Chapter 6: Press, Paranoia, and a Perfectly Polished Floor
The financial fallout of the Battle Trial was, in a word, astronomical. The simulated building in Ground Beta was not merely damaged; it was structurally compromised to the point of complete demolition. A board of U.A.'s investors and accountants sat in a sterile meeting room, their faces grim as they reviewed the multi-million-yen damage report. At the head of the table, Principal Nezu sat serenely, sipping his tea.
"The sheer force of Young Bakugo's Quirk was far beyond our initial projections," one of the accountants lamented, wiping sweat from his brow. "This level of destruction is unprecedented for a first-year exercise."
Nezu placed his cup down with a delicate clink. "Unprecedented, yes. But not unforeseen."
The room fell silent. Nezu's paws steepled in front of him. "In fact, our new Risk Assessment and Structural Integrity Consultant, Saitama-san, had flagged that very building for 'potential vibrational stress intolerance' just this morning. His report was quite… succinct, but his conclusion was clear." He slid a simple piece of paper across the table. In Saitama's messy handwriting were the words: "Building C looks a bit wobbly."
The board stared at the note. Nezu's genius was in his ability to weave the most ridiculous truth into an unassailable corporate narrative. "His timely intervention," Nezu continued, "prevented what could have been a truly tragic accident. The building's failure served as a perfect, if costly, real-world test of our emergency protocols. In that sense, this was not a disaster, but a successful audit."
The mood in the room shifted from despair to grudging admiration. The narrative was secured. The budget would be approved. And the legend of the mysterious, prescient consultant grew.
Meanwhile, the subject of this legend was facing a trial of his own: paperwork. Shota Aizawa had been tasked with getting Saitama's official statement on his intervention during the Battle Trial. He found him in the staff lounge, meticulously cleaning the coffee machine.
"Saitama," Aizawa began, his voice flat with exhaustion. "I need your official report on the incident at Ground Beta."
Saitama finished wiping a smudge off the chrome casing and turned. "The report?"
"Yes. For the record. Just tell me what happened, from your perspective." Aizawa held a pen and a report form, ready to transcribe.
Saitama thought for a long, silent moment. "Okay. I was trimming the hedges. They were uneven on the left side. Then there was a loud noise. The ground shook. It messed up my straight line." He paused. "Then I saw the building was breaking. A big piece was falling. It was going to make a dusty mess on the path I had just swept."
Aizawa's pen remained motionless. He was not writing.
"So I went inside," Saitama continued. "I caught the rock. It was heavy. I turned it into dust so it would be easier to sweep up later. Then I told the two noisy kids to stop making a mess." He nodded, satisfied with his summary. "That's it."
Aizawa stared at him. The man's entire motivation, in the face of lethal danger, was janitorial convenience. He felt a familiar throbbing behind his eyes. He took a deep breath and began to write, translating Saitama's statement into the only language the administration would understand. "Consultant Saitama, while performing routine environmental analysis, detected seismic anomalies originating from Ground Beta," he wrote. "He proceeded to the scene to investigate. Upon arrival, he identified an imminent structural failure and took immediate, decisive action to neutralize the primary threat—a multi-ton concrete projectile—thus ensuring the safety of all students and staff in the vicinity…"
The next day, the consequences of All Might joining the U.A. faculty came home to roost. The main gate of the school was besieged by a swarm of reporters, anchors, and cameramen, a hungry pack of wolves desperate for a soundbite from the Symbol of Peace. It was a chaotic, impenetrable wall of bodies.
It was also directly in the path of Saitama's route to the local grocery store. Today was Tuesday—the day of the big cabbage sale.
He tried to push through the crowd, his expression one of mild annoyance. "Excuse me. Pardon me. Trying to get through."
The reporters, focused on bigger fish like Iida and Uraraka, shoved him aside without a second glance. He was just part of the background, another faceless staff member. The indignity of it was less offensive than it was inconvenient. The sale ended at noon.
Suddenly, a high-pitched alarm began to shriek across the campus. The massive U.A. Barrier, the school's state-of-the-art security gate, began to groan. Before everyone's eyes, the thick titanium alloy of the gate turned to gray, crumbling dust, disintegrating into nothing.
Panic erupted. The reporters screamed. The students were herded back inside by the teachers. Aizawa and Present Mic rushed to the front, their expressions grim. Someone had breached U.A.'s defenses. A villain.
Saitama stood in the middle of the chaos, having been knocked back by the initial surge of the panicked crowd. He looked at the empty space where the gate used to be. He saw the piles of fine, metallic dust settling on the pristine cobblestones he had power-washed just yesterday. He looked at the path leading to the supermarket, now blocked by a school-wide security lockdown.
His face, usually a mask of placid boredom, tightened into a look of genuine, profound frustration.
He had missed the cabbage sale.
As Aizawa's eyes scanned the scene, searching for any sign of the intruder, he saw a baffling sight. There, amidst the panic, was their new consultant. He wasn't looking for villains. He wasn't assuming a defensive posture. He had picked up a long-handled dustpan and a broom from a nearby janitorial closet and had begun, with a grim and focused determination, to sweep up the remains of their multi-million-yen security gate.