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Aizawa-Sensei had been missing for almost two days.
He’d gone out shopping the night before last, and Class A had immediately convened for a brief council. They had, somewhat reluctantly, agreed that stalking him on his errands was pushing it a bit. Especially since they had maybe two people who could reliably stalk Aizawa-Sensei without getting caught. If they were lucky.
Even still, they were all regretting it now.
The store that Aizawa-Sensei had been at was large. In fact, it was huge. It had hundreds of customers and, frankly, not enough cameras to fend off a dedicated attack.
No trace of Aizawa-Sensei remained. And it had been two days. For all they knew, he’d already been tortured to death and was rotting in a dumpster somewhere.
And it was their fault.
Here they were, Hero students who Aizawa-Sensei had risked his life half a dozen times for, and they hadn’t even been there to help him when he really needed them.
None of them were taking it well.
The whole class had been sitting in the dorm common room together for several hours, and an air of guilt and despair reigned.
Momo shakily pressed her fingertip to her side, drawing out yet another hair clip. This one was pink and covered in glitter. She’d made so many hair clips that it was almost instinct by now, like her Russian nesting dolls. That was good, because Momo didn’t really have the coherence to make anything that required a lot of thought.
Mechanically, Momo passed the hair clip to Ashido, who was sitting behind her with half of Momo’s hair held distractedly in her hands. Jiro had the other half. They were ostensibly braiding her hair in two different, competing styles, but neither had really done much competing yet.
All sound in the room was subdued. Muted. As though she was hearing it underwater.
Kaminari, Sero, Uraraka, and Hagakure were ostensibly playing a videogame, but with how distracted and distressed all of them were, they spent more time flying off the edge of the track than actually racing. Several people were scrolling through their phones with distant expressions. Iida was trying to do homework, and Momo knew that she should have been trying with him. As the class vice president, she needed to set a good example.
But did homework matter when their teacher was probably in agony or already dead, and it was their fault? Their fault for being too lazy and not assertive enough to make sure he was safe. He had given his blood, sweat, and tears to keep them safe, and this was how they repaid him?
Either way, Iida wasn’t making a lot of progress on his homework. He kept getting distracted by something in his hand. Momo couldn’t actually see it, but she had an idea of what it was. Aizawa-Sensei wasn’t one for sentimental items, but all of them had at least one thing he’d given them – usually subtly and without really acknowledging it, as was his wont.
There was a reason Momo had people doing her hair. She was sure the hairclip Aizawa-Sensei had offered her one day when her hair was uncontrollable was taken from Eri’s hair supplies. There was no other explanation for Aizawa-Sensei to be carrying a bright blue plastic hair clip with a giant sparkly butterfly adorning it. But he’d given it to her when he’d seen a need, and Momo… just kept forgetting to give it back.
Yeah. That was why Momo – who kept a dozen different color-coded spreadsheets, updated in real time, to organize her diet, Quirk training, exercise regimen, schoolwork, meal planning, and more – hadn’t returned the hair clip. She’d just… forgotten. A lot.
It was her only lifeline right now, cradled in her palm and shedding glitter all over her hand.
Momo pressed her fingers to her side again, forming another hair clip. This one was black with glittering red rhinestones on it, and she turned it over in her hand to pass over her shoulder to Jirou.
The hair clip snapped between her fingers, and the plastic gemstones crumbled to flaky plastic dust in her grip.
Momo froze, staring at the pile of semitransparent dust spilling over her skirt. She… must have done something wrong. Added the pigmentation wrong or formatted the chemical structure of the plastic just slightly off. It wasn’t like it was the end of the world. Wasn’t like anyone else was missing without a trace because she had voted against putting a watch on him.
“Yaomomo?” Jiro asked softly.
She couldn’t even remember what she’d done wrong. She had been working on muscle memory, creating without thinking, and she had slipped up. But a Yaoyorozu did not lose her composure, even in the midst of a disaster.
So, Momo mustered a transparent shadow of her usual smile and offered Jiro a reassuring “Just… lost in thought.” She formed another black hair clip, this one with a spray of glittering musical notes to go along with the rhinestones.
“Don’t,” Bakugou said stiffly, and Momo glanced up at him, surprised. He was scowling like usual, but there was something uniquely helpless and possibly even self-recriminating about the expression. Bakugou had been quite vocal about the stupidity of attempting to stalk Aizawa-Sensei, even as a protection detail.
“You’re not fine,” Bakugou spat, clenching his hand so tightly on the arm of the couch that the fabric creaked, “None of us are fine. Aizawa-Sensei is missing. We’re not fine. Stop acting like it.”
“My head hurts,” Midoriya said, apropos of nothing. His bangs hung over his face, hiding his eyes, and his hands were still gripped in Todoroki’s. Todoroki had been acting as a living heat pack for the past half hour, and there wasn’t an end in sight for him. Not that he was looking for one very hard. They had electrical heating pads.
“My head,” Midoriya continued dully, “has been hurting for over a week. I don’t have a migraine.”
Several people hissed or sighed or winced. Momo didn’t, but she almost wanted to.
Danger Sense was infamous among pretty much all of UA, but Class A especially. Midoriya’s headaches ranged from little pangs that came from reading his own handwriting to migraines that would be debilitating for anyone without Midoriya’s crazy pain tolerance. Unfortunately, Danger Sense also ranged along the whole spectrum.
Which meant that Midoriya basically just had perpetual headaches, and even he struggled to tell them apart.
It was highly likely – actually, if Momo knew anything about Midoriya, it was a one-hundred-percent certainty – that Midoriya was blaming himself more than Momo could ever possibly conceive.
Before anyone could respond, though, there was a knock on the door.
Teachers had shown up every hour or so to check up on them ever since Aizawa-Sensei had been taken. Even in the middle of the night, when the members of Class A had taken turns sitting vigil. But Vlad-Sensei shouldn’t have appeared for another twenty minutes at least.
Cautious glances flickered around the room, questions and answers flying in silent looks until it was confirmed that nobody was expected at the door. Finally, Kirishima stood. There was nothing externally visible that made it obvious, but Momo knew that he had hardened his chest and shoulders as he approached the door. His reflexes would harden his face and neck if anything went for them.
Momo only had to tilt her head slightly to see through the doorway as Kirishima pulled the door open. Standing on the other side was an unfamiliar woman.
She was around average height with stick-straight black hair and pale golden eyes. She had the expression of a soldier, something that Momo recognized from experience, and the way she held herself spoke of fatigue and emotional strain that she was attempting to hide.
“Hi!” Kirishima greeted, all smiles and sunshine.
“Hello,” the woman said, a tight smile flickering across her face. “You- I have… information. On your teacher.”
“Why don’t you come inside,” Kirishima offered after only a split-second hesitation.
“Thank you,” the woman agreed, trailing after Kirishima as he pulled the door open wider and ushered her in. With Bakugou sitting on one side of the door and Todoroki on the other – not to mention Kaminari, Jiro, Dark Shadow, and Tsu all watching carefully and now in much closer reach – that wasn’t nearly as innocent an offer as it seemed.
“So,” Bakugou said, “you said you had information?”
“Yes,” the woman said, “I did. And I do. I’m willing to tell you everything I know about what happened to your teacher, but I need an assurance that you won’t attack or interrupt me in the middle of my explanation.”
The Class – capital letter included and required – shared another round of subtle glances. Momo caught the stranger’s attention flickering around the room with them as glances and authority passed. Slowly but surely, in little twitches and subtle motions, the floor was ceded to Shinsou, Iida, and Midoriya. Aizawa-Sensei’s son, the class president, and… well, Midoriya.
Shinsou and Iida exchanged glances, then both turned to Midoriya.
“We won’t attack you in the middle of your explanation,” Midoriya promised, and that emphasis was all everyone in the room needed to know that, if her explanation wasn’t satisfactory, she wouldn’t get far past the end.
“That’s all I ask,” the woman said, and Momo was sure she’d heard Midoriya’s message as well.
“My name is Haikei Kugutsu,” the woman began, “and I work for the Byoukis’ organization.”
The whole room went still. Haikei was pinned in the middle of twenty frigid, deadly gazes. She took it surprisingly well, all things considered. Even Dark Shadow appearing behind Tokoyami to seethe at her with wild crimson eyes barely even seemed to phase her.
“It’s my job to prepare subjects for long-term containment and testing,” Haikei continued, cool as ice and clear as glass. “Two days ago, after reporting to work, I ran across a familiar face.”
Momo caught the flicker of Haikei’s eyes as they danced around the room and stuck – for the briefest instant – on Shinsou.
“Suffice to say that Eraserhead and I are… acquainted.”
From the shuffling around the room – and, in Bakugou’s case, soft swearing and muttered threats – it sounded like very few of them were going to let that explanation suffice.
“I managed to make contact with him,” Haikei said, “and, when asked who I should contact with the information I have, he told me to talk to his class. I assumed that meant you.”
“Prove it,” Bakugou snapped.
Haikei only nodded swiftly. “In the right breast pocket of my coat, there is a hair clip with a cat head. I was instructed to show it to a Momo, Mina, or Yuuga.”
Half the attention in the room spread between the three of them, and it was all Momo could do to resist reacting to her name. She had a feeling that, if Haikei was telling the truth, she knew exactly what hair clip it was.
“Show us,” Midoriya instructed, and Haikei dipped two fingers into her pocket and pulled it out.
Even at the time, Momo had thought it was a bit silly. Aizawa-Sensei barely even had hair long enough to put clips in, and he certainly didn’t seem like the type to use cutesy plastic cat-head clips. But she’d – somewhat childishly, she supposed – wanted to return a hair clip for a hair clip, and the sparkly butterfly one undoubtedly stolen from Eri was somehow a prized possession to her now.
So, when she’d heard that Ashido and Aoyama were conspiring to help Sensei fix the emotionally-charged mess that was his hair, she hadn’t been able to help slipping the hair clip to Ashido with a flimsy excuse that she was sure Ashido saw right through. But she hadn’t said anything, so Momo hadn’t said anything.
And now her silly, cat-themed hair clip was being used as evidence.
Momo felt her cheeks go pink, but she still pulled a glove out of her skin and gingerly accepted the hair clip.
Was this effective proof?
It required direct physical contact with Aizawa-Sensei to obtain, so that was a mark in her favor. It also seemed unlikely that Aizawa-Sensei had told anyone about the hair clip. It had only been a few days, and something like that – a cute cat version of himself – didn’t seem like something Sensei would share easily. So, the odds were good that it required information only Aizawa-Sensei would be capable of providing to even know that she could use it as proof.
That wasn’t information that could be tortured out of Aizawa-Sensei, and it wasn’t anything important that mind reading or mental intrusion Quirks could drag out, so it was probably legitimate.
“Okay,” Momo agreed, “we’ll accept that for now.”
A slight tension eased from Haikei’s shoulders.
“I have a lot of information for you,” she said briskly, “as much about the facility, schedules, and infrastructure as I could manage.” She slipped her fingers back into her breast pocket and pulled out a hard drive, which was handed off to Midoriya, the only other person with full gloves immediately on hand.
“You’ll probably still need time to plan an effective assault,” Haikei continued, “and I won’t be able to stay in contact for long. Not without blowing my cover. I strongly advise that you involve both the police and some of your teachers. This is already a long-running active case, and most of this information is already making its way through the system. But those currently working on the case don’t have Nezu’s mind or Present Mic and Midnight’s Quirks on their side. Nor do they have the rest of you.”
Haikei tilted her head slightly, her gaze roaming the room. “I can’t force you to do anything, of course, but I won’t be contacting anyone else about this. I have already put my life – and your Sensei’s life – at risk to bring you this information.”
“That,” Haikei said, her chin tilting up slightly and her shoulders tensing, “is the end of my report.”
The room stilled for a split second, recognizing the invitation for what it was. Her explanation was over. So, too, was their agreement.
“Well then why are you still standing here?” Bakugou snapped, “we have work to do, and don’t you have somewhere to be?”
An impossibly familiar expression that mingled pride, appreciation, and shock flickered over Haikei’s face, there one second and gone the next, so fast that Momo almost missed it. But, despite her hair and eyes and height, despite everything about her that made her so clearly a stranger, Momo could have sworn that it was Aizawa-Sensei himself standing in the middle of the room, giving them some big important dorm-wide announcement.
Haikei slipped out the dorms as quickly as she’d come, and Class A did, in fact, have work to do.
Jiro and Shoji shared a look that meant they’d both heard something they maybe weren’t meant to, but they didn’t bring it up, so Momo set that in the back of her head as a ‘for later’ problem and turned her thoughts towards piecing together the information Haikei had given them.
Here was their chance for redemption. To get Aizawa-Sensei back and make up for their failure. Not perfectly, of course. There was no perfect recovery from a mistake like that, but, at least this time, a rescue was possible.
When she next encountered Haikei – at the side of Aizawa-Sensei’s hospital bed – Momo would be forcibly reminded of the woman’s parting message, caught only by their two with enhanced hearing.
“Shouta was right about you, wasn’t he,” she had murmured as she left. Left behind the twenty of them, who Aizawa-Sensei apparently trusted enough to contact with his one attempt at calling for help. Not his husband or his best friends, not his Hero coworkers or associated police precinct, not even the Heroes and detectives already on the case.
No, he’d sent a message straight to them. And, well. Momo had to admit that he hadn’t exactly been wrong. With Midoriya, Nezu, and Present Mic, they had managed to tear apart the organization that Aizawa-Sensei – along with many other Underground and Intel Heroes, police officers and detectives, and even apparently undercover operatives – had been working at for weeks. And they’d done it in only a few days.
Perhaps they weren’t such failures after all.