BNHA: Undying (Ch 74) (Patreon)

“What’s this I hear about you waving a knife around during lunch?” Aizawa demands before I can even return to class, having wrapped me up in his scarf and dragged me to this empty classroom. On a desk next to him is my recently confiscated knife.

“You know, if we lived in a hentai world this would be going very differently.” I say casually. He doesn’t respond, just continuing to glare at me, causing me to sigh with a roll of my eyes. “Well if you must know: some students were being nosy, so I subtly encouraged them to mind their own business.” I cock my head as I look at him. “Speaking of, are you a close minded person who doesn’t treat Dark Shadow as a person?”

My seeming non sequitur seems to surprise him enough that he responds to that before continuing his interrogation. “Dark shadow is a quirk.” He shakes his head. “Don’t try to change the subject. Where’d you get the knife?”

“Hmm.” I hum as I bounce my head side-to-side before stating with a completely straight face, “I pulled it out of my ass.”

He scowls, tightening his scars as his hair starts floating and his eyes turn red. He really likes to use his quirk for intimidation purposes, doesn’t he. “I’m in no mood for games. We confiscated all the knives you had on you when we brought you in, and I know you couldn’t have gotten it at lunch. So where’d you get it?”

I smirk, making heavy eye contact. “I literally pulled it out of my ass. UA didn’t do a cavity search~!” I mock in a lilting tone.

He doesn’t blink as he maintains his glare. “Take this seriously.” I say nothing, only continuing to smirk at the hero as realization slowly dawns on his face. “You aren’t joking?” I slowly start laughing as his face twists into disgust. “That’s disgusting.”

“Effective though!” I continue laughing as Aizawa unravels his scarf, returning it back to around his neck. He goes to grab the knife before thinking better of it and just picking up the entire desk instead.

“Go to class. You have Heroics up next.”

He walks towards the door, not even hesitating to walk through it as I shout after him in an amused tone, “Are you sure you don’t want to check for more!? Who knows what I have up there!”

“I’ll let Recovery Girl know to expect you after school,” he throws over his shoulder before speeding up his pace.

I snort as I walk down the hall at a more leisurely pace. Sure, I don’t have anything else hiding in my butt, but there’s no way he would know that. For all he knows I could have a grenade up there and am planning to pull the pin when I get back to the classroom! I can’t help butt tsk at how lax he is regarding his students’ safety just because he doesn’t want to do a cavity search. Butt I guess that is something more typically handled by police than heroes.

Heh.

I walk into the classroom with a smile on my face, ignoring the way Kachan immediately jumps to his feet only to be restrained by… Kirishima? Or am I thinking of the city? Eh, I’ll find out if I’m wrong later. But regardless of his name, I admire how easy it is for him to calm a wild animal.

I kick my feet up and lean my chair back while waiting for the next class to start. Now that I think of it, I wonder who the teacher is? I extend my leg a bit farther so I can look at the person behind me without turning around. It’s a girl with long green hair and a neutral expression. “So, who’s the Heroics teacher?”

She blinks at me before answering, both of us ignoring the way Iida complains and chops his hands next to her. I wonder if more than his legs have artificial parts? “All Might is the one who teaches that class, kero.” She puts her finger on her cheek and tilts her head at me while I freeze. “Shouldn’t you know that since you guys attacked the USJ because he would be there? Well, he was supposed to, kero.”

I let my chair fall back to the floor as I swing around to look at her properly. “Say sike right now.”

She blinks, poking her tongue out the side of her mouth as she tilts her head to the other side. “Sike, kero?”

I groan, eyeing the windows. “If I defenestrated myself, do you think it would get me out of the lesson? Or would I get in more trouble for stabbing the prick?”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure murder is almost always worse.”  Little Miss Alien Queen sitting to the girl’s left says tentatively. “What’s ‘defenestrate’ mean anyways?”

“It means thrown out a window.” I explain, letting out a huff as I slap my knees and get to my feet. “For example; I am about to defenestrate myself so I don’t have to deal with Ass Might.”

Luckily -or not depending on the students’ viewpoint- the door opens before I can move to get a running start and in walks Cementoss. “Greetings, students. Today I will- what are you doing?”

I alternate between looking at him and the window for a moment before asking a question of my own, still fully prepared to dive head-first through the glass. “Is All Might teaching heroics today?”

He doesn’t lose his look of confusion, but a bit of understanding leaks into his expression. “Given the…circumstances… All Might will not be teaching the heroics class this week.” He continues explaining over the various noises of annoyance and disbelief. “Discussions will be held during internships to decide how the class will proceed, so do not be concerned: All Might is not quitting his job teaching here at UA.”

I click my tongue in disappointment but smile when I hear Shoko speak up. “Not to mention that he’s busy dealing with the backlash of Izuku’s announcement that they’re related, as well as his public identity being revealed. The fact that he hid that his quirk is a transformation type has the public split on-”

“That’s enough, Miss Todoroki!” Cementoss almost yells to cover up the rest of her words, clearly trying to avoid the topic. “Regardless of what All Might is dealing with at the moment, what should concern all of you is your training! Go ahead and get changed into your hero outfits and head to ground Beta. There, I’ll explain what we’re doing for the lesson.”

The class allows themselves to be distracted as they all get up to head to the locker rooms. Clearly they don’t want to think about what it means for the Symbol of Peace to be revealed to be a human just like them. They’d prefer that he remains some unstoppable force of nature, a bulwark that can protect them from all the truly difficult hardships.

A naive mindset, in which they acknowledge that some villains will always be beyond their abilities while subconsciously deluding themselves into thinking that All Might will deal with the biggest threats so they won’t have to throw their lives away. They know that’s not how it works, but they can do nothing but hope it will.

But that’s decidedly a them problem. Not only am I a villain, but I also bounce back from dying. So even if I run into the problem of being unable to win, I don’t really have anything to worry about. Plus running away is always an option.

I follow the others to the boys locker room, giving Shoko a small wave before walking through the door and missing her thoughtful look. Inside all the others are getting into their hero costumes, but given I don’t have one I guess I’ll just wear my uniform. If they wanted me to wear something else they should have said something.

While I’m waiting for them so I can follow where we need to go, someone notices my predicament and decides that it’s an invitation for them to help. “Hey villain bro! You can’t go out there in your uniform, it’ll get destroyed!” The red-haired boy who seems to think pants are a costume pulls out a gym uniform and hands it to me, at the same time using his other hand to stop Kachan from exploding me, a piece of white tape covering his mouth stopping the stream of obscenities he no doubt is trying to say.

I take it with a raised eyebrow. “Thanks.” These people are really weird. Why are they acting so casual with someone who attacked their class? Sure, most of them didn’t actually see me at the USJ, and we weren’t really trying to kill them either, but still. Maybe me acting casual makes it difficult for them to associate me as a person with me as a killer? Normal people do tend to have frankly ridiculous expectations of villains, so maybe it’s society’s fault they’re like this?

Either way, Kirishima gives me a sharp grin and flexes his free arm. “No problem man! Just let me know if anyone bothers you!”

He practically drags Kachan out of the locker room with him, and I can’t help my eyes from following him. They narrow. There’s something off about him…

I dismiss it for the moment. There’s nothing to do about whatever it is until I actually figure out what it is. He’s friendly at the moment, so I suppose it doesn’t really matter until it becomes a problem.

I wait for the others to finish changing, leaving the room one by one. Kaminari is the last one out and he stops at the door, fiddling with his fingers as he looks uncertainly at me. “Uh, you don’t have to wait to change, you know. We, um, saw the video at the Sports Festival. So we’ve all seen your scars. We won’t stare, promise!”

He suddenly waves his hands in front of himself while shaking his head. “Not that they’re a reason to stare, obviously! It’s just, well, if you want to wait you can, but we don’t want you to feel like you have to! Right?”

I blink at him in surprise for a moment before chuckling. It’s not a happy chuckle, despite how much I appreciate him trying to make me feel better. It’s too sad for that.

“Oh, Kaminari.” I look at him pityingly, because it truly is pitiful just how little these hero aspirants understand of the world. “What I showed was only what I was comfortable showing. They’re just the tip of the iceberg.”

I reach out and put a hand on his shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “I really appreciate what you’re trying to do here, but trust me,” I lean forward as I look into his eyes, “I will never do something because of other people’s opinions about me. I won’t lie to myself, which means I won’t lie to others about myself. Me waiting to change is because of the more personal scars.”

I let him go and step back, giving him a wide smile. “So again, thank you for the concern, but I’m good.” I shoo him out. “Go on, I’ll catch up in a minute.”