We came up with some pretty good ideas together. Just like I thought, Iida and Kendo were perfect as Co-Kaicho’s. Iida’s rigid need for structure balanced well with Kendo’s calmer, yet still strong demeanor. Which meant that he could nail in a pretty efficient way of conducting the club, but Kendo was always there to veto him when he would go a bit too far. Because there’s being efficient, and then there is leaving literally no time for anything other than working out, studying and sleeping. What, eating? Why wouldn’t you do that while studying!?

That aside, we came up with a solid system. We’d start by figuring out what we all needed as individuals. As a class, we really only needed space to interact with, but our individual quirks had specializations and needs to really get out their full potential. Some of us might need support items to overcome our weaknesses, some might need to just push our quirks harder, and some just needed to think of our quirks in a new way.

We had some ideas to figure out where we’d start with that stuff.

Monoma, as it turned out, was well suited for teaching others how to use their quirks, because he could try them out for himself. So that was interesting as hell to me, on multiple levels. But it also left me curious as to what would happen if he touched me.

See, since arriving in Japan, I’d spent some time contemplating my own nature. Was I a human with a quirk that made him look like Bowser, the same way that Godzillo’s quirk made him a copy of Godzilla? Was I really a Bowser copy, right down to my DNA?

And even then, how would Quirk’s like Monoma’s react with my body? Or Aizawa-sensei’s? It was like the question of if their quirks ONLY reacted with quirks, or if they could respond to, say, Kryptonian powers, Naruto chakra abilities, or other things like that. So if my powers weren’t derived from a quirk, could they still have an effect on me? Or maybe just a muted effect in some way?

I put that question on the back burner for now to focus on the ideas we were sharing.

One other thing I brought up was the question of specialization. Not every hero was able to be the end all be all of heroics. Bakugo was fantastic in combat, but he didn’t have the powers or the mindset for search and rescue. Koda was perfect for search and rescue, but the kid was a lover, not a fighter.

But that was fine. In the future, when we became heroes, we’d all need to find our place. Some would be jack-of-all-trades, some would be overly specialized, but we’d all have a way we could help, and dedicating some time to that would be great.

When the cafe closed, we separated for the night, planning to leave more discussion for tomorrow, though we traded phone numbers so that we could text later. Pony invited me to stay over at her place, so I slept over there, then we headed to school together.

Which of course, had its own problems.

------

“Wow, what are so many people doing at the gate?” Pony asked curiously as we approached the school.

I’d been off in my own world. A thought had occurred to me last night as I’d been about to sleep that was still hitting me in waves, so I wasn’t in the best of mindsets. I looked towards the front entrance. There were dozens of people surrounding it. Cameras and microphones were being wielded like swords and shields at the kids trying to get to class. I could see Kaminari getting interviewed, the blonde posing with a grin before sweat dropping when the reporters turned away from him, the dejected kid walking into the gates.

“Reporters?” I asked, before I remembered. Oh right! The reporters! How the fuck did I forget about them!?

Damnit, I’d gotten so distracted. And I’d spent the whole night stressing over… So wait. That meant the decay asshole was somewhere nearby, ready to sneak into the school! Damnit. Then I needed to… do what, exactly?

Well, I did have a plan in place that I’d come up with a while back. For now though, the reporters were coming up to us. They eyed me nervously, but still approached. I blamed my school uniform. I don’t care who you are, Darkseid, Darth Vader, or Frieza, nothing ruins the intimidation factor like a school uniform. That and Pony was next to me, so her cuteness was negating my badassery.

“Excuse me!” A mic was shoved into Pony’s face. “You’re a student at this school, right!? Have you taken any classes with All Might as a teacher? What is he like?”

“All Might-sensei?” Pony pressed a finger to her lips thoughtfully. “Hmmm. Well, he’s very happy! And he always tells us how to do our best!”

The brown haired reporter lady looked somehow dissatisfied with that. What was she expecting, All Might to be the second coming of Great Teacher Onizuka?

“And you!?” she turned to me. Then she stared up. “Ah… Are you a student?”

“No, I got the uniform off the internet,” I snarked.

She glared at me, while one guy in the back chuckled. “Have you taken a class with All Might as well! Do you have a comment for us!?”

Come on. You can’t feed me lines like that and NOT expect me to take advantage.

I nodded. “Yeah. Here,” I leaned forward. A mic approached my face. I coughed lightly, whispering just a bit.

“What? Sir, we can’t hear you!” more mics came in closer. I took a soft breath, looking over at Pony and winking. Pony’s eyes widened a bit before she snapped her hands over her ears.

“GRAAAAUGH!” a sound not unlike the echoing roar of a lion left my lungs, smashing into the crowd of reporters as they screamed in shock, some covering their ears in pain.

I stopped after a few seconds, coughing.

“W-What the hell was that for!?” the reporter lady shouted at me.

“I thought you wanted a comment?” I said with a grin, pushing past the crowd. At the door to the school, I could see Present Mic laughing his ass off while Aizawa-sensei rubbed his forehead.

“Kid, what the fuck!?” one other guy said.

“That was unnecessary! What are they teaching you at this school!?”

“They’re teaching me a lot. But here’s one thing I already know,” I glared at them. “All Might-sensei came to this school to teach. Because, as a guy who has kicked butt for decades, he wanted to share some lessons he’s learned. I doubt anyone can say the Symbol of Peace doesn’t have some hard-earned teachings to share. And I admire him for that. I do not admire the lot of fucking vultures coming here to find a story or scandal for something this simple and reasonable! We are STUDENTS. You shouldn’t be harassing kids to try and get a ratings bump! So the lot of you can kiss my fucking shell!”

I spun around, growling as I went.

I don’t hate the media. They have a necessary job. But the way some of them acted. In those guys eyes, nothing mattered more than the story. The prospect of fame and fortune from destroying the lives of others. If the news was a weapon, it was one that could be wielded for good and evil alike. Fuck those guys.

I passed by Aizawa. He gave me a look, then sighed, heading to the gate. Present Mic followed, grinning. I was feeling stressed now. My anger at those assholes at the front, combined with the night I’d had...

“Bowser-kun?” Pony’s voice drew my attention. I looked over at her. She was looking up at me, worried. “You okay? You’ve been distracted all day. And just now… You don’t usually yell like that.”

“Ah,” damnit. “Yeah… just, have a lot on my mind. Been kinda worrying over a lot. Becoming a hero is going to have a lot more complications than I thought.”

She looked at me with worried eyes, crossing one arm across her stomach while pressing a finger to her chin with the other hand. “What do you mean?”

“...I think, on some level, making the new club sort of awoke some new concerns in me that I didn’t expect. I’m still processing it. Hopefully once we get together after school, I can assuage those concerns.”

“What are the concerns?” Pony asked.

“I’ll tell you later!” I turned and rushed off. “For now, get to class! See you later, Pony!”

“Bowser-kun!” she called after me. I sighed, pushing my stride a bit more. I just needed some time.

Today, the villains would infiltrate the school, then tomorrow would be the USJ thing. Okay. I could handle this shit. But first, to tell the class about our new club.

------

On getting to class early, Momo, Iida, and I gave the good news. Which led to unforeseen circumstances.

“You made Iida the leader?” Kaminari said, looking super skeptical. “That’s not fair, you guys didn’t let anyone else choose!”

“Yeah, we should have put it to a vote!” Mina whined, shaking her head.

“And we haven’t even met the other person, Bowser,” Kirishima said. “We’re supposed to just accept her as our leader?”

“I…” I rubbed the back of my neck, looking at Iida, who seemed stricken. “Okay, that’s fair. We’ll figure it out then, maybe do a short campaign thing? But I honestly do think Iida has what it takes. And in the end, if we wanted to have a club, we needed a captain.”

“I can understand expediency, but you really should have asked us first, kero,” Tsuyu pointed out.

“I apologize, everyone,” Iida bowed, looking contrite. “I was so touched by Bowser-san’s offer that I didn’t consider others wouldn’t feel the same way.”

“No, this is my fault,” I said, swallowing my pride and bowing as well. “Everyone. I’m sorry. I promise, I’ll be more considerate of the class's wishes from now on. But I implore you to consider Iida for captain. He has our best interests at heart, and will do everything in his power. Please, just wait to hear what he’s already planned for club activities before you dismiss him.”

Momo nodded, bowing as well next to Iida and I. “I agree. We’ve already come up with several ideas to help us reach our full potential! So please, be patient everyone! We’ll meet after school and show you what we’ve worked on. Decide on who should be the UA Super Sentai captain afterwards.”

“Besides, the team captains are going to be doing a LOT of boring paperwork. So, if you guys are down for that…” I pointed out.

Mina, Jirou, Kirishima, and Kaminari sweatdropped, while Ochaco chuckled a little bit. “Oh yeah, that’s true…” the gravity girl mumbled.

“Paperwork isn’t boring, it is a necessary part of our school experience, Bowser,” Iida said sternly, Momo nodding in agreement with him. “It allows the UA Super Sentai to function!”

“Wait, that’s the name of the club?” Jirou asked. “Who came up with that?”

I rose up from my bow. “My friend, Pony. I like it. We’re all going to be heroes, so naming ourselves as some of the most famous ones is good.”

Still. There was a dark thought the name had brought up in me later, when I’d been about to sleep in my shell. I’d been curled up inside in the living room of Pony and Tauren’s home, drifting off, thinking about my day and the new club we’d made. And the sudden thought struck me.

Super Sentai died. They had in the past shows. It wasn’t often. But while the one Power Rangers death I could remember in the shows eventually got reversed, I knew that Super Sentai could and had died.

I don’t know why the thought consumed me so much. It was so fucking dumb! But it did. The brain just loves grabbing onto worries like that, no matter how ridiculous the source. Because that thought led to the next thought. One that had been on my mind all morning. That was on my mind as I stared around at Kirishima, Iida, Mina, Momo, Mineta, Tsuyu…

These kids were trying to become heroes. And heroes died. All the time.

I had to keep that from happening. No matter what.

Driving off those thoughts as best as could, I looked to my right, at Deku, only to blink.

He had his chin cupped, staring at the ground with tight eyes. He was mumbling at a high-speed. He had been for a while. I leaned in to listen.

“-ith-that-we-can-all-work-on-search-and-rescue-but-we-should-also-plan-for-cases-where-pure-combat-will-be-needed,so-some-of-us-will-have-to-plan-out-more-villain-and-hero-exercises,if-the-teachers-help-they-can-even-act-like-villains-for-us,I-should-really-think-on-what-sort-of-team-variations-we-can-make-with-forty-heroes-and-unique-quirks-”

“Man, he really overthinks things, huh?” Mina said, all of us watching as Hurricane Deku continued to blow.

“It’s part of his charm,” I said fondly. “Plus, when you actually listen, he’s making some smart points. But anyways, you guys okay with the name?”

“I didn’t really care either way, just sounds dorky,” Jirou snarked, shrugging a bit.

“I like it! Super Sentai are super manly!” Kirishima said, pumping a fist. “Can I be Red!?”

“No, that would be Kendo,” Iida said seriously. “I’m the sixth Green. Bowser is pink.”

“Pink!?” Kaminari said, looking up at me.

“It brings out my eyes,” I said, while Mina pouted.

“Seriously! You! I mean, just look at me!” Mina said, waving her hands up and down.

“Don’t worry, you can be my understudy,” I snarked.

“Bowser,” I turned to see Aizawa-sensei at the door. I frowned. He was here a little early.

“Yeah, Sensei?”

He crooked his finger at me. “Come here.”

“...Okay.”

I rose and left the class to join him in the hallway. I stood before him, ready for anything.

“From now on, when the media is looking for a scoop, don’t feed them one on a silver platter,” Aizawa said without preamble. “Your little stunt has led to those ‘vultures’ claiming your actions prove UA students have become reckless and rude. That our hiring All Might is a desperation move to maintain control over our school.”

“What the fu-” I cut myself off, but Aizawa noticed. “Sensei, I’m sorry. I was just pissed off. I didn’t think-”

“That might as well be where you end your sentence,” Aizawa snapped. “I understand where you were coming from. Hell, I’ve wanted to tell those guys to piss off as well. But you can’t let them get to you. We’ll go over it in class at some point, but some advice? When you meet the media, and you don’t want to give them something specific? Become as flat and boring as a mirror. Factual answers delivered directly with no emphasis. The media hates boring. They don’t care about true or false. Just exciting.”

I think I’d heard of a tennis player who did something like that in my old world. Damnit. In my defense, I’ve only been on the news twice before. Once, in my last life, on some crappy local station for a feature on the computer club I was a part of. Then again, when Pony and I rescued those people. I wasn’t exactly trained in this stuff.

“Sorry,” I said at last.

Aizawa scoffed, waving me off. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t do it again. We can create enough controversies without you helping.”

I walked away. But as I did, I could barely hear Aizawa talk under his breath.

"Even If I have wanted to tell them where to shove it for years…”

------

“Good work on yesterday’s combat training,” Aizawa-sensei said to us once we were all sat down. “I saw the video and results,” he turned slightly. “Bakugo. You’re talented, so don’t act like a brat.”

The Blonde glared to his left, unable to meet Aizawa’s eyes. “I know.”

“And Midoriya,” Deku jumped. “You settled it by breaking your arm again, huh?” The green-haired kid stared at his desk in shame. “You can’t keep saying you can’t help it because you can’t control your Quirk. If you haven’t already, join that club the rest of brats started. Put in more time into mastering your power. Once you master it, you’ll become something special. But work towards that with your classmates. Understood?”

“Y-Yes sensei!” Deku said, now more excited than depressed.

Aizawa turned to me. “Bowser. You need to get more control of yourself. You can’t go rushing in for a fight anytime you want. Yesterday it made sense, but I saw a similar pattern of behaviour from you during the entrance exam. You may be suited for combat, but learn to fight with a purpose, rather than simply stalling someone till time runs out if you can’t beat them.”

“Got it,” I said simply.

“And Todoroki. Learn to work with your classmates in team building exercises. I don’t have to tell you that even a powerful quirk can’t always beat enemies in one-shot. It’s okay to be confident, but there is a difference between that and foolhardy arrogance. Simply striding into the building like that, assured all your enemies were defeated, was foolhardy. Understood?”

“...Yes, sensei,” Shoto ground out after a moment.

“Now, let’s get down to homeroom business. Sorry for the late notice, but today I’ll have you…” Tension rose in the room. I leaned back in my chair, already knowing what was coming. “...decide on a class representative.”

Yeah, there was the surprise at the sudden normal thing that I’d expected from the rest of the class.

“I want to be class rep! Pick me!” Kirishima shouted.

Immediately, a storm of shouts erupted. Everyone yelled out their candidacy, with Bakugo’s loud roars mixing together with Mineta’s weird ass declarations that he’d change the school dress code to allow everyone to dress as sexy as they want.

Funny enough, I didn’t mind the idea of the latter. School uniforms are super constrictive…

“Everyone, please!” Iida said with just enough bass to his voice that everyone stopped. He rose up and looked around seriously. “This job is a serious one. Not something that we can simply take on because we feel like it, but a responsibility. Whoever has it will be leading the rest of the class in all things. Including working with the leaders of the UA Super Sentai in all that they do. I believe we should nominate our leader based on an election, with democracy to decide the job.”

Wait. Iida didn’t have his hand up like in the anime. “Iida, you don’t want the job yourself?” I asked, genuinely surprised.

Iida shook his head. “No. I’m afraid that my responsibilities would not allow me to take on more than one leadership position. I would like to put my focus on attaining that position. So, I formally remove my name from the running in this election.”

Well… shit. That surprised me. On some level I kinda thought he’d just grab both positions. Well now I had no idea what was going to happen next.

“Isn’t that kind of weird though?” Kaminari noted. “Having an election so soon?”

“We do barely know each other,” Sato agreed, looking around.

“Yeah, we don’t have any trust in anyone’s particular leadership skills,” Tsuyu agreed.

“Plus can’t we just vote for ourselves?” Kirishima said to Koda, who nodded. The two had been hanging out a bit today. Guess they’d hit it off after the Battle Trial.

“It’s fine,” I noted, crossing my arms. “I mean, if anyone gets any multiple votes then they probably deserve it. That or they bribed the officials. By the way, I’ll buy pizza for the class if they vote for me.”

“Bowser!” Iida said, scandalized. “You can’t make campaign promises of that sort, it’s unethical!”

“Follow me, children, and there will be a pizza for every star in the sky.”

“That is impossible!”

Iida really was the world’s best straight man. I looked over at the teacher. “Aizawa-sensei, you cool with a vote?”

He was already zipping up his yellow bag. “Whatever. Just get it done before homeroom.”

Truly, an inspiration to all educators. Fine, I’d take over.

“All right, then we just need slips of paper and a box,” I rose to my feet, cracking my neck. “I’ll collect them for everyone. Or we can have someone else do it, if you all prefer?”

“No, we trust you,” Tsuyu said. Bless your soul, future Froppy-chan.

Everyone wrote down names on slips of paper. I wrote Momo for my vote. I figured Deku would win like in canon, but maybe with my vote, Momo could become the class rep. Deku might be a good shonen protagonist, but he wasn’t exactly leadership material at this stage in his short career.

Once collected, I walked up the front and started counting them out. I wrote them down on the board as I went, taking my time. And… No, wait, that couldn’t be right.

Momo had four votes. Deku had two… And I had five.

“What the hell!?” I spun around, staring at the class. “Who voted for me!?”

“Screw that, who voted for Deku instead of me!?” Bakugo shouted.

“Nobody cares about your weird crush on Deku, I’m asking questions here!”

“You motherfuc-!” Bakugo roared, while Deku’s face paled in horror.

“Seriously?” I stared at the votes, then at the board. Yeah, no. Five votes. I hadn’t voted for myself either. So a few of us had zero votes in the class, which meant those people voted for Deku, Momo, and I rather than ourselves…

“What, are you really mad?” Kaminari asked, confused. “You have enough money for the pizza, right?”

And just like that, the curtains fell. Damn, now I know what every politician feels like when the campaign promises need to be fulfilled.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get the pizza,” I sighed, looking over at Momo. “But seriously, I voted for you.”

“Aw, thank you,” she said with a smile. “I voted for you as well.”

That was nice to know. Well… I guess I could have refused the job. But honestly, this would be the best thing. In a leadership position I could do more. More to protect my classmates. I felt uncomfortable with it, but… we could make this work.

Momo and I bowed towards each other. “Let’s support each other as best as we can.”

“Yes, Bowser-san.”

“You all take too long with every decision,” Aizawa grumbled. He rose to look over at us. “Then the Class Representative will be Koopa, and the deputy class rep will be Yaoyorozu.”

“And yeah, I’ll bring in pizza tomorrow,” I said before Kaminari could speak up. He gave me a grin and a thumbs up.

------

At lunch, I joined Pony. Rin came along because Pony invited him. On a whim, I asked Mineta to come along. So of course, the first thing he said when he saw Pony was…

“Hey, I’m Mineta! You single and ready to mingle, beautiful?”

I growled under my breath while Pony stared at him in surprise.

“I mean, uh, nice to meet you,” he said more politely, sweating bullets and very carefully not looking at me.

“Nice to meet you too!” Pony said politely, while Rin stared at Mineta like he was trying to figure out if he’d really heard that.

We sat down as a group and began to chat.

“So yeah, Monoma was depressed for the rest of class when no one voted for him,” Rin explained with a chuckle. “And Kendo-san is now our class rep as well.”

“She isn’t worried about adding that to her other responsibilities?” I asked curiously.

“No, she said she could handle it!” Pony said, chowing down happily.

“How are you gonna deal with it?” Mineta asked me. “Don’t class reps have a whole lot of responsibilities they have to deal with?”

“I can handle it I think,” I said thoughtfully. “I’ve been working on my multitasking. I’ll just need to keep up my studies while I’m at it. Shouldn’t be the worst thing in the universe.”

Pony frowned thoughtfully. “Bowser, do you even know what a class rep does?”

I took a big mouthful of curry. “I mean… yes. I can’t believe you would doubt me. I learned from all the anime of the past after all.”

“I’m starting to get worried about you becoming class rep now,” Mineta mumbled.

“Yeah, I’m glad Kendo at least knows what she’s doing,” Rin agreed.

I ignored their byplay. I was waiting for something very specific. I sat away from them, but out of the corner of my eyes, I could see Iida talking to Deku and Ochaco. I tried my best to act relaxed, but couldn’t help feeling tense. Any second now…

“Bowser?” I looked over at Pony. She seemed worried for me. “Are you… okay?”

I hesitated. She’d noticed. Of course she had. No one knew me better.

“...Well-”

An alarm rang out. As the ringing sound echoed outwards in an annoying clatter, Mineta looked up, panic in his eyes. “What the hell is that?”

“Did something happen?” Rin asked, scales flickering along the Chinese students arms.

The intercoms in the cafeteria sounded out. “There has been a level 3 security breach. All students, please evacuate outdoors promptly!”

There it was. I snapped to my feet, looking around quickly. Okay. I could see the reporters outside the windows, all rushing through the gate to head towards the doors of the school. I felt more disgust towards them. Invading a school to ask questions. Assholes.

“What do we do!?” Rin asked a third year student nearby.

“What else, we run!” Mineta said.

“No, we don’t,” I said seriously.

“Wha-Are you nuts!? The intercom said we have to go!”

“Mineta, hop onto my head man and look there,” I said, pointing in one direction.

“Hop onto… ugh, fine!” he jumped upwards, scrambling up my spines, while I extended a hand to Pony, who sat in my palm. I lifted her up as Mineta finally sat atop my head, grabbing my horns.

“The reporters?” Mineta said, confused.

“It looks like they got onto school grounds somehow,” Pony said curiously. “You think they are the reason the alarm went off?”

“Gotta be,” I said, now shouting over the panicking crowd of students. In the distance, I could see Kirishima and Kaminari yelling. Momo was trying to calm people down, but no one was listening to her. This was always gonna be weird, acting like I didn’t know exactly what was going on. Felt like lying. “Even as loud as it is, I don’t hear anything other than us! Level 3 would be a huge attack, not a bunch of nosy assholes!”

“We should tell everyone!” Pony declared, tugging at my hand as I held her aloft. “Bowser! You’re louder than all of us! Roar! Get their attention!”

I couldn’t help the rush of pride I felt for her. She’d suggested exactly what I’d hoped she would.

I opened my mouth so wide I could feel my jaw click just a bit. Then I let loose a roar, unleashing a blast of flame along with it.

“Groawwwwr!” FWOOSH!

The combination of sound and fire drew the attention of the others. All the students looked over. I could also see Iida in the distance, floating over the crowd. I guess I’d interrupted his plan. But I could combine his with ours. “Iida! Let them know!”

“U-Uh, right!” the floating speedster said. He spoke aloud, giving an abbreviated version of his speech from the anime. “Everyone! Everything is fine!”

As he explained things, I placed Pony down, plucking Mineta off my head. The grape kid spoke as I put him down. “So it’s over now, right?” he looked at the now calm students, some older ones laughing at their earlier panic. “What happens now?”

“We let the adults handle the reporters,” I said, sighing. In truth, my original plan had been to rush off and find that Decay asshole once he infiltrated the school. But I couldn’t be sure where he was now. I’d have to stay. After all the changes I’d affected in the timeline in a short time, I couldn’t be sure that Iida would act the same way.

And yet, he had. I had wasted my time here.

Tomorrow… Tomorrow the USJ battle would begin. My timeline had shrunk to a pinpoint. I had one day to get my plan in action.

Fine. We’d get dangerous then.