(Present day, days after Sukuna and Melissa teamed up)
Sunlight still came in through the same windows in Class 1-A. The students were all here, making some conversation before their sensei entered. Funnily enough, the board still had yesterday's notes half-erased.
Everything was exactly where it should be, except...
There was a desk that no one sat at anymore.
It wasn't dramatically highlighted, but at the same time it was so glaringly obvious to everyone around. No one avoided looking at it on purpose, but they don't look at it directly either.
The chair was pushed in. The desk was too clean. At first, someone, Iida more specifically, made sure it stayed orderly. Now it just stayed that way. Untouched by everyone.
"Hey, why's there a new table over there? " Sero questioned, noticing another empty table to the left of Mina's seat. Izuku hummed.
"There's probably—"
"Alright, settle down." Aizawa walked in unannounced, with his students quickly finding their respective seats. His eyes sweeped the room slowly. He never does that. Until... Well...
The sleep deprived teacher shook his head, focusing back on taking the class attendance. But when he came across a certain name, he stared at it a bit longer than he should've, before slowly marking said student as absent.
It wasn't obvious unless one knew him well, but his students, ever the observant ones, had noticed his strange behavior long ago. Obviously their sensei was still thrown off by what happened. He never once brought it up during class, even during the morning they found out he left, but they could tell that he was frustrated too.
But things still had to move on, whether they all liked it or not.
Aizawa cleared his throat, gathering his students' attention before he started the agenda for the day. "I have an announcement to make before we start our lessons. A new student would be joining us from now on."
Class 1-A stared hard at him, some had their jaws open, whether from excitement or disbelief, Aizawa couldn't tell. He did notice they didn't break out into their usual chattering like they would whenever he announces something exciting.
"She's someone I think you all would know fairly well. So Be. Nice." He added with the faintest hint of dry amusement. Then, the class broke out into murmurs and whispers, all wondering who their new classmate would be.
The giant door slid open, as the person entered. The whole class froze, mostly in horror as they stared at their new classmate in pure disbelief.
Himiko Toga was right in front of them, wearing the UA girl's uniform, carrying a light pink colored bag, her hair tied in those signature two messy buns of hers. She grinned at them, showing off her sharp vampire-like teeth to them on purpose. Some of the boys and girls gulped out of fear.
"Hiii~" She gave a small wave to them, before a box cutter slid down from under her sleeve, landing in her hand as she twirled it around playfully.
"Can I stab you?" Chairs scraped back at once as everyone reacted out of pure instinct. Izuku was already up half waybefore his brain even finished processing what was happening, while Bakugo had small explosions flickering around his palms, ready to let his explosions fly. Everyone before Toga was ready to contain her if needed.
"Sit down... " Aizawa ordered, already regretting this. His students looked at him, unsure. Toga groaned, the box cutter glinted under the classroom lights.
"Ugh! I was just joking!" She grumbled. Aizawa stared at her for a long moment before giving a tired sigh, rubbing his temple.
"I should've known... Where did you get that?" He asked, eyes flickering to the weapon in her hand.
"Oh this? I found it."
"Of course you did, brat." He grumbled.
"What's with that face? The guys back at rehab said I should joke around a little." Toga complained.
"Looks like we have to work on your humor a little." He muttered, holding out his hand. "Give it to me."
"Ugh... Whateverrr. Every one of you has bad humor. " She rolled her eyes, placing it in his hand without resistance, though it only made the students more on edge. Aizawa pocketed it before he continued.
"Before any of you brats jump into conclusions, she's here legally. She passed medical clearance and behavioral evaluation through rehabilitation oversight. After that, a special entrance exam was arranged." He explained, glancing slightly at Toga who was swaying back and forth, glancing around the classroom, somehow ignoring the fact that she was the elephant of the room.
"There's a special entrance exam?" Denki whispered. Uraraka was staring at Toga, unsure what to think of this new development.
"She took the written portion like any other applicant, covering the subjects you all learned whem you were in middle school, though we added foundational hero theory and ethics so that she would be effectively catching up to the second semester." Toga raised her arms after his explanation.
"It was a piece of cake. I already knew most of it anyways." She boasted with a grin. It made the room shift, some were uncertain how to categorize her.
"Her written score was sufficient—"
"Pshh? Sufficient?" Toga scoffed, glancing at her teacher. "You called me scoring an A+ 'sufficient'? Wow, sensei. You've got such high standards. It scares me. " For a moment, no one reacted. Then a few students glanced at each other, their faces asking questions. Is she joking? Is she allowed to joke? Are we allowed to react?
'Wait, an A+?' Izuku blinked.
'She got WHAT?!' Denki screamed, staring at her in disbelief.
Aizawa wasn't even surprised. He sighed, this style of sarcasm was very familiar to him, almost reminding him of a certain pink haired student turned vigilante of his.
"Don't even start... And for the record, lowering my expectations is not a hobby I recommend..." A couple of students coughed to hide their reactions. Mina looked away quickly, trying not to smile at the absurdity of it.
Toga hummed. "So what I'm hearing is… I impressed you, but you're pretending I didn't?"
Aizawa stared at her before exhaling, rubbing his nose this time. "You're going to be exhausting..." He grumbled.
Toga smiled. "I get that a lot! "
"Not usually in a classroom setting." Their teacher added dryly. Bakugo snorted loudly, knowing how true that was.
"And your score doesn't matter if you can't apply it under pressure." Aizawa turned slightly, addressing the room again but clearly still responding to her.
"Anyways, the standard robot combat exercise wasn't appropriate for her practical evaluation, so we modified it. We placed her in a controlled urban simulation, no civilians, no lethal targets, and minimal destruction allowed."
"The objective of the test was behavioral observation, testing her decision making under stressful situations. And most importantly, restraint. As you can see, she has met the requirements for that as well."
"Yeah well I think I got an A+ in behavior." Toga nodded, giving them her signature toothy grin.
"Don't start assigning yourself grades... " He grumbled. Why did he always get the cocky ones as his students? He noticed them still staring at Toga like they were in a muesuem.
"Well you've heard me, and now you all are going to do something more important than thinking about her past. You're going to treat her like a classmate." He declared seriously, with a tone that made it clear that this was non negotiable.
"Tch..." Bakugo scowled a little, looking to the side. Uraraka only hummed, while Tsuyu was in deep thought. Their fight between Toga was still on their minds. It was hard to see her as someone who's changed for the better given how bloodthirsty she had been when they fought.
"While that doesn't mean ignoring boundaries or pretending nothing happened, don't turn every interaction into a courtroom. I know some of you are judging her every word like it's evidence, so stop it. You're students, not juries." Aizawa sighed to himself, noticing their silence.
'Great, this is going well.' He thought sarcastically. 'You better double my salary for this, Nezu.' He then turned to Toga, pointing at her.
"And you, don't test them for reactions."
Toga blinked. "Well, I wasn't going to... much... Hehe..." She laughed a little awkwardly. He sighed again.
"Everyone here has expectations. You're going to clash with them sometimes, and it's normal. But what's not normal is making every moment about proving a point, so don't do that."
"So I just... Talk? Is that it? " Toga tilted her head. Aizawa nodded.
"And if something doesn't feel right, just tell me. And this goes both ways." He looked back at the class. "If you have a problem, you address it directly. I don't want any whispers, assumptions or any group verdicts forming in the background, am I clear?"
"Yes, sensei." They replied in unison. He nodded, before looking back at Toga.
"Go sit down, class is about to start."
Toga nodded, before she skipped straight towards her designated spot. Mina glanced to her left, before realizing something.
'Oh, so that's why there's a new table there... ' She thought to herself as Toga placed her bag down before sitting on the chair. The blonde glanced at Mina before grinning at her.
"I like how pink you are. " She commented. Mina blinked, before offering a small smile.
"Thanks girl...You don't look that bad yourself... You gotta teach me how you tie up your hair like that."
Toga nodded, before focusing on the class via Aizawa clearing his throat.
Things are only getting interesting at this point for Class 1-A.
...
"Are you in?" A deep voice questioned over the earpiece. Melissa narrowed her eyes a little, her hands holding a controller a she stared at the screen.
It was a micro spider drone she was controlling, and it was in the middle of unscrewing a small vent at the back of a certain building with one of it's arms.
"Be patient... There we go." Melissa sighed a little as the spider rushed into the vent, crawling through it quickly. "You should be able to see what it's recording from your point of view." She added.
"Well, all I see is darkness, oh, and that cobweb over there." Melissa didn't reply, as she skillfully controlled the drone until it dropped down into a maintenance gap in the vents, landing in a clean hallway.
"It's too quiet." The voice commented.
"Yeah... Hold up I'll keep exploring." Melissa muttered, as the spider kept moving. With the help from her data sweeps, one location kept reappearing in the Shizuoka Prefecture. It had power consumption that constantly spiked at odd hours, shipments routed through dummy companies, no consistent staff records and security feeds that looped too cleanly for her taste.
So that's where the spider drone came in, a perfect infiltration tool created by Melissa herself. It climbed on the wall as it went deeper into the facility, before it encountered something odd.
"Strange, this section doesn't match with the building layout." She commented before moving the spider forward, before encountering several rooms.
"Reinforced walls, adaptive restraints, monitoring equipment everywhere." She muttered. Their suspicions were correct after all.
"Most probably designed to observe and measure Quirks under controlled conditions." The voice in her earpiece added. Melissa's eyes narrowed as the drone found itself before several pods. Pressing a button, she scanned ths device. On a blue hologram beside the screen she was staring at, multiple screens popped up as she glanced at it quickly.
"These things are sound-dampened and have minimal stimuli. Are they preserving them?..." She asked in a hushed voice, finding herself sick in the stomach. How could people do this to others?
After the drone explored each and every room, it found itself inside a research and data hub. There were tons of workstations, suspended displays, and also a low, constant hum from servers.
Melissa controlled the spider, finding it a small hiding spot, away from the eyes of the personnel stationed in the facility.
"I see a server stack." The voice commented.
"On it." After making sure the coast was clear, the micro drone sped towards the stack of servers. It stopped before one of them before Melissa started typing, letting go of the controller beforehand.
"And the data should be transferred to you... Now." She whispered, as a ton of files were transferred to her and the person she was communicating with.
"Everyone's labelled like they're inventory. They're reducing people to variables." She whispered quietly as she skimmed through the files, before finding two that caught her eye.
'Subject 1
Quirk: Domain
Status: Transferred'
'Subject 2
Unnamed Energy Quirk
Status: Transferred'
"Sukuna... They're..." She muttered. There weren't any names listed on any of the files, but it was obvious who these Quirks belong to.
"They're not here." Sukuna muttered. "This place is just a processing center..." Melissa silently gathered more intel via hacking the servers, now having information of their transport routes, scheduled movement logs and coded destinations.
"How far does this go..." Melissa whispered, finding herself staring at numerous files in disbelief. "These guys are all over Japan, there's multiple facilities in almost every prefecture."
"There's still people in there."
"What are you suggesting?" Melissa questioned, though she already had a good idea what he wanted to do.
"Just find their power supply and cut it. We're going dark.
"You're the boss..." She mumbled, the spider drone already moving. Having the building's layout on her side, it didn't take long for her to find it.
Some of the personnel were in the middle of a discussion before it all went dark.
"What the hell?" One of them muttered while another took out a walkie talkie.
"Can someone go and check it out?" He had asked, but all he heard was static. "The hell? How are our signals jammed?" He muttered in confusion.
Both of them jumped in shock, as they suddenly heard a loud boom. Then the whole facility had a loud alarm blaring all throughout the place.
"We're under attack! You need to get out of here!" One of the guards ran over to them in a hurry before rushing off, with multiple armed personnel following behind.
"Did the pro heroes find us? But how? " The scientist muttered as they both rushed off towards the nearest exit. The other didn't reply as he kept running, having no answer to the question.
The guards stood and crouched in the hallway, guns all pointing at the surveillance room where the last group of guards was taken down. They pointed at a large hole through the wall, having no idea how it got through. Though judging by the position of where another fallen guard laid, they had a pretty good idea what had happened.
"Hey! Can someone get a light shining here? I can't see shit." One guard hissed.
"I'm working on it." Another muttered, fumbling through his body armour. A couple of clicks echoed through the silent hallway as the guard pointed at the hole. There was no one in front of them.
They were all at a stand still, some had sweat dripping down their faces. Then the flashlight suddenly turned off.
"Ah shit! The battery probably ran out. Useless piece of junk..."
"Just use mine." Another set of clicks could be heard, as the guard pointed at the hole in the wall once more, showing nothing but the inside of a thrashed up room.
One guard blinked. As soon as his eyes opened once again, he found himself staring at a man with jet black hair, four terrifying crimson eyes and markings on his face, staring back at them with an emotionless gaze.
The guard's eyes widened in pure terror, immediately recognizing who that person was.
"IT—IT'S SUKUNA!!!!"
"OPEN FIRE!!!" A guard shouted before all of them pulled the trigger, opening fire towards the man. Sukuna disappeared, reappearing close to the group of guards. He threw his fist forward, the punch slamming a guard into the wall, knocking him unconscious.
He then grabbed another guard by his collar before pulling him close. With a single heavy punch to the face, he was also dispatched.
The rest of the squad tried opening fire towards him. Sukuna's reaction was to just casually flick his wrist. Invisible cuts tore through the rest of the guards' armor, as they all fell to the floor. He had effectively dealt with the last of the guards in only 5 seconds.
"I didn't know an alarm would activate if I turned off the surveillance system." Sukuna muttered, as Melissa's drone reactivated the power supply.
"Next time let me do the hacking alright?" Melissa's dissatisfied voice mumbled through his earpiece. Sukuna only hummed as he walked down the hallway, his footsteps echoing through it.
He smirked a little, before he stopped, looking around the place.
"This place is useless now. Did you get rid of the other scientists that tried to escape." He glanced out of a window, staring straight at a drone, Melissa's drone.
"Yup, down for the count. The police are on their way as well. You should probably make your way out." Sukuna remained silent, before he disappeared from the hallway in a blur, leaving behind a trail of blood for the authorities to clean up.
...
Sukuna gracefully landed on the roof of a building. He looked down, noticing a bunch of police cars and vans rushing towards a certain direction, most certainly where the facility was.
He sighed, running his fingers through his dyed hair. "You're no longer unknown to them, Sukuna." Melissa's reminded him. He snorted.
"I'm not sure if I even was unknown to them in the first place. Relax, as I see it we have two advantages. Now they'll prioritize reacting to me, and we now also have their behavioral pattern under pressure. They will repeat structure, even while relocating, so we just follow where they stabilize. A fun game of cat and mouse."
"But you're too visible now. If you move like before, they'll anticipate you." She brought up, leaning forward from her seat back at her personal lab, as tons of holograms floated before her.
"Now your priority is to chase their reconstruction points, and we let them rebuild just enough to reveal themselves."
"My parents, Melissa." Sukuna's serious tone cut through. "I'm not letting something dangerous exist long enough to map it, especially if it's the League."
"They were part of a selection profile, Sukuna. They weren't just labelled as some random victims, which means we're not late, we're just... early in the structure." She reassured. He stayed silent for a while.
"So next move?" He asked, as a hologram of a map appeared on his wristband.
"One, we track financial reroutes tied to the facility chain. Two, we monitor post-raid communications for regroup signatures. And three, you stop acting like bait unless I say it's necessary."
"Oho? You're ordering me now, Melissa? " Sukuna raised an eyebrow, amused at her tone. "I'm not as reckless as you think."
"I'm coordinating you, you big fat liar. If you want to find them before they adapt completely, you need someone who sees the system while you pressure it."
"Yeah yeah whatever..." He grumbled, scratching the back of his neck, an annoyed expression on him. "And don't try ordering me around again. Only one person can do that, and it's certainly not you."
"Ugh! I didn't mean it like that!" Melissa groaned, palming her face.
" Uh huh, sure..."
To be continued...
(Boring ahh chapter)