go kill himself and save everyone the bother of looking at him.”
Bagoku is quiet, then.
“So what did seven year old Izuku Midoriya do? Hm? He ran away from school, found a bridge, climbed the railing, and jumped.”
Bakugo whines when Izuku squeezes his hands tighter.
“He killed himself, Kaachan, because you told him to. By the time anyone realized he was missing, his body was long gone in the water and his mother had to bury an empty casket. Then she jumped off the same bridge, Kaachan.”
Tears flow down Bakugo’s face, but tears don’t mean a single fucking thing.
“You are a murderer, Katsuki Bakugo. Not a hero. You can never be a hero. Dress yourself up however you like, save as many people as you like, do all the good you like. A tiger cannot change its stripes, and you cannot change the fact that you murdered a seven year old boy and his mother.”
Izuku squeezes just enough to feel a bone or two snap, but lets go.
Bakugo slumps to the ground.
Izuku draws his sidearm and shoots him only once.
“Between the two of us, you are the villain. Not me.”
Izuku walks away.
Once out of the field of debris, he climbs into his waiting car.
At the gates of Ground Beta, the rest of class 1-A stand, mostly cleaned up and alive again. Aizawa and the rat are there, too.
“Hey, rat. Pay up. Twenty kills in less than two hours, just like I predicted,” Izuku says while hre grabs his kit from the back of the car.
Nezu hums. “Yes, you put on quite the show. I’ll have to rebuild the school’s cyber security since you managed to find your way in despite my best attempts.”
“Gimme a call when you’re done and I’ll point out your mistakes.”
“You’re assuming I’ll make any, Taskmaster, dear.”
Izuku cocks his head to the side. “Because you always do. Also, knight to E4. Checkmate.”
The rat lets out an almost imperceptible sigh. It must be hard for the smartest creature in the world to constantly be out-smarted.
“Fine. My turn on white. A2 pawn to A3.”
Izuku considers. “I have you in checkmate in thirty-four moves. Care to change your opener?”
Nezu hums. “I’ll keep with it. Your payment will be delivered shortly.”
“Good. Figured out my name yet? Or my quirk?”
Trick question; he has no quirk. And as for the name… Guess he doesn’t really have that either.
“Not yet. Nor have I solved that puzzle you gave me,” Nezu admits, though his face is rather grim-looking. “I hope you understand young Bakugo’s case will be taken under investigation by the school and by police. Your accusation were…quite serious.”
“I’ll send you my evidence,” Izuku says with a nod. “Shoto.”
The class all look from him to Todoroki and back again.
“I’m sending the stuff I have on your dad, too. I gave him the chance to turn himself in when I let him live,” he explains as he starts his walk off the grounds of both Beta and the school. “And your brother says hi.”
“Wait, Natsuo?” Todoroki says as Izuku passes by.
“No. The other one.”