Hey Guys.
It's been a week. Meaning it's time for new chapters.
Hope you have all adjusted, because I am dropping another warning again.
For this new chapter, There is not going to be anything jarring but there is going to be something that probably makes no sense to you guys.
So with the stuff that happened last time, I want you guys to please be calm, ask questions for anything you don't understand and wait patiently for the following chapters. Because I am not going to do another Mass release no matter what happens this time unless the stone goals are met.
Hope you enjoy.
....
MUSTAFU, JAPAN
The next day rolled in quicker than I expected.
The bell rang and the room filled with the usual shuffling of chairs, notebooks, and sleepy voices. Present Mic strolled in with his usual grin, sunglasses reflecting the overhead lights.
"YOOOO! CLASS 1-A! Who's ready for some English?" he shouted, dropping a thick folder onto the desk.
"No... Not this again."
Kaminari's despairing voice reached my ears. "To think even the Hero Course wasn't spared from language class."
Mineta sighed, his tone almost tearful.
Frankly, I understood why.
English, being the universal language, was mandatory regardless of country. That was fine in other places. Here in Japan, it was practically like learning a completely new language.
No surprise some were distressed. A distress I fortunately wouldn't be sharing with them. I slid my notes back into my bag. Not because I was lazy—well, maybe a little—but mostly because I didn't need to be here.
Yaoyorozu glanced over. "You're not taking notes?"
"Nope," I said, slinging my bag over my shoulder.
"Where are you going?" Ashido asked, half-turning in her seat.
"To the exit, my pink mademoiselle."
I said this in the best French accent I could muster.
Barely finishing, Mineta leaned forward, pointing an accusing finger. "Hey, that's not fair! We're all stuck here, and you get to leave?!"
"I don't take English with you guys," I said simply. "Already finished the required coursework. Remember?"
Mineta's jaw dropped. "WHAT?! But we're still in first year!"
I raised an eyebrow.
Was this guy even listening to Aizawa's explanation yesterday? Luckily, I didn't need to explain again.
Present Mic snapped his fingers. "Ohhh yeah, I remember getting that memo! My man Ken, completing studies ahead of schedule! That's hardcore."
"So hold on! He just gets to leave while we suffer?"
"I believe I do." I smirked widely, finding the situation oddly satisfying. "See ya."
"Anyway!" Present Mic clapped his hands, turning back to the board. "Seats, everyone. Ken, see you around."
I gave him a nod and stepped out.
The sounds of the classroom—scraping chairs, groans, Mineta still muttering—faded behind me as I walked down the hall. My smile faded too, replaced with a pensive expression that bordered on grim. The results of yesterday's analysis were still fresh in my mind.
Yesterday's discovery wasn't something I could just file away in the "deal with later" folder. Having an alert telling me my brain had been tampered with wasn't exactly the kind of thing you ignore.
So it was no surprise Mom noticed and called me out for acting strangely when she got home yesterday. As subtle as I tried to be, my actions practically went against the cool, composed persona I usually maintained in front of a woman who could spot a wrinkle in my shirt from across the house.
To be fair though, it was hard to have an appetite when you knew someone was messing with your mind but didn't know who, how, or when. So despite my attempt to act normal, I was panicking. No surprise there either.
If there was one thing a transmigrator hated more than finding themselves in a cliche protagonist or villain situation, it was mind control. The possibility of having my greatest secret revealed and being manipulated all this time was driving me insane. Thankfully, I was able to piece together vital information from the analysis that gave my restless mind some peace.
One: The nature of this mental intrusion. Behavioral inhibition marker. Passive command layering. Brainwashing adjacent. This wasn't mind reading or memory manipulation like I initially feared.
Two: Dormant status. Interference likely pending external trigger. Meaning whoever implanted it hadn't used it yet and had placed it for future use.
Three: Integration timeframe: less than eighteen hours. Meaning it was extremely recent. I quickly retraced my whereabouts eighteen hours prior.
I got my answer. The park.
Just before I went home and had my surprise party.
That feeling of unease I'd previously dismissed as paranoia. It all clicked, sending a shiver down my spine. Ladies and gentlemen, I had been brainwashed.
Someone had buried a mental command deep into my neural pathways, set to flip me into a good little soldier on command.
The closest example that came to mind was The Winter Soldier from Marvel, or Superboy from DC.
How exactly? I wasn't sure.
Thankfully, I had clues for that too. Foreign Quirk Signature. Type: Radio-wave induced Neuro-link.
Part of me wanted to laugh at how sci-fi that sounded. The rest of me just wanted it out of my head.
My first thought was to find my homeroom teacher, Eraserhead. That plan died pretty quickly though. The logic was simple—since my Meta Eye flagged it as a quirk phenomenon, I wanted to test whether Aizawa's Erasure Quirk would eliminate it entirely.
But I quickly realized why it wouldn't work.
Eraserhead's Quirk didn't remove quirk damage—it only shut off an ability's active effects while being maintained. If a quirk left behind a lingering alteration or embedded something into a person's biology or neural pathways, his gaze wouldn't magically undo it. It would be like trying to erase a bullet wound by turning off the gun.
Even if it was still an active effect, walking up to him with "Hey, could you stare at me and see if anything's wrong with my brain?" wasn't exactly a low-profile move. That would lead to questions. Surveillance. Medical scans. The whole staff watching me like a lab rat. And if whoever did this was still keeping tabs, they'd know the instant I was onto them.
If Aizawa couldn't help, that left my second option: find someone who could.
Which is how I ended up heading toward the Support Course. Class 1-A was stuck in English right now, which meant I had a whole free period to myself.
Let it be said: U.A. was terrifyingly well-funded.
The main Hero Course building was impressive enough, but the Support Department? Different breed.
Still, it was much quieter than I'd initially imagined. No sparks flying in the background. Nothing exploded down the hall, and there weren't any rogue creations chasing down their makers. It honestly seemed peaceful.
Was that odd?
Maybe, but that was coming from the guy who was expecting mad scientists everywhere, cackling maniacally as they obsessed over their creations, so who was I to judge.
"Hey! That's my concussion stockpile!"
I passed by a student dragging a wheelbarrow full of what looked like rocket legs, only for another one to shout after them.
Having a destination in mind but not knowing exactly how to get there, I asked for directions. Finally, I reached my goal.
Standing before a lab with a half-rusted "Design Lab" sign crookedly bolted to the wall, partially melted on one side.
I knocked once.
No answer.
I knocked again.
Still nothing.
So naturally, I opened the door.
And instantly ducked.
BOOM.
A mechanical limb shot past my head like a sentient battering ram. Something sparked, a puff of steam hissed from the left corner, and the overwhelming scent of oil, ozone, and burnt plastic hit me like a punch to the face.
"HA! YOU WORKED!" someone yelled triumphantly.
I peeked inside.
There, standing over a mess of mechanical parts, was a pink-haired madwoman in grease-stained overalls and safety goggles that probably hadn't been cleaned since the first semester.
"Hi," I said flatly. "Should I be worried that your arm just tried to kill me?"
Mei Hatsume spun around.
Her eyes lit up the instant she spotted me, and in true Mei fashion, she ignored my question entirely.
"Ooooh! A live volunteer!"
"...That's not an answer."
Before I could back away, she zipped over with startling speed, skidding to a stop right in my personal space. I caught the faint smell of soldering metal and engine grease.
"Hmm. Decent build. Good posture. Hands aren't calloused—ohhh..." She grabbed me and began feeling me all over without any embarrassment. A feat I unfortunately couldn't reciprocate.
Mei Hatsume. Support Course genius. One of the more memorable characters I knew quite well from the anime.
I'd known what her character would be like, but experiencing her enthusiasm and zero awareness of personal space firsthand was a bit overwhelming.
"Interesting! You sure have a whole lot of muscle under that uniform, don't you?"
I blinked. "Do you interrogate everyone who walks into your lab like this?"
"Of course! Can't waste time—you never know when someone's secretly a valuable test subject!" she said cheerfully, still examining me like I was a special toaster.
I broke away from her, my eyes glowing red as I used my Meta Eye to scan the room for surveillance cameras. It pinged a dozen potential quirk tools and concealed mechanisms around the room—micro-drones stacked like poker chips, a spring-loaded harness hanging from the ceiling, and what looked disturbingly like a turret tucked behind a pile of cushions.
No surveillance devices online though.
Good.
"I'm actually here because I need—"
"An upgrade?" Mei interrupted, her grin stretching. "Something flashy? Or subtle? Maybe both! Do you need hidden cannons? Spring-loaded shoes? A multi-form transforming bo staff? Ooo, maybe you want my latest baby—compact, wireless, AND doubles as a—"
"—a brainwave filter," I cut in, my eye twitching.
That stopped her mid-rant. Well, for exactly two seconds.
"Brainwave filter?! You've definitely got my attention now. Sit, sit, sit!" She pointed to a chair.
It looked like it was one bad weld away from collapsing. Today was just the second day of school. How was that even possible?
"Um... No thanks. I think I'll stand."
"Suit yourself. Well, what're we filtering? Tracking signal? Sleep patterns? Subliminal mind control commands?"
"...Let's call it 'mental interference,'" I said. "Background noise I want gone."
"Is that so..." Mei's eyes narrowed like she was trying to see the noise itself. "Ooooh. Neurological junk data, huh? Interesting. Could be electromagnetic bleed, sensory overflow, latent quirk feedback—" She gasped. "Or! A secret quirk drawback you don't want on record!"
Well, that saved me a whole lot of explaining. Still, I gave her my best deadpan. "A privacy concern."
That didn't deter her in the slightest. She pulled a welding mask up onto her forehead and grabbed a penlight, leaning closer.
"Well, you're in luck, mystery boy. Mei Hatsume is on the job. I'll need to map your baseline brainwave activity first so I can calibrate the—"
"Yeah, no," I cut her off.
She blinked. "...No?"
"I'm not handing over my brain to science," I said flatly. "Not even for science with your... eyebrows."
She tilted her head, half insulted, half intrigued. "Then how am I supposed to make something that won't fry your brain while it's filtering out the bad stuff?"
I let out a small sigh, then tapped my temple and activated my quirk. A second later, a shimmering 3D display burst to life in the air between us—translucent, shifting lines and pulses mapping out a perfect brainwave model, projected in crisp holographic detail.
Mei gasped so loudly it was almost theatrical. "Is that—? Did you just—? That's your quirk, isn't it?"
"Part of it, yes," I confirmed.
"Hah. So I was right."
This was going to be easier than I thought.
"Holographic display included. You can't copy it, steal it, or sell it to the highest bidder. But you can use it to build what I need without hooking me up to some mad scientist EEG machine."
Her grin stretched again, even wider than before. "Oh, you are my favorite kind of client."
"Client?" I echoed.
"Yup! And don't worry, I'll even give you the second-day-of-school discount. Now, hold still while I—"
"Still standing," I reminded her, eyeing the death trap she called a chair.
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