Chapter 48: The Mouse Returns to the Board! A Devastated Mother, a Guilty Heroine, and the Bravest Idiot at UA!

The highway had stopped looking like a highway. Izuku was still leaning against the overturned car, half his face streaked with blood and one hand pressed against his side, staring at the smoking disaster stretching out in front of him as the first sirens broke the silence in the distance.

Alright, let's take inventory. Cars split in half, streetlights bent, an armored truck with no doors, and a teacher using me as a pillow. Could be worse, though right now I can't think how.

Midnight still had her head resting on his shoulder, hissing through her teeth every time the pain shot up her leg. Izuku didn't dare move too much, afraid that any gesture would drag a scream out of her.

"Sensei, are you still awake?" he asked quietly.

"Still awake…" she murmured without fully opening her eyes. "I'm just debating whether getting the feeling back in my legs is worth the effort, or if I should just declare them officially lost."

"I'd vote for getting them back. You'll need them tomorrow for class."

A tired smile tugged at her lips.

"How thoughtful. I'm surprised at that kind of optimism from someone who, a few hours ago, was about to become a villainess's favorite plaything."

"W-well, sensei, that wasn't exactly my plan."

"No? What a disappointment. And here I was already preparing a heroic speech about the importance of not letting yourself get pummeled before exams."

A couple of vans pulled up at the edge of the crater, and out of the first one stepped a small, furry figure that made his way through the rubble with his paws crossed behind his back, taking in every detail without losing his composure.

"Well, well…" Nezu said, stopping in front of the empty armored truck. "So much creativity for tearing up a public road in a single night. I recognize the effort, though I'm afraid I can't compliment the results."

Behind him, a tiny elderly woman with an enormous syringe-shaped helmet hurried through the wreckage, leaning on her cane and frowning the moment her eyes landed on the two injured people beside the car.

"Not one word, young lady," Recovery Girl snapped, tapping the ground with her cane before Midnight could get out a single protest. "I've been patching up stubborn heroes for decades and I know a fracture when I see one. That leg is broken from top to bottom. Now explain to me what on earth was going through your head to end up like this."

"I was thinking that if I didn't do it, my student would end up as decoration on a windshield," Midnight answered with a tired smile.

"Hmph. UA teachers have less common sense every day."

Recovery Girl turned toward Izuku and lifted his chin with two fingers to check his pupils. The boy took the opportunity to try to sit up.

"I'm fine, really, I can help lift sensei and…"

WHACK!

Her cane connected with his head with an aim that made a mockery of her age.

"Don't even think about getting up, boy!" she ordered. "Next time an old woman tells you not to move, listen the first time. You've got two bruised ribs and a split eyebrow, so the only place you're going is onto a stretcher."

What the hell?! Isn't the victim supposed to be me here?

He glanced sideways at the tiny old woman.

I knew it. There's no way someone her size hits that hard normally. There's gotta be a villain infiltrator in the infirmary, and it's her. Yeah, that would explain a lot. They sent her to finish the job while everyone's guard is down.

Recovery Girl watched him over her glasses, as if she'd just read his mind. Izuku swallowed.

…Although, now that I think about it, if she really were a villain, she probably would've cracked my spine open with that cane already. Better not test my theory.

"Yes, ma'am, whatever you say," he said, rubbing his head as the wariness lingered.

Two paramedics came over with a stretcher and tried to talk Midnight into letting them lift her onto it. She waved them off.

"Not a chance. Nemuri Kayama does not leave a battle lying down like a fish," she said, planting her palm on the car to push herself up. "A lady and a heroine has to look after her image, don't you agree, gentlemen?"

She got to her feet with effort, held it for two seconds, and her injured leg gave out. She stumbled sideways with a wince of pain, and before the paramedics could react, Izuku was already halfway up, catching her by the arm.

"Whoa! I've got you, I've got you…" he murmured, draping her arm over his shoulders. "Lean on me, Kayama-sensei. If we're gonna go down, better to do it together. It'll look way more heroic on the news."

"Heh… That youthful enthusiasm of yours is going to be the end of me one of these days…" she huffed, letting herself lean on him despite the obvious pain. "Though, honestly, you should be on a stretcher too."

"Ladies first."

Midnight let out a short laugh at that.

"Well, Midoriya… You know exactly what to say to a wounded woman."

"Then let's try to make it to the ambulance without causing a scene, shall we?"

The two of them limped toward the ambulance, one leaning on the other, while Recovery Girl trailed behind them grumbling about how stubborn young heroes had gotten.

A few meters away, Aizawa dragged his feet over toward Nezu, his eyes bloodshot to the rim and a thin line of dried blood running down his head.

"Principal, the prisoners are gone," he said flatly. "The rear compartment was empty when we checked it. Someone got them out during the explosion."

Nezu tilted his head and drummed a claw against his own arm.

"Oh, my… How fascinating. Four creatures capable of tying up five professional heroes; a truly impressive display. And yet, it seems winning was never the real point." He raised his gaze to the empty sky the winged Nomu had escaped through, and a small smile crossed his face. "They put on a thunderous performance for us while someone else took the opportunity to go through our pockets behind the scenes. Heh, heh… I must admit, distracting an opponent with a visible threat to hide the real play requires quite an ingenious mind. Almost elegant, I'd say."

"Elegant or not, they got away from us," Aizawa growled.

"For today, Aizawa-kun. Only for today." Nezu offered a polite smile. "We'll discuss this matter calmly a little later. In the meantime, I think it would be wise to have a specialist take a look at your eyes."

Off to one side of the crater, Mt. Lady was patting down her cut-covered arms while she stared at what was left of her suit, charred and torn in several places.

"I can't believe this," Mt. Lady complained, holding up a scorched piece of fabric between two fingers. "It was a limited edition! It cost me a fortune, and on top of that it had a custom lining… Now it looks like an old rag!"

She huffed, sweeping her hair back from her face with an indignant gesture.

"And, as if that wasn't enough, nobody here seems to remember who stayed and faced that giant monster all by herself. Seriously, a simple 'thanks, Mt. Lady' wouldn't kill anyone."

Kamui Woods tried to take a step toward her to say something reassuring, and the moment he lifted his arm, his whole body trembled with exhaustion and he ended up leaning against a bent post.

"M-Mt. Lady…" Kamui Woods murmured, his voice broken by fatigue. "The agency's insurance will cover the damage to the suit… so try not to worry too much… Just give me a minute… As soon as my body starts responding again, I'll congratulate you properly."

Mt. Lady snorted and crossed her arms, still holding the scorched scrap of fabric.

"Don't push it, Kamui. With that face of yours, if you try to stand up, you're going to kiss the floor."

Izuku opened his eyes in a white room, arm bandaged, eyebrow stitched, and an IV in the back of his hand. The gray morning light was coming through the window, and the bed next to his was empty.

Okay. I'm alive, in one piece, and in a bed that isn't made of rubble. My luck streak for the day finally switched sides.

The door flew open.

"IZUKU!"

Inko crossed the room and threw herself onto him before he could get a single word out. She hugged him so tightly that the air escaped his lungs in a strangled groan.

"M-mom… mom, my ribs…" he managed to get out, patting her arm. "I need… to breathe… please…"

"They called me from the hospital to tell me my son was injured!" Inko squeezed him even tighter, trembling. "I told you to be careful, I told you a thousand times!"

"And I was careful, mom, I swear… as much as I could…"

"AS MUCH AS YOU COULD?! THEN WHY ARE YOU IN A HOSPITAL?"

Behind Inko, a small figure poked her head in, bouncing on her toes, yellow eyes gleaming with excitement.

"Izukun!" Himiko said, slipping in beside the bed. "You look so cute like that! I love guys all torn up and covered in blood, you know? Does it hurt a lot? Did you lose a ton? Aaah, tell me, did you get to see how the blood came out or did you pass out first? I wanna know everything about you!"

"Himiko-san, I just woke up… could we start with a 'hi, glad you're alive'?"

"Hi, glad you're alive," she repeated obediently, without taking her eyes off the stitches. "Now will you tell me about the blood?"

"Ugh, forget it, blood freak," Izuku sighed.

"Himiko-chan, please!" Inko turned toward her, cheeks still damp. "My son is in a hospital bed and you're asking about puddles of blood!"

"But it's important information, Inko-san," Himiko defended herself, crossing her arms. "If he comes back from a fight this exciting and doesn't tell me anything, it's like he doesn't love me."

Toga, you were supposed to be worried about me, not taking notes for your future criminal career.

The door opened again, more gently this time, and a nurse pushed a wheelchair to the middle of the room. In it sat Midnight, her leg in a splint, two fingers bandaged, and a patch covering her injured eye, though her bearing was still perfectly dignified.

"Well, sorry for barging in at this hour," she said with a soft smile. "I snuck out of my room for a minute. I needed to see with my own eyes that the kid was still breathing."

Inko froze for an instant, looking back and forth between the heroine and her son.

"You're…" she began slowly. "You're my son's teacher."

"Nemuri Kayama," Midnight introduced herself with a small nod. "Though the news knows me by a different name."

Inko's composure cracked. Her hands started trembling again, this time in a different way.

"My son is a student," she said, her voice growing taut. "And I'm being told he ended up in this bed because he stepped in front of a monster to protect a professional heroine. You're the professional here… how did you let things get to that point?"

"Mom, listen to me for a second…" Izuku tried.

"No, Izuku, let me speak." Inko didn't take her eyes off Midnight, and the tears were welling up again. "I'm not blaming you, I don't know you, I don't know what happened out there. But my son could have died, and it's very hard for me to accept that he had to be the one to step forward for someone who was supposed to be protecting him."

"…You're right, Mrs. Midoriya," Nemuri murmured, lowering her gaze to the bandages covering her hands. The smile she'd been wearing since walking through the door vanished entirely. "And believe me, I'm not going to make excuses."

Inko took a moment to respond.

"I was the professional heroine. The adult. I was supposed to keep that thing away from Izuku and get him to safety. That was my job… and I didn't do it well."

She tightened her fingers over the bandages, unable to hold the mother's gaze for a few seconds.

"By the time I finally reacted, your son had already been fighting alone for far too long against something that should never have fallen on his shoulders. So if you need to blame someone, you can start with me."

Nemuri let out a bitter laugh, empty of all her usual mischief.

"Because I've been doing it myself all night."

Izuku pushed himself up a little in the bed, wincing at the pull in his ribs, and raised a hand.

"Okay, both of you, stop right there, because that's not how it went," he said with a firmness that surprised even his mother. "Mom, nobody forced me to do anything. I saw that Kayama-sensei needed time and I saw that thing heading straight for her. I could stand there and watch, or I could do something. I chose to do something. That was my decision and nobody else's."

"Izuku, that doesn't change the fact that…"

"Yes, it does." He smiled, looking his mother right in the eyes. "And there's more. During the fight I figured out a whole bunch of new things about how my Quirk works. Things I wouldn't have learned inside a classroom in a whole year. I came out of there wrecked, yeah, but I came out knowing way more than I did going in."

He turned to Midnight with a gentler smile.

"And about the failing thing… sensei, if you hadn't done everything you did, I wouldn't be here talking to them. The two of us came out of the whole group the worst off, and that's because you kept throwing yourself in the way until the very end. That's not called failing, sensei. That's called holding out to the end for somebody, no matter what."

Midnight looked at him for a long moment and let out a soft laugh.

"Izuku…" Nemuri murmured, watching him for a few seconds before letting out a tired laugh and shaking her head. "Mrs. Midoriya, I'm afraid you have a rather serious problem at home."

She turned her gaze back to Inko and offered a small smile.

"Your son has the annoying habit of not letting anyone carry the guilt for even five minutes. Not even when that person wants to wallow in her own tragedy for a bit."

She looked back at Izuku and added in a softer tone:

"Though I suppose that's precisely the kind of flaw that turns someone into a hero."

Inko looked at her son, then at the heroine, and the tension in her expression eased a little. She wiped her sleeve across her eyes and let out a sigh.

"Yes, he is," she admitted with a trembling smile. "He's always been like that, ever since he was little, incapable of just standing there while someone else was hurting." She turned to Midnight and dropped her guard a little. "Thank you for bringing him back to me. Even if I still don't like any of this one bit."

"It's only fair," Midnight replied. "He brought me back first."

The door cracked open and a blonde head peeked through the gap, a bandage across her forehead and an annoyed look on her face.

"Hey, I'm hurt over here too, you know?" Mt. Lady protested, limping in. "I ate a whole explosion, my favorite suit got reduced to ashes, and not a single person has come to bring me flowers! What's up with that? Where's my heartwarming scene, huh?"

"Takeyama, you always show up right in time to steal the spotlight," Midnight said, chuckling under her breath.

"Somebody's gotta do it if everybody else forgets!" Mt. Lady dropped into the only free chair and crossed her arms in a pout. "Next time there are monsters, I'm staying home, and they can fight each other."

Well… at least nobody's trying to kill me… yet.

The UA meeting room was silent when Nezu set his teacup down on the table and let his gaze travel over the teachers gathered there. Aizawa had bloodshot eyes and gauze on his head, Kamui Woods was propping his head up with one hand, and Snipe had leaned back in his chair with his hat pushed up. Present Mic was drumming on the table without saying a word, and at the back, huddled under an oversized coat, was All Might. Two chairs sat empty: Midnight and Mt. Lady were still in the hospital, too battered to attend.

"Thank you for coming in the state you're in," Nezu began, paws crossed on the table. "I'll be brief, though those who know me know that 'brief' isn't among my virtues."

A couple of tired smiles made their way around the table.

"After reviewing all the reports from last night, I've come to a conclusion I can't seem to shake," he continued. "The resemblance between those four creatures and the Nomu at the USJ is, frankly, too great to consider it a mere coincidence."

Snipe adjusted his hat with a finger.

"I'll back you up on that, Principal," he said calmly. "I've seen my fair share of strange characters over the course of my career, partner, but those four moved like a crew that had been drilled to perfection."

"Which brings me to the first point," Nezu nodded, tapping a claw against the table. "Manufacturing a creature at the USJ's level already required considerable resources. Manufacturing four of them, coordinating them by radio, and sacrificing them in a single operation is another scale entirely. We're not talking about impulsive criminals who just want to stir up chaos for fun. Behind this there's a considerable infrastructure: funding, research facilities, and above all, someone willing to wait as long as it takes to reach their goals."

"Are you saying this new League of Villains has that kind of backing?" Kamui Woods asked, straightening up in his chair. "That completely changes the type of threat we're dealing with."

"I'm afraid the situation is even more troubling than it appears," Nezu said, bringing a paw to his chin. "The speed and resources they used to recover those two prisoners suggest something important: I very much doubt there's a single mind directing this entire operation. A lone ringleader would hardly mobilize this many people and resources solely for two pieces on the board. No… everything points to several hands pulling the strings behind the League at once. What a fascinating matter… and, at the same time, so unsettling. It seems our adversary is far more complex than we imagined."

Aizawa leaned forward, planting his elbows on the table.

"There's another thing you should keep in mind," he said. "The other three creatures acted on instructions transmitted by radio. Every movement depended on a distorted voice telling them what to do."

He folded his arms before continuing.

"But the female was different. She was assessing the situation on her own, changing targets and adapting on the fly. She picked who to attack based on the circumstances. She wasn't waiting for orders."

Nezu stayed silent for a few moments, holding the cup in front of him.

"A creature capable of making autonomous decisions…?" he murmured, setting the cup back on the desk. "That is… disquieting."

His eyes narrowed slightly.

"A weapon that depends on someone else's orders is, in a way, still predictable. But when it can reason and adapt on its own, it stops being a mere tool. At that point, it doesn't need anyone to tell it what its next move will be."

From the back of the room, All Might shifted in his seat, his gaunt frame hidden under his coat. He spoke in a low voice, far from the booming tone he used in front of the cameras.

"Then what happened last night was never a battle," he said, fists clenching on his knees. "It was a distraction."

"Exactly, All Might," Nezu confirmed, and for a moment his courteous smile faded. "The whole attack, the four creatures, the destruction on the highway, the entire spectacle… They needed to force us to look in one direction long enough to get those two prisoners out without anyone noticing."

Toshinori lowered his gaze, finally grasping the sheer scale of the deception.

"And, unfortunately… they succeeded."

"An armored truck, escorted by a dozen patrol cars and helicopters," Snipe said, shaking his head. "And even so, they got them out clean. That's not something just anyone can pull off, Principal."

"No," Nezu agreed. "To empty that truck in the middle of the chaos, without leaving a trace, required someone with a very specific Quirk. Some form of stealth, or outright teleportation. Someone capable of getting in and out of a moving vehicle without any of you seeing them. And that someone, to my mind, is the real danger from last night."

Kamui Woods ran a hand down his face.

"If they really do have more creatures like those tucked away in some lab…" he said slowly.

"Then it's only a matter of time before they use them," Aizawa finished. "Last night it was five heroes against four enemies. And even so, we barely managed to contain the situation. If they let those things loose in a crowded area with civilians around, there won't be any room to react."

He paused briefly.

"The bottom line would be simple: too many casualties."

An uncomfortable silence settled over the table.

*****

All I'll say is, if you want more, look me up as Shurazero. See you soon!