The light in Nezu's private office was different from the rest of the bunker. It was soft, filtered through thick, reinforced glass that looked out over the desolate, fortified grounds of UA. The sun was beginning to dip, casting long, jagged shadows across the training grounds that looked like bars on a cage.
Nezu sat behind a desk made of dark, polished mahogany, his small paws gliding over a translucent glass interface. Beside him, Shota Aizawa stood like a shadow, his capture scarf draped loosely around his neck, his eyes fixed on the digital roster hovering in the air.
"The teams are finalized, Shota," Nezu said, his voice clipped and precise. "I've balanced them based on quirk compatibility, tactical versatility, and, most importantly, psychological friction."
Aizawa's eyes scanned the list until they hit a specific line. He went still. "Midoriya and Bakugo."
"Correct."
"No," Aizawa said, his voice a low, warning rumble. "Absolutely not. I just sentenced them to a week of manual labour for nearly levelling a dormitory hallway. Their relationship isn't just a 'friction,' Nezu. If you put them in the 'Box' together under high-stress stimuli, they won't just fail the exam. They'll tear each other apart before the 'Monster' even finds them."
Nezu didn't look up. He swiped a finger, and a video file played in the corner of the screen, footage of the Tokyo Massacre, showing civilians screaming as they were trapped behind fallen rubble.
"On the outside, Shota, the villains do not check your compatibility before they attack," Nezu said, his black eyes reflecting the cold blue light of the screen. "Shigaraki does not care if Midoriya and Bakugo are on speaking terms. If they are cornered by a High-End Nomu, they will either work together or they will be buried together. I would rather they learn to choke down their pride in a controlled simulation than have to watch their funeral because they couldn't agree on a formation."
Aizawa let out a long, weary sigh, the sound of a man who had been fighting a losing battle against logic for years. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "It's a disaster waiting to happen. But I suppose 'disaster' is the new curriculum."
He shifted his weight, his expression darkening. "Speaking of disasters... did you manage to get through to All Might? Did you tell him about what Recovery Girl found? About his quirk, 'Adaptability'?"
Nezu's expression shifted. His snout twitched, and for a brief second, he gnashed his teeth, a rare, animalistic display of genuine agitation. "I attempted to. However, I had to cut the transmission. I have reason to believe our internal and external communications have been compromised."
Aizawa's hand went instinctively to his capture scarf. "The Commission? Are they bugging the bunker?"
Nezu shook his head, his whiskers quivering. "No. This is far more... grassroots. And far more annoying. My algorithms detected a frequency bleed originating from Musutafu. It's not a government agency. It's a civilian."
He tapped a key, and a surveillance photo appeared on the screen. It showed a young man, perhaps nineteen or twenty, sitting in a messy dorm room at a local college. He was a mutant-type, his head was an organic, flesh-and-bone structure shaped exactly like an antique 1950s radio box, with a mesh 'mouth' and two tuning knobs where ears should be.
"His name is Teruo Matsui," Nezu said. "A second-year communications student. His quirk is called 'Radio Host.' It allows him to act as a living antenna. He can intercept, decrypt, and even re-route digital signals and text messages within a two-mile radius. He's been skulking around the perimeter of the evacuation zones, likely selling 'leaked' info to underground tabloids or, worse, LOV affiliates."
"A college kid with a radio for a head is the reason we can't talk to the Symbol of Peace?" Aizawa's voice was laced with venom.
"He is highly efficient," Nezu admitted, though it clearly pained him. "He's been bouncing his signal off low-orbit satellites to mask his location. If I try to shut him down digitally, he simply shifts his frequency. To get him out of our hair permanently, we need him in a cell. But I can't just send a strike team to grab him without cause. The Commission would accuse us of 'mutant profiling' to further strip UA of its autonomy."
Aizawa leaned against the wall, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the photo of Teruo Matsui. "So we need to catch him on something else. Something Detective Tsukauchi can process without a political circus."
"Exactly," Nezu said. "I considered a 'Canary Trap', leaking fake information about All Might's location to see where the data travels and then arresting him for conspiracy. But with the HPSC breathing down our necks, even a sting operation is a liability. They're looking for any excuse to claim I've lost control of the school's security."
Aizawa straightened up, his neck cracking with a sharp pop. "Don't bother with a leak. Logistics like this are a headache, and I'm already over my limit. I'll handle it. I'll go to Musutafu tonight. I won't arrest him. I'll just... remind him that some frequencies carry a very high price. I'll scare the 'Radio' right out of his head."
Nezu gave a small, dignified nod. "I would appreciate that, Shota. Minimal paperwork is preferred."
The mouse-like principal turned back to his screen, his paws flying across the interface again. "As for All Might... I managed to send a single, high-burst encrypted burst before I detected the intercept. He received the alert. He says he will prepare himself and arrive at UA just before the Special Exams begin. He intends to act as a 'Wild Card' in your 'Monster in a Box' scenario."
Aizawa grunted. "Great. Another variable. And we still haven't told him that his own quirk is the reason his body is resetting into a mangled wreck every day. The man is going to lose his mind when he realizes his 'quirkless' origin story was a lie told to him by his own biology."
"We will speak with him when he arrives," Nezu said, his voice final. "Until then, focus on the students. If Midoriya and Bakugo are to be our 'Champions,' they need to survive the Box. And you, Shota, need to make sure they don't kill each other before the first siren wails."
Aizawa turned toward the door, his mind already drifting to the dark alleys of Musutafu and the trembling 'Radio Host' he was about to hunt.
"I'll scare the kid," Aizawa muttered, half to himself. "And then I'll get ready to play babysitter to two boys who hate each other almost as much as the villains hate them. This is going to be a long week."
___
The morning did not begin with the sound of an alarm for Teruo Matsui. It began with the hum.
To anyone else, the air in the cramped Musutafu dorm room was silent, save for the distant rumble of the city. But to Teruo, the world was a thick, vibrating soup of invisible threads. As he sat up, the organic mesh that served as his mouth let out a soft burst of white noise, a mechanical yawn. His head, a rectangular, bone-hard structure reminiscent of a 1950s vacuum-tube radio, felt heavy on his neck. He reached up, his fingers brushing the two brass-like knobs where a human's ears would be, and gave the left one a slight click to the right.
The world sharpened.
He could hear the neighbour's morning news broadcast through the wall, not through the speakers, but through the raw signal floating in the air. He could feel the frantic, high-frequency pulses of the local 5G towers and the low, steady drone of the municipal power grid.
Teruo pulled on a nondescript gray hoodie, pulling the cowl over his radio-head to avoid the inevitable stares he got as a mutant-class citizen. He lived a quiet life. He was a second-year at Musutafu University, a boy who studied communications and kept his grades in the comfortable middle. He bought his coffee at the same kiosk, sat in the back of the same lecture halls, and never raised his hand.
He was a ghost in a world made of signals.
By noon, the day felt perfectly, boringly normal. He was sitting in the university courtyard, a half-eaten sandwich in his lap, watching a group of first-years argue about the latest "Harvest" leaderboard rankings, which were still oddly all at zero. The air was filled with the usual digital chatter, students texting about exams, parents calling to check in, the frantic pings of social media.
Then, his burner phone buzzed in his pocket.
It wasn't a signal he "heard" with his quirk, it was a physical vibration against his thigh. He pulled the cheap plastic device out. It had no SIM card, no GPS, and no history.
[Unknown]: You are being observed.
Teruo's knobs twitched. A cold, sharp needle of ice slid down his spine. He didn't look up. He didn't scan the rooftops or the crowds. He knew better. If someone was watching him they were already behind his guard. His hand shook, just a fraction, as he tapped the screen. He didn't panic, panic caused signal leakage. He forced his breathing to remain rhythmic, like a steady AM frequency.
A second message followed immediately.
[Unknown]: Do not worry. There is another task for you. High priority.
Teruo swallowed hard. He scrolled down. The header of the attached file made his organic "valves" hum with a sudden, anxious heat.
[FILE: TARGET DATA - IZUKU MIDORIYA & KATSUKI BAKUGO - UA CLASS 1-A]
Teruo stared at the names. Everyone in the country knew those names now. They were the boys from the Sports Festival massacre. They were the center of that madness.
He turned off the phone, the screen turning black and reflecting his mesh mouth. He tucked it deep into his pocket and stood up, his sandwich forgotten on the bench.
The rest of the day was a blur of forced normalcy. He went to his afternoon lab, his fingers moving mechanically as he soldered circuit boards. He walked through the grocery store, picking up a carton of milk he didn't really need. He acted like a boy who wasn't a spy. He acted like a boy who wasn't terrified.
As the sun began to set, casting long, bruised shadows across Musutafu, Teruo made his way back to his apartment complex. It was a utilitarian building, the kind of place where people didn't know their neighbours' names.
He stopped at the entrance, his hand hovering over the key-card scanner. His quirk flared, his internal antenna scanning for "static" the tell-tale digital footprint of a hero's surveillance equipment.
Nothing. Just the usual hum of the city.
He swiped his card, the light turning green with a soft beep, and walked inside. He climbed the stairs to the third floor, his sneakers squeaking on the linoleum. Inside his room, he locked the door, slid the deadbolt, and didn't turn on the lights.
He sat on his bed in the dark, the only light coming from the glowing "Power" indicator on his own chest. He reached up and turned the tuning knobs on his head until the white noise in his brain finally went silent.
"I never thought it would come to this," he whispered, his voice sounding like a recording played through an old speaker. "Repaying that small, yellow devil in such a way..."
He thought of the deal he'd made. He thought of the person, that diminutive, golden-eyed nightmare, who had found him when he was starving, who had "fixed" his frequency when his quirk was tearing his mind apart. He had thought it was a kindness. He had thought he was being saved.
Now, he was a mole. He was a parasite feeding on the signals of the most prestigious hero school in the world, a boy risking a life sentence in Tartarus... or any other prison now that the main hellhole was destroyed... for a debt he could never fully settle.
"Spying on UA..." Teruo leaned forward, burying his radio-head in his hands. "I never would have done something like this on my own. I just wanted to be a student. I just wanted to be normal."
It was the life he was trapped in.
"God," he muttered into the dark. "I should have just stayed out of it. I should have kept my head down."