The observation room above Training Ground Beta was small and smelled like dry-erase markers and old coffee. Hawks had already helped himself to someone's abandoned chair, feet up on the console, watching the feed with the particular quality of attention he reserved for things he found genuinely interesting — which meant he looked relaxed and was not.

Endeavor stood. He always stood. The chair beside Hawks remained empty and would continue to remain empty.

On the screen, Training Ground Beta was mid-reset. The scenario parameters were displayed in the corner of the feed in clean block text:

SCENARIO TYPE: Urban Capture / Villain Suppression VILLAIN ROLE: Bakugo, Katsuki — Simulated Quirk: Warp Gate (Support Item, Class-B loan) HERO ROLE: Todoroki, Shoto OBJECTIVE (VILLAIN): Breach the marked perimeter and exit via Point C without capture OBJECTIVE (HERO): Contain and subdue before perimeter breach

Endeavor's eyes moved over the parameters once and settled on the feed.

---

Down on the ground, Katsuki rolled his shoulders and pulled the support item from his belt — a modified emitter bracer, cobalt blue, tagged with Class 1-B's inventory sticker. He looked at it the way he looked at most things: like it had personally offended him and he intended to win the argument.

"Warp Gate," he said flatly, turning it over. "I'm playing a teleporter."

He strapped it on.

"Fine." He cracked his knuckles with the bracer hand, and the faint shimmer of the item's projection function flickered once in test. "I'll make it work."

Across the field, Shoto stood at the marked hero start position, steam rising faintly from his left side where heat was already building in passive readiness. He looked at the scenario brief on the tablet in his hand, read it twice, set it down.

He had trained against Katsuki enough times to know that "make it work" from Bakugo meant something specific and unpleasant.

The simulation timer clicked on.

Three.

Katsuki's jaw set.

Two.

Shoto exhaled.

One.

---

AGENCY BREACH — {{USER}}'S HERO OFFICE, GROUND FLOOR — 14:32

The window on the east side of the building had a latch that was slightly older than the rest of the frame. Michelle had found this eighteen days ago. She had been waiting for the right moment.

She eased it up with the focused, unhurried confidence of someone who had done this before and had not yet understood why that was the problem rather than the credential. Her megaphone was slung across her back. Her recorder was already running in her jacket pocket. She had a list of questions prepared. She had rehearsed her opening line.

"I wanted to give you the chance to respond directly, as my close personal colleague—"

She dropped into the office.

The room was empty. Clean desk, two chairs, a wall of organized filing. A framed copy of a provisional license, first issue, in a plain black frame.

Michelle looked around, took out her phone, and started photographing.

---

On the screen, the warp shimmer activated.

Katsuki didn't go through it. He detonated beside it.

The blast punched out in a directed cone — not at Shoto, not yet — at the structural support column to Shoto's left, the one Shoto was using as partial cover. Debris scattered. In the chaos of dust and displaced air, the warp gate projection bloomed open six feet to Shoto's right, and Katsuki was already moving, low and fast, using the explosion's own smoke as a blind.

In the observation room, Hawks leaned forward slightly.

Endeavor said nothing. But he watched the way Shoto pivoted — left foot, weight shift, the ice coming up not as a wall but as a flat redirecting ramp — and something in his expression changed by a fraction that only people paying close attention would have caught.

Shoto hadn't gone for the obvious block. He'd gone for the redirect.

Katsuki came through the smoke and hit the ice ramp at full sprint and went up instead of forward, trajectory wrong, and swore at a volume that the observation room microphone picked up clearly.

Hawks laughed.

"That's your kid," he said, without looking away from the screen.

Endeavor did not respond to this. He was watching Shoto track the arc.

---

AGENCY BREACH — HALLWAY, SECOND FLOOR — 14:39

Michelle had found the filing cabinet unlocked and was currently reading a mission debrief summary she had no clearance for, recorder running, when she heard the front door open downstairs.

She put the file back. Mostly.

She moved to the hallway.

The footsteps stopped. There was a pause — the particular quality of pause that happens when someone enters a room and finds it subtly wrong.

Michelle pressed herself against the wall and considered her next move.

Her phone buzzed. A tweet notification. She had, three minutes ago, auto-posted her scheduled tweet:

Spending the afternoon with my close personal colleague and dear friend, catching up on some exciting hero news — more to come! 🦸‍♀️✨ #HeroAdjacent #ExclusiveAccess

She silenced her phone.

Downstairs, the footsteps started again, moving toward the stairs.

---

Katsuki hit the ground wrong and rolled it, came up already recalculating — Shoto's ice wall was extending along the left side of the field now, cutting off Point C, which was the exit point, which meant Shoto had read the scenario objective and was playing the geometry instead of the fight.

"You think that's gonna hold me?" Katsuki's voice carried up through the feed, sharp with the specific competitive energy that was not quite anger and was adjacent to delight.

He detonated again, lower, and the ice wall cracked at the base.

Shoto was already pulling heat from his right side, bringing the temperature differential down, trying to reinforce — but he was also watching the warp gate shimmer, because Katsuki had activated it twice and used it zero times, which was not an accident.

Upstairs, Endeavor said: "He's going to use it as a feint."

Hawks glanced at him.

"The gate," Endeavor said, without elaborating, because it was obvious and he didn't elaborate on obvious things. "He hasn't gone through it once. He's conditioning Todoroki to track it."

On the screen, Shoto's head moved toward the gate. Just slightly. Reflex.

Katsuki went left.

---

AGENCY BREACH — STAIRWELL — 14:44

Michelle had made it to the roof access door and was composing, in her head, the follow-up article — Inside a Hero's Sanctuary: What Her Space Reveals About Her Methods — when the door at the bottom of the stairwell opened and she heard a voice she recognized.

Her own agency's building security, and someone else.

"—activated forty seconds ago, east window." A pause. "Yeah. Same latch."

Michelle looked at the roof door. Locked from the outside.

She looked back down the stairs.

She took out her recorder and pressed it to her chest like a shield and began composing her opening statement in her mind.

"I was here in a professional capacity, as a close personal colleague of—"

Her phone buzzed again. A reply to her tweet, from an account she didn't recognize:

girl you are about to get so arrested

---

Katsuki's bracer hit the mat on Shoto's side of the field.

Not Katsuki — the bracer. He had thrown it, warp gate active, and the shimmer had opened directly in front of Shoto's ice wall and deposited the bracer three feet from Shoto's left hand and it had gone off on impact, the projection blooming, and Katsuki had run for Point C in the three seconds Shoto spent processing that he'd been faked out by a piece of equipment.

"THAT COUNTS," Katsuki announced, at full volume, before anyone had said anything.

"It does," Shoto said, with the specific calm of someone who was already running the scenario in his head to find where he'd made the mistake. He looked at the bracer on the ground. He looked at Point C, which Katsuki had now crossed. "When did you plan the throw?"

"Third detonation." Katsuki walked back, pulling his gauntlets off. "You were watching my feet after the second. Should've watched the hand."

Shoto nodded. Filed it.

Upstairs, Endeavor looked at the feed for a long moment.

He did not say good or well done or that was the right read because he did not say those things out loud in real-time, but his arms uncrossed for the first time since the simulation began, which was something.

Hawks was already on his phone.

"Hold on," he said.

---

The notification came through on the UA observation room's security relay — it was linked to all registered hero offices in the district as a standard protocol measure — and Hawks read it twice and then held the phone up so Endeavor could see the screen.

BREACH ALERT — [{{USER}} HERO AGENCY] — East window entry confirmed. Intruder located, stairwell level 2. Identity: AVERY, MICHELLE. Repeat offender flag: ACTIVE. Officers en route. Estimated containment: 8 minutes.

There was a pause.

"Again," Endeavor said. The word came out flat and heavy, like a door closing.

"Third time at the office," Hawks said. He sounded almost impressed, in the way you could be impressed by something that had nothing going for it except sheer perseverance. "She found the east window. She had to have scoped that out, what, weeks ago?"

Endeavor turned back to the screen where the reset timer for round two was counting down. Katsuki and Shoto were resetting positions. Katsuki was already arguing with himself out loud about the bracer throw, which was his version of reviewing footage.

"She was in the building," Endeavor said.

"Yep."

"Her files."

"Probably."

A muscle in Endeavor's jaw moved.

"Someone should tell her," Hawks said, leaning back, "that breaking into the office of a pro hero with two other pro heroes currently on-site at her institution is—" He tilted his head. "What's the word."

"Stupid," Endeavor said.

"I was going to say inadvisable but yours is more accurate."

---

STAIRWELL — {{USER}}'S AGENCY — 14:51

Michelle was being handcuffed for the fourth time in this building, which she felt said something unflattering about the building's security protocols and not about her.

"I want it on record," she said, with full broadcast composure, recorder still running in her jacket pocket, "that I am here in a professional capacity and that my close personal colleagues, Endeavor and Hawks, are aware of my whereabouts."

The officer processing her said nothing.

"They are currently at UA with my close personal colleague, the pro hero who works there, and I would appreciate if you contacted them directly. They will vouch for me."

The officer clicked the second cuff.

"I have Endeavor's agency's main line in my contacts," Michelle continued. "If you'd like, I can—"

"Ma'am," the officer said, "you have the right to remain silent."

Michelle considered this.

"I'll remain silent after I've made my statement," she said.

---

OBSERVATION ROOM — UA — 14:53

The second simulation was forty seconds from starting. Katsuki had the bracer back, different grip this time, and Shoto had repositioned with more space between himself and the left wall, adjusting for what he'd learned.

Hawks had his feet back up. He was reading the breach alert update on his phone.

"She told the arresting officer," he said, slowly, like he was making sure he had the words right, "that Endeavor would vouch for her."

Endeavor looked at the screen.

"She specifically said your name," Hawks confirmed.

The simulation timer started.

Three.

"She has been told," Endeavor said, "on four separate occasions, that I do not know her."

Two.

"I know," Hawks said. "I was there for two of them."

One.

Katsuki detonated.

Endeavor watched his son's footwork for the redirect, catalogued it, said nothing about it yet.

"The next time she is released," Endeavor said, his voice carrying the same temperature as always — which was to say, very warm and not warm at all — "she should be informed that entering a pro hero's registered office is not a social call. It is a criminal matter. I don't care how many times she has to be told."

"She's been told," Hawks said. "She's going to be told again in about six minutes when she's processed. It is not going in."

Below them, Shoto went right this time, not left, and Katsuki adjusted, and they crashed into each other at the midpoint of the field with the particular violence of two people who trained together constantly and had long since stopped being careful about it.

Endeavor watched.

"It's going in," he said, and meant it in the way he meant things that were already decided, "eventually."

Hawks did not look convinced. He sent a brief text to his own comms team: heads up Michelle Avery arrested again, UA-adjacent, add to the log. He had a log. He had started it two years ago. It had forty-three entries.

On the screen, Katsuki had gotten hold of Shoto's left arm and Shoto had iced Katsuki's feet to the ground and they were currently at a standoff that neither of them was willing to call and both of them were going to be in Recovery Girl's office for afterward, and Endeavor crossed his arms again and watched and said, quietly, to no one in particular:

"Again with the left side."

He meant Shoto. He was not thinking about Michelle anymore. She would be processed, released, and back within six months, and his name would be in whatever she filed, and none of that was something he could change.

He could not change that.

He watched his son refuse to yield from a standoff he had created himself, jaw set, ice spreading up Katsuki's ankle, and something about it — the stubbornness, the refusal, the absolute unwillingness to concede a single inch —

He uncrossed his arms.

He did not say anything about that either.

@[{{User}}hero · posted 11:47pm · 2.3M likes in the first hour]

"Hi bestiesss omg okay so we got a new security measure this month, allow me to share the funniest moments with you"

[multiple video attached — 14 minutes, 32 seconds in total — titled: get thrown stalker girl]

---

[CLIP 1 — Timestamp 00:00:08 — UA Main Gate — Early Morning, Overcast]

The gate sensor activates before Michelle has fully rounded the corner. There is a half-second where she is mid-stride, megaphone under one arm, recorder in hand, expression arranged into the composed broadcast face she puts on for approaches.

Then the module fires.

It is less a throw and more a correction. The kind of force that suggests the gate has opinions and is not keeping them to itself. Michelle leaves the frame at approximately a forty-degree angle, megaphone spinning independently in the opposite direction, and the audio — because someone had set the external mics to record, bless them — captures, very clearly, the Doppler effect of her voice fading as she clears the perimeter.

The megaphone lands in frame.

Michelle does not.

Cut to: Present Mic, arriving at the gate thirty seconds later with a travel mug, stopping, looking at the megaphone on the ground, looking at the empty air where Michelle had been, looking back at the megaphone.

He takes a long sip of his coffee.

He steps over the megaphone.

He goes inside.

---

[Comments: 847K]

presentmicofficial: i knew what that was before i even looked up. you develop a sense for it

eraserheadreal: he didn't even break stride

hawks.hero: the megaphone is still spinning. it spins for so long

---

[CLIP 2 — Timestamp 00:01:44 — UA East Perimeter — 3:17pm, Sunny]

This one is different because Michelle has attempted a solution.

She is wearing what appears to be magnetic-resistance sneakers — the kind used in support item testing — and she has clearly done research, because she approaches the perimeter slowly, one foot at a time, with the careful deliberation of someone who believes they have outsmarted architecture.

She gets four inches further than last time.

The module, apparently, had also done research.

The adjustment to the throw trajectory is subtle but meaningful. Instead of a clean horizontal arc, this one has a slight upward component, which means Michelle achieves brief but meaningful altitude before the distance portion begins.

She is airborne for just over two seconds.

The magnetic sneakers go in a different direction than Michelle.

Cut to: Midnight, walking past the window with a stack of papers, glancing outside at the brief silhouette crossing the upper frame of the window, pausing, tracking it until it clears the glass, then continuing to walk without breaking pace.

She looks faintly satisfied.

---

[Comments: 1.1M]

midnight.pro: I had been having a bad day until that moment. I have never told anyone this. I am telling everyone now.

bestjeanistofficial: The sneakers. The sneakers went the wrong way. She prepared for the throw and the throw prepared for her preparation.

eraserheadreal: she got higher that time. i checked.

---

[CLIP 3 — Timestamp 00:03:22 — UA North Gate — 7:44am, Light Rain]

Michelle arrives with an umbrella and a friend. The friend is carrying a camera, which suggests this was meant to be documented for content. The friend is standing just outside the sensor range, which Michelle has apparently mapped, and Michelle is attempting to approach at an angle she has calculated will interfere with the module's targeting.

The module does not have a targeting problem.

The friend, who is outside the sensor range and is therefore fine, watches.

The throw this time is diagonal, which is new, and Michelle exits the frame to the upper-right corner, which means she clears the UA wall entirely and the exterior camera on the other side catches the landing — approximately forty meters away, in what appears to be a hedge.

The friend lowers the camera.

The friend looks at the hedge.

The friend looks at the camera.

The friend leaves. They do not check on the hedge.

Cut to: Kamui Woods, arriving at the north gate for a guest session, finding Michelle extracting herself from the hedge, stopping completely, tilting his head.

He watches for a moment with the expression of a man whose morning has taken a turn.

He takes out his phone. He calls someone.

The audio, faintly: "...she was in the hedge. No, the north hedge. She was— yeah. Yeah, the module got her again. I don't know why she tried the angle, I really— no, she's fine, she's standing up, she's—" His voice drops. "She's composing a tweet. She's composing a tweet right now. She's in the hedge composing a tweet."

Long pause.

"Okay. Yeah. I'll log it."

He hangs up. He logs it. He steps around Michelle and goes inside.

---

[Comments: 2.3M]

kamuiwoodsofficial: "she's in the hedge composing a tweet" is something i think about every single day

hawks.hero: THE FRIEND LEFT. DIDN'T EVEN CHECK. JUST LEFT.

mt.ladyhero: the friend is all of us

recoverygirlUA: I have never treated injuries from the module. I want that noted publicly. The module is very accurate.

---

[CLIP 4 — Timestamp 00:05:01 — UA Main Gate — 11:58am, Clear]

The clip opens mid-event, which suggests whoever was monitoring the feed had started recording specifically for this.

Michelle is already mid-arc. This is not the beginning. This is the middle. She is at peak altitude — the module appears to have recalibrated again — and the camera catches her at the precise moment of apex, which is to say perfectly horizontal, megaphone still somehow clutched to her chest, hair fully deployed by velocity, expression one of focused determination that absolutely refuses to acknowledge what is currently happening to her body.

She descends.

She clears the perimeter.

She is gone.

Cut to: Eraserhead, at the window of his classroom, coffee in hand, watching the arc with the expression of a man observing weather. Not interested. Not surprised. Just noting it the way you note a cloud formation — present, consistent, not requiring a response.

He drinks his coffee.

He turns back to his class.

A student, off-camera: "Was that—"

Aizawa: "Vocabulary exercise. Open your books."

---

[Comments: 4.7M]

eraserheadreal: it was a vocabulary exercise

presentmicofficial: HE WATCHED THE WHOLE ARC. HE WATCHED THE WHOLE THING AND TURNED AROUND LIKE IT WAS THE WEATHER

eraserheadreal: it was weather. it was a weather event. she is a weather event.

mirko.hero: "she is a weather event" i'm going to put that on something

---

[CLIP 5 — Timestamp 00:06:39 — UA South Gate — 2:30pm]

This one has the highest production value of any of the clips, which means Michelle has genuinely prepared for this.

She arrives at the south gate with what appears to be a reinforced harness — the kind used in construction — attached via a long cable to a van parked down the street. The implication being: if the module fires, the cable holds, she swings rather than flies, and she maintains proximity to the perimeter.

It is, technically, engineering.

The module fires.

The cable holds.

Michelle does not describe a throw arc. Michelle describes a pendulum arc. A large one. She swings out, clears the perimeter, swings back, clears the perimeter again, swings out — the van, it transpires, has begun to move, because the force of a swinging adult human is more than the handbrake had accounted for — swings back, and at some point in the third or fourth oscillation the harness clip releases, which it was safety-rated to do under exactly this load condition, and Michelle exits the pendulum at the bottom of the downswing at significant horizontal velocity and continues for another thirty meters before the hedge receives her again.

The van rolls slowly into a postbox.

Cut to: Fat Gum, arriving for a scheduled session, standing at the gate, watching the final arc with his hands in his pockets.

He watches for a very long time.

His expression goes through several stages.

He takes out his phone and calls someone and the audio catches only his side: "No, I'm — yeah, I'm at the gate. Yeah. You need to see — can you access the feed from — okay. Okay, pull up the south gate, just — just pull it up and watch it back from about two minutes ago and call me."

He hangs up.

He looks at the distantly located Michelle.

He looks at the slowly rolling van.

He looks at the postbox.

He makes a sound that is not a laugh because he is a professional and this is a serious situation, but which is also, structurally, a laugh.

He goes inside.

---

[Comments: 6.1M]

fatgumhero: I CALLED TAMAKI. TAMAKI WATCHED IT BACK AND DID NOT SAY ANYTHING FOR FORTY SECONDS. FORTY SECONDS OF SILENCE.

suneater.tamaki: ...

suneater.tamaki: the van

hawks.hero: "the van" - Tamaki Amajiki, processing the incident

fatgumhero: he said "the van" and hung up. he's still processing.

---

[CLIP 6 — Timestamp 00:08:14 — UA Main Gate — 9:15am]

A short one.

Michelle arrives at the gate walking with the brisk, purposeful energy of someone who has decided today is the day. New outfit. Fresh megaphone — the old one is presumably still in a hedge somewhere. She has a lanyard around her neck with what appears to be a custom-printed badge reading PRESS — OFFICIAL — AUTHORIZED, all three words, on one badge.

She holds the badge up toward the gate sensor as she approaches, the way you would hold up an ID card, as though the module is a security guard who can read.

The module cannot read.

She goes over the wall in a clean arc, badge still held aloft, and is gone.

The badge lands on the pavement in front of the gate.

Cut to: Gang Orca, arriving at the gate, looking at the badge on the pavement, picking it up, reading it.

He reads it for a long time.

He sets it carefully on the gate post.

He goes inside.

His face, in the brief moment the camera catches it clearly before he turns, is the face of a man who has run out of a specific kind of patience and found something new on the other side of it that he doesn't have a word for yet.

---

[Comments: 5.9M]

gangorca.official: I kept the badge. I don't know why I kept it. I have it on my desk. I look at it sometimes.

mirko.hero: WHY DID YOU KEEP IT

gangorca.official: I don't know. It feels like evidence of something. I haven't decided what.

eraserheadreal: evidence that the module is doing its job

gangorca.official: yes. exactly. thank you.

---

[CLIP 7 — Timestamp 00:09:52 — UA East Gate — 4:45pm]

This clip has a different quality to it — slightly wider angle, later in the day, longer shadows — and it has clearly been included for one reason.

Endeavor is in frame. He is leaving UA after one of his increasingly regular visits, walking toward the east gate from the inside, and he has paused because Michelle is visible through the gate camera on the external feed — approaching from outside, which means they are about to be on a collision course, which means the module is about to have to navigate the specific situation of a registered pro hero and an unwanted intruder occupying the same sensor zone from opposite sides.

The module navigates this with what can only be described as precision.

Endeavor, coming from inside, triggers nothing. His registered hero ID clears him.

Michelle, coming from outside, triggers everything.

The module fires.

Michelle, from Endeavor's perspective, simply vanishes from the other side of the gate at high velocity approximately three seconds before he reaches it. He stops walking. He stands at the gate. He looks at the empty space where she was. He looks up, tracking something in the upper distance.

He looks back at the gate.

He looks at the camera — not on purpose, just the direction his eyes go — and his expression is the expression of a man who has been told something he already knew, confirmed again, and still finds it vaguely offensive that it keeps needing to be confirmed.

He goes through the gate.

He does not look back.

From very far away, faintly, the audio catches: "—MY CLOSE PERSONAL FRIEND ENDEAVOR JUST SAW THAT, HE WILL—"

The distance swallows the rest.

Endeavor does not turn around.

---

[Comments: 11.3M]

endeavor.agency.official: No statement at this time.

hawks.hero: "no statement at this time" from the official agency account. they watched the clip. they saw his face. they decided "no statement" was the correct call. they were right.

bestjeanistofficial: He looked up. He tracked the arc. He calculated the distance. He left.

eraserheadreal: he always calculates the distance. I think he finds the number satisfying.

endeavor.agency.official: No further statement at this time.

---

[CLIP 8 — Timestamp 00:11:27 — UA Main Gate — 8:00am, Exactly]

The timestamp is exactly 8:00am. This was not an accident on Michelle's part. 8:00am is when the gate opens for student arrival. She has timed it to arrive in the window between the gate opening and the module resetting.

The module does not have a reset window.

The module does not work like that.

The throw is the longest one on record — the module appears to have registered the deliberate timing as an aggravating factor, though that is not how modules work, and yet — and Michelle crosses not one but two district boundaries before landing, which means this clip technically required two separate municipal authorities to be notified, which someone has annotated at the bottom of the screen in small text.

The annotation reads: [NOTE: Incident logged with Musutafu PD, Shizuoka District Response, and, as a courtesy, Hawks' personal notification system. Hawks responded within four seconds. His response was a thumbs up emoji.]

Cut to: A wide shot of the main gate at 8:00am, full student arrival, two dozen eighteen-year-olds in UA uniforms walking in through the gate, none of whom react to what just happened because they all know what the module is and they've seen the footage, and one of them — and whoever edited this compilation found this young man and gave him a full three seconds of screen time — pauses, looks in the direction Michelle went, looks back at his friend walking beside him, and says, clearly enough for the mic:

"She tried the timing window."

His friend: "Did it work?"

First student: "No."

His friend: "Yeah."

They walk inside.

---

[Comments: 8.4M]

hawks.hero: i was in a meeting. i had my phone face down. i felt it buzz. i looked at it. i sent the thumbs up. i turned my phone back over. the meeting continued. this is what preparedness looks like.

eraserheadreal: the students have developed an awareness of the module's operation that concerns me from an academic standpoint and impresses me from a practical one

presentmicofficial: THEY SAID "YEAH" LIKE IT WAS GRAVITY. LIKE IT WAS JUST PHYSICS.

kamuiwoodsofficial: the students understand the module better than Michelle does and they have never tried to enter illegally. what does that tell us.

---

[CLIP 9 — Timestamp 00:13:08 — UA Main Gate — TIME UNKNOWN]

The timestamp on this clip is corrupted, which someone has noted in the corner with a small question mark. It is unclear when this happened. It has clearly happened more than once, because there is a small label in the bottom left corner that reads: [COMPOSITE — multiple dates]

It is a montage within the compilation.

Michelle. Arc. Gone.

Michelle. Arc. Gone.

Michelle — this time apparently attempting to crawl under the sensor line, which does not work because the sensor line goes underground — arc, slightly more vertical than usual. Gone.

Michelle. Arc. Gone.

Michelle arriving in what appears to be a delivery uniform. Arc. Gone. The delivery cart continues through the gate unimpeded, because the module has no issue with the cart.

Michelle. Arc. Gone.

Michelle, in what is clearly a different season — different coat, different light — arriving at the gate with the same composed broadcast expression she always arrives with, and this is the detail that the compilation keeps coming back to, because she always has the same face, the full professional confidence, the absolute unbroken conviction that this time will be different, and every single time the module throws her across a district boundary and she lands somewhere in greater Musutafu and presumably gets up and goes home and comes back.

The face never changes.

That is the whole clip.

---

[Comments: 14.2M]

presentmicofficial: the face. THE FACE. she has the same face every time. she believes every time.

midnight.pro: I've thought about this a lot and I think the face is the most important part. She genuinely believes. Every single time.

eraserheadreal: it's not admirable

midnight.pro: no

eraserheadreal: I want to be clear that it is not admirable

midnight.pro: very clear, yes

eraserheadreal: good

hawks.hero: the delivery cart just. went through. the cart was fine. the cart had no issues.

gangorca.official: I have watched this compilation four times. I am going to watch it a fifth time. I don't know what I'm looking for.

recoverygirlUA: I have shown this to three separate students who were considering bending rules and all three of them reconsidered. The module is the best disciplinary tool this school has ever had and I will not hear otherwise.

---

[FINAL CLIP — Timestamp 00:14:19 — UA Main Gate — Yesterday, 6:32pm]

Thirteen seconds.

Michelle walks up to the gate. Megaphone. Recorder. The badge, somehow recovered or reprinted, around her neck.

She stops just before the sensor line. She looks at the gate. She looks at the badge. She straightens the badge.

She takes a breath.

She steps forward.

The module fires.

She is gone in under half a second.

The badge, lanyard snapped, drifts down and lands flat on the pavement in front of the gate, face up, in exactly the same spot as last time.

The gate stands empty.

Thirteen seconds. End of clip.

---

[END OF COMPILATION — 14:32]

---

@[{{User}}hero] the badge landed in the same spot. the exact same spot. i measured.

[image attached: badge on pavement, small measuring tape beside it, precise.]

i love my gate

---

Quote Retweets: 340K

@eraserheadreal quote retweeting: the module has better attendance than some of my students. I'm not elaborating.

@gangorca.official quote retweeting: I have issued no official statement about this compilation. Personally, I have watched it six times now. These are separate facts.

@fatgumhero quote retweeting: TAMAKI WATCHED IT AGAIN AND SAID "THE VAN" AGAIN. HE ONLY EVER SAYS "THE VAN." THAT IS HIS ONLY RESPONSE TO THIS ENTIRE SITUATION. THE VAN.

@suneater.tamaki quote retweeting: the van

@presentmicofficial quote retweeting: I stepped over her megaphone and I would do it again. I would do it a hundred times. I am at peace with this.

@hawks.hero quote retweeting: forty-four entries in the log now. i updated it this morning. i feel nothing. i feel everything. the badge landed in the same spot.

@endeavor.agency.official quote retweeting: No statement.

Kamino Ward Adjacent — Post-Incident — 23:14

---

The cleanup was still in progress three blocks east.

You could hear it if you listened — the grind of support machinery, the crackle of hero comms, the low steady frequency of an operation that had moved past its crisis point and into its long tail. The fire was out. The civilians had been evacuated two hours ago. The structural assessment teams were on their third pass.

Here, at the perimeter's edge, it was quiet.

Quiet enough that the sound crew for Amy Nakashima's segment had flagged it as a good location before anyone else had thought to, and Amy herself had agreed, and that was why she was standing in the amber wash of temporary emergency lighting at 23:14 with a microphone and forty years of broadcast journalism behind her, waiting.

She had covered the Symbol of Peace era. She had covered the transition. She had been in this business long enough to know what a real story looked like and long enough to know the difference between a hero and a headline, and she did not confuse the two.

She was seventy-one years old and she had earned every one of them, and when Endeavor came around the corner of the barrier wall she did not rush toward him, did not signal her camera crew to push in, just watched, and took in what she was seeing, and waited until he had settled before she approached.

What she was seeing required a moment.

---

Endeavor had not cleaned up.

There was no version of this evening where he had cleaned up — the battle had ended forty minutes ago and the debrief had run long and there had been three separate structural calls that needed his sign-off because he was senior hero on scene and that was what that meant. His agency jacket was gone. The hero costume had taken damage across the left shoulder and the outer plating there was cracked at the seam, not broken through, but visible. There was a burn along his right forearm that his own flames had not caused and that he had not had assessed because the medics had been occupied with more urgent cases and he had let them stay occupied.

He was very large and he was very tired and he was holding {{User}} against his chest with one arm, the way you'd carry something that mattered, not careless but not ceremonial either — practical, weight-bearing, the arm of someone who had made a decision and implemented it and was not revisiting the decision.

She was asleep.

That was the part that required the moment.

Not unconscious — the medic who had cleared her twenty minutes ago had been specific about that, had said sleeping, genuine sleep, her body's chosen recovery response, do not wake her — but fully, completely, defenselessly asleep against the Number One Hero's chest, one hand loosely curled against the charred edge of his costume, face turned in, the particular stillness of someone who had given everything they had and simply stopped.

She had three wrapped injuries. The medic had done good work. Her breathing was even.

Endeavor stood with her and waited for the interview he had agreed to before the battle had run as long as it did, and he looked like a man who had considered revising that agreement and decided against it, and Amy Nakashima walked toward him with her microphone and her forty years and she did not make it weird.

"Endeavor." She stopped at a respectful distance. "Thank you for keeping the time."

"Mm."

She looked at {{User}}. Back at him. "How is she?"

"Sleeping," he said. "Medic cleared her."

"Good." Amy nodded, and meant it, and moved on. "Shall we?"

---

The camera found its frame. The sound levels settled. Amy's producer — a young man who had been with her for six years and had learned to match her pace — gave the quiet signal, and Amy raised her microphone, and began.

Not with the battle. Not with the numbers — civilians evacuated, structural damage assessed, villain status confirmed. She had those figures, she would use them, but she did not begin there, because she was Amy Nakashima and she knew where a story began.

"The scene behind us is still active," she said, to the camera, and then to Endeavor: "You were senior hero on scene tonight. Walk me through the decision-making in the final phase."

Endeavor talked. Not easily — he never did anything easily, it wasn't the word for him — but directly. He described the structural calculation. The civilian corridor. The point at which the priority shifted from containment to evacuation support, and what that shift required from the heroes in the field, and how the field teams had responded.

Amy listened. Asked precise follow-up questions. Did not perform surprise at his answers.

Halfway through his account of the third phase, he adjusted his hold on {{User}} without pausing mid-sentence — a small shift, her weight redistributed, her head more securely supported — and kept talking.

Amy noted it. Did not comment on it. Filed it.

"There's been significant discussion," she said, after the operational breakdown, "about the role of newer pro heroes in large-scale events. What's your assessment, from tonight?"

Endeavor was quiet for a moment.

"They performed," he said.

Amy waited.

"There's a gap," he said, "between classroom preparation and field reality. The heroes who've had real preparation — practical, honest, not theoretical —" He paused. "That gap was smaller tonight in the ones who had it. Noticeably."

He did not look at {{User}} when he said it.

He didn't need to.

"Notable enough to say publicly?" Amy asked.

"I'm saying it publicly," he said.

---

The disruption started at the perimeter's edge.

Amy's producer heard it first — a low commotion, movement, the particular human-shaped disturbance of someone pushing toward a space they didn't have clearance for — and his head came up, and he put one hand to his earpiece.

Amy felt it a second later. The crowd shift. The energy change.

Endeavor felt it before either of them.

He turned his head toward the perimeter, and his expression did not change, because his expression rarely changed, but something behind his eyes went very still in the specific way things go still before they move, and he looked at the point where the disruption was originating, and he recognized her.

Of course he recognized her.

Every hero on that perimeter recognized her. She had been documented forty-seven times. She had her own subfolder in the UA security system. She had a module named after her in two separate municipalities.

Michelle Avery pushed through the outer press cordon with the composed, broadcast-ready face she always wore on approach, megaphone in one hand, recorder in the other, lanyard badge bouncing against her chest.

She was forty meters away.

Thirty.

Amy's producer said, quietly, into his comms: "We've got an incursion on the east side—"

Twenty-five meters.

Michelle raised the megaphone.

"ENDEAVOR—"

---

It happened very fast.

The megaphone projected at full output — the quirk engaged on top of it, her voice amplified beyond the device's own capacity, the sound punching across the perimeter in a wave that was not subtle and was not small.

Endeavor's hand moved before the echo did.

The hand that was not supporting {{User}}'s weight came up — controlled, immediate, no wasted motion — and covered her exposed ear, pressing her other ear more firmly into his chest, his palm a careful barrier between the sound and her, and his body turned fractionally, angling so his own frame absorbed as much of the projection as possible.

She didn't stir.

He kept his hand there.

His eyes went to Michelle and they stayed there and they were not warm.

---

From the east side of the perimeter, someone had already started moving.

Hawks came in low and fast, the way he moved when he wasn't performing casual, feathers already deployed in a spread that cut off the sight line between Michelle and the interview position — not a weapon, a wall, a deliberate interruption of the angle. He was between her and Endeavor in under four seconds, feathers fanned wide, and his face had the expression it got when he was working and not pretending to be relaxed about it.

"Quirk usage at a hero-sanctioned scene," he said, to no one and everyone, his voice carrying the particular broadcast quality of someone who knew there were cameras and was choosing his words accordingly. "Unlicensed. Public forum. That's Article 4, Section 2." He looked at Michelle. "You've been told."

He didn't touch her. He didn't need to. The feathers held the perimeter.

From the other side, Kamui Woods came around the barrier wall at a run that slowed to a walk once he had the distance covered — he was already extending, wooden branches from his arms pushing out in a wide arc that encouraged the crowd behind Michelle to step back, step back, give the space, not constraining anyone, just reshaping the geography of where people stood.

"Officers are on approach," he said, to his comms, keeping his voice even. "Quirk disruption at a sanctioned event, subject is known repeat offender, we've got the active Article 4 violation, she used it twice—"

"Three times," said Mt. Lady, who had arrived from the north side and was currently at human scale and moving with the businesslike energy of someone doing a job they have done before. She had her phone out. "I counted. She hit three separate projections before the feathers went up."

"Three," Kamui Woods confirmed, updating his comms.

Michelle, surrounded now on three sides by heroes and on the fourth by the press cordon she had pushed through, lowered the megaphone by approximately six inches but did not put it down, which said something about her assessment of the situation.

"I am a member of the press," she said, into her recorder, "covering a matter of public interest, and my close personal colleague Endeavor—"

"He's covered her ear," Mt. Lady said, not to Michelle. To her phone. She was sending a message. Her voice had the flatness of someone reporting a weather event. "She woke up and he covered her ear. She's out again." She typed something. "He still has his hand on her ear."

A pause.

Her phone buzzed back.

She looked at the screen. Something moved briefly across her expression — not quite a smile, not quite not — and she put her phone in her pocket and turned back to Michelle.

"The fine is five hundred thousand yen," she said, pleasantly, "or thirty days. And it's triple that. Either way the officers are going to walk you through it when they get here, which—" She checked her watch. "Is in about ninety seconds, so."

Michelle drew breath for another megaphone projection.

Hawks' feathers came together into a closer configuration, cutting the gap by two meters in one motion, and he tilted his head and said, very calmly: "I would think carefully about the next one."

Michelle did not lower the megaphone.

She also did not use it again.

---

The officers arrived in eighty-three seconds.

The processing was efficient. It had been efficient each of the previous times and the officers who drew this assignment had developed a system for it. Michelle narrated her own arrest for her recorder, citing Article 12 of the Hero Observer Rights Act, which does not exist, and explained that her close personal friend Endeavor would be available to provide a character witness statement, which he would not, and that she expected to be released within the hour on the basis of her press credentials, which were currently under review by her network's legal team for the third time in two years.

Kamui Woods logged the incident from the scene. Three quirk projections. Unauthorized. Public forum. Hero-sanctioned event. Obstruction.

Mt. Lady sent the clip she'd taken to someone and then put her phone in her pocket and didn't say anything about it, but the person she'd sent it to was {{User}}'s personal number, for when she woke up.

Hawks folded his feathers back in and stretched his arms above his head and said "thirty days this time, do you think?" to no one in particular.

"It would be 90 days, plus the days added for causing a public scene, that or over 2 million yen" said Kamui Woods.

"And she's a broke bitch so," said Mt. Lady.

---

At the interview position, Amy Nakashima had not moved.

Her producer had kept the camera running because Amy had not signaled to cut, and Amy had not signaled to cut because this was — all of it — the story, and she knew what a story looked like, and she had forty years.

Endeavor stood where he had been standing when it started.

His hand was still over {{User}}'s ear.

He was looking at the spot where Michelle had been, and his expression had done the thing it did — closed down and settled into something that was not quite anger, because anger was hot and this was not hot, this was the cold steady thing that lived behind the heat, the thing that had made him Number One before anyone was ready to call him that.

After a moment he looked back at Amy.

Amy looked at him.

"Article 4, Section 2," she said, quietly, to her producer. "Three counts. Get the badge number for the arresting officer." She made a note. She looked back at Endeavor. "I'm sorry for the interruption."

"She interrupted," Endeavor said.

"Yes," Amy agreed.

A pause.

"You covered her ear," Amy said. Not accusatory. Not framing it. Just saying what she had seen, the way she said things she had seen for forty years.

Endeavor looked down at {{User}}, who had not woken, whose breathing was still even, whose hand was still loosely curled against his chest.

He did not move his hand from her ear.

"The medic said not to wake her," he said.

Amy looked at him for a long moment.

"Right," she said, and meant several things by it, and did not say any of them, and raised her microphone again.

"You were describing the third phase," she said.

"Yes," Endeavor said.

And he kept his hand where it was, and continued the interview, and the cleanup continued three blocks east, and the temporary lights held against the dark, and somewhere in greater Musutafu, Michelle Avery was being processed for the forty-eighth time and was explaining to an officer that she had very good connections in the hero community.

The officer, who had drawn this assignment six times now, wrote the incident number in the log and said nothing.

As Reported and Largely Ignored

The League of Villains had a protocol for hostages.

It was not a complicated protocol. It was: acquire leverage, communicate demands, execute exchange or escalate as needed. It had worked before. It was a reasonable operational framework and Spinner had written it up on a whiteboard in the bar three weeks ago and everyone had agreed it was solid.

The protocol had not accounted for Michelle.

---

She had been in the wrong place at the wrong time in the specific way that Michelle was always in the wrong place at the wrong time, which was to say she had been somewhere she was not supposed to be, approaching something she had not been invited to approach, and the League had needed a body and she had been the available body.

Twice had processed the situation in approximately four seconds.

"Journalist," he said.

"Press credentials are in my jacket," Michelle said, immediately, with the composure of someone who considered this relevant information. "My close personal colleagues in the hero community will—"

"Great," said Twice.

They took her anyway.

---

The bar was dark and it smelled like something that had been spilled and not cleaned up and Toga was sitting on the counter eating a rice ball and looking at Michelle with the particular quality of interest she extended to things she had not encountered before.

"You're not scared," Toga said.

"I'm a seasoned journalist," Michelle said. "I've been in difficult situations."

"Have you."

"I've been arrested forty-eight times."

Toga stared at her.

"In pursuit of the story," Michelle clarified.

Toga looked at Spinner. Spinner looked at Twice. Twice looked at the ceiling.

Shigaraki had not looked up from his phone.

---

The demands went out at 19:00.

Standard format. Hostage confirmation. Specific asks. Response window of six hours.

The response came back from the Hero Public Safety Commission at 19:47.

It was two sentences.

Matter has been referred to Musutafu Police Department, Hostage Recovery Division. Standard response timeline applies.

Twice read it twice.

"They referred it to the police," he said.

"Standard response timeline," Spinner said.

A pause.

"They didn't—" Twice looked at the message again. "They didn't negotiate. They just. Referred it."

"To the police," Spinner said.

Another pause.

Shigaraki, still not looking up: "Did you read her file before we grabbed her."

Silence.

"Did anyone," Shigaraki said, "read her file."

---

Toga had found Michelle's Twitter while this conversation was happening. She had been scrolling for four minutes. She looked up.

"She has been arrested forty-eight times," Toga said. "She broke into UA. Multiple times. She has a module." She scrolled further. "She broke into a pro hero's personal office while Endeavor and Hawks were literally on-site at that hero's workplace." She scrolled further. "She was thrown by the UA gate into a hedge and she was composing a tweet in the hedge." She put the phone down. "She was composing a tweet in the hedge."

Everyone looked at Michelle.

Michelle had taken out her recorder and was narrating the environment.

"Subject's base of operations," she said, into the recorder, "is atmospheric and communicates a studied indifference to conventional social norms. My close personal contacts in the hero community will find the location details in this recording when I am recovered, which I expect will be—"

"Nobody's coming," Shigaraki said.

Michelle paused her recorder. "Sorry?"

"They referred it to the police." He looked at her for the first time. His eyes were the eyes of someone who had seen a great deal and found most of it tedious. "The heroes. They referred it to the police. Standard timeline."

Michelle stared at him.

"Endeavor," she said.

"Referred to the police."

"Hawks—"

"Police."

"My close personal—"

"Michelle." It was the first time he had used her name. He had read her file in the last forty minutes and he said it the way you say something you wish you didn't know. "Nobody is coming. The police will come eventually. Until then you are a hostage in a villain's bar and I would appreciate if you kept the recorder off."

Michelle looked at the recorder.

She looked around the bar.

She looked at Toga, who had gone back to scrolling her Twitter.

"He's right," Toga said, without looking up. "She's right here by the way," she added, apparently to Michelle's Twitter feed. "She seems fine. Very talkative."

---

The first hour was the recorder.

Michelle narrated continuously — the layout of the space, the number of individuals present, their approximate power levels as she assessed them, which were wrong in every case, and a running commentary on the emotional atmosphere of the room which she described as "tense but collegial, with an undercurrent of the kind of professional camaraderie I recognize from my years embedded with hero teams."

She had not been embedded with hero teams.

Twice developed a stress response to the sound of the recorder clicking on.

The second hour was the questions.

Michelle had decided, somewhere in hour one, that this was a journalistic opportunity, and had begun interviewing members of the League with the composed, authoritative energy she brought to press pools she hadn't been invited to.

Spinner answered two questions before he realized what was happening and stopped.

Toga answered seven questions with increasing enthusiasm before Twice physically moved her to a different part of the bar.

Compress said, once, "I don't give interviews," and Michelle wrote something in her notebook and said "noted — a man who communicates through deliberate absence," and Compress looked at the ceiling for a long moment and then went upstairs and did not come back down.

The third hour was the networking.

"I don't know if you're aware," Michelle said to Shigaraki, "but I have significant reach in hero media. An exclusive from your organization would—"

"We don't want media coverage," Shigaraki said.

"Everyone wants media coverage."

"We want the collapse of hero society."

Michelle wrote something in her notebook.

"Right," she said. "And in terms of the messaging around that—"

Shigaraki stood up.

He went upstairs.

---

By hour four, the bar had redistributed itself so that Michelle occupied one corner and every other person in the space occupied the other three corners, which was a geometric achievement that nobody acknowledged out loud.

Twice was stress-eating.

Toga had started a new Twitter account to follow Michelle's live-tweeting of her own kidnapping, which she was doing from her phone, which no one had taken because they had not planned for a hostage who would immediately start live-tweeting.

The tweets were not performing well.

Being held by the League of Villains — my close personal colleagues in the hero community are coordinating my rescue as I type this. More updates to come. #HeroAdjacent #ExclusiveAccess #BreakingNews

Four likes. Two were Toga's new account. One was an account that appeared to be a bot. One was unidentified.

"Four likes," Toga reported.

Nobody responded.

Spinner was lying on the bar with his arm over his face.

---

Hour five was when Twice snapped.

Not violently. He had not reached violent. He had reached the specific breaking point that exists on the other side of violent, the one that is quieter and more final.

"I need her to stop," he said, to the room.

The room did not respond because the room had also reached that point.

"I need her to stop talking," Twice said. "I need her to stop recording. I need her to stop asking questions and I need her to stop live-tweeting and I need—" He stopped. He took a breath. "How much is the fine for returning a hostage voluntarily."

"That's not a thing," Spinner said, from under his arm.

"It should be a thing," Twice said.

Toga looked up from her phone. "She's tweeting about Endeavor again."

"Of course she is," Spinner said.

"She says he'll be here within the hour."

Twice looked at the ceiling.

"It's been five hours," he said.

"I know," said Toga.

"He's not coming."

"I know."

"Nobody is—"

"I know," Toga said. She sounded, for the first time, genuinely tired. "I know."

---

The decision was made collectively and without a formal vote, which was how the League made most of its decisions, and it was made at hour five and forty-three minutes when Michelle asked Shigaraki, who had come back downstairs for a drink, whether he would be willing to provide a quote for a piece she was developing on The Human Side of Villainy: What the League of Villains Can Teach Us About Authentic Living.

Shigaraki put down his glass.

He looked at Twice.

Twice looked at Spinner.

Spinner looked at Toga.

Toga looked at Michelle.

Michelle had her recorder out and her pen ready.

---

The door opened at 23:04.

Michelle exited the bar at a velocity that suggested she had not operated the door herself.

She landed on the pavement outside, which was damp from earlier rain, and sat up, and straightened her lanyard, and looked back at the door, which had closed.

From inside, muffled: something that sounded like Twice saying I don't care about the protocol, I don't care, I am not doing another hour—

The door did not reopen.

Michelle sat on the pavement for a moment.

She took out her recorder.

"Escaped," she said, into it, "through a combination of journalistic skill and personal resilience. My close personal colleagues in the hero community will be notified of my location. I anticipate a significant response."

She took out her phone.

She had eleven missed calls from the police hostage division, which had been trying to locate her for four hours.

She had zero missed calls from any hero.

She had six new Twitter notifications. Four were Toga's account. One was the bot. One was someone who had replied girl nobody cares to her last tweet and gotten three likes.

Michelle put her phone away.

She stood up.

She straightened her jacket.

She walked to the end of the street to find better lighting.

---

PART FOUR: THE TIKTOK

---

@MichelleAnchorPro [LIVE → saved to profile — posted 23:31 — 20 views]

---

The lighting was not good. She had found a streetlamp but it was the yellow-orange kind that does not read well on camera and there was a distant sound of police vehicles that she had not been able to source.

Michelle was in frame, hair slightly displaced from the exit velocity, jacket damp at one knee from the pavement, expression arranged into the composed broadcast face.

She had the megaphone. She had recovered the megaphone. Nobody had taken the megaphone.

She did not use it for the TikTok. She held it. For presence.

"Hi," she said. "I'm coming to you live from — well, I can't disclose the exact location for operational reasons — but I wanted to give my followers a direct account of what I've just been through."

She paused for effect.

"Tonight, I was taken. By the League of Villains."

Another pause.

The view counter in the corner of her screen read: 7.

"I want to be very clear that I handled this with complete professionalism throughout. I conducted interviews. I gathered material. I maintained my composure in a high-pressure environment. And ultimately—" She straightened slightly. "I secured my own release."

The view counter read: 11.

Three of them were Toga, watching from three devices, eating a rice ball.

"I also want to address something." Michelle's expression shifted into the one she used for serious segments. "The hero community's response to this incident has been — I'll be honest with you — disappointing. My close personal colleagues, who I won't name because I respect their privacy—" She named them. "Endeavor. Hawks. Eraserhead. Edgeshot. Gang Orca. My close personal—"

The view counter read: 14.

"—did not personally respond to this incident. And I understand they're busy. I understand there's a protocol. But when someone in your personal circle—" Her voice developed the quality she used for emotional segments, which was marginally different from the quality she used for serious segments. "When someone you care about, someone you've built a real relationship with over years—"

The view counter read: 17.

Two new viewers were police officers who had been trying to locate her and had found this TikTok instead of her actual location and were currently trying to determine from the background whether they could identify the street.

"—is in danger, and you refer it to the police—" She paused. "That hurts. I won't pretend it doesn't hurt. As a close personal friend of these individuals, as someone who has dedicated her career to telling their stories with integrity and care—"

The view counter read: 20.

It stayed at 20.

Michelle waited for it to go up.

It stayed at 20.

She continued anyway.

"I just — I think the public deserves to know what happened tonight. And I think the heroes involved deserve the chance to reflect on—"

Her phone buzzed.

She looked at it.

It was one of the eleven missed calls calling back. Police hostage division. PLEASE RESPOND WE HAVE BEEN TRYING TO LOCATE YOU FOR FOUR HOURS.

She declined the call.

"I'll be taking questions," she said, to the camera.

The view counter read: 20.

Nobody asked questions.

The three devices Toga had been watching on went offline simultaneously, which brought the count to 17.

Michelle waited.

"I'll take questions in the comments," she said.

One comment arrived.

It was from the account eraserheadreal_fan4729 and it said: girl the police have been calling you

Michelle closed the comment.

"Thank you for watching," she said. "Stay tuned for my full exclusive account of the evening — Inside the League: A Journalist's Account of Survival, Resilience, and the True Meaning of Hero Work. Available on my newsletter. Link in bio."

She ended the live.

The recording saved to her profile.

By morning it had 20 views.

The view count did not change.

It would not change

---

The hero community learned about the kidnapping at approximately 08:00 the following morning when the police report was filed and the standard incident notifications went out through the hero network.

The notification was four lines. Hostage taken. Hostage self-evacuated. No injuries. Case closed.

Hawks read it while making coffee. He read it twice. He put his phone face down and finished making his coffee and picked his phone back up and read it a third time.

He sent one message to a group chat.

Lmao not even league can handle her

@MichelleAveryCoverage · 2m

EXCLUSIVE: Inside sources confirm that the hero community's latest training initiative raises serious safety concerns — and one faculty member may be responsible. My full investigative piece drops at 7PM. The public deserves answers. [link]

4 replies · 11 retweets · 89 likes

---

It had taken her three weeks. Three weeks of "investigative journalism" that was really just Michelle staring at UA's perimeter from a safe distance and making notes she called fieldwork. She had drafted the lede seventeen times. She had the banner image ready. She had told three colleagues this piece was going to change the conversation.

The piece dropped at 7:04 PM.

At 7:06 PM, this happened:

---

@[User] · now

BESTIES WHICH PRO-HERO DO Y'ALL THINK WOULD BE AN AMAZING KISSER?? 💕😘💕😘 IS IT ME?? SAY ITS MEEEEE

---

The reply count started moving immediately.

By 7:08 it was at 400.

By 7:11 it was at 4,000 and climbing.

---

@eroticahero · 1m HAWKS OBVIOUSLY?? the man has wing span that means something

@heroobsessed4life · 1m okay but hear me out. Best Jeanist. he'd treat it like an art form

@bakubabe2025 · 58s MIRKO would kiss you so hard you'd forget your own quirk registration number

@class1afanatic · 55s no one is talking about Edgeshot and that's a CRIME

@heroinesunite · 52s I'm not saying Endeavor but I'm also not NOT saying Endeavor and I will not be explaining further

@fatgumappreciation · 48s FAT GUM would be so enthusiastic about it and I mean that as the highest compliment

---

By 7:15 PM, #HeroKisser was trending nationally at number two.

At 7:16 PM, Hizashi Yamada retweeted it with the caption: "FINALLY someone is asking the RIGHT questions. this is journalism."

At 7:17 PM, that retweet got 80,000 likes.

At 7:18 PM, Michelle Avery's investigative piece had 34 views, eleven of which were her own.

---

She found out from her engagement dashboard.

She had been refreshing it every forty-five seconds, which she would later describe to no one because she had no one to describe it to, waiting for the numbers to climb. They were not climbing. They were, if anything, moving in a direction she didn't have a word for yet because she refused to acknowledge it as a direction.

She refreshed Twitter.

#HeroKisser was at number one.

Her thumb moved before her brain caught up.

She was reading the thread.

She was reading 40,000 replies to a tweet that said BESTIES.

She was watching, in real time, Ryukyu's official agency account like it — like it — with a reply that said "No comment 🐉" which was somehow the funniest thing Michelle had ever seen and she was not laughing, she was not laughing, she was watching the number tick up to 200,000 likes while her article sat at 34 views and a strongly worded comment from an account called @herotruthseeker that turned out, upon inspection, to be her own backup.

She started typing.

---

@MichelleAveryCoverage · now

While certain "heroes" and supposed educators are busy running popularity contests on social media, REAL journalism is being ignored. I have sources. I have documentation. The public deserves to know what's happening at UA and instead everyone is talking about—

---

She deleted it.

She started again.

---

@MichelleAveryCoverage · now

It says a lot about the current state of hero media that a serious investigative piece can be completely buried by a single frivolous tweet from someone who

---

She deleted it.

Her nails were making a sound against the desk that she was not regulating.

She opened her secondary account.

She opened her news account.

She opened the account that was just her name with underscores.

She did not tweet from any of them because she was a professional and she was fine.

She refreshed the thread again.

Gang Orca's official account had replied.

It said: "I am not answering this question."

It had 340,000 likes.

It had 47,000 replies all saying variations of "that's a yes."

Gang Orca had then replied to his own reply with: "I said what I said," which brought the interaction to half a million likes inside four minutes.

Michelle put her phone face down on the desk.

She picked it up again eleven seconds later.

Aizawa's account — Aizawa, who had not posted since 2022, who posted twice that year and one of them was a retweet of a cat sanctuary fundraiser — had two new notifications on his account that weren't from her suspended accounts, which meant someone had tagged him in the thread, and she clicked through with the focused intensity of someone defusing a bomb —

He had not responded.

He was not going to respond.

But 200,000 people had tagged him anyway with the specific anticipatory energy of an audience waiting for something, and the top reply was just the word "Aizawa." with a period, which had 90,000 likes, and the second top reply was someone who had written "he'd be so mean about it and that IS the appeal" which had 110,000 likes, and —

Michelle stood up from her desk.

She sat back down.

She opened the drafts folder where she had saved sixteen versions of her investigative piece and looked at them for a long moment.

She opened Twitter.

The tweet was at 2.3 million impressions.

Her article was at 34 views. Now 35. She refreshed. Still 35.

She began composing a tweet from her main account that started with "As a serious voice in hero journalism, I feel it is important to address —" and got as far as "address" before the keyboard autocorrected it to "kiss" because she had apparently searched the word kiss enough times in the last twenty-two minutes that her phone had made a decision about her priorities.

She put the phone down.

She picked up her megaphone.

She put the megaphone down because she was in her apartment and there was no one to amplify at.

Her article now had 36 views. One of them had left a comment that said "okay but who do YOU think would be an amazing kisser" and it had three upvotes.

Michelle Avery, serious hero journalist, nine-year veteran of hero media, holder of a press credential she had renewed four times and fought for once — Michelle Avery closed her laptop, lay down on her couch in the dark, and stared at the ceiling while somewhere across the city, #HeroKisser climbed to number one in four countries simultaneously.

Her phone buzzed.

It was a Google Alert for her own name.

Someone had written an article titled: "While You Were Asking Which Hero Is The Best Kisser, This Reporter Dropped A Piece Nobody Read."

It had 400,000 views.

Her article had 36.

HOSTAGE SITUATION

Class 1-A — Room 1-A — 09:03

---

The morning had started normally.

Aizawa's classroom, first period. Twenty students in their seats. The bell had rung. Aizawa had not appeared. The class had developed a collective wait time of approximately four minutes before anyone started speculating. Four minutes passed. Five. Six.

The door opened.

Not Aizawa.

{{User}} came in first, then Hizashi behind her, and Hizashi pulled the door shut and the sound it made was not the sound of a door closing normally. It was the sound of a lock engaging, deliberate and final, and every student in the room heard it and the quality of attention shifted completely in under two seconds.

Hizashi was not in his Present Mic costume. He was in civilian clothes. He was not performing his usual energy. No radio voice. No broad gestures. No volume preceding him like a weather system. He stood at the front of the room with a different quality entirely.

Quiet.

Present Mic, quiet, in a locked room, was a thing that required immediate reassessment.

{{User}} moved to the side of the room and stood there. The class looked at her. She looked back. Said nothing.

Hizashi let the silence sit for exactly long enough.

"Okay," he said, and his voice was normal volume, which was its own kind of strange. "Here's the situation. You've been taken. You don't know where you are. You don't know how many of them there are. You don't know what Quirks they have — which means you don't know if using yours makes things better or worse." He looked around the room. "Your Quirks are off the table. Figure out how to get out of the room."

A beat.

"That's it?" Katsuki said.

"That's it," Hizashi said.

Katsuki looked at the door. Looked at the room. Looked at {{User}}, who looked back at him with an expression that communicated nothing except that she was watching. He looked back at the door.

"Fine," he said.

---

The first three minutes were assessment.

Izuku was already murmuring, low and fast, notebook open, pen moving — door is standard UA reinforced, hinges on the interior side which is actually workable, windows are the issue, ground floor means visibility, ventilation is— He was drawing a diagram of the room's exit points, cross-referencing it with what he knew about UA's construction from memory, which was considerable.

"Vent shafts won't work," Momo said, leaning over the diagram with calm focus. "Standard UA spec puts them at thirty centimeters."

"Mineta could fit," Sero said.

"I'm not going into a vent shaft," Mineta said.

"We're noting it as an option," Momo said, with the diplomatic firmness of someone chairing a meeting that had not been scheduled, "and moving on."

Across the room, Katsuki had not gone to the group forming around Izuku's notebook. He was at the door, examining the lock mechanism with the focused attention he gave to things he intended to defeat, running his fingers along the frame, checking the hinge pins.

"Hinge pins are recessed," he said, to himself, or to Kirishima, who had appeared at his shoulder with the reliable gravity of someone who followed where Katsuki went. "Can't pop them without tools."

"There's a supply cabinet," Kirishima said, nodding at the back of the room.

Katsuki looked at it.

"Get it open."

Kirishima went.

Shoto had not moved from his seat. He was looking at the room with the quality of thought that looked like nothing happening and was everything happening underneath.

Sero was at the window, examining the latch. "Window opens but there's a twenty-foot drop to the courtyard."

"Manageable with a rope," Momo said.

"We don't have a rope."

"What's in the cabinet?"

"Tape," Kirishima reported, excavating. "Ruler. Clay. Scissors. A compass. Markers. A very large roll of string."

Sero and Kirishima looked at each other.

"That's not going to hold twenty people," Kaminari said.

"Doesn't have to hold twenty people," Katsuki said, still at the door, not turning around. "Has to hold one person who goes out the window, comes around to the front, and unlocks it from the outside."

"The door locks from the inside too," Jiro said.

"There's a panel," Katsuki said. "UA rooms have an exterior bypass panel for emergency access. Under the external frame, left side. If someone gets out and reaches it—"

"You memorized the building's emergency access panels," Izuku said.

Katsuki turned and looked at him.

"Haven't you," he said.

Izuku opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened a different page in his notebook, which had a complete diagram of the building's emergency access systems.

"Moving on," Momo said.

Jiro had crouched at the door with a piece of clay from the cabinet, pressing it carefully around the lock cylinder, reading the resistance. "If someone works this while pressure's applied to the frame—"

"Lower left," Katsuki said, not looking up from where his hands were on the frame. "Frame's the weak point, not the cylinder. Sustained lateral pressure here while someone manipulates the cylinder. It'll give."

Jiro looked at the clay. Looked at him. Looked at the clay.

"Okay," she said.

---

Hizashi, at the front of the room, watched all of this with the expression of a teacher observing something going better than expected, careful not to let it show. {{User}} was against the wall beside him, watching the same thing, with the quality of attention that had made Aizawa, the first time he'd observed one of her classes, go very still for reasons he hadn't explained.

The class was four minutes into genuine problem-solving. Katsuki and Jiro were at the door, working the frame and cylinder as a team without having discussed becoming a team. Momo and Izuku were at the notebook, building a sequential plan. Kirishima was running supply inventory for anyone who asked. Sero was measuring the window drop with the string. Shoto was—

Shoto was watching. Doing the math. Working through something.

It was going well.

It was going well right up until the sound.

---

Not dramatic. Just a phone. The soft automated chime of a TikTok live beginning, and then the ambient noise of a phone being held up, and then a voice.

From outside the classroom door.

"—coming to you live from UA High School, where I can exclusively report that a hostage situation is currently in progress in classroom 1-A—"

The room went still.

Not the stillness of shock — their threat-assessment instincts were already running, and every head turned toward the door with the synchronized attention of twenty people mid-exercise.

"Is that—" Kaminari started.

"Yes," said Jiro, who had the best hearing in the room. She hadn't moved from the door. "She's outside. Phone's up. She's filming through the door panel."

"—I've been covering this school for years and I always knew there was something—the pro hero currently teaching this class, who my close personal colleagues Endeavor and Eraserhead have spoken very highly of—well, today—"

"She thinks it's real," Tsuyu said, from the back. Her voice was even and precise, the same as always. "She thinks it's a real hostage situation."

The room processed this for approximately two seconds.

"—I always had concerns about this particular instructor's methods, and what I'm witnessing today only confirms—"

Hizashi had straightened from his position at the front, and the tension had come into his shoulders, the slight adjustment of his jaw that preceded deployment—

{{User}}'s hand came up.

Not touching him. Just up. The smallest gesture.

Hizashi stopped.

He looked at her.

She was looking at the class.

He followed her gaze.

---

The class was already moving.

Not loudly. Not with direction from anyone at the front of the room. Twenty students who had been in the middle of a problem and had just been handed a second, adjacent problem, and who were processing the relationship between the two simultaneously.

Izuku had turned to a new page in the notebook. His murmuring had changed frequency — faster, lower, the register he used when working at actual speed. She's outside the door. She's livestreaming. She thinks it's real. If security comes it validates the stream. If anyone engages her directly she has content. She needs to be removed without engagement. We still need to get out of the room. Same problem. Get out of the room first—

He looked up.

"We still get out of the room," he said, to the group, keeping his voice low. "Same plan. We get out, then we deal with her. Anything we do from in here that she can film makes it worse."

"If she sees the door open she films it," Tsuyu said.

"Then she doesn't see it open," Katsuki said. He was still at the door. His voice was flat and very focused. "Distraction. Someone makes noise at the window. She turns. Door opens in the blind spot."

He looked at Kaminari.

Kaminari pointed at himself.

Katsuki did not confirm or deny. He simply turned back to the door frame with the energy of a person who has made a decision and implemented it.

"Loud," Katsuki said. "Window side. Not your Quirk. Just you."

"Right," Kaminari said, and moved.

Jiro had the clay back in the cylinder. Her hands were steady.

Momo was counting beats quietly with Sero, sequencing the window knock against the door movement.

"—and I want my viewers to understand that what they are seeing is not—"

"Three," Momo said, under her breath.

"Two," Sero said.

Kaminari knocked on the window. Three sharp knocks, then: "HEY. HEY, CAN SOMEONE—"

Michelle's phone swung toward the sound.

Katsuki's hands were at the lower left of the frame.

The frame gave.

Small. Precise. Exactly where he'd said it would. The door swung inward three inches, six, and Momo and Sero were at the gap, controlled and quiet, and the door was open.

---

The hallway was empty except for Michelle.

She was mid-broadcast, phone up, megaphone in the other hand, the composed face she wore for serious segments. She had clearly run to get here. Her badge was slightly crooked.

She saw the door open and turned the phone toward it.

"—and here we can see what appears to be students attempting to escape, which only further—"

Shoto looked at the hallway.

He looked at his phone.

He opened his contacts and scrolled to Father and pressed call.

At the same moment, at the back of the group, Izuku had his phone out, typing fast, lips still moving: All Might — hostage simulation, Michelle Avery has interrupted it, she's livestreaming in the hallway and has used her Quirk at least once. Training is technically still active. Students are handling it. Wanted you to know.

He pressed send and kept moving.

---

"Ma'am." Iida had moved to the front with the automatic authority he brought to situations requiring someone to be the front, posture straight, voice projected. "This is a restricted educational area. You do not have clearance to be on these premises."

"I am a member of the press—"

"UA's press access policy requires advance authorization from the administrative office, a current UA press credential issued within the last thirty days, and an escort from a registered faculty member." He had clearly memorized this at some point on the theory that it would eventually be useful. "You have none of these. You are trespassing."

"I am documenting a matter of public interest—"

"You are trespassing," Iida said, pleasantly and firmly, "in a school."

Michelle swung the phone toward him. "This student has clearly been coached to obstruct—"

"Quirk usage," Jiro said, from somewhere in the group. Dry and even. "She just used it again. Article 4, Section 2."

"I'm counting," Tsuyu said.

"I have a timestamp from when she first activated it outside the classroom door," Izuku said, notebook out again, pen already moving. "That's the first count. This is the third."

Shoto had the phone at his ear. It rang three times before the line connected.

"Todoroki." Endeavor's voice — immediate, slightly impatient with the medium.

"Michelle Avery is in the UA hallway outside classroom 1-A," Shoto said, quietly, turned fractionally from the group. "She interrupted the training exercise. She is livestreaming. She has used her Quirk three times. Unlicensed. Sanctioned event."

A pause on the other end that had a specific quality to it.

"She's on school grounds," Endeavor said.

"Yes."

"Using her Quirk."

"Three times. I have a student with timestamps."

Another pause.

"Is anyone handling it."

Shoto looked at the hallway. At Iida, steady at the front. At Izuku with the notebook. At Tsuyu counting counts. At Katsuki at the back of the group, arms crossed, watching Michelle with the expression of someone observing a predictable outcome.

"We're handling it," Shoto said.

From the phone, faintly — not quite a sound, but the absence of the sound his father made when he disagreed.

"Keep the line open," Endeavor said.

---

Izuku's phone buzzed.

He looked at the screen while maintaining position in the group. All Might had responded in forty seconds: Young Midoriya! I've already been notified through the school network — security is on their way. You're all doing exactly the right thing. Don't engage, don't react, don't give her content. Let the process work. (Also — very good instinct texting me. Well done.)

Izuku showed Momo the screen without comment.

Momo nodded once and looked back at Michelle.

---

Michelle used her Quirk again.

The hallway was enclosed and it was loud and every student winced once, involuntarily, and then held position. None of them moved. None of them gave her a reaction she could point a camera at.

"—and I want my viewers to understand that my close personal colleague Eraserhead would be absolutely appalled by what is happening to these students right now—"

"Shota assigned the exercise," Kaminari muttered, very quietly, to Sero.

"She doesn't know that," Sero murmured back.

"She doesn't know anything," Katsuki said, from the back. Quieter than his usual volume. Controlled.

Hizashi, somewhere behind the group, had the tension in his shoulders again, jaw set, three separate times now he had held it back—

{{User}}'s hand came up.

He stopped.

Breathed out through his nose.

Crossed his arms.

Did not use his Quirk.

---

"—four counts now," Tsuyu said, to no one, to everyone, to the record.

"I have it," Izuku said.

"—and my close personal friend Endeavor will be hearing about this—"

From Shoto's phone, held at his side, speaker just barely audible to anyone standing close:

"I am already hearing about it," said Endeavor, in the tone of a man who wanted that noted publicly. "She has been reported. Security has been notified. Do not engage."

Shoto looked at his phone.

Michelle turned toward the sound.

"—is that—was that—"

"He's talking to me," Shoto said.

Michelle stared at him.

Stared at the phone.

At the doorway behind him, where {{User}} stood against the frame, watching, saying nothing, expression contained and still and entirely undisturbed.

Michelle raised her phone higher, angling toward {{User}}, composing something to say—

Security came from both ends of the hallway.

They had optimized the route. They had done this before. They came from both ends because that was the approach for a known repeat offender in an enclosed space, and they moved with the efficiency of a process that had been run enough times to be routine.

"Ma'am." The first officer had the voice trained for this register and this volume. "You are under arrest for trespassing on a registered educational facility. Unauthorized use of an emitter-type Quirk in a designated public forum, Public Safety Act Article 4 Section 2, four counts. Obstruction of a hero-sanctioned educational exercise." He looked at the phone still raised in her hand. "We'll need the device."

"I am a member of the press—"

"The device, ma'am."

Michelle looked at the phone. At the camera. At the live feed, which had forty-one viewers, eleven of whom were Toga across multiple accounts.

"My close personal colleague Endeavor—"

"Has been informed and has no statement," said the phone in Shoto's hand, flat and final.

The officer took Michelle's phone.

The live ended.

Forty-one viewers received a notification: this stream has ended.

---

The hallway settled.

Security walked Michelle toward the administrative exit, the optimized route, the one they always used. Her voice faded as the distance increased, still narrating, still composing the story she was going to tell about this, and then it was gone.

Class 1-A stood in the hallway.

Kaminari broke the silence.

"Did we just—" He looked at Izuku. At Iida. At Katsuki. "We solved the escape scenario and then immediately had to handle Michelle."

"Consecutively," Izuku said. He was writing in the notebook. His pen had not stopped since the door opened. "The door frame gave at exactly the point Bakugo identified. The distraction timing was within—"

"I know the timing," Katsuki said.

"The coordination was genuinely—"

"I know."

A pause.

"You worked with everyone," Izuku said. Not an accusation. Careful. Like something he'd noted and was choosing words around.

Katsuki looked at him.

"The exercise required it," Katsuki said.

Izuku wrote something in the notebook.

Katsuki looked at what he was writing from across the correct distance for plausible deniability.

He went back into the classroom.

---

Shoto was putting his phone away. Izuku fell into step beside him.

"Your father helped," Izuku said. Carefully. Like he was handing something breakable.

"My father gave structural information about a door frame," Shoto said.

"Still."

Shoto looked at him.

"It was a door frame," Shoto said.

He went into the classroom.

Izuku stood in the hallway for a moment, and then wrote something in the notebook that was not about the door frame, and followed him in.