The bells of the elementary school didn't chime anymore, they were a sharp, mechanical buzz that signalled the end of the day, a sound that felt more like a warning than a dismissal.
Fuyumi Todoroki stood at the front of her classroom, her hands dusted with white chalk as she watched her students pack their bags. The air in the room was stagnant, smelling of floor wax and the faint, ozone-heavy scent of the storm brewing outside.
Usually, the end of the day was filled with the chaotic, joyful noise of children, but lately, the atmosphere had turned brittle. The students didn't talk as much, they moved in tight, wary circles.
As the last of the bags were zipped, Fuyumi's eyes drifted toward a small, empty desk in the second row.
"Has anyone seen Hiroshi-kun?" she asked, her voice soft but carrying across the room. "He hasn't been back since the afternoon break."
In the back corner, a group of three boys, all looking unremarkable, "pure" human types, shared a look. One of them, a boy named Kaito, let out a short, jagged snicker that set Fuyumi's teeth on edge.
"He wandered off to the toilets a while ago, Sensei," Kaito said, his tone dripping with an unearned, casual arrogance. "Probably just hiding. You know how slow he is."
Fuyumi frowned. She turned to another student, a boy who usually sat near Hiroshi. "Sato-kun, you went to get a drink five minutes ago. Did you see him in the hall?"
The boy looked at his shoes, his face pale. "No, Sensei," he whispered, quickly grabbing his bag and hurrying out the door before she could ask anything else.
The classroom emptied, the silence left behind feeling heavy and cold. Fuyumi didn't wait to grade the papers on her desk. She walked into the hallway, her heels clicking rhythmically against the linoleum.
She reached the boy's toilets and knocked softly. "Hiroshi-kun? Are you in there? The buses are about to leave."
There was no answer at first, only the sound of a distant, dripping faucet. Then, a tiny, muffled squeal drifted from the far stall.
Fuyumi pushed the door open. Her breath caught in her throat.
Hiroshi was slumped in the corner of the stall, his small frame trembling. He was a rhino-mutant, a thick, slate-gray skin covering his body, and a small, ivory-coloured horn protruding from his forehead. His hands were bound behind his back with a rough, jagged plastic cord, and a strip of dirty athletic tape had been plastered over his mouth.
"Oh, Hiroshi," Fuyumi whispered, her heart dropping into her stomach.
She knelt on the cold, antiseptic tiles, her fingers shaking as she gently peeled the tape away. Hiroshi let out a broken, wheezing sob as soon as he was free. She quickly worked on the cord around his wrists, her nails digging into the plastic until it snapped.
"Are you hurt? Did they hit you?" she asked, her hands moving to check his face.
Hiroshi didn't look at her. He reached up with a trembling hand, his fingers grazing the base of the horn on his forehead. There were red, angry scratches around the bone, and a small chip had been taken out of the ivory.
"They... they said I didn't need it," Hiroshi whispered, the tears carving clean tracks through the dust on his gray cheeks. "They said it was wrong. They were trying to snap it off with a ruler."
Fuyumi felt a cold, visceral sickness wash over her. It was the "Refinement" ideology. The ghost of the White Standard returning to haunt the playgrounds of the next generation.
"Why?" she breathed.
"They said... maybe if it falls off, I'll gain a human form," Hiroshi sobbed, his voice cracking. "They said I'm a monster and that's why the villains are attacking UA. Because of people like me."
Fuyumi pulled him into a tight embrace, burying her face in his shoulder. His skin felt like cold stone, but he was shivering like a leaf in a gale. "You are human, Hiroshi," she said, her voice thick with a desperate, maternal fury. "You are a little boy, and you are perfect just as you are. They are wrong. They are so, so wrong."
Hiroshi let out a hollow, bitter sound, a noise too old for a child his age. "I'm not human, Sensei. I heard the men on the news. I'm a 'biological devolution.' My dad... he says it was like this when he was a boy, too."
Fuyumi pulled back, looking at him with saddened eyes. "How long has this been going on, Hiroshi? Why didn't you tell me?"
"A month," he whispered. "Ever since the big prison break. Everyone is just... angrier now."
He wiped his eyes, his gaze dropping to the floor. "Please, Sensei... don't call my dad. He's busy at the wharf, working double shifts. He'd just tell me to keep my head down and not cry about it since they are just jealous to be us."
Fuyumi took in a deep, shuddering breath. She looked at the small, wounded child and realized that the "Golden Light" of her father's world had failed this boy. Society wasn't just collapsing at the top, it was rotting from the roots up.
"I understand," she said, her voice a fragile promise in the dark, cold bathroom. "I won't call him. But you're staying in my classroom during breaks from now on. You aren't alone, Hiroshi. I promise."
___
The air within U.A.'s Great Assembly Hall did not circulate. The high-domed ceiling, once a symbol of soaring ambition, now felt like the lid of a very expensive coffin. Below it, the students of Class 1-A and 1-B sat in rows of reinforced chairs, their bodies hunched, their whispers creating a low-frequency hum of collective anxiety that rattled the nerves of the teachers standing along the perimeter.
"My mother called again this morning," a student from 1-B whispered, her voice trembling. "She was crying. She wants to pull me out. She says the school is a lightning rod."
"Where would you go?" another responded, his voice a jagged rasp. "Look at the news. The 'Harvest' is everywhere. At least here, there are walls. Outside… outside, you're just a target."
The conversation rippled through the rows, a chaotic tapestry of fear, relief at having survived the third breach, and a burgeoning, bitter resentment. They spoke of the meteor that had nearly crushed the gym, the blue flames that had licked at the vents, and the terrifying silence that followed every siren. They were children who had been told they were the "Golden Generation," yet they were currently huddled like refugees in their own sanctuary.
They were so loud, so buried in the frantic processing of their own trauma, that they did not notice the figure standing on the elevated stage.
Vlad King stood at the lectern, his massive arms crossed over his chest, his expression a mask of weary patience. He waited. He watched the undulating sea of gray and blue uniforms, the way their mouths moved in desperate, recursive loops. Beside him, Shota Aizawa looked like a ghost, his eyes bloodshot, his posture stiff with a tension that suggested he might snap if the wind changed direction.
Finally, Tenya Iida stood up in the front row. He did not chop his arms, he did not shout. He simply turned to his peers and raised a single, steady hand. The gesture, born of a discipline that felt increasingly brittle, slowly drew the silence out of the room. One by one, the students looked toward the stage.
Vlad King stepped forward, the microphone catching the heavy thrum of his breath.
"Quiet down," he commanded, though the edge was missing from his voice. "The Board of Directors and the Hero Public Safety Commission have concluded their emergency review of the recent security failures. As of zero-hundred hours this morning, Principal Nezu has been relieved of his administrative duties. He is currently being transitioned to a secure advisory role."
A wave of shock broke over the hall. Nezu was the mind of U.A. He was the architect of their safety. To remove him was to admit that the brain of the institution had been compromised.
"In his stead," Vlad King continued, his eyes darting briefly toward the wings of the stage, "the Commission has appointed an Acting Principal to oversee the restructuring of U.A.'s curriculum and defence protocols. Please welcome Principal Masanori Kuroda."
The man who stepped out from the shadows did not walk so much as he glided.
Masanori Kuroda was forty-seven years old, but he possessed the unnerving stillness of an expensive marble statue. His suit was a charcoal three-piece, tailored with such mathematical precision that not a single wrinkle appeared as he moved. His hair was slicked back, a silver-streaked helmet of order that caught the harsh fluorescent light. Behind thin, rectangular glasses, his eyes were clear, focused, and entirely devoid of the warmth one might expect from an educator.
He did not go to the lectern. He walked to the very edge of the stage, looking down at the students. He smiled. It was a perfect, practiced curve of the lips that did not reach his eyes, a mask of cordiality worn over a face of stone.
He stood there for a full minute, allowing the silence to become uncomfortable. He looked at each row, his gaze lingering on the students like a collector appraising a shelf of fragile porcelain.
"Interesting," Kuroda said. His voice was a measured, polite baritone that carried to the back of the hall without the need for amplification. "Out of all the year levels currently housed within this facility, the First Years were the slowest to achieve silence. Efficiency, it seems, decreases with the intensity of the experience. Something to be corrected."
He clasped his hands behind his back, his posture military-straight.
"I am Masanori Kuroda. I am not a hero. I am a strategist working under the commission. I am a builder of systems. And I am here because the system you have lived under for the past semester has failed. It failed to protect your dorms. It failed to protect your peace. And most importantly, it failed to produce the results the nation requires of its primary deterrent entity."
He began to pace the stage, slow, deliberate steps that echoed with the rhythm of a metronome.
"U.A. is often described as a school. This is a sentimental misnomer. U.A. is a state-funded incubator for the development of the Hero Entity, a specific biological and social instrument intended to maintain national stability. Heroes are not just symbols of hope, they are the infrastructure of order. Figures like All Might were not miracles, they were high-functioning anomalies that we have failed to replicate because we focused on the 'man' and ignored the 'mechanism.' My goal is to ensure that every one of you becomes a functioning gear in the machine of the state."
The hall was so quiet now that the hum of the air filtration system sounded like a roar. The students of Class 1-A looked at one another, a cold dread settling into their marrow. This man spoke an odd way about growth.
Kuroda stopped his pacing and looked toward the center of the first row. His smile widened by a fraction of a millimetre.
"I understand that your class, Class 1-A, has suffered a specific logistical loss during the last breach," Kuroda said, his tone softening into a faux compassion that felt like cold oil. "Katsuki Bakugo, a student of immense potential, has been successfully abducted by the League of Villains."
The news hit the room like a physical blow. The teachers hadn't confirmed the abduction to the general student body yet. Gasps erupted, some students covered their mouths, tears instantly welling.
"Let him join them."
The voice was low, jagged with a snarling, visceral hatred. It didn't come from the back of the room. It came from the middle of Class 1-A.
Kuroda's eyes snapped to the source instantly. He didn't look surprised, he looked as though he had been waiting for the data point to manifest.
"Ochaco Uraraka," Kuroda said, his voice smooth and terrifyingly calm. "Stand up, please."
Uraraka stood. Her hands were balled into fists so tight her knuckles were white. Her face was pale, her eyes bloodshot with a mixture of grief and a bone-deep, exhausted fury. She looked petrified, the eyes of two entire classes and the faculty boring into her, but she did not sit back down.
"You said: 'Let him join them,'" Kuroda repeated, tilting his head. "I am not angry, Miss Uraraka. I value data. But I want to understand the calculation behind that statement. Why would you wish for a classmate to remain in the hands of the nation's greatest threat?"
Uraraka's voice trembled as she spoke, her words tumbling out of a reservoir of pain that had been filling since the Sports Festival. "Because… because he isn't a hero. He never was. He's a bully. He's a terrible person who has done terrible, cruel things to people who were supposed to be his friends. Things that are unbecoming of anyone wearing that uniform. If he's with the League, then maybe… maybe he's finally where he belongs."
Behind Kuroda, Aizawa's eyes narrowed, his hand twitching toward his capture scarf. Several other teachers looked at the floor, unable to meet Uraraka's gaze.
Kuroda nodded, his expression one of polite interest. "A moral assessment. You believe that his character defects outweigh his institutional value. You view him as a moral liability."
"He wanted to take the future of a classmate," Uraraka cried out, her voice cracking. "He tried to destroy someone we loved! How can you talk about him like he's just a… a lost piece of equipment?"
Kuroda stepped to the very edge of the stage. He didn't tower over Uraraka with physical aggression, instead, he leaned forward slightly, his shadow stretching across the front row like a dark, cool tide.
When he spoke, his voice wasn't just a baritone, it was a scalpel, precise and bloodless. It possessed a robotic elegance, a cadence that felt like a series of perfectly timed gears clicking into place, yet there was enough of a human "vibration" in his tone to make his cruelty feel intimate.
"Miss Uraraka," he began, his eyes reflecting the harsh overhead lights until they looked like twin silver coins. "You are operating under the beautiful, tragic delusion that U.A. is a morality play. You believe that the 'good' are rewarded with a future and the 'bad' are discarded like refuse. It is a lovely way to view the world, but it is a luxury that requires a peace we no longer possess."
He paused, letting the silence of the hall emphasize the weight of his next words.
"You say he is a bully. You say his heart is jagged and his actions were cruel. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps Katsuki Bakugo is a storm that was allowed to blow unchecked through these halls. But tell me, when a village is drowning in a midnight flood, do the people reject the sandbags because the burlap was woven by a thief? When a forest is burning, do the animals refuse the rain because the clouds are dark and uninviting?"
He turned his gaze from Uraraka to the rest of the student body, his hands clasped behind his back in a pose of absolute, terrifying certainty.
"Society is currently a city in flames, and Katsuki Bakugo, like many of you, has the potential to become a high-pressure hose. U.A. didn't fail because it didn't 'fix' his heart, Miss Uraraka. It failed because it allowed a weapon of his magnitude to be stolen. If he can be put back into the fire, if he can be hammered until he learns the shape of a blade that protects rather than cuts, then he will be back at square one. He will play catch-up. And he will be the wall that stands between the innocent and the trash running amuck."
He looked back at Uraraka, his smile widening by a fraction, a faux-compassionate expression that felt like a predator pretending to understand grief.
"Your sentimentality is a sin of the old era. It is a luxury that costs lives. In a state of decay, we do not ask if the light is 'pure.' We only ask if it is bright enough to keep the dark at bay."
Uraraka sat down, her body trembling, her eyes fixed on her lap. The logic annoyed her, to her it was all bullshit. But she found she had no words to fight it.
"U.A. has reached its limit for failure," Kuroda continued, his voice regaining its rhythmic, professional hum. "By this stage, the majority of you should have already secured your Provisional Hero Licenses. You should be stabilizers, not survivors. That ends today. The curriculum is now a singular path: licensing and combat-readiness. We are no longer nurturing children; we are refining assets."
He adjusted his cuffs, the silver links gleaming.
"From this moment forward, the curriculum is discarded. Your sole focus is the acceleration of your licensing exams. You will be trained to function under extreme variance. And while you are being refined into instruments of the state, I will be coordinating a specialized recovery force. We will find both of the missing students."
A student from the back, a boy from 1-B, raised a trembling hand. "Sir… if we find him… if Bakugo is with the League… will he be taken back by U.A.? Will he still be a hero?"
Kuroda turned his gaze toward the boy. The artificial smile returned, a hollow, terrifying mask of certainty that seemed to reflect the darkening future of the school. He adjusted his glasses, the light obscuring his eyes for a fleeting second.
"That," Kuroda said softly, the words hanging in the air like a death sentence, "depends entirely on how we find him."