Unforeseen Simulation Joint, 1:07 PM

April 7th, 2149.

The hole in the world spread outwards, quickly taking over much of the courtyard far below them, and then figures started to come out of the darkness—revealing it as a portal of some kind.

More and more figures entered the USJ—some sloppy math put the number somewhere upwards of a hundred and forty people before they started to slow to a trickle. Swords, axes, scythes, and countless other weapons rested comfortably in the hands of the masses, revealing their intentions loud and clear—this was no longer a training exercise.

It was an invasion.

“Is this like in the entrance exam or something?” Eijiro said, frowning.

“Don’t move!” Eraserhead snapped, and everyone came to an immediate halt. “Those are villains….”

He spoke with more authority in his voice than I had ever heard from the man—easily clearing the lingering doubts any of the others might have had about the situation. I could feel the tension spike at the words.

“The destruction of the gate was their work,” Eraserhead deduced, putting the situation together immediately.

I slotted the information in and tried to figure out how he had gotten there.

This army of villains somehow knew when and where a class was taking place out here in the middle of nowhere. How could they have known that a class would be here right at this moment? None of the students knew until this morning, so it couldn’t have been word of mouth.

“Villains!?” Eijiro said, shocked. “How did they just get in here? It’s a hero school!”

The answer was obviously that they had somehow obtained the information in advance—hence the destruction of the gate must have been their work. They had infiltrated the school, obtained something that showed the next scheduled class at this location, and then organized an attack.

“What happened to the trespasser sensors?” Momo said quickly.

No—There was no way to organize this many people in a single day, this was clearly a heavily prepared assault, planned out likely weeks in advance, and they must have been waiting for the delivery of the place and time, and the infiltration of the school had offered that.

“They were checked yesterday and were fully functional.” Thirteen said calmly.

The only remaining question was why—why bring this many people to attack a class of twenty kids in training and two pro-heroes.

“With this many villains, there is likely someone amongst them with a quirk that could disable the system,” Shoto said calmly. “An isolated area separated from the main campus, during a time when a class is supposed to be here, this is clearly a surprise attack with some sort of specific goal in mind.”

“They are after All Might,” I said quietly. “He was supposed to be here, that’s why they brought so many with them.”

“Yes,” Eraserhead said coldly as his bandages began to unwind around his neck like a snake. “They are after All Might—Thirteen, start the evacuation, and find a method to contact the school. These villains even had something prepared to counteract the sensors. The phone network will most likely be down as well—Kaminari, use your radio headset to contact the school, they might not have blocked it.”

“Y-yes!” Kaminari said quickly and pressed his hand against the device.

Eraserhead approached the stairs and stared down at the hundreds of villains.

“Sir!” Izuku said, worried, “With that many villains, even if you erase their quirks… we can help split them up into smaller groups—”

“Midoriya!” Eraserhead snapped, shocking the boy into silence. “Let me be very clear. None of you will be fighting. You are not trained for this.”

“S-sir,” Izuku stammered, obviously concerned for their teacher. “Are you really going to fight them by yourself?”

Eraserhead glanced back over his shoulder at the boy and gave a bland smile.

“You cannot be a hero with only a single trick, Midoriya,” Eraserhead said seriously, evading the question entirely. “I’m leaving it to you, Thirteen. Get them out of here.”

Eraserhead crossed half of the length of stairs in a few short seconds, somehow finding balance on the edges of the stairs while moving at a flat-out sprint. He approached the immense group of villains head-on and completely without fear. Some of the villains at the front of the group actually stopped cold, wary of the man’s confidence—or perhaps it was just how absurd his movement speed was, given he had no enhancement quick.

The reason he had evaded answering Izuku’s question was very apparent—He was either capable of fighting off all of them at once, which was incredibly unlikely, or he was going to engage in a losing battle, sacrificing himself to give them the time to evacuate.

I couldn’t help but respect the man. These were the actions of a real hero.

“Follow me!” Thirteen ordered, moving back towards the entrance. “Do not dawdle!”

I left a sand orb on the stairs to watch the battle—despite already being in the thick of so many villains, Eraserhead hadn’t been touched a single time. The man’s reflexes were something else entirely.

“Midoriya!” Tenya snapped, “Hurry up!”

They had crossed maybe half of the path towards the massive gates when the portal user disappeared from behind the other villains. I opened my mouth to call out, but there was no need as he appeared directly in front of us, wasting the element of surprise.

I sent tiny threads of sand off the edge of the path on both sides and towards the gate in preparation to open it.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you go,” The figure said politely.

The man was covered in a rolling black and purple smoke, with a pair of sharp yellow eyes set where his face would have been. Thirteen gestured for them all to halt, with one arm thrust out to the side, and they stopped in front of the villain.

“We are the league of villains, and it is so very nice to meet you all.” The man said pleasantly, “It may be presumptuous of us, but we have invited ourselves into your lovely school.”

I started moving tiny grains of sand into place around the others, ready to protect them if need be.

“Why are you here, villain?” Thirteen said seriously.

“Our goal is simple,” The man said, pleased, “We are here to ensure that All Might, the symbol of peace, will take his last breath.”

“You really are here to kill All Might,” Momo mumbled, horrified. “This is insane….”

“Now, I believe he was supposed to be here at this time, has there been some kind of change?” The man questioned, but nobody spoke a word in response. “No answer? Well, it is neither here nor there, I suppose—this is my part in the play.”

The man raised his arms to the side, and I braced myself, waiting for orders from Thirteen. Katsuki and Eijiro suddenly shot towards the villain like they had planned it out in advance, passing by Thirteen just as the hero had raised her hand to attack.

“Die!” Katsuki said gleefully, and a massive explosion rocked the area.

Thick smoke rolled over them, making it impossible to see the outcome of the attack.

“You should have considered that we might fight back!” Eijiro said confidently, still lost in the smoke.

“Oh my, oh my—that’s very dangerous.” The man’s voice said, vaguely rattled. “I mustn’t be so overconfident, not even if you are just students.”

The smoke cleared and revealed his head had been destroyed, and only a metal brace remained—before the smoke washed upwards and reconstructed his head from the shadows in a few short moments.

“Move away!” Thirteen called in horror, hand still outstretched but unable to act with the two boys in the way.

“The task I have been assigned is quite simple!” The shadow man roared as his body exploded outwards, “I will scatter you and then torture you all to death!”

The shadows flashed out on either side of the group, encircling them in an instant. My sand exploded upwards between each cluster of students, and I pushed—but it was too late, as more than half the group was caught when the spinning dome of darkness formed completely.

For a moment, I had some very confusing views of the USJ and caught glances of falling students and groups of villains waiting below them before the portals closed. I lost connection to most of my sand as it was torn out of range.

“No!” Thirteen shouted as the dome dissipated.

Those that were caught were now gone—and only five members of class 1-A had managed to evade the attack due to their position on the outer ring of the group.

“Shit, where did you take them?” Hanta said worriedly, watching the now much smaller mass of darkness.

The villain didn’t reply.

“A-are they even still alive?” Ochako said, horrified.

“He moved them to different areas in the building,” I said quietly, “I don’t know if they’re alive or not because he dropped them in mid-air—the only ones in my range are Rikido, Toru, and Koji—in the desert area, they are still alive.”

It was such a large amount of sand that I could feel it from here, but the distance was still messing with my remote vision—As soon as this villain was taken care of, I would move there.

“Did Bakugou’s explosion do nothing to him?” Mashirao said, frowning. “Is he immune to physical attacks?”

“That may not be the case,” Fumikage said calmly, “His body is covered in shadows, but there is something in that metal brace or beneath it. If we focus our efforts in that location, we may yet defeat our foe.”

“How dangerously observant,” The shadow villain said warily.

“No.” Thirteen said sternly, “I can not let any of you fight this villain. Higawara, get to the school as fast as you can manage, alert the rest of the faculty to the events here. The rest of you will attempt to leave the USJ while I engage this man. GO!”

I was already reforming outside of the gates when the darkness washed over my previous position—I used the sand I’d gathered outside to shatter the doors behind me, to allow the other members of class 1-A to escape.

I lost connection to the artificial desert environment in the USJ as I started moving towards the school. I left large clumps of sand behind me as I went, a trail I could use to return to the building faster on the way back. The bus ride had taken us twenty minutes from the main section of the school, but it hadn’t been moving that fast.

I pushed harder, breaking into a cloud of particles and tearing through the air. The world blurred past as I strained myself to go faster—minutes later, a flash of gold in the distance caught my eyes.

I reformed in front of it, tumbling to a stop on the ground in my haste. A skinny man with a gaunt face and too big golden suit watched me in surprise, sitting in the driving seat of what looked like a bulkier, modified golf cart.

He started to open his mouth, but I spoke first.

“All Might, more than one-hundred and forty villains have invaded the Unforeseen Simulation Joint,” I said clearly, speaking fast. “Eraserhead is fighting the bulk of them in the center of the dome, but he will most likely be overwhelmed within minutes. Thirteen and several class members are fighting a portal user by the entrance. He has a metal brace just below his head that might be a weakness. Most of the class has been scattered into the various zones and is currently under attack by groups of villains. I have been tasked with alerting the rest of the faculty.”

I didn’t wait for a reply, bursting forth into a cloud of sand and continuing my journey. I didn’t have to turn around to know that All Might was already gone.

I reached the school five minutes later, reforming before the front counter—the admin behind the desk jumped at the sudden appearance but was quick to act as I repeated the message I’d given All Might.

A warning, not unlike the one that had played during the reporter incident, soon rang out to avoid engaging any villains and to remain inside the building. I could see Vlad King, Cementoss, and Ectoplasm facing a monitor on the far wall, with their backs to me.

My mission was complete, the faculty were alerted, and the school was warned—my part in this was finished. Except all of my classmates were currently fighting for their lives while I stood here in relative safety, doing nothing.

I was surprised to find the thought actually bothered me.

Ignoring the warnings and returning to the USJ wasn’t quite the same situation as the one I’d found myself in prior to coming to U.A. I’d told Nezu that I hadn’t regretted protecting my class from harm back then but that I shouldn’t have left the building to do so—that it was reckless.

Going back to the USJ to protect my class was different, it wouldn’t be a snap decision this time, but a premeditated one. The journey back would take at least five minutes, and I would be actively going against a very clear instruction given during an emergency to do so. It could very well endanger my place here at U.A.

Midnight stepped into the foyer and spotted me before she turned in my direction. She had only taken three steps before I made my decision, vanishing and reforming at the first sand marker I’d left behind outside.

I wondered if All Might had managed to arrive at the USJ before something unfortunate happened. I’d seen him move ludicrous speeds several times now, and I couldn’t help but think he would have made the journey in a fraction of the time I had.

I pushed the useless thoughts away and thought back to what I had seen at the beginning of the attack. The portal user was obviously the mobility of the attack force, but he was also our biggest source of information.

He’d used several words and phrases during the short skirmish that suggested a lot.

For one, calling it his ‘part in the play’ meant that he saw the overall attack as something artistic, well designed, or of high class—whichever way you took the phrase, it implied that he held a certain respect for the one who had come up with it. He could have held that respect for himself, but the other phrase he had used was ‘the task I was assigned,’ a task was given to him to accomplish, he had been assigned a role in the attack.

That meant he wasn’t the leader of the group.

The first villain to exit the portal had been a man with white hair and whose costume appeared to be made of a multitude of hands. He had remained at the portal until the rest of the villains had left, staying behind them as they approached. He was joined by a larger heteromorphic quirk user whose unfortunate physical mutation had left his brain exposed to open air.

Neither of those two had moved to join the fighting, seemingly content to watch—it spoke to the notion that they were the leaders of the villain army, or they were the ones who were jamming the school’s sensors. If they were the leaders, it meant that if they could take either of them down, the rest of the army might falter, whichever of the two it may have been.

I arrived at the USJ minutes later, reforming back next to where I had left the group—to find them in complete disarray but for some reason, still inside the building despite the portal user’s absence.

“Higawara!” Ochako said, terrified and alone.

Thirteen was incapacitated, with Ochako providing some limited first aid—but the damage was far above what anyone could fix without a healing quirk. The hero’s entire back was just gone, through some unknown means.

“Ochako,” I said calmly.

Mashirao and Jiro were currently carrying Eraserhead’s broken body up the stairs, while Fumikage, Yuga, and Hanta were below them, doing their best to fend off the mass of villains from ascending by firing non-stop into the crowd, and it was actually working to some extent.

“Thank god, you found All Might,” Ochako said swallowing, “Are the rest of the teachers coming?”

There was some kind of explosive fight going on near the water, the participants moving too fast to be seen, but the environment was breaking around them. The ground was shattering, and the nearby forest was being demolished under the shockwaves that sent massive chunks of debris skipping across the ground.

The white-haired man with all of the hands-on his body was standing at the outskirts of the battle. Shoto was on the other side opposite him, surrounded by several walls of jagged ice. The man with the exposed brain wasn’t anywhere that I could see.

“Yes, Ochako,” I said quietly, “The teachers are currently en route, but it could be anywhere from five to ten minutes before they arrive.”

The sounds of the villains climbing the stairs were getting louder as Hanta and Fumikage retreated— I snapped my head around towards the desert zone.

“Higawara?” Ochako said quickly. “What’s wrong? Do you see something?”

A group of five villains was standing in the desert zone now, clustered in a loose group. Koji, Rikido, and Toru were lying on the sand, and two of them weren’t breathing.

“Ochako,” I said slowly, “Two of our classmates are dead.”

He realized too late he shouldn’t have told her—she was already under enough stress without piling more on top—Mashirao and Jiro made it up the stairs sweating and struggling to carry their teacher. Yuga stumbled up after them, holding his stomach and groaning miserably.

“Oh-oh god,” Ochako whispered.

“Stay here,” I said quietly.

I reformed at the top of the stairs and lifted my hand—sand rapidly multiplied, bursting forth in a tidal wave, sweeping between Hanta and Fumikage and then spreading out. It surged down the stairs, crashing into the villains and carrying them back downwards.

Twelve of them managed to remain on the stairs, able to hold their ground against the force of the wave through various means. Sand slithered up their legs, ripping most of them off the ground and dashing them against the stairs until they stopped fighting back.

A flurry of spikes rained down on Fumikage, slamming into his shadow construct and moving no further. A wall of sand rose in front of Hanta as the flying villain switched targets—he evaded my follow-up attack by spreading his massive wingspan and dashing to the side at high speed.

The villain began a strafing run, firing his torrent of thin spikes towards them from the side, and then sand bloomed to life, directly in front of his path—he crashed into it with a squawk, and I got my first good look at him. It was a chicken, scaled up to the size of a human—I crushed his wings ruthlessly and tossed him with the others at the bottom.

The final villain, a woman with massive, bulging arms, each larger than her body, almost made it to the top before she was forced to hop into the air to avoid Hanta tape fired at her legs. She spun to avoid Dark Shadow, using her arms to angle the demonic creature away from her, and then desperately crossed her arms in an attempt to block. The bus-sized sand-fist smashed into her crossguard, and she was sent rocketing downwards to crash into the concrete below.

Both of the other boys were panting, having been fighting for almost ten minutes, and Hanta fell back onto the stairs exhausted.

“Thank you, Higawara—” Fumikage managed, but I was gone.

I attacked without warning, the desert zone rising to my command in an instant—the girl who carried a whip and dressed in a fishnet bunny suit was caught completely unaware, and I buried her before she could react.

A woman in a red skintight bodysuit and long black gravity-defying hair clapped her hands once, and a circular wave of force washed outwards, throwing my sand away from her. I split the desert under her feet, creating a yawning chasm beneath her, and she fell screaming into the gap before I repeated her clap and smashed it back together around her.

I felt her forcefield expand in desperation, saving herself from the impact of the sand walls crashing together but leaving her trapped in an orb of empty space buried deep below the surface. I watched her from every direction as she closed her eyes and focused hard on her hands, trying to push the force orb outwards.

The orb edged outwards, pushing my sand away—I pushed inwards, and she cried out at the effort of holding my sand back as the field started to compress. The man in the white robe was too fast to catch in the same manner—The sand failing to get purchase on his feet as he moved across it, blurring to my normal sight.

I ignored him for now, raising walls to block the rapidly fired orbs that were streaking across the sand towards me. The attacker was a woman with no mouth, long hair, and sharp eyes that flashed before every attack. The eye blasts were easily strong enough to scatter the sand shields, but she had nothing in the way of mobility, and she joined her friends below.

I dissolved into the sand as the fast man reached me, cutting straight through my torso with an outstretched knife-hand. I reformed in the exact same spot after he had passed with my arms crossed, watching as he circled me at an untouchable speed.

He made no second move to approach me, instead suddenly streaking away, heading towards the edge of the zone. I raised my hands, and massive walls of sand rose at the edges of the zone, trapping us all inside. The white-robed man started running up the sand wall—I wrenched the top of the wall outwards, curving it over his position in a massive tsunami that crashed down on him before he could escape.

The last woman remained still, having not moved except to fire a small explosion to free herself right at the start of the battle. Two strange purple prongs stuck up from the back of her neck, or perhaps her shoulder blades, and several red orbs spun around her. I couldn’t see her eyes beneath her hair, but her mouth was wide, stretching from one side of her face to the other.

“You are not running,” I noted calmly.

“There’s nowhere to run. You can control everything here.” The woman said nervously before swallowing. “I’m surrendering—”

I dragged her beneath the sand without a word before I reformed next to the three unmoving bodies of my classmates, they had somehow managed to remain relatively undisturbed since the start of the battle. I carefully formed a stretcher of sand under each, lifting them gently off the ground before I started moving towards the edge of the desert zone.

Several teachers were approaching the zone, and I angled towards them, lowering the massive amounts of sand that had walled off the area.

“Higawara?” Toru said, sounding disorientated.

I raised a ridge of sand around the other two stretchers and moved them behind her, so she wouldn’t see the condition of the two boys.

“Toru,” I said quietly. “Are you injured? I am unable to check visually.”

I could feel her general outline with the sand particles, but going further than that risked pushing sand into any open wounds she might have.

“My face hurts, something hit me when we were dropped onto the sand….” Toru mumbled, holding her head. “I don’t really remember what happened after that. Where are—”

I spoke up before she could ask, intentionally derailing her thought process.

“Toru, the teachers have arrived at the USJ.” I said calmly, “They are actually just ahead of us—can you see them?”

“Um—I think I can see them,” Toru mumbled. “Everything is a bit blurry.”

“You may have a concussion, “ I said quietly. “Stay as still as possible, and try not to turn your head to look around. You could have injured your neck as well.”

“Okay,” Toru said distractedly as they approached the adults.

“Mr. Higawara.” Recovery girl said calmly, sitting on Vlad King’s shoulder.

I spoke quickly.

“Toru has had a severe impact on her face. She has complained of both pain and continual blurry vision,” I said quietly, moving the girl’s stretcher towards them.

Vlad let the elderly woman down carefully, and she quickly approached the invisible girl.

I lifted both of the other platforms up on an angle, revealing the other two bodies to them without letting Toru see. I covered them once more when Recovery Girl shook her head quickly. Vlad King clenched his fist tightly, the tortured leather of his glove easily audible over the ambient noise.

“Anything else?” Vlad King said, strained.

I thought about the five villains still buried deep under the desert and considered leaving them to die under the same sand where they had killed two of my classmates. If I did, it would most likely be discovered at some point, and then whatever remnants of a chance I still had of staying at U.A would vanish.

I started dragging the mostly unconscious villains towards the surface.

“I captured the attackers,” I said quietly as they surfaced beside us.

The black-haired woman in the red bodysuit was the only one awake, and she looked exhausted, her once gravity-defying hair was plastered about her face, while the palms of both hands were red and swollen.

Waiting Room, Infirmary, U.A, 6:07 PM

April 7th, 2149.

I stood up when I noticed Midnight had stuck her head out of a hallway and curled her finger in the universal gesture to follow. I fell in step beside her, waiting to be addressed.

“Higawara, right?” Midnight said evenly as they walked. “I haven’t memorized all of the newbie’s names yet, and you are pretty quiet in class.”

Midnight stopped in the middle of an empty hallway. Several doors lined the walls, each leading to a patient’s room. She leaned against the wall and crossed her arms, studying me.

“Yes,” I said evenly. “You want to talk to me because I went back to the USJ.”

There was no point in dancing around the issue—Leaving to participate in a battle was something I had already made the mistake of doing once before. Multiple students and teachers had seen me return to the USJ. I was surprised, however, that it was Midnight who was talking to me about it and not Nezu.

Midnight likely didn’t have the authority to expel me herself, but she could very well be the messenger—Nezu was likely extremely busy right now, given that his school just had two of its students die in what could only be described as a terror attack.

“Why did you go back?” Midnight said seriously, “I saw you standing in the lobby, so I know you heard the automated warnings to stay inside.”

I just nodded.

“I did hear them, and I made the decision to leave anyway,” I said honestly. “The imminent danger to my classmate’s life was enough to outweigh the chance that I might find myself expelled afterward.”

I’d made that decision with a relatively clear mind—my thought pattern was derailed entirely when Midnight spoke.

“Why are you weighing the danger to your classmate’s lives against your chance of being expelled from U.A?” Midnight said incredulously.

What?

“I don’t think I understand the question,” I said hesitantly, genuinely unsure of what she was trying to get at. “Breaking the rules of a system almost always leads to a punishment, one that is usually scaled in proportion to the severity of—”

Midnight held up her hand, and I trailed off.

“That’s not what I’m asking, Higawara.” Midnight said, frowning. “Why aren’t you even considering the danger your actions present to your own life? Why are you more worried about being expelled from U.A than going into a building filled with villains who want to kill you?”

Because if I died fighting those villains, then my consciousness ended, and nothing mattered afterward because I would be dead. If I was expelled from U.A, I would have to continue living, but with a drastic reduction to the chance that I would find Nanami due to a lack of learned skills.

“I was thinking about my own life as well,” I lied, speaking quickly, “Now that the danger has passed, I am free to worry about other things—like my future, and so I misspoke.”

Midnight didn’t look like she believed me, and I really couldn’t blame her.

“Do you at least regret breaking the rules?” Midnight said with narrowed eyes.

“No.” I said honestly, “I wish I had made the decision to leave faster. Then I might not have been too late.”

Midnight let her head tilt back to rest against the wall, and she stared up at the ceiling for a long moment. They stood in silence for almost a minute before she spoke up.

“I didn’t call you in here to yell at you,” Midnight decided eventually. “All Might wants to speak to each of you individually.”

I watched as she pushed herself off the wall and gesturing to the door opposite them. I’d already checked each of the rooms around us—the one she was indicating currently had Denki and All Might inside.

Denki, Katsuki, and Mina had all been dropped in the Squall zone, according to what I’d overheard. The rain had rendered all three of their quirks far less effective and reduced their options to hand-to-hand combat. At some point, Denki had been forced to unleash his quirk in the rain, knocking himself out but saving the three of them in the process.

The door opened, and All Might stepped out into the hall, practically filling it with his presence.