Location: Kyoto Mountain Service Road, Private Charter Buses
Time: Twenty Minutes Ago | 11:40 AM
HUMMMMM.
Two sleek, silver buses rolled quietly up the winding two-lane mountain highway, their tinted windows reflecting the dense pine trees lining the road.
Inside the lead bus, Tenya Iida stood near the front windshield holding onto the overhead handrail, peering out at the empty asphalt ahead.
Sitting two rows back with a digital map open across her knees, Momo Yaoyorozu adjusted the small radio earpiece tucked into her left ear.
"...Honenuki, Kendo, can you hear me clearly on Bus Two?" Momo asked, tapping the tiny microphone on her collar.
[Loud and clear, Yaoyorozu,] Itsuka Kendo's voice crackled back from the second bus following thirty yards behind them. [Though I still think booking two separate forty-seater luxury buses was complete overkill.]
[Speak for yourself, Kendo!] Neito Monoma's voice cut in over the shared radio channel as he leaned over Juzo Honenuki's seat in the second bus. [Did you really expect Class 1-B to cram into the back of Class 1-A's bus like sidekicks borrowing cab fare?! Good thing Honenuki's family has corporate accounts with the transit company!]
[...Just keep your voice down back there, Monoma,] Honenuki sighed over the line, adjusting his bandana as he looked out the window of the second bus alongside Setsuna Tokage, Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu, second-year student Mawata Fuwa, and third-year student Yuyu Haya. [The automated driver system doesn't care about class rivalries, and you're giving me a headache.]
Up in the front seats of the first bus, third-year students Mirio Togata, Nejire Hado, and Tamaki Amajiki leaned over the center aisle to check the GPS coordinates on Izuku Midoriya's phone.
"...We're about four kilometers out from the Gunga mountain turnoff, Midoriya," Mirio said quietly, pointing a thumb toward the highway sign flashing past the window. "...Still, have you guys noticed the roads since we left Musutafu?"
Sitting beside the window with his chin resting on his fist, Shoto Todoroki nodded slowly.
"...We just crossed through three different prefectures in broad daylight," Todoroki murmured, his eyes scanning the empty intersections of a small mountain town below the highway bridge. "...Normally we'd pass at least a dozen local patrol agencies or traffic sidekicks by noon. I haven't seen a single cape since we got on the expressway."
"Me neither," Ochaco Uraraka whispered from the seat behind him, pressing her fingertips against the cool glass alongside Tsuyu Asui. "Even the local police boxes by the train stations had their shutters pulled down... it's like every single hero in Japan vanished off the streets at the same time."
"That's because the commission pulled the entire active registry into Jaku and Gunga," Midoriya said, his thumb tightening around his notebook cover as he looked down at the red markers on his screen. "When Mr. Aizawa and the teachers didn't even leave a backup instructor at the dorms, it meant the HPSC called an all-hands mobilization."
Back in the rear rows of the first bus, Katsuki Bakugo sat with his boots propped up against the empty seat cushion in front of him, glaring out the side window with his arms crossed.
Across the aisle, Eijiro Kirishima tapped his hardened knuckles together nervously while Mina Ashido, Denki Kaminari, and Hanta Sero checked the straps on their costume boots.
"...Man, my palms are actually sweating," Kaminari admitted, wiping his hands on his pants. "...Remember what Kendo and Iida said before we left the dorms, guys we're only here to watch the outer roads and help evacuate civilians if the fighting spills out of the mountains."
"Yeah, yeah, we heard the speech, Kaminari," Kirishima said, though a restless grin tugged at the corner of his mouth as he glanced over at Bakugo.
'Evacuating civilians comes first, obviously,' Kirishima thought, flexing his fingers inside his gauntlets. 'Still... after getting shut out of the Humarise raid when Hero X beat all twenty of us without breaking a sweat, I really hope a few stray villains run out toward our perimeter so we can show the pros how much stronger we've gotten.'
Sitting two seats ahead of them, Fumikage Tokoyami adjusted his dark cloak while Dark Shadow peeked out from his collar.
"...Don't underestimate the scale of what's waiting up ahead, Kirishima," Tokoyami warned quietly. "...For Hawks to cut off all contact with his agency for months, whatever is hiding inside that mountain isn't a normal gang of street thugs."
"I don't care if it's ten thugs or ten thousand," Bakugo growled, small sparks popping inside his heavy grenade bracers as the bus slowed down near an abandoned highway rest stop. "The teachers didn't tell us squat, and they thought a piece of paper about a barrier test would keep us locked in our rooms all weekend. Let's get off this damn bus before the pros finish everything without us again."
HISS.
Both charter buses pulled into the empty parking lot behind a row of tall cedar trees three kilometers below the mountain peak, their hydraulic doors folding open in unison.
--<>--
Time: Present | 12:05 PM
CRAAAASH!
Two miles up the forested valley, a deafening roar echoed across the mountain peaks as a massive cloud of gray dust and shattered roof tiles erupted into the bright noon sky.
Crouching low behind a rocky outcrop along the outer timberline ridge, all forty-five students from Class 1-A, Class 1-B, and the upperclassmen froze in their tracks, staring toward the distant plume of smoke rising above the trees.
"...Holy crap, the ground shook all the way out here!" Sero gasped, grabbing onto a pine branch to keep his balance.
"...That's Cementoss's Quirk!" Midoriya said, pulling a pair of compact binoculars up to his eyes and zooming in on the torn mountain ridge two miles away. "...He just peeled the entire roof off the underground cavern! Look at the cliff edges. Edgeshot, Kamui Woods, Yoroi Musha, and hundreds of pros are already surrounding the pit!"
"And look up in the middle of the sky above the smoke!" Nejire pointed excitedly, floating two feet off the pine needles beside Yuyu Haya and Mawata Fuwa. "That tiny white dot floating over the crater, that's Hero X!"
"All right, everyone stay low behind the ridge line!" Iida ordered in a hushed, urgent voice, waving his armored arm to keep the group crouched behind the rocks. "We're right at the two-mile boundary we agreed on! Jirou, Shoji, Koda, Tokage... Check the forestry roads and the cabins down the slope! How many civilians are still in the outer zone?"
Kneeling at the edge of the path, Kyoka Jirou plugged both of her earlobe jacks deep into the soil, while Mezo Shoji spread six of his tentacle arms out into the wind, morphing their tips into oversized ears and eyes.
Ten feet to their left, Setsuna Tokage recalled the twenty detached pieces of her eyes and ears that she had sent floating through the lower woods five minutes ago, while Koji Koda cupped his hands around a small mountain sparrow perched on his finger.
For thirty seconds, the only sound on the ridge was the distant rumble of Quirks clashing two miles away in the valley.
Then, slowly, Jirou pulled her jacks out of the dirt, her brows furrowing in total confusion.
"...There's nobody down there," Jirou said, looking back at Iida, Kendo, and Momo.
"...What do you mean, nobody?" Kendo asked, stepping forward with a frown. "...There's a logging village and three highway rest areas half a mile down the west slope."
"...I just flew my eyes through every single street in that logging village, Kendo," Setsuna replied, snapping her detached body parts back onto her shoulders with a bewildered look on her face. "...The houses are locked, the cars are gone, and there are yellow police tape barricades across the main road at the bottom of the hill."
"The birds say the police came through in vans at four in the morning and moved all the families to the city shelters," Koda whispered quietly, letting the sparrow fly back into the branches.
"My tentacles aren't picking up a single heartbeat within three kilometers of our position except for ours," Shoji confirmed, folding his extra arms back against his sides. "The commission already evacuated the entire mountain range hours before we even woke up."
"..."
"..."
Dead silence fell over the forty-five students crouched in the pine needles.
Looking down at the map glowing on her tablet, Momo slowly lowered the screen, her cheeks flushing slightly with embarrassment.
"...Of course they evacuated the outer towns first," Momo murmured, biting her lip. "...An operation conducted by the HPSC and the entire Top Ten wouldn't leave civilians sitting two miles away from a major battlefield... our whole reason for coming out here was already handled before dawn."
"Wait... so there's literally nobody out here for us to guard or evacuate?!" Mineta hissed, clutching his head with both hands. "Then we just broke out of a campus lockdown and rode two buses into the middle of nowhere for nothing?!"
"It isn't for nothing, you idiot!" Monoma yelled, pointing toward the massive cloud of dust billowing over Gunga Mountain Villa in the distance. "Listen to the noise coming from that crater! There have to be tens of thousands of villains down in those tunnels!"
Peering through his binoculars again, Midoriya watched a massive wave of liberation fighters pouring out of the breached cavern entrance while dozens of Pro Heroes clashed with them along the forest perimeter.
"...Monoma's right," Midoriya said, lowering his binoculars as he looked back at Mirio, Todoroki, and Bakugo. "...Even with hundreds of pros on the ridge, the sheer number of enemies coming out of the ground is huge! Some of those squads are already trying to break through the eastern tree line!"
CRACK!
Letting off a small burst of orange sparks from his right palm, Bakugo stood up from behind the boulder and started walking straight up the wooded incline toward the valley.
"Since there aren't any civilians around to trip over, we don't have an excuse to sit in the bushes anymore," Bakugo grinned fiercely over his shoulder. "Those extras trying to run through the eastern woods are headed straight toward our side of the mountain! Let's go bag 'em before the pros even notice!"
"Wait a second, Bakugo!" Iida hissed, lunging forward to grab at Bakugo's shoulder, only for Todoroki, Kirishima, and Tetsutetsu to step up onto the path right behind him.
"...If villains break past the pros' containment ring, stopping them is part of perimeter security, Iida," Todoroki said calmly, frost crystallizing along his right boot.
"Yeah, Kendo, we aren't running into the middle of the crater!" Tetsutetsu argued, pounding his iron chest with a wide grin. "We're just catching the guys leaking into the woods! Even Vlad King couldn't complain about that!"
Looking between the forty-five eager students and the distant smoke rising over the trees, Iida and Kendo hesitated for two seconds.
'We didn't receive any instructions or warnings from the teachers when they left us at the dorms,' Kendo thought, chewing her lip as she looked at Mirio and Nejire nodding beside her. 'And if enemy squads are really slipping into the forest toward the highway, turning our backs and walking away now goes against everything we learned at U.A.'
"...All right, listen up!" Iida whispered sharply, raising a hand as he gave in. "...We advance five hundred yards to the inner ridge line to intercept any escaping fugitives, nobody goes a single step closer to the main villa!"
"Yes!" Kaminari and Mina cheered under their breath, tightening their utility belts as all forty-five students turned toward the upper trail.
Bakugo took one single step up the ground slope.
Right at that exact second, a crisp, unmistakable sound echoed straight out of the quiet pine clearing ten feet behind the back row of students.
SNAP.
Every single member of Class 1-A froze solid in their tracks, their spines locking up as pure muscle memory from their twenty-on-one defeat the previous month shot straight through their nervous systems.
'...So soon?,' Bakugo thought, the hair on the back of his neck standing straight up as the sparks in his palms died out instantly. 'Wasn't he floating two miles away over the crater three seconds ago?!'
'That sound...' Midoriya swallowed hard, his eyes going wide as he slowly turned his head around.
Turning in unison on the trail, all forty-five students from Class 1-A, Class 1-B, the second year, and the third year stared back into the small shaded clearing between the pine trees.
Standing calmly on the pine needles with one hand tucked into the pocket of his spotless white slacks was Kaito, looking at the frozen group of teenagers with an amused, exasperated smile behind his glasses.
Right beside Kaito's left shoulder stood Toshinori Yagi in his baggy yellow suit, holding a half-folded paper map of Jaku City in his bony hands.
And standing on Kaito's right side was Principal Nezu, dressed in his miniature waistcoat and holding a steaming porcelain teacup and saucer neatly in his white paws.
Nobody in the woods made a single sound.
--<>--
Blink.
Blink.
Standing beside Kaito in the middle of the forest clearing, Toshinori Yagi looked down at the paper map in his hands, then up at the tall pine trees surrounding him.
"...Huh?" Toshinori muttered, his sunken blue eyes wide with confusion. "...Wait a moment, Hero X, weren't we just inside the HPSC mobile command tent ten miles south of here? Why did you suddenly..."
Beside him, Principal Nezu took a small, polite sip of his green tea before lowering the cup.
"...And I was sitting at my desk in Musutafu watching the live satellite feed with Recovery Girl two seconds ago," Nezu remarked cheerfully, his black eyes shifting forward as his furry ears twitched. "...Though looking at the crowd standing in front of us, All Might, I believe I can deduce why Hero X brought us out for some fresh mountain air!"
Following the principal's gaze, Toshinori looked up from his map and froze completely as his eyes landed on Izuku Midoriya, Katsuki Bakugo, Shoto Todoroki, Mirio Togata, and forty-one other U.A. High School students standing on the ground in full combat costumes.
PFTT!
A tiny puff of white steam shot out of Toshinori's mouth as he nearly dropped his tactical map onto the pine needles.
"...Y-Young Midoriya?!" Toshinori choked out, his voice cracking an octave higher as he pointed a trembling finger across the clearing. "...Young Bakugo?! Class A, Class B, and the Big Three?! What on earth are all forty-five of you doing in the middle of Kyoto during this time?!"
Over in the middle of the student group, Mineta's knees buckled, and he hid completely behind Shoji's leg, while Kaminari, Sero, and Hagakure looked like they wanted the ground to swallow them whole.
Letting out a light sigh, Kaito slid his right hand into his trouser pocket and looked down at Nezu and Toshinori.
"I felt forty-five familiar signatures hiking up the back of the mountain," Kaito said casually, gesturing toward the frozen teenagers with his chin. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Principal Nezu, Toshinori... didn't we agree in the commission weeks ago where that students aren't included?"
"...We certainly did!" Nezu replied, keeping his bright, polite smile fixed in place even as a sharp glint entered his eyes. "...Class Representatives Iida and Kendo and you as well, Mirio-kun! Care to explain how two entire hero classes and five upperclassmen teleported through our locked campus gates without a single security alarm going off?"
Stepping forward with his armored shoulders stiff as iron boards, Iida bowed at a perfect ninety-degree angle right beside Kendo, while Midoriya and Momo stepped up nervously alongside them.
"...We take full responsibility for this unauthorized deployment, Principal Nezu, All Might, Hero X!" Iida shouted at the top of his lungs, staring straight down at his boots. "...However, please allow us to explain how we uncovered the operation!"
"...Nobody leaked any classified files to us, sir," Midoriya said quickly, holding up his thirteenth analysis notebook with both hands. "...Over the past week, all of our work-study agencies suddenly canceled our shifts at the exact same time, while Nejire-senpai and Tamaki-senpai saw Fat Gum and Ryukyu loading field trauma kits into unmarked vans!"
"...And when Mr. Aizawa and Vlad King locked down the dorms yesterday claiming Power Loader was running a barrier calibration test, Tokage noticed the support labs were completely empty," Momo added, holding up her tablet. "...Once I saw the HPSC buying out my family's entire regional stock of blood plasma, Shoji and Jirou realized all the teachers had left the faculty dorms in the middle of the night, and we traced the chartered bus routes to Jaku and Gunga!"
"...We didn't come here to get in the pros' way or ruin the raid, All Might!" Mirio spoke up earnestly, stepping beside Midoriya with his hands clenched at his sides. "...Because the teachers left without telling us anything or leaving a single instructor behind, we realized every active hero in Japan was pulled into these two battles! We thought if the villain army scattered into the outer towns, there wouldn't be anyone left to protect the civilians!"
"...Except when we got here two minutes ago, our scouts found out the police already evacuated the whole mountain before sunrise," Kendo admitted sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck as her cheeks turned red.
Listening to the four students lay out their entire investigation from start to finish, Toshinori slowly closed his mouth, exchanging a long, helpless glance with Principal Nezu.
'Good grief... we kept them completely in the dark without a single word of warning because of the commission's blackout order,' Toshinori thought, rubbing the back of his neck while a reluctant swell of pride warmed his chest behind his stern expression. 'And with zero clues given to them, they pieced together the largest covert operation in Japanese history using pure observation and teamwork.'
Down beside Toshinori's knee, Principal Nezu took another sip of his tea, his whiskers twitching with quiet amusement.
'Using supply-chain logistics, acoustic scouting, and highway transit logs to pinpoint two black-ops staging grounds within six hours,' Nezu mused internally, genuinely impressed despite their rule-breaking. 'Part of the blame certainly lies with us on the faculty not telling these sharp young students with a flimsy excuse about a barrier test was bound to backfire!'
Clearing his throat, Toshinori forced a stern frown back onto his face and placed his hands on his hips.
"...Be that as it may, Young Togata, Young Midoriya!" Toshinori scolded, trying his hardest to sound angry. "...Even if the faculty left you without instructions, sneaking off campus in chartered buses and marching toward an army of fifty-four thousand villains without authorization is a massive mistake! What if you had run into an ambush on the highway?!"
"...We have no excuse, sir!" Iida and Kendo bowed again in unison. "...We are prepared to be teleported back to Heights Alliance immediately and accept whatever suspension the school sees fit!"
Behind them, Bakugo clicked his tongue loudly and looked away toward the trees, annoyed beyond belief that their whole trip had ended without throwing a single punch.
"Hold on, who said anything about sending you guys back to the dorms?" Kaito asked lightly.
All forty-five students blinked, raising their heads at the exact same time to look at the white-suited hero.
"...Wait, you aren't sending us back to school, Hero X?" Kirishima asked, his eyes lighting up with sudden hope. "...Does that mean you're gonna let us guard the forest after all?!"
Kaito let out a soft laugh, shaking his head as he pulled his right hand out of his pocket.
"Not a chance, kid," Kaito replied smoothly. "Think about it, if I snap my fingers right now and drop all forty-five of you back into your air-conditioned common room so you can eat potato chips on the couch and watch the news, that isn't a punishment. That's just giving you a free taxi ride home after you ditched school."
"...Huh?" Kaminari blinked, glancing nervously at Sero and Bakugo. "...Then what are you gonna do with us?"
"You guys spent all morning sneaking out here because you wanted to see a real war up close, right?" Kaito asked, a playful, knowing grin crossing his face as he raised his right hand and lined up his thumb and middle finger. "Then your punishment starts with front-row seats where you can't touch a single thing."
SNAP.
At the crisp sound of his fingers, a translucent grid of glowing blue geometric lines shot outward from Kaito's hand, wrapping around all forty-five students, Toshinori, and Principal Nezu in less than half a second.
WHOOSH!
Before anyone could gasp, the pine trees vanished beneath their boots.
In a single blink, the entire clearing folded upward into the sky, transforming into a wide, flat, two-dimensional transparent observation box floating a thousand feet in the air directly above the massive open crater of Gunga Mountain Villa.
"Whoa! we're floating right over the battlefield!" Uraraka yelped, dropping to her knees and pressing her hands against the crystal-clear, comic-shaded floor of the skybox.
Down below their feet, the entire panoramic view of Gunga Mountain Villa stretched out like a living map fifty-four thousand Paranormal Liberation Front soldiers clashing against hundreds of Pro Heroes across the shattered cavern, while Re-Destro, Dabi, Geten, and the other lieutenants rallied their troops near the stage.
At the same time, Kaito snapped his fingers a second time SNAP, opening a giant, twenty-foot-wide floating 2D window along the left wall of the skybox that displayed a live, high-definition feed of Mirko, Endeavor, Crust, Ryukyu, and Aizawa smashing through Doctor Garaki's Nomu laboratory beneath Jaku General Hospital!
"Is this two dimension?...We can see both Jaku Hospital and Gunga Mountain at the exact same time!" Midoriya breathed, scrambling up to the transparent front wall alongside Todoroki, Bakugo, and Mirio.
Pressing his gauntlet against the invisible barrier wall, Bakugo tried to push outward, only for his palm to flatten harmlessly against the boundary like a drawing inside a picture frame.
"Hey! Let us out of this damn box, you bastard!" Bakugo barked, glaring at Kaito standing near the edge of the frame.
"Nope, you're staying right inside my two-dimensional skybox until the dust settles," Kaito said cheerfully, resting a hand on the invisible frame. "None of the villains down there can see or hear this box, and no attacks can pass through it. Since you kids couldn't sit still at the dorms, you get to stand right here and watch how the adults clean up a warzone."
Standing beside the students with his teacup still balanced perfectly on its saucer, Principal Nezu raised a single white paw with a bright, cheerful smile.
"...And to make sure this unauthorized field trip serves an educational purpose, let's add U.A.'s official punishment on top of Hero X's!" Nezu announced happily, looking around at the forty-five frozen teenagers. "...Since you are all observing both battlefields from the best vantage point in Japan, every single student inside this box will write a fifty-page handwritten tactical analysis essay comparing the Jaku and Gunga raid formations due on Mr. Aizawa's and Vlad King's desks by eight o'clock Monday morning!"
"F-fifty pages handwritten?!" Kaminari, Mina, Sero, and Tetsutetsu screamed in unison, their faces turning pale with horror.
"...Furthermore, for the next thirty days, all automated cleaning robots in the Heights Alliance dorms and main school building will be shut off!" Nezu continued, his eyes crinkling into happy crescents. "...All forty-five of you will scrub every hallway, bathhouse, and cafeteria dish by hand after school with zero Quirk usage permitted!"
"A whole month of scrubbing dishes by hand?!" Monoma gasped, dropping to his knees beside Honenuki in sheer despair. "Curse you, Class 1-A! Look what you dragged us into!"
"You're the one who insisted on renting a second bus to follow us, Monoma!" Kendo groaned, burying her face in her hands.
Laughing softly at their reactions, Kaito turned toward the outer edge of the floating skybox and stepped one foot out into the open, three-dimensional sky above Gunga Mountain Villa.
"Oh, and don't pack away your costumes yet," Kaito called back over his shoulder, offering Bakugo, Midoriya, and the others an easy, relaxed wink as the wind caught his dark necktie. "Once the pros and I finish wrapping up these guys, I'm dropping all forty-five of you right down into the ground so you can spend the rest of the afternoon hauling rubble and carrying handcuffs directly in front of Mr. Aizawa."
"..." Every student.
--<>--
A/n: I'm back. Though it still hurts. I managed to get back up. I'm gonna miss you granny.
--<>--
Support the journey here:
patreon.com/Dr_Chad
(9 Advanced Chapters)