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Chapter Text

The Quiet Before the Storm  

The halls of U.A. High had never been this suffocating. They weren’t narrower, nor had the ceilings pressed lower, but something in the air had shifted—an invisible weight pressed against every chest, a collective breath drawn in and stubbornly held. Even the hum of fluorescent lights felt louder, buzzing like anxious thoughts that refused to resolve.  

Midterms loomed, internships crept ever closer, and the faculty decided that simply training future heroes wasn’t enough. They unveiled a new initiative—Conduct Focus—and meticulously threaded it into every corner of the students’ lives.  

Schedules became ironclad. Evaluations rolled in daily, each one colder, more clinical than the last. Hero etiquette lectures stretched long into the evenings, stripping away the laughter that usually echoed through the common rooms. Even All Might—once the beacon of boundless encouragement—now delivered pep talks with a rigid solemnity that felt foreign to his booming voice.  

The message was clear: no running in the halls, no quirks outside of sanctioned drills, no disruptions…  

No chaos.  

It was order at knife-point. It was exhausting.  

Izuku Midoriya noticed it first—not because he was paranoid, but because he couldn’t not notice. He was a collector of details, and the details were grim. Uraraka’s posture sagged in ways even Zero Gravity couldn’t hide. Kaminari laughed less and yawned more, sparks of fatigue flickering around him instead of playful energy. Even Kirishima, ray of unshakable spirit, quietly abandoned his morning “manliness meter” speeches, staring into bowls of rice with a contemplative gloom.  

And Bakugo—Bakugo had only grown sharper, hotter, louder. He was no longer a storm—he was a live volcano looking for any excuse to erupt. A misaligned training mat? Rage. A late attendance call? Fury. Todoroki’s unbothered nods? Nothing short of infuriating.  

Izuku liked structure. He thrived on it, in fact. But this wasn’t discipline; it was suffocation disguised as refinement. Class 1-A wasn’t thriving. They were wilting. Heroes-in-training beginning to buckle before they’d even faced real pressure. Watching his classmates drag themselves through the days, Izuku made a decision.  

Not a tactical decision. Not one inked into carefully tabbed notebooks. Not the sort of plan that involved stats, counters, or contingency webs.  

This wasn’t the analyst.  

This was the friend.  

Prank time.  

— 

It began on a morning so normal it felt suspiciously staged. Ground Beta shimmered under a pale wash of sunlight. The air smelled faintly of metal and concrete dust, heat bouncing from the training field’s scarred surfaces. The class gathered, sluggish but obedient, lining up for Quirk Coordination Drills.  

Then Bakugo arrived.  

He strutted across the blackened floor with the swagger of a predator entering its territory, grenade gauntlets gleaming like twin threats. He cracked his neck, the sound sharp as a detonator being primed, and gave a grin that promised violence. His voice tore through the still air.  

“I’m gonna make the sky bleed.”  

And then—he raised his arm, squeezed the trigger, and—  

BOOM.  

Except it wasn’t.  

A pop rang out instead, comically sharp, followed instantly by a shower of glittering confetti. Pink. Gold. Neon green. The explosion rained streamers down over the battlefield like a festival gone feral, paper dancing in spirals of sunlight. Bakugo’s mighty gauntlet now whimpered like a deflating balloon, coughing colorful chaos instead of fire and destruction. The sound wasn’t war—it was party.  

For two eternal seconds, the world froze. Even the birds stopped mid-note, hanging on the absurd spectacle.  

And then—  

“WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!?” Bakugo’s roar shattered the silence, his hands trembling beneath an awful frosting of sparkle and paper.  

Kirishima doubled over, clutching his sides. “Bro—bro, you’re literally a party cannon! This is… ahahaha—this is manly in all the wrong ways!”  

Kaminari staggered toward him with a grin too wide to be safe. “Hey, man, fist bump for the cause?” He barely dodged incineration. Mina squealed like it was her birthday, diving through the raining streamers with gleeful abandon. Even Todoroki’s face twitched—just barely—but enough to show the shadow of something remarkably close to a smirk.  

Aizawa didn’t even glance up from his clipboard. His pen scratched the page, his voice dry as ever. “Not my problem unless someone loses an eye.”  

And through it all, one figure lingered at the edge of the chaos. Hood up. Face shadowed. A faint curl at the corner of his mouth betraying the struggle against laughter. Izuku Midoriya clutched a small, inconspicuous notebook to his chest:  

_“Class Morale Testing—Phase 1.”_  

Written in green ink. Underlined twice.  

His free hand slipped into his pocket, brushing against the small black remote buried inside. Two switches, two labels: “Cannon A” and “Cannon B.”  

Still unused. Waiting.  

His classmates hadn’t realized it yet. But the air that had grown so heavy with tension had just shifted again. This time, not into oppression—  

But into anticipation.  

The storm hadn’t broken.  

It was only gathering strength.

 Clocked  

Tenya Iida prided himself on structure. On order. On precision so immaculate it bordered on religion.  

His dorm room was his cathedral. Every surface gleamed, every corner aligned to an invisible blueprint. His desk was a grid of efficiency: pens stood upright in chromatic order, notebooks stacked by spine thickness, textbooks filed not only alphabetically but also chronologically, reflecting publication dates down to the month. His socks—dear heavens, the socks—were folded into perfect rectangles, compressed neatly into drawers as though he were preparing for a championship display in textile origami.  

At the heart of this shrine to discipline sat his most prized relic: a digital planner. Unlike mere mortals who scribbled carelessly into calendars, Iida had calibrated his device nightly to harmonize with U.A.’s master schedule. Divided into five-minute increments, color-coded for task intensity, it was the metronome by which his existence ticked.  

So when Tenya awoke at precisely 06:00 to the sound of not one, not two, but fifteen alarm clocks detonating in unholy unison—his brain did not immediately register chaos.  

It registered malfunction.  

It calculated breach.  

It plotted vengeance against the creeping hand of entropy.  

The dorm room vibrated like a possessed engine. Screeches, buzzes, chimes, beeps, and one eerily cheerful rooster crow blended into a nightmarish overture. His walls shook with the strength of the noise. Fifteen metallic mouths sang from unseen corners—clockwork demons armed with snooze buttons and spite.  

One shriek blew directly through his pillow. Another cackled from the air vent, rattling the metal slats like teeth chattering in winter. Two bellowed from inside his neatly lined left shoes, muffled but manic. And, in an act of purest heresy, one grotesque specimen dangled from the ceiling fan, spinning wildly as its digits flashed an ominous 6:01 upside down in crimson red.  

Iida launched out of bed with the reflexive grace of a soldier under siege. His glasses shone in the morning gloom as he barked nonsensical battle cries—“Unacceptable auditory invasion!”—followed by muttered condemnations like “who calibrates anything to 114 decibels?!”  

He stormed into action, moving with a blend of karate kata and forensic precision.  

- Clock #1: extracted from the toothpaste drawer. Battery still radiating heat. A crime of engineering.  

- Clock #2: pried out of a cereal box labeled Crunch Time. Cheap pun. Malicious intent. Suspicion of psychological warfare heightened.  

- Clock #3: uncovered vibrating under his otherwise pristine mattress, its casing marred by a neon sticky note that read: Rise and grind, hero!  

Each disarmed timepiece was evaluated, documented in mental notes, and punished with efficient dismantling. He snipped wires. He flicked switches. He unstuck batteries with surgical snaps of his fingers.  

By 06:27, the carnage was complete. Every rogue alarm lay gutted, silent as corpses strewn across the immaculate floor. But for Iida, silence was not enough. Justice required records.  

He sat at his desk, planner opened to the Emergency Protocol tab, and drew three perfectly straight lines before beginning the Noise Violation Spreadsheet: Dormitory Incident #002-AF.  

His pens—each uncapped in a sacred tricolor sequence of red, green, and blue—scratched across the paper with surgical rhythm.  

- Field One: Chronological Order of Detonation.  

- Field Two: Decibel Level (Estimated by Ringing Duration).  

- Field Three: Suspected Method of Entry.  

- Field Four: Hypothesized Motive.  

At “Motive,” his glasses gleamed with reflected fury. He circled the phrase Psychological Disruption five times. The “Perpetrator Name” field remained blank, though his looming silhouette suggested he already had candidates under review.  

The door to his sanctum creaked open at precisely 06:45. In its frame stood Tokoyami, bathed in half-shadow as if drawn by the pull of chaos itself. His crimson eyes glowed faintly in the gloom.  

He stared, silent for three measured beats, before offering judgment in his sonorous voice:  

“Your aura reeks of frustration.”  

Iida didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. His hand rose wordlessly, holding aloft a still-blinking clock, its red numbers cutting through the silence like demonic eyes. His tone was low, resolute, ominous.  

“The ticking has… corrupted my morning routine.”  

From somewhere down the hall, Kaminari—mid-recording of a “Dorm Tour” on his phone—heard the residual chorus of alarms still echoing faintly from within the air vents. He froze, eyes wide, words caught on his tongue before spilling out in a hushed gasp.  

“This place is haunted.” He swallowed, gripping the phone tighter. “By punctuality ghosts. IIDA DID YOU DIE?”  

—

Meanwhile, two floors beneath the epicenter of chaos, Izuku Midoriya sat tucked into a sunny corner of the dorm’s common breakfast lounge. The early light, amber and gentle, spilled across the table cluttered with half-eaten toast, neatly stacked notebooks, and a battered tablet propped at an unobtrusive angle beside his glass of juice.

Between munches of buttered toast still steaming from the kitchen, Izuku’s eyes flickered—bright, analytical, a glimmer of mischief fueled by too many late-night planning sessions—across the glowing feed on his tablet. Four surveillance windows blinked beside a spreadsheet labeled “Class Morale Initiative 1A.” Frame #3, grainy but vivid, centered on Iida’s room.

There he was: Tenya Iida, tall and frantic, a blue blur of motion as he darted about his once-pristine sanctuary. Watching from afar, Izuku could practically hear the orchestration of chaos—alarms shrieking in an overlapping symphony, the distant thump of furniture jostled in desperation, the righteous indignation vibrating through Iida’s trademark karate-chop gestures. He cut a figure both pitiful and hilarious, as if conducting a caffeine-fueled opera whose only instrument was time itself.

Izuku stifled a laugh, scribbling a brief note under a carefully bullet-pointed list in his notebook:  

“Phase 2: Complete.”  

With a practiced hand, he caught the memory—sketching quickly, pencils scratching the page, capturing Iida wide-eyed and disheveled, clutching alarm clocks in both hands while tears of comedic frustration leaked beneath his glasses. He added motion lines for frantic energy and a speech bubble that simply read, “Order must be restored!”

Satisfied, Izuku took a deliberate sip of orange juice. Cool, slightly tart. He felt the spark of anticipation kindle in his chest—tomorrow’s scheme already fizzling with possibility behind a mask of innocent green eyes.

If today was noise, tomorrow, he mused, would be an even grander crescendo.

Costume Confusion

It began like any other gear inspection morning—rows of students lined up in full hero costumes, backs straight, chins lifted, each one silently hoping this would be over quickly. The sun climbed steadily above the UA training field, painting everything in sharp, angular light, as if the morning itself was on inspection duty.  

Aizawa trudged forward at his usual pace, wrapped in scarves and exhaustion, the very picture of a man in an eternal feud with mornings. His eyes were half-lidded, bounce of his hair unbrushed, and his gait suggested not so much walk as unwilling drag. If anyone had taken bets the night before on how much coffee he had consumed, the consensus would have been: “Not enough.”  

But then—mercy abandoned him.  

Because somewhere along that crisp line of up-and-coming heroes, something… sparkled.  

At first, it was subtle, just a glint, a trick of light, the shimmer of fabric under a pale September sun. But the illusion dissolved quickly when the full crime revealed itself—Todoroki, expression as unchanged as mountain stone, stood in a modified costume that could not be described as anything other than weaponized fashion sabotage.  

His battle armor, normally sharp and functional with understated blues and muted grays, was now the many-shaded pink of bubblegum stands and neon arcade signs. Where one side of him had been cold elegance, the right now blazed like a walking disco inferno—resplendent in sequins, glitter thread, and an embroidered flame emoji stitched boldly across the chest as if daring enemies to roast marshmallows on his soul.  

The fabric caught and refracted the sunlight like a prism. It did not shimmer—it dazzled.  

Todoroki, seemingly unaware or perhaps entirely unbothered, gave a tentative half-spin. “I think… I prefer this style, sensei.” His voice was the auditory equivalent of a blank page.  

The silence that followed was dramatic—then Kirishima, armor gaudy with unexpected layers of metallic ruffles (ruffles which clinked like swords drawn in a ballroom), broke into wheezing laughter. He pointed, nearly doubling over. “BRO—you starting a fashion line? Because I’d buy that fire!”  

Bakugo snorted so loudly it carried down the rows. His usual sturdy, grenade-studded getup had been insultingly altered: the grenadier bracers now plastered in stickers of smiling sunflowers, and both boots glowing with aggressive LED strips that pulsed fuchsia with each stomp. If he had noticed, he was refusing acknowledgment purely on threat of homicide. His jaw twitched. The sticker on his left bracer boldly read: ‘Kaboom in Bloom.’  

Midoriya, hips awkwardly squared in an emerald-green bodysuit bedazzled with rhinestones in swirling spiral patterns, looked positively distressed. His utility belt jingled faintly, every pouch bursting with pastel confetti instead of support gear. He muttered furiously into his notebook: “W-wait, but function-wise this doesn’t add up, how heavy is glitter when compacted in bulk, and how—ohhh no, the wind resistance—" He nearly dropped the notebook when one of the spirals lit up like a stage-light marquee.  

Uraraka turned uncertain circles with her modified costume, once a humble, practical suit—but now, tiny plush planets orbited her shoulders on delicate metal rings, each one dangling and jingling like novelty cat toys. They bobbed with each movement, the miniature Saturn colliding rudely with her helmet dome. “Um… okay but like… are these supposed to be aerodynamic? Or…? Oh, they make little jingles. Heh.” She gave a nervous spin, and the solar system audibly dinged in harmony.  

Not far down the row, Jirou’s look had been pirated and rebooted entirely. The headphones she wore were now comically huge—plate-sized neon circles flashing synchronized equalizer patterns—and her cape, which gently swayed in the breeze, had bold lettering etched in glowing graffiti style: “Vibe Check Complete.” She twisted one of her earphone jacks irritably. “Okay. That’s it. I’m quitting the hero course. Starting a band. Hope you all enjoy sweating it out against villains when I’m touring sold-out stadiums.”  

Denki, however, was all grin—initially believing himself spared when he spotted no glaring modifications on his suit. He flexed proudly. “Guess I’m just too cool to prank!”  

Tsuyu tilted her head, ever blunt, and extended one long finger toward his own chest plate. There, upside-down, was an absurdly lopsided lightning bolt patch, outlined in sequins, with bold stitched letters declaring: “Discount Pikachu.”  

“Ribbit,” she said, deadpan. “You didn’t notice that, kero?”  

Denki’s smile collapsed, his face pale with sudden despair. “Oh no. Oh nooo. I thought I was safe.”  

On the far side of the formation, Yaoyorozu stood composed but grim, her usual cape now sprouting with tiny compartments labeled in elegant embroidery—except the contents were far from her usual battlefield-ready utilities. Each tag bore names like ‘Emergency Glitter Bomb,’ ‘Substitute Kittens,’ and ‘Instant Napping Dust.’ She flicked one pocket experimentally and was immediately enveloped in a puff of lavender haze that rained flower petals around her. Coughing lightly but recovering with trademark dignity, she assessed:  

“…This has been designed with tactical inversion in mind. Whoever did this engineered the alterations—carefully, meticulously. It’s not sabotage. It’s thematic warfare.”  

Iida, meanwhile, looked as though he had been chosen as sole advertisement for a motorcycle parade. His armored legs—already prominent—had been fitted with gleaming chrome mufflers and rainbow streamers that fluttered behind every precise, stiff gesture. As he adjusted his glasses with rigid indignation, confetti shot exhaust-like from his calves. “UNACCEPTABLE. THIS MOCKERY—WHICH EVIL INDIVIDUAL WOULD DARE—?!”  

Aizawa hadn’t moved during the entire charade. He simply took it all in, one bleary glance at a time, eyes narrowing but not flashing red, as though even Erasure itself considered this scene beneath formal acknowledgment. He pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering, “It’s too early for this.” Then, out loud—flat, inevitable:  

“Who. Did. This?”  

Nobody answered. Not out of fear—but because behind them, Mineta had just fainted on account of his revised costume: a grape-cluster bodysuit covered in plush, oversized spheres, each decorated to resemble squeaky children’s toys. Every wobble made a sound.  

From the back row, a quiet voice tried—and failed—to contain laughter. Hagakure, invisible as always, only not in a dinosaur costume, announced far too gleefully:  

“Oh, my costume is ADORABLE today!”  

The field erupted.  

—

It wasn’t until the next morning that fate—or perhaps cruel comedy—decided it was Aizawa Shouta’s turn.  

The training field had the stillness of early hours, sky bleeding pale orange into blue, the kind of morning that insisted on a quiet start. The students waited in two neat rows, whispering amongst themselves, anticipation buzzing like static in the air. They remembered yesterday. They hadn’t forgotten the glitter, the feathers, the neon humiliation.  

Now all eyes turned toward their homeroom teacher, who approached at his usual reluctant speed: hair tangled, half-buried in his scarf, clipboard dangling in one hand like it weighed the mass of the sun. He blinked once, twice, lids nearly shut as if he might drift into a nap mid-stride. His sigh, low and weary, rolled out over the field like thunderclouds on the horizon.  

It wasn’t a sigh. It was a dissertation. A confession. A warning. The sigh of a man who believed mornings were a personal enemy.  

“This is either a dream,” he muttered under his breath, “or I’m being punished for something I haven’t admitted.”  

One more step forward—and he froze.  

For a moment, no one understood. Why had he stopped? Why had his shoulders slumped even further, as though some invisible weight had replaced his bones with cement? Then they saw it.  

His scarf.  

Only, it wasn’t his scarf. Not in the rugged, battle-forged, weaponized sense they all knew. No, what wrapped around his neck now was alive with color and movement.  

The capture weapon had been expertly swapped out—replaced strand for strand with party streamers. Bright ribbons of every shade tangled around his shoulders, weaving down his sides in near-perfect mimicry of the weapon’s shape and flow. In the breeze, the fabric rustled, not with the menace of steel-thread cloth, but with the crackling whisper of distant celebrations—soft, cheerful crinkles like an audience clapping out of sync.  

The effect was both devastating and absurd: Eraserhead, infamous underground hero and professional grump extraordinaire, wrapped head to toe in something that looked like it had been borrowed from a children’s birthday party. The festive rainbow hues clashed aggressively with his dark outfit, like someone had dropped a pride parade on a funeral.  

Dead silence. Not a single student dared make a sound.  

Bakugo’s neon feather boots shifted in the grass with the faintest squeak. He stared at the scarf as though it had personally threatened his entire bloodline. Mina clapped both hands over her mouth to choke back hysterical laughter that threatened to detonate into the air. Todoroki, still resplendent in bubblegum pink sequins from yesterday, only tilted his head, voice a flat monotone: “…your scarf… is sparkling.”  

Aizawa slowly, deliberately, rubbed his eyes. Once. Twice. Then peered again at the confectionery riot draped around his shoulders. Nope. Still party streamers.  

“…I’m going back to bed,” he said with mechanical calm, voice flat enough to suggest he’d abandoned any ties to reality. Without so much as a parting glare, he turned on his heel and trudged toward the faculty lounge, streamers fluttering gaily in his wake like banners celebrating his resignation from life.  

The class stared after him.  

“Wait—is he actually leaving?” Mina hissed once she found enough air to whisper.  

Sero leaned in, eyes still on the departing rainbow that had once been a scarf. “Dude… do you think this counts as a half day?”  

No one answered. Nobody could. Because to put words to this moment felt blasphemous, like naming a divine mystery: The day Eraserhead fled in streamers.  

—    

Meanwhile, far from the field, tucked into the UA dorm kitchen with a clear line of sight on a small handheld monitor, Izuku Midoriya stirred his cereal absentmindedly. His eyes didn’t leave the feed. The device, jury-rigged from spare parts and Yaoyorozu’s “donated” mini-camera clones, hummed softly on the counter. Through its lens, he had watched every second of the great reveal.  

And smiled.  

On the table before him lay what could only be described as a battlefield of notebooks. Each page frantically filled: diagrams of costumes, modifications imagined, reaction predictions, counter-moves sketched in messy green pencil. One page—dog-eared and patched with sticky notes—read in detailed headings:  

- Target: Todoroki Shouto  

  Alteration: Neon-flame glam aesthetic.  

  Predicted Response: 20% sarcasm, 80% stoic silence.  

  Actual Response: Stoic twirl. Unexpected, but acceptable.  

- Target: Bakugo Katsuki  

  Alteration: Grenadier cuffs → Sunflower stickers. Boots → neon LED rave shoes.  

  Predicted Response: Rage, potential homicide.  

  Actual Response: Rage building in silence. Probability of property damage: 94%.  

- Target: Aizawa Shouta  

  Alteration: Capture weapon → party streamers, rainbow.  

  Predicted Response: Existential despair. Possible immediate nap.  

  Actual Response: Abandoned inspection. Declared return to bed. Victory achieved.  

Midoriya’s pen scratched eagerly, updating each margin with ticks, arrows, and added notes. On the empty section of the notebook page, he doodled: a tiny cartoon Todoroki holding a neon pink ice cream cone beside a flamingo. Beside it, he quickly sketched Aizawa, half-submerged in rainbow curls, eyes narrowed to slits behind the storm of ribbons.  

Above them, in neat, bold letters circled twice for effect, he wrote:  

> Operation Quirk Couture: Complete success.  

Cereal long forgotten, Midoriya leaned back, barely suppressing the grin tugging at his lips. He flipped the notebook to the next page, where a new title, already underlined three times, for his next task of operation.

The boy who once catalogued quirks now catalogued couture chaos. And judging by the faint giggle audible from the next room—likely Hagakure or Mina already suspicious—the game was only just beginning.  

Chapter Text

Quirk Quibbles

UA’s morning pulse began as always: the dull shuffle of slippers against tile, the groggy groans of students stumbling from their rooms, and the faint smell of toast burning somewhere in the communal kitchen. The dorm halls were alive with the trudging march of half-awake bodies who bore more resemblance to zombies than to hopeful pro-heroes-in-training. Conversation was muffled, mostly yawns and muttered curses at alarm clocks.  

But for Kyoka Jirou, the morning was far from typical.  

Her wake-up call hadn’t been the buzzer of her alarm, nor the craving for coffee, but a squeak.  

Sharp. Rubberized. The kind of squeak that belonged in a slapstick cartoon, not in her meticulously maintained sound equipment. She blinked once, rubbed her eyes, and stared blearily at her nightstand. What she found staring back was an offense to her very existence as a musician.  

Two bright yellow rubber chickens.  

And worse—they weren’t just sitting on the nightstand. They were attached to her. Specifically, her earjacks—her pride, her quirk, her instruments of both music and battle—were jammed firmly into the hollow torsos of the squawking monstrosities.  

The googly, painted eyes of the chickens bulged outward as if daring her to react, necks frozen in eternal, gaping squawks. Their floppy orange beaks faced her like twin jesters mocking her solemn disbelief.  

Her mouth dropped open. “What the hell…”  

Careful, cautious, she tugged one jack free.  

SQUEEAAAAK.  

The sound was so shrill it echoed down the dorm hallway, not unlike a defective trumpet shrieking for attention. Jirou flinched at the noise. The second chicken, as if emboldened by its sibling’s performance, let out a warbling honk just from the slight movement on her nightstand.  

“No. Absolutely not.” Jirou’s voice was low, dangerous.  

The hallway, however, suddenly had its attention piqued. The squeaks and squawks rolled through the air like chaotic foghorns, stirring a few zombified students from their stupor. Somewhere in the distance, Mina let out a confused, “Are we… under attack by barnyard animals?”  

And then Denki appeared—hair unkempt, still in his UA T-shirt from the day before, his grin already wide with mischief. He leaned against the doorframe like watching her wrestle poultry was the best thing he’d ever seen.  

“Oh my,” he breathed, fighting to contain his laughter. “Is… is your quirk making you funnier? Because that’s hilarious.”  

Without ceremony, Jirou yanked one rubber chicken free and lobbed it at his forehead.  

PLUNNK.  

The impact was somehow both hollow and perfectly comedic. The chicken bounced limply to the floor with theatrical rebellion and let out the loudest, most elongated SQQQUAAAWK so far—a sound so absurd it bordered on insult.  

Denki stumbled back, clutching his head, but quickly collapsed against the walls of the hall, wheezing in laughter. “I—ha! Jirou—you—you’re literally being attacked by a clown school! AH! It’s too good—!” He slapped the wall like he needed support to even breathe.  

Jirou’s scowl deepened. “I’m gonna kill someone.”  

Determined to prove the prank hadn’t crippled her equipment, she replugged the remaining jack into her sound amp, bracing herself for the familiar thrumming pulse of her abilities. Instead…  

KAZZZZOOOOOO.  

The distant whine of a kazoo filled her room like an untalented high school marching band stumbling through a halftime show. And not just one kazoo. The sound layered—kazoo harmonies, kazoo arpeggios, kazoo vibrato, all reverberating from her amp with unholy cheer.  

Jirou’s entire body froze. Then her hands balled into trembling fists. Her jaw clenched, a vein popping near her temple.  

Denki tumbled to the floor outside her door, doubled over, tears in his eyes. “You’re…—you’re the kazoo queen! Please… tell me you’ll record an album… I’d buy it—platinum, double platinum, rubber chicken deluxe edition—”  

The squeaky chicken on her nightstand wobbled when she slammed her fist on the table, letting out one last deflated squeeeaaak, like the sad coda of an unfortunate symphony.  

“I will find out who did this,” Jirou muttered through gritted teeth, glaring at the rubber poultry as though her stare alone might incinerate it. “And when I do, they’ll regret ever messing with my earjacks.”  

Behind her, Denki gasped between giggles. “Oh man… this is so much better than when someone swapped Aizawa-sensei’s scarf for streamers. This… this is art.”  

Her pupils thinned, murderous with promise. “You know something, Kaminari?”  

Denki froze. His laughter quieted instantly. “…Maybe.”  

The kazoo in her amp whined again, as though demanding a punchline.  

— 

Meanwhile Mina Ashido’s mornings were sacred rituals of chaos-powered self-care. While most of Class 1-A staggered through the dorm halls like caffeine-deprived corpses, she bounced into the communal showers with her speaker tucked under one arm, blasting her custom playlist: Slay the Day (track one: bass-heavy K-pop; track two: disco anthem no one admitted to liking but everyone danced to).  

Steam curled up as she turned the water on full blast, humming along, shaking her hips in half-dance, half-power stance. A pink towel turban wrapped like a crown, she was every inch a queen in her makeshift shower palace.  

Step one: water.  

Step two: acid gel scrub—enhanced, courtesy of the Ashido family’s special formula. Meant to keep her quirk balance in check while leaving her skin glowy, radiant, and combat-ready.  

And so, she grabbed the familiar little bottle, gave it a mighty shake, and let a bright droplet hit the tiled floor.  

That was the trigger.  

With the force of a confetti cannon, the shower stall exploded in a blast of neon purple dye.  

A cloud of vivid color burst outward, carried instantly by the steam into every corner of the stall. Splattering droplets hit the walls, ceiling, pipes, everything, until it looked less like a bathroom and more like the backstage of a rave. Thick haze swirled around as though the entire shower block had been dipped into cotton candy chaos.  

Mina stumbled back into the fountain of radiant mist, coughing once, blinking fast—then froze when she glanced down.  

Her arms, legs, and cheeks shimmered under the fluorescent light. Her skin now pulsed with an iridescent pink glow, like radioactive bubblegum or the world’s most confident lava lamp. Every inch of her radiated sparkle, each shift of her arms catching and refracting purples, magentas, and glittery undertones. And her hair—oh, her hair. Once a soft bubblegum pink, it now shimmered like a living nebula, streaks of chartreuse and glowing magenta curling through every strand like cosmic fireworks trapped in candy floss.  

The bathroom was silent except for the pounding shower and her playlist buzzing distantly against tiles. A few droplets of neon paint dripped to the floor.  

Then Mina gasped. Wide-eyed. Reverent.  

“Oh. My. PINK.”  

She stretched one arm out like a model, flexed the other behind her head, giving the stall walls her best smoldering look despite the dye dripping onto her lashes. “This is BEAUTIFUL.”  

Twisting, twirling, she gave herself a flawless runway spin in puddles of purple-scented chaos, each move leaving vibrant smears of magenta mist across the shower glass. Sparks of animated energy seemed to ripple off her; she was less student, more living sculpture.  

She whipped out her phone—now also glowing faintly, dyed in cosmic riot patterns—and posed with zero hesitation. Selfie angled just right, hair fanned out like neon wings. Click.  

Caption typed in three stylized seconds: “Guess who’s the ACID PIXIE QUEEN now 💜✨👑”  

Sent to the 1-A group chat.  

Her grin widened at the immediate chorus of pings as phones buzzed across the dorm.  

From down the hall, a muffled voice rose in shrill disbelief—Ochako Uraraka, barely awake, toothbrush still in hand. “Mina?! Why do you look like a Lisa Frank fever dream?!”  

“Don’t know,” Mina sang back, voice echoing gorgeously in her glitter-drenched rave stall, “but whoever pulled this off… HAS TASTE!”  

Across the bathroom, another stall door creaked open, steam flowing with it. Tsuyu blinked slowly, observing the purple smog staining the air, then glanced at Mina shimmering like a radioactive fairy godmother.  

“Karo. You look like… a toxic glowstick,” she commented flatly.  

Mina struck another dramatic pose, chest out, hands on her hips. “Correction!—an ELITE toxic glowstick! Ready to SLAY villainy with sparkle power!”  

Her phone buzzed. She glanced. Bakugo had responded in the group chat:  

> “I’M GOING TO F****** KILL WHOEVER DID THIS. AND IF IT WAS YOU, ACIDFACE, YOU’RE FIRST.”  

Mina smiled brighter, hair sparkling galaxy green in the shifting light. Then, mist curling around her neon form like a stage spotlight, she dropped the punchline:  

“Note to self: figure out who did this prank and marry them, because I have NEVER looked hotter in my entire life.”  

— 

By the time Class 1-A trickled into the dorm Kitchen the next morning, the place had descended into what could generously be called low-level breakfast chaos. The air carried more than just the smells of miso soup and buttered toast—it shimmered with glitter residue, faint trails of neon dye, and an almost tangible sense of prank-born tension.  

Kyoka Jirou stomped into the room first, dragging behind her the war crimes otherwise known as her modified rubber chickens. Their googly eyes flopped side to side as they bounced across the floor, squawking occasional defeat notes when she tugged too hard on her earjacks. Every few seconds, she slammed one under her heel with a sharp SQUAAAWK, the sound like an indignant trumpet echoing across the Kitchen linoleum. At this point, the chickens were less accessories and more hostages in her ongoing vendetta.  

Mina Ashido followed close behind, glowing like a sugar-rush hallucination. If the previous night had showered her in dye, this morning she had doubled down on the look. Draped across her shoulders was a glitter cape that shimmered extravagantly, trailing sparkling dust behind each step like comet debris. The faint purple haze clung stubbornly to her hair, and every streak of neon green through her magenta curls caught the overhead lights until she resembled less a student and more a mascot for intergalactic pride parades. She struck a pose just to sit down, then immediately spun in her chair to make the cape flare.  

Invisible as always but audibly intrigued, Hagakure’s voice whispered from the far end of the table: “Okay, hear me out—what if this isn’t just one prankster? What if there’s an art collective doing avant-garde costume terrorism on us? This is aesthetic warfare!” Her fork clinked against her plate with nervous excitement. “We could be living inside a giant installation piece and not even know it.”  

And then came Aoyama. Naturally, he had not been directly altered—he was chaos incarnate all on his own—but that never stopped him from finding the spotlight in others’ misery. Halfway across the Kitchen he froze mid-step, pivoted his hips dramatically, and raised one glowing fingertip to the ceiling like a disco sentinel. “Oui! The chaos only amplifies my éclat cosmique!” he announced, his sparkles playing uninvited accompaniment to Mina’s glitter storm. He then posed beside Jirou’s chickens with a flair so intense one might have thought them props in a couture runway, not unwilling poultry instruments of comedic torment.  

The rest of the class sat scattered at the tables, whispering among themselves, half afraid to move for fear today’s meal might erupt in confetti.  

And then Aizawa entered.  

The teacher shuffled into the room with his usual aura of exhaustion, hair askew like he’d lost an argument with a hairdryer. His scarf still bore the faintest crinkles of yesterday’s “party streamer incident,” remnants stiffly refusing to sort themselves out no matter how many times he had folded them. He stopped just past the doorway. Lines of dried purple dye led like breadcrumbs from the corridor straight into the Kitchen. His eyes tracked the trail to Mina’s seat, where her otherworldly glow quite literally lit up one corner of the room. Then to Jirou, her boots squeaking faintly against rubber poultry. Then to Aoyama, who was currently reclining like Zeus in the middle of a performance art meltdown.  

If Aizawa had the emotional energy to be angry at 8 a.m., maybe he would’ve been—but instead, he simply picked up a mug of coffee from the counter, which Izuku noted was not his, sipped it like holy lifeblood, and gave his response to all of it:  

“…Your generation confuses me.”  

The students exchanged looks, some relieved, others alarmed that he hadn’t threatened actual punishment or expulsion at the least. Mina blew a kiss into the air. Jirou stomped another chicken until it wheezed a long, pitiful squaaawk. Somewhere down the row, Kaminari laughed so hard his orange juice spilled.  

— 

And in the back corner, away from the glitter chaos and melodramatic posturing, Izuku Midoriya sat quietly on the floor, cross-legged with his breakfast tray balanced beside him. He nibbled absently at his toast while his pencil flew furiously across the open pages of his battered logbook.  

On one page, a messy sketch of Jirou clutching a microphone, her rubber chickens reimagined as backup dancers in sequined bowties. He scrawled notes in the margins: Annoyance factor: high. Showmanship: accidentally incredible.  

On another, Mina mid-battle, blasting a dumbfounded villain with beams of radiant confetti and glitter smoke, the villain collapsing under the overwhelming weight of “fabulosity.” He carefully underlined: Quirk synergy with dye pigments currently unknown, but morale impact: enormous.  

Beneath both illustrations, smaller, precise lettering:  

> Phase 4 – Target Quirk Personalization Test: Complete.  

> Current suspicion level: Low.  

> Morale spike: Confirmed.  

Izuku tapped the edge of the page thoughtfully, watching as Jirou dragged her chickens beneath the table, their squeaky protests carrying faintly across the Kitchen din. Mina was shouting about “cosmic acid pixie vibes” through a mouthful of eggs, while Kaminari begged her to “make the glow permanent” like a walking rave stick.  

He smiled quietly, shutting his notebook with careful precision.  

Tomorrow’s entry lay waiting. Tomorrow’s prank was already in the works—and it was going to be even stranger.  

Izuku popped another bite of toast into his mouth. And for the first time in days, he let himself chuckle out loud.  

The Rumor Begins

Despite the mounting chaos of the past few days—the alarm clock ambush that had turned Iida’s precision morning routine into slapstick theater, the glitter bombs in their combat gear, and the costume swaps that defied both dignity and textile reason—no one in Class 1-A had managed to pin down a culprit.  

It wasn’t just random mischief. These were orchestrated strikes. Calculated chaos. Each prank so hauntingly tailored to its victim’s quirks, habits, and personality that it became impossible to laugh them off as coincidence. Todoroki’s neon flamingo suit. Jirou’s poultry-possessed sound system. Mina’s radioactive makeover. The echo of Aizawa’s streamers still haunted the dorm. Whoever the trickster was, they weren’t just clever. They were omniscient.  

That morning at breakfast, the atmosphere in the Kitchen was tense. Trays clattered with less enthusiasm than usual as everyone kept half an eye on their food, waiting for their toast to explode into glitter or for their soup to start meowing. Mina sat proudly glittering in her cape, Jirou still seethed with poultry-shaped rage, and Denki giggled every time she squashed one of her chickens for the squeaky punchline. Conversations buzzed with theories, suspicion darting from corner to corner like a rogue spark.  

And then—Hagakure made her move.  

Floating next to her tray (which, unnervingly, consisted solely of quivering cubes of jelly stacked in a pyramid), she cleared her throat. The sound was delicate, but it sliced straight through the Kitchen din.  

“I think there’s a villain,” she declared.  

Forks froze mid-air. Chewing stopped mid-bite. A hushed silence fell heavy over the room.  

“A… villain?” Denki asked slowly, blinking as if trying to decide whether this was insane or brilliant.  

“Yes. A villain,” Hagakure confirmed, leaning forward. Though her face was unseen, her dramatic energy radiated with the gravitas of a conspiracy theorist unveiling forbidden knowledge. “An invisible one.”  

Kirishima, wide-eyed, immediately choked on his orange juice, sputtering halfway across the table. “Wait—you mean like… you?”  

“What? No!” she shouted, waving her arms furiously, emphasizing the chaos with floating utensils clattering in mid-air. “Well—technically yes. But no. Not me! I mean someone else invisible. Someone sneaky. Someone who knows us better than even we know ourselves.”  

And she wasn’t unprepared. With a dramatic flourish, Hagakure slapped a sheet of paper onto the table. It crinkled beneath her invisible palms, revealing a haphazardly drawn diagram titled in rainbow markers:  

“PHANTOM MYSTERY MAP: U.A. UNDER ATTACK?!”  

Gasps flickered through the group as they leaned forward.  

The map showed crude doodles of dorm hallways and training fields, prank sites marked with aggressive little stars. Arrow-dotted lines connected seemingly unrelated incidents, weaving a chaotic, star-shaped spider web of suspicion. Bold scribbles labeled Jirou’s chickens as “Psychological Interruption Devices”, Mina’s cosmic makeover as “Morale Distraction Tactic”, and, perhaps most insulting, Todoroki’s rave suit as “Probable Decoy Operation.”  

Red circles loomed ominously around dorm showers, equipment storage rooms, and even the teacher’s lounge. Hagakure’s penmanship was frenetic, unholy in its intensity, the work of midnight paranoia disguised as genius.  

The theory spread like wildfire.  

Bakugo stormed into the Kitchen mid-explanation, still dragging flecks of neon glitter across the floor as if he was singlehandedly redecorating U.A. with fury. He caught sight of the paper, his crimson eyes immediately narrowing.  

“What the hell are you all doing?” he demanded, voice like a detonation as he kicked a chair out of the way and loomed over Hagakure’s map. “Somebody started this crap, huh? Then here’s my plan—when I find ‘em, I blow ‘em through the f***ing wall.”  

“Good luck,” Hagakure shot back, her voice dropping into a mock-ominous whisper. “You can’t punch what you can’t see.”  

Denki gasped so dramatically his hair sparked uncontrollably, buzzing with erratic energy. “She’s right! Imagine it—an invisible villain living among us! They could be anywhere! They could be right—behind—us—” He whirled on his chair so fast he fell off it, yelping on the floor while his sparks snapped the air like frying pans.  

Across the table, Uraraka had already pulled out a notebook, beginning to doodle “suspect silhouettes”: cloaked figures with jagged outlines, mysterious masks that hid faces, villains with no footprints, no reflections, no shadows. She scribbled furiously: Quirk possibly allows nullifying cameras? Or sound distortion to erase footsteps? Her brow furrowed with classic seriousness that made it look like they weren’t freshmen overreacting, but veteran agents mid-investigation.  

The buzz intensified as whispers swept around the Kitchen. Was the League testing new infiltration tactics? Could this be a rogue instructor? An unknown U.A. experiment gone too far? Students leaned in close, hissing in half-whispers like they were characters in a spy thriller rather than teenagers in pajamas plotting a breakfast mystery.  

Hagakure waited for the swell of panic to reach its peak, then dropped her final dagger of doom:  

Her voice softened with eerie weight. “I think…” She paused—for effect—then lowered her tone to a conspiratorial whisper.  

“…they’re living among us.”  

The words rippled like a curse. Mina’s glitter cape rustled against the chair in sudden unease; Iida nearly choked on his miso; Sero instinctively glanced behind him like an invisible hand might be on his shoulder. Even Jirou stopped stomping her chickens for a second.  

The Kitchen was no longer just a breakfast room. It was a crime scene. A battlefield of paranoia. A war council of pajama-clad heroes-in-training staring at jelly cubes and glittered boots as if they held undiscovered truths.  

— 

And in the farthest corner, half out of sight—Izuku Midoriya sipped his juice quietly, his pencil gliding across another logbook page.  

Each hysterical whisper, each wild accusation, went straight into his notes. His green eyes twinkled with restrained satisfaction as he underlined a single phrase in careful, meticulous handwriting:  

> Phase 5 – Paranoia Seeding Test: Success.  

A small doodle took shape beneath it: an invisible culprit drawn as a question mark with a cape, surrounded by frantic little chibi classmates shouting theories. Izuku smiled faintly as the room spiraled into conspiracies.  

Tomorrow’s prank, he thought, didn’t even need glitter. By the looks of it, his classmates were ready to invent the villain themselves.  

— 

Later that afternoon, the “invisible villain” hysteria had reached such fever pitch that even Hanta Sero—usually content to coast on laid-back humor—was moved to action.  

“If no one else will defend our dorm… then I will,” he announced solemnly, standing tall in the middle of the hallway like a man preparing for battle.  

His outfit screamed “DIY hero.” A neon orange construction vest (procured from some supply closet nobody could recall ever existing) clung to his torso, reflective strips glinting in the dorm light. In each hand, he wielded three rolls of tape like legendary artifacts: scotch tape in his left, packing tape in his right, and slung over one shoulder, a specialty roll of Hatsume’s “experimental adhesive” that occasionally sparked with static energy as if alive.  

Shoji, ever the quiet voice of reason, peeked his many eyes around the corner. “Sero… what are you doing?”  

Sero’s grin stretched like elastic. He held up a pair of napkins crudely stuck together with duct tape. Scrawled across them in mustard, smeared into half-legible letters, was a plan. At the top, in broad, heroic font:  

“STICKY ENTRANCE ZONE OF JUSTICE.”  

“Genius,” Sero said, tapping the paper dramatically. “Genius can’t be explained, Shoji—it can only be taped.”  

And thus began the construction.  

Roll after roll deployed in rapid-fire webwork, as though Sero was staging an avant-garde Spider-Man audition. Within minutes, the front doors of Heights Alliance were draped in his creation: a multi-layered grid of adhesives, nearly invisible in the daylight except for faint glimmers of reflection. From a distance, it looked like empty space. Up close, it was a nightmare worth three janitorial complaints and possibly a UN treaty violation.  

The air smelled faintly of glue and victory. Sero crouched low beside the entryway, stopwatch in hand, sweatband tied across his forehead. He whispered to himself like a soldier awaiting combat. “They’ll never see it coming… This is my masterpiece of paranoia.”  

A crowd had gathered behind him: Denki buzzing with excitement, Mina cheering with pom-pom enthusiasm, and Hagakure insisting this proved her invisible villain theory tenfold. Kirishima called it “manly defense tactics.” Even Todoroki, unphased, muttered, “It’s… tape.”  

The trap was set. The bait was patience.  

And then, fate delivered not a villain—but something much worse.  

Aizawa.  

Already in a mood foul enough to curdle milk, he approached the dorm entrance at a snail’s pace, summoned by murmurs of “paranoia-fueled hysteria” circulating through faculty chat. His hair shifted slightly in the breeze, scarf dragging as though even it had given up. His coffee was long gone. His stamina for dealing with children—even longer.  

The door swung open soundlessly.  

He stepped forward.  

And stuck.  

Both feet, instantly anchored as though cement had swallowed them whole.  

Aizawa glanced downward. His blank face took in the crisscross web of adhesive layered like a booby-trapped art project from hell. He blinked once. Twice. Slowly. The tape did not release him.  

Off to the side, Sero’s stopwatch clicked. He gasped in triumph. “It works… oh my gosh—it actually works! I caught one!”  

The dorm fell deathly silent. Even Denki’s sparks sputtered out mid-crackle, leaving nothing but the faint sound of packing tape stretching ominously beneath Aizawa’s soles.  

Aizawa did not speak at first. His hair shifted in the faint wind. The scarf rustled. His eyes rose—glacial, deliberate—to the gathering of very guilty faces. No one could meet his stare. Even Bakugo looked away, just slightly, glitter boot scraping the floor.  

Finally, Aizawa’s voice broke the silence. Flat. Void of hope. Dry enough to sand an entire plank of wood.  

“I swear… to every pro hero regulation board… if this is about an invisible villain? I’m filing for hazard pay.”  

With surgical boredom, he bent down. Peeled. Slowly. Each motion accompanied by disgusting suction noises, as if the tape were savoring its victory. His first shoe detached with a wet squelch. The second, stubborn and prideful, clung to the floor like a dying warrior until he finally abandoned it, leaving the boot embedded in Sero’s web as an eternal sacrifice.  

So Aizawa walked into the dorms barefoot. A trail of stickiness and despair followed him, each step whispering defeat onto the linoleum.  

Sero watched in awe. Stopwatch still running. “Do you think I’ll get detention… or a medal?” he whispered.  

Denki, eyes sparkling like a proud parent, fist-bumped him. “A medal. 100%. No—like a duct-tape medallion. Hero-grade.”  

From somewhere above, Hagakure gasped. “No… don’t you guys see? We’ve proven it. If Sensei got caught… imagine what would happen to an invisible enemy. The trap works.”  

“Yeah,” Jirou muttered darkly, kicking one of her rubber chickens. “Too bad all it catches are teachers who already hate mornings.”  

The tape trap glistened, victorious, as if mocking them all.  

— 

Later that night, the dorms of U.A. settled into their familiar rhythm: the steady hum of distant machinery, faint chatter drifting from rooms where homework had been abandoned for gaming competitions, and the occasional thud from somewhere above that always made Aizawa regret his career choices. Outside, the moon spilled soft silver light across the campus lawns, catching fragments of glitter and stray tape still clinging to the grass from the day’s disasters.  

Inside his room, Izuku Midoriya sat cross-legged at his desk, his logbook open, lamp buzzing faintly overhead. A half-empty mug of tea cooled by his elbow, long forgotten. The chaos of the day had been digested, processed, and now rendered into precision. His pencil danced furiously across the page, each stroke building a mosaic of mischief.  

He updated three neat bullet points at the top of a fresh entry:  

> Rumor propagation: Achieved.  

> Physical trap activated: Unexpected but hilarious.  

> Faculty alert level: Moderate.  

Beside these, his careful sketches bloomed. A cartoonish rendition of Aizawa, slumped in apathy, feet lodged in a puddle of goo and tape. Izuku gave it unflattering, exaggerated eye-bags and a little speech bubble that only read: “...Sigh.”  

Beneath the illustration, he scrawled the title:  

“Sticky Sigh Crisis.”  

Satisfied, he underlined it twice in green ink. Then came the assessment notes:  

Invisible villain theory: successful.  

Panic triggered across Class 1-A.  

Phase 5: complete.  

Izuku leaned back, tapping his pencil against his notebook rhythmically, almost like a heartbeat. He looked at the filled pages, weeks’ worth of meticulous planning masquerading as casual scribbles, prank blueprints woven into the same diaries where he once catalogued villain data, quirk evolutions, and battle strategies. Now, those same tactical gradings that had predicted enemy attacks were tracking glitter bombs, kazoo infections, and poultry-based humiliation devices.  

On the facing page, he made quick doodles of his classmates. Jirou, fuming but visibly sketched with her chickens reimagined as backup dancers doing can-can kicks. Mina, twirling like a celestial mascot, her cape sparkling brighter than the crescent moon outside his window. Sero, holding his duct tape like a katana, blueprint napkins waving like battle standards. Even Hagakure herself featured—drawn as a floating exclamation mark above her “PHANTOM MYSTERY MAP.” Each doodle exaggerated, affectionate, and slightly mocking.  

Beneath them all, Izuku carefully traced a phrase across the paper:  

“The walls of U.A. hum with confusion, fear… and laughter.”  

He paused there, pencil hovering. His classmates’ voices echoed faintly down the hall—Denki’s obnoxious giggles, Mina shouting “SLAY QUEEN” at someone, Sero cracking his knuckles like a samurai tape master. There was panic, yes, and suspicion. But more than that, there was bonding. They were a mess of cosmic hair dye, glitter explosions, squeaky chickens, and tape webs, but they were laughing together.  

And, most important of all: nobody suspected him.  

Not the strategist who sat quietly in the corner during mealtimes, sketching silly cartoons into his logbook while pretending to be the stoic observer. Not the green-haired boy who shrugged with wide-eyed innocence when asked “so who do you think’s doing it?” Not the one nodding sympathetically while Bakugo stormed about “dumbass villains wasting my time.”  

Izuku smiled faintly, the kind of small, private grin that would’ve unsettled anyone who caught it. His eyes flicked to the window, where the moon carved pale reflections into the glass—reflections not unlike the faint sparkle currently flowing in Mina Ashido’s hair every time she walked beneath a shaft of light. His hand tapped the page with deliberate amusement.

Closing the notebook with care, Izuku reached for his mug. The tea had gone cold, but victory was a sweeter drink anyway.  

Tomorrow’s prank would be stranger. Bolder. Brighter.  

And, like every one before, no one would ever believe it was him.  

Explosive Realizations

Katsuki Bakugo was not a man easily mocked.  

He could tolerate defeat if it was ripped from him in fire and blood, carved with skill, earned through sweat. He could stomach a worthy rival besting him head-to-head in battle. That was war, that was merit. Fine.  

But pranks?  

Pranks were murder to his pride. Glitter explosions instead of combat blasts. His gauntlets firing confetti into the training field while his classmates doubled over with laughter. Neon feathers stitched to his boots. “Kaboom in Bloom,” that humiliating sunflower patch still scorched into the steel memory of his gear.  

This was not challenge. This was not battle.  

This was mockery.  

Unacceptable mockery.  

He hadn’t slept properly in two nights. His dorm lights burned well past curfew while his hand scrawled manic fury onto notebook paper. Strategy notes, sketches, diagrams—each one jagged with rage, punctured by burns where his palm had unconsciously sparked. The cover bore only a Sharpie title scratched in aggressive block letters, black bleeding like inked shrapnel:  

“OPERATION: DETONATE THE CLOWN.”  

And now, two nights of obsession culminated here—deep in U.A.’s training compound, far from the dorm noise where fools speculated about invisible phantoms and fashion-forward villains. The halls were empty, the air thick with the sterile tang of detergent and solvents. The only sound was the faint hum of the building’s vents, like the low drum of anticipation before a battle.  

He squatted over his creation inside the dim dorm laundry hallway, eyes gleaming with a predator’s hunger. Spread before him was a makeshift battlefield disguised in mundane fabric: a trap.  

Pressure pads concealed in floor tiles. Micro tripwires wound impossibly thin between laundry carts. Canisters of compressed compound—volatile, experimental, quietly smuggled from his personal stash of “authorized invention scraps.” He called them “practice grenades,” Mitsuki had called them “structurally unsafe,” and U.A. had labeled them “prohibited indoors.”  

All of it tucked securely inside a sleek duffel bag propped casually beside a washing machine, a sock draped over the edge with suspicious innocence. Stenciled across the canvas flap in clean black marker: “LAUNDRY SUPPLIES.”  

He knelt at its side like a soldier crafting a landmine, calloused fingers fiddling with the trigger—a compact switch no larger than a deck of cards, its diode blinking red in rhythm with his heartbeat. Its glow illuminated his face in flashes, sharpening the manic curve of his grin into a feral snarl.  

“I don’t care who it is,” Bakugo growled under his breath, the words knifing into the empty corridor. “I catch ‘em, I blow ‘em. Don’t care if it’s Hagakure, if it’s Sero, if it’s some dumbass villain in our dorm walls—I end them. And when I’m done, I’m burying what’s left in glitter and salt.”  

Somewhere far above, the metal ventilation shaft groaned in its usual cycle. He froze—listening. Only air. Only silence.  

Still. His instincts itched. Too quiet.  

The hallway stretched into stillness, every laundry machine a white hum in the dim. Bakugo crouched in the shadows at the hallway’s end, like a mercenary raccoon with murder in his eyes, duffel zipped, wires gleaming faintly beneath the fluorescent hate of the light bulbs. He waited. He breathed sharp and shallow, the predator’s coil of patience.  

But what Bakugo didn’t know—what none of them could have known—was that his wiring had already been touched. His time was already ticking.  

Because someone… had found his trap.  

And someone had modified it.  

—   

At precisely 6:02 a.m., the automatic dormitory door hissed and creaked open.  

Bakugo froze in place, muscles taut, body wound tightly like a spring about to snap. He crouched deeper into the shadow of the hallway corner, one hand hovering centimeters above the trigger switch, sweat beading against his temples. For two nights he had starved himself of sleep and sanity for this moment. It was time. It was revenge.  

The sound of footsteps echoed—light, unhurried, casual. A jog. Sneakers on tile. The relaxed rhythm of someone utterly unsuspecting.  

Bakugo’s grin curled sharp as a blade.  

Got you.  

The first step landed on the pressure sensor with a barely audible click.  

The system came alive—wires snapping with purpose, the hidden canisters hissing like serpents, the glowing diode flashing from red to green. For a single breath it seemed perfect. His perfect design. The detonation he had craved.  

Then—  

It erupted.  

But not with flame. Not smoke. Not with the tactical foam pellets he’d so carefully arranged in the trap.  

No—this was something else entirely.  

GLITTER.  

A catastrophic, high-pressure rainbow blast detonated through the hallway as though the gods of birthdays and children’s art projects had conspired to punish him. Gold, pink, sapphire, emerald, silver—the entire spectrum of light in weaponized particle form spewed skyward in a furious storm of glam. The eruption thundered forth in such dazzling force that it rattled the hallway windows, shimmering blizzard-like until it was impossible to see more than three feet ahead.  

It coated the walls, embedding into every microscopic crack in the floor tile. It clung to skin, burrowed into hair, and weaseled its way down shirt collars with cruel inevitability. It pooled inside boots, stuck to eyelashes and tongues, turned the sterile dorm corridor into something between a rave, a parade, and a nuclear-grade craft store disaster zone. The entire hallway sparkled as though crowned Queen of Surprise Festival Season.  

And Bakugo—unlucky center of the detonation—emerged from the epicenter mid-scream, arms thrashing wildly. His golden eyes blazed through a storm cloud of rhinestones. His hair, normally spiked by nature of volatile combustion, now cemented itself upright in jagged clumps, each spike coated in reflective shine. He resembled more disco hedgehog than human, every strand glittering like it defied physics.  

“WHOOO—WHOOOO—WHAT—HOW—WHO DID THIS?!” His voice cracked into a snarl of rage, each syllable exploding louder than the last until the glitter itself seemed to tremble.  

The first brave souls of Class 1-A peeked around corners and stairwells, jaws slack. Jirou clutched a piece of toast mid-bite, frozen in awe at the destruction. Sero muttered, “Holy tape…” Mina gasped like she was beholding a sacred miracle.  

Then came Kirishima.  

Still gripping his unfinished protein smoothie, his red hair spiked in its natural defiance, he stepped fully into the shining battlefield. Glitter stuck to his teeth with every grin as he surveyed his best friend—Bakugo: glowing, twitching, incandescent with fury.  

Kirishima’s lips trembled, fighting back laughter, then broke loose. “Bro…” He choked it out, voice wobbling with delight. “Bro—that’s… manly sparkle.”  

Bakugo froze mid-roar. Turned slowly, veins bulging in his forehead. “What. Did you. Just call me.”  

But Kirishima only nodded solemnly, as though bestowing a medal. His eyes shone with sincerity—or perhaps tears from trying not to laugh. “Manly sparkle. I mean, look at you. You’re glowing. Like the embodiment of heroic festivity.”  

“I LOOK LIKE A CARNIVAL VICTIM!!” Bakugo bellowed, thrashing his arms again, sending fresh shockwaves of glitter into the air.  

Behind them, Denki revealed his position: crouched inside a laundry cart he had wheeled into the hallway, phone raised, recording with gleeful dedication. His voice was hushed in reverence, like documenting a sacred rite of battle. “This… this is it. The stuff legends are made of. History. Glitter history.”  

Jirou groaned. Mina squealed and live-posted a dozen photos. Hagakure muttered something about “cosmic performance art sabotage.” The hallway glitterstorm only grew more mythical by the second, drifting in lazy sparkly clouds across the floor.  

Ten minutes later, salvation—or damnation—arrived.  

Aizawa.  

Dragging behind him his beleaguered, half-functional coffee maker like a body in tow, he trudged into the scene still wrapped in his faintly crinkled scarf. His slippers scuffed against the floor as he came to a sluggish halt just inside the glitter zone.  

He took one look around.  

At Bakugo’s disco inferno hair.  

At the glitter dunes climbing up the walls.  

At the cluster of students staring like witnesses to an abstract crime.  

The light reflected in his half-lidded eyes. He blinked once in the shimmering fog. Said nothing.  

Then came his only statement, dry enough to fossilize whole forests:  

“…Of course.”  

He gripped his coffee machine tighter. Turned. Walked away.  

Not another word.  

Every step left a faint sparkle behind in the fibers of his slippers.  

— 

Back in the quiet belly of U.A., far from the chaos-streaked dorm corridors and the glitterized battlefield, Izuku Midoriya sat hunched in the dim glow of the security monitor.  

The room hummed faintly with the buzz of old electronics—the surveillance consoles lined with blinking diodes, static feedback crackling every so often from forgotten channels. Shadows from the single overhead bulb hung long across the wall, throwing him into relief as he leaned forward, elbows braced against the desk.  

Onscreen: the mop bucket feed flickered to grainy life. The hidden camera—a tiny device carefully grafted by his own hand into the faded rim of janitorial equipment—had given him the best possible angle of Bakugo’s spectacular humiliation. The screen still shimmered faintly with airborne glitter, rendering the footage less like security feed and more like avant-garde cinema.  

Izuku couldn’t stop grinning.  

His notebook, propped open beside him and already bursting with scrawled entries, waited patiently for its new chapter. He dragged the pen across the paper with practiced momentum, giggling between muffled breath. First came the sketch: Bakugo mid-eruption, arms flailed out, mouth open in an endless comic scream, hair rendered jagged and impossible beneath shining starbursts. Around him, Izuku scribbled tiny spark symbols, exaggerated lines of manic fury, the caption practically dripping with satisfaction:  

“Phase 6 – Rage Glitter Exposure.” 

Below it, in neat bullet points, the analysis flowed:  

> Status: Highly effective.  

> Collateral comedy: Maximum.  

> Kirishima’s loyalty: Absolute.  

He tapped the pen against the margin, smile softening.  

Midoriya leaned back, pencil smudges streaked faintly along his fingertips, heart thudding not just from nerves but something warmer. Against the flicker of the monitor he saw again the way Kirishima had stepped through the glitter storm without hesitation, smoothie in hand, turning Bakugo’s fury into… celebration. How Mina’s screech of delight had rung like a bell, how Denki’s laughter had practically carried over the static of the recording. Cheeks red, eyes glowing—all of them together again in their shared ridiculousness.  

The tension that had been gnawing at Class 1-A since midterm exams—the sighs, the sleepless murmurings of “what if we’re not enough,” the buried stress that had wrapped them like chains—was dissolving. Piece by piece, prank by prank, it had been shoved aside.  

And what remained?  

Camaraderie. Ridiculousness. Connection.  

Ugly chickens. Sparkling capes. Aizawa walking barefoot in streamers. Bakugo snapping like an enraged disco star. Between the madness, they were laughing again. They weren’t just a class bracing for battle—they were kids, friends, alive.  

Izuku’s cheeks warmed, a flush creeping at the edge of his grin. He turned the page, thumb brushing the lined paper craving future notes. 

He paused, tapping the paper, letting the words sit heavy. This next one wouldn’t just target one person—it would sweep the entire class together, like a net pulled tight around their paranoia and their joy all at once. Tonight’s chaos would feel small compared to what was coming.  

He looked back at the monitor one last time. The glitter clouds finally settled on-screen, Bakugo still storming, students still laughing. He shut the monitor down with a soft click. The room fell quiet.  

And in that silence, Izuku smiled the rare smile no one ever saw, small and satisfied—mischief and hope swirled together into one.  

Tomorrow would be louder. Wilder. Messier.   

Chapter Text

Lunch Rush Confusion

Noon at U.A. was sacred.  

After grueling morning drills, strategy lectures, and chaotic bursts of quirk training, the lunch bell was salvation itself. For a brief hour, nerves were soothed by warm rice, steaming curry, miso bowls, and—above all—the culinary efficiency of Lunch Rush, the tireless hero-chef who could churn out balanced meals faster than most villains could blink.  

The cafeteria buzzed as always: shoes squeaking on polished tile, trays clinking in a symphony of hunger, students weaving through the crowd, already shouting half-gossip, half-battle stories. For the heroes-in-training, this was their sanctuary. The closest thing to “normal” their schedule ever allowed.  

But that day, normal had already packed its bags and fled the building.  

The first clue was the smell.  

Instead of savory waves of grilled meat, soy, and curry mingling above the counters, there drifted the unmistakable scent of sugar. Butter, frosting, vanilla. A subtle undertone of chocolate. Even the air carried sweetness, catching in the throat like standing inside a bakery. The shift was so out of place it pulled puzzled murmurs from the students as they funneled into line.  

“…Are we being tricked?” Hagakure whispered, her floating sleeves twitching nervously.  

“Smells like a candy store arm-wrestled a cake,” Jirou muttered, tapping her earjacks irritably against her arms.  

Uraraka squinted as trays rolled past the serving counter. One dish in particular—a block of meatloaf that shimmered suspiciously pink under the lights—made her raise a brow. “Did Lunch Rush change the menu?! Because this… this looks dangerous.”  

“No clue,” Denki replied through a full mouth, already ladling something into his stomach before questioning what it was. He waved his fork enthusiastically, rice tumbling off across the table. “Doesn’t matter. Still delicious!” On his plate sat a pristine omelet shaped like Mount Fuji itself, complete with a delicate sprinkling of cheese powder snow at the peak. Nobody knew whether Denki noticed.  

But the prank revealed itself in earnest with Sato, dependable strength of the class, who always reached the line first. Fork in hand, hunger plain on his face—he stepped up to the counter, received his tray, glanced down at the steaming food… and froze.  

Because across the dish—piping hot curry, rice dome piled tall—edible frosting had been scrawled in thick bubble letters, impossibly vibrant against the savory meal:  

“SUGAR BABY RAGE SUPREME.”  

For a long, stunned moment Sato did not move. “…Is this… me?” he asked finally, tone flat with quiet disbelief.  

Heads craned. Students clustered. Laughter choked up beneath the surface.  

The cafeteria atmosphere shifted like static before a storm.  

Then—Bakugo’s turn.  

The kitchen lady approached with unshakeable grace, sliding across the tray with understated flourish. Golden foil edges framed the plate like a burning crown. And on a mountain of mashed potatoes, every carve precise as a calligrapher’s brushstroke, glared the words:  

“LORD EXPLOSION MURDER DELUXE.”  

Silence.  

Mashed potatoes trembled under Bakugo’s grip. Steam curled upward like smoke before a blast. His eye twitched as if detonations were already firing off inside his skull. Gold glitter had been sprinkled across the gravy like divine mockery. The cafeteria itself seemed to hold its breath.  

“…I’M GONNA—WHO DID THIS?!” His roar hit the ceiling like live ordnance. Napkins flapped in the air from the sheer force. A few first-years at the table nearest the line dropped their chopsticks in terror.  

And then—Todoroki.  

Composed as ever, he accepted his dish with the solemn acceptance of a man resigned to fate. The plate gleamed beneath the lights. Across the carefully layered meal—half chilled soba, half steaming teriyaki—curved elegant letters of shimmering sauce, written with oddly refined grace:  

“FROSTY FIRE CHICKEN.”  

A pause. Todoroki stared. His right eyebrow lifted the tiniest fraction. “…I suppose it’s… accurate.” And without further ceremony, he picked up his chopsticks and began eating as if nothing was wrong. The words “Frosty Fire Chicken” blurred slowly as soy sauce spread across the rice.  

The eruption that followed was inevitable.  

Kirishima’s tray read “UNBREAKABLE CRUNCH COMBO.” Mina’s dish arrived as “GALACTIC ACID DIVA DELIGHT,” a rainbow parfait that literally sparkled when stirred. Denki’s already-devoured omelet was revealed (too late) to have read “SHOCK VALUE SURPRISE PLATTER.” Jirou’s curry included a “VIBE CHECK STEW” written in salsa, and Hagakure’s seat remained suspiciously surrounded by jelly cubes stacked to spell “THE INVISIBLE FEAST.”  

Around every corner of the cafeteria, laughter began bubbling. Sato stared mournfully at “Sugar Baby Rage.” Bakugo raged so hard his potatoes were now airborne shrapnel grenades threatening dinnerware. Mina twirled her parfait spoon like she’d won a beauty contest. Denki was crying actual tears of joy, recording everything on his phone.  

Even Lunch Rush emerged briefly from the kitchen, sweat glistening under his hat. “Uh… I didn’t authorize this,” he admitted. “But they say presentation matters.”  

And in the back, half-hidden in the crowd, Izuku Midoriya chewed his toast in silence, notebook open beneath the table, green pen scratching fresh words:  

> Phase 7 – Personalized Meal Gambit  

> Status: Flawless deployment.  

> Group reaction: Unified chaos.  

> Faculty attention: Escalating.  

He doodled Bakugo screaming into his mashed potatoes, sparks flying from gravy. Beneath it, Mina glittering like a pageant queen beside her literal rainbow sundae.  

Izuku smiled quietly, tapping his pen. Waiting for the event to start.

And then came Recovery Girl.  

The cafeteria had already dissolved into half-controlled pandemonium. Students laughed, argued, and gawked at their bizarrely personalized meals. Bakugo’s bellowing rage still echoed off the walls. Mina posed with her glittery parfait like it was a runway accessory. Todoroki quietly ate his “Frosty Fire Chicken” as though nothing unusual had occurred.  

No one expected what came next.  

The automatic doors sighed open, and into the fray hobbled Recovery Girl—not toward her usual seat near the med bay exit, where she could supervise students who fainted from overeating or tripped over their own quirks. No, today she wobbled directly toward the serving counters, cane clicking in even rhythm against the tile. The candy dish in her other hand wobbled dangerously, but her steps were steady enough that the entire cafeteria instinctively hushed into a respectful lull.  

And then she did something remarkable.  

With a careworn sigh that almost sounded theatrical, she eyed the rows of trays, leaned in, and plucked one right from the middle of the line. Students craned their necks as the dish settled onto her cane-free arm. It was a simple plate—steamed vegetables, rice on the side, one neat slice of fish. But nestled on top, frosted in sugar syrup of all things, was a title that made jaws drop across the cafeteria:  

“THE SWEET NANNY OF HERO CHAOS.”  

There was a frozen beat. Then Recovery Girl snorted—not just politely, but loudly, the kind of sharp little laugh that bore the bite of mischief seldom seen from her. And with her eyes narrowing in amusement, she turned towards Class 1-A, mischief lines deepening into a full grin.  

“Not bad…” she crooned, voice dripping with amusement. “Not bad at all. Though—” she tapped her cane against the floor in mock lecture, “someone tampered with my chocolate stash.”  

The words dropped like anvils into silence. The entire cafeteria stilled instantly, voices bunched in their throats.  

Denki, ever the poor fool fated to ask the wrong question, raised a trembling fork. “...Tampered how?”  

Her hand dipped into her pocket. Out came a neat little square of chocolate, carefully wrapped in shiny foil. She twirled it between her fingers before tossing it into the air and catching it without breaking eye contact.  

“Swapped half the batch for laxative-laced lookalikes,” she said bluntly, brandishing it toward the suddenly pale class. “Honestly? Impressive detail work. Whoever did it—not me, mind you—they’ve got the prank gene.”  

Half the cafeteria gasped. The other half shrieked. Trays clattered, silverware rattling against the tile.  

Bakugo froze mid-yell, suspicion breaking across his face like a stormcloud. His head whipped back toward his tray. His jaw clenched. “WAIT. Did anyone already eat the dessert?!”  

Kirishima blinked rapidly, smoothie dripping from his straw, and gestured dumbly. “You think Lord Explosion Murder Deluxe wouldn’t trust his pudding?!”  

The realization hit the room like a detonation.  

A collective scream rippled across three tables at once. Chairs toppled. Sato dropped his whole plate of “Sugar Baby Rage Supreme.” Denki shrieked and dove for the pudding cups on nearby trays, as though he could rescue them from doom. Mina doubled over laughing so hard her glitter parfait glowed brighter, tears streaking purple down her cheeks.  

And then—Bakugo moved.  

For one Katsuki Bakugo, fate had already thrown down its card, and it was far, far too late to turn back. His face went pale, then green, then pale again in the space of a breath. No roar erupted—no scream of defiance. Just three catastrophic words squeezed through clenched teeth:  

“...DAMMIT. NO.”  

His chair screeched backward. His boots pounded on tile like cannon fire. Glitter still clung to his hair as he tore across the cafeteria at top speed, carving a furious, very urgent trail toward the nearest bathroom.  

The bathroom door slammed so loud it rattled cutlery in the farthest corners of the hall, as others like Iida, Tokoyami, and Sero followed suit.

The silence afterward lasted half a beat. Then the cafeteria collapsed into hysteria.  

Denki howled with unrestrained laughter until he fell backward off his bench. Mina kicked her legs in delight like she was front-row at a comedy show. Jirou muttered, smirking darkly, “This is karma playing jazz.” Kirishima dropped his head into his hands, torn between manly loyalty and complete, unstoppable giggles.  

Recovery Girl, unperturbed, finally settled at her chosen table, stabbing her vegetables with thoughtless calm. She popped one into her mouth, chewed slowly, then murmured with satisfaction: “Justice delivered.”  

Security tapes later showed Recovery Girl laughing in the supply closet with All Might, who held up a tray labeled "SMILEY MUSCLE SAUCE SURPRISE" and chuckled, “I didn’t even touch the beans, just in case.”

But for now behind the chaos, sitting half-shadowed near the cafeteria’s window-lined corner, Izuku Midoriya quietly jotted in his logbook.  

A doodle of Bakugo mid-sprint—sparkles of glitter behind him as speed lines—adorned the left margin. Above it in bold green ink, he wrote:  

> Phase 7 – Personalized Meal Gambit: Extended.  

> Status: Chaos escalated.  

> Collateral: Gastrointestinal emergency.  

> Class morale impact: Uncontrollable laughter.   

> Faculty Reaction: Cackling.  

> Suspicion Level: Lowered by chocolate distraction.

> Emotional Outcome: Morale elevated. Bakugo furious. Recovery Girl… scary?

He closed the log, smiling gently. Waiting to execute his next plan.

Faculty Under Fire  

Izuku Midoriya had been careful in the beginning. His earliest operations had aimed squarely at his classmates—because the risk was smaller, the suspicion more easily redirected. A squeaking chicken here, a glitter storm there, the occasional cafeteria-wide meltdown capped with Bakugo’s bathroom sprint.  

No one had caught him. No one had even suspected him.  

But every successful “phase” seeded something dangerous inside him: confidence. And with confidence came escalation.  

Phase 8 would not stop at students.  

Not even at his homeroom teacher.  

This phase belonged to the faculty.  

Target One: Aizawa Shouta  

The strike came in the early silence of dawn.  

Aizawa usually prided himself on waking the instant his students made noise—but this morning, it was not an alarm or the shuffle of dorm hall shoes that woke him.  

It was a sound. A steady, soft tearing: rrrrip-thhhfwopppp…  

When his bleary eyes cracked open, he found that his body refused him. From shoulders to boots, his sleeping bag had been transformed into a duct-taped cocoon, laced with crosshatches so precise that Houdini would’ve saluted. Only Aizawa’s scowling face poked out of a slit like the sun through storm clouds.  

His scarf lay discarded on the floor, limp and useless—like a loyal mutt kicked aside in battle.  

Aizawa blinked once. Twice. Then, like a man officially too tired to meet life halfway, he sighed. “…Should’ve stayed underground.”  

By the time the groggy Class 1-A discovered him, their stoic teacher was perched on the janitor’s dolly, wheeled inch by inch toward the staff lounge like cargo—students whispering, teachers staring, and his glare sharp enough to pierce titanium.  

Phase 8’s opening salvo: successful.  

—

Target Two: All Might  

The real spectacle arrived by afternoon.  

All Might, intent on tackling a backlog of internship reports, pushed open the door to his immaculate office. He expected the typical brass-and-mahogany seriousness, the iron will reflected in his memorabilia.  

Instead, he opened the door on a flood.  

Not water. Not smoke. But color. An avalanche of rainbow spheres—hulahoop-sized, golf-ball small—hundreds of foam balls blasted through the frame, knocking him back as waves of neon bobbled around his legs. The office had been transformed into a ball pit stretching wall to wall, spilling into the hallway with juvenile rebellion.  

His posters had been swapped, too—replaced with toddler-grade crayon art. One depicted him in stick-figure form, muscled arms flailing beneath a rainbow.  

Above it hung a hand-stitched banner:  

“ALL MIGHT’S FUN ZONE – SMILE EVEN HARDER!”  

Students nearby collapsed into laughter as All Might’s golden hair cut through the tide like a beacon. He tried valiantly to stride forward, but the balls swallowed each motion, legs flailing, desk just out of grasp. The room sagged dangerously in the middle where several tons of compressed spheres had packed in deep.  

“I–I AM… FUN!!!” he thundered, voice booming with involuntary comedy as he tried to climb to safety.  

Phase 8’s morale-shattering blow had landed.  

But Izuku wasn’t done.  

—

Target Three: Present Mic  

The opportunity came easily. For Hizashi Yamada, life without sound was meaningless. His mic was sacred. His catchphrases were gospel.  

So when he arrived for morning announcements the next day, bouncing in as always with enough bravado to shake the rafters, no one expected his beloved microphone to betray him.  

He grasped it, cleared his throat, flung his trademark shout—  

“YEEEAAAAH—GOOD MORNING, U-A—”  

And from the speakers came not thunder, not beat drops, but an automated flat squeal that transitioned instantly into:  

🐔 “Squaaaawk.” 🐔  

The sound repeated. Every yell, every syllable he attempted was hijacked by an orchestra of rubber chicken calls.  

“—IT’S YOUR B—bwAAAK—”  

“—WHO’S READY TO—sQUAAAAAWWWWK—!”  

The cafeteria audience collapsed. Half the student body screamed with laughter, others clutched their ears in disbelief.  

Present Mic clutched the mic, jaw slack, betrayed by his most loyal friend. “BRO. My vocals—my identity—!”  

Each attempt to shout only deepened the squawking chorus—until half the cafeteria walls echoed like a coop at dawn.  

Phase 8, target three: Present Squawk engaged.  

—

Target Four: Midnight  

Nemuri Kayama was not easily caught off-guard. Sharp, sly, and not above mischief herself, she often playfully reminded the staff that she was the “Queen of Chaos” long before these brats were even born.  

But Izuku had anticipated that too.  

Her classroom entrance that day had been reengineered with one subtle twist: the smoke machines used during training had been rerouted. Midnight sashayed in dramatically, intent to beguile her students… and when she struck her pose in the doorway, a cloud of pink powder erupted from the vents.  

Not her usual perfume mist.  

Glitter.  

Thick, cloying sparkles poured down like radioactive snow, coating her costume, her hair, her lashes. The glitter reflected every ceiling light, transforming her into a walking disco-ball temptress.  

The students roared. Kirishima covered his face with both hands. Kaminari shouted, “QUEEN OF FABULOUS!” Mina actually knelt like Midnight had descended from Olympus itself.  

But her eyes narrowed behind the glow, lips twitching somewhere between murderous and amused. “Whoever planned this…” she purred dangerously, brushing violet sparkles from her shoulders, “has declared war on me.”  

The lights flared dramatically off her costume. She turned, striding into class without missing a beat, leaving a trail of glitter that would haunt U.A.’s floors for weeks.  

And somewhere, hidden among the students, Izuku jotted his report into the logbook:  

> Phase 8: Faculty Offensive  

> Status: Absolute success.  

> Targets neutralized: Eraserhead, All Might, Present Mic, Midnight.  

> Morale effects: Distraction achieved.  

> Suspicion level: Still misdirected.  

At the bottom of the page, he doodled:  

- Aizawa glaring from a duct-taped cocoon.  

- All Might half-buried in foam.  

- Present Mic mid-“squaaaaawk.”  

- Midnight glowing like a glitter comet.  

He tapped his pen twice, heart racing, smile pulling wider.  

His classmates squabbled in panic. The faculty scrambled in indignation.  

And Izuku Midoriya—class nerd, golden boy, All Might’s heir—remained utterly unsuspected.  

Tomorrow, Phase 9 would begin.  

The Vigilante Committee  

By now, “invisible villain hysteria” had warped from a silly joke into something much larger—almost a religion within Class 1-A. The whispered theory Hagakure had blurted over breakfast had spiraled out of control.  

Her conspiracy charts, once a sheet of paper decorated with jelly cubes, had metastasized across the common room walls. Half the corkboard now resembled a detective drama: neon yarn linking suspects to locations, sticky notes with “??? MOTIVE ???,” doodles of suspicious shoes, even glitter samples taped into tiny plastic baggies. At the center of it all, scrawled in purple marker:  

“THE INVISIBLE PRANK VILLAIN”  

Izuku Midoriya smiled quietly whenever he walked by. It was almost too easy.  

It was Ochako Uraraka, usually a voice of optimism, who finally broke under pressure. One night while the class pored over “suspect files” in the lounge, stomachs growling, laundry forgotten, she slammed her notebook on the table hard enough to make Mina jump.  

“No more waiting. No more guessing. We need action. We need… an investigation team! Something official!”  

Gasps swept across the room—part disbelief, part excitement. Then came the murmurs, then the nods. Faces turned strangely solemn under the dorm lights.  

Thus was born The Vigilante Committee.  

Class 1-A’s self-appointed task force against prankdom. Equal parts detective club, student council… and witch-hunt mob.  

—

Tenya Iida immediately pinned a reflector armband to his sleeve and declared himself “Captain of Protocol.” Within hours he had written a charter, three bylaws, and mandatory bathroom sign-in sheets, insisting that “Bakugo-related explosions in unsanctioned restrooms will be tracked and prevented.”  

Momo Yaoyorozu took to her role with grim earnestness, producing “counter-prank measures” from lip balm-sized canisters. She showed them off like military tech:  

- Glitter Neutralization Powder (looked suspiciously like vacuum dust),  

- Kazoo Jammer Prototype (a rectangular box that emitted low static),  

- Confetti Containment Shields (umbrellas, but spray-painted gold).  

Mina Ashido, by contrast, loudly declared herself “Chief Vibe Analyst.” She claimed she could sniff prank energy. This position mostly meant interpretive dance breaks in the middle of tense investigations.  

“I’m telling you, the prank wave flows this way!” she announced while wiggling toward the kitchen. Nobody questioned it—mostly because they were used to ignoring half of what she said.  

And Hagakure? She appointed herself both archivist and prophet, scribbling every new clue into increasingly dramatic “Villain Files.” Her diagrams now included all of Class 1-A’s dorm bathrooms marked with glittery stars: “Potential trap zones.”  

—

Most unnerving of all, the committee meetings only grew more frantic after decoy clues began to appear. Always sudden, always planted in just the right place to foster suspicion.  

One morning, Denki Kaminari found a sticky note hidden under his notebook with scribbled letters:  

“Next time, YOU sparkle.”  

He screamed, dropped the paper, then immediately tried to frame Hagakure. “IT HAS TO BE YOU. WHO ELSE CAN PLANT NOTES WITHOUT BEING SEEN?!”  

“Shut up, Denki,” Hagakure shot back, throwing her napkin into his face. “You never notice anything. I’d trust you not to prank yourself.”  

Meanwhile, Mina nearly dissolved into tears (and neon goo) when her prized acid-moisturizing scrub bottle was replaced with a half-empty bottle of Mountain Dew. She foamed at the mouth—not because it was dangerous, but because “her skincare routine had been VIOLATED.”  

Jirou fared no better. She returned to her room one evening only to find her prized amps covered edge-to-edge in stickers. Not edgy punk stickers. Not cool band logos. No—these were cheap, bright kid stickers with one word repeated endlessly:  

“cluck.”  

Her earlobes twitched in murderous rhythm as she slowly peeled one off.  

The evidence piled up. The laughter had curdled into bickering. Suspicion spread like dye in water.  

—

Friendships wobbled on invisible fault lines.  

Denki accused Hagakure again, then declared Momo “suspicious” because she, frankly, was too prepared. Mina accused Denki in turn because “Only somebody guilty laughs that hard!”  

Kirishima simply puffed out his chest and declared, with a manly tear in his eye, “I WILL FIND THEM. Even if it costs me everything.” Nobody knew exactly what “everything” meant, but his sincerity earned him the title “Honorary Sheriff” within the Committee.  

Bakugo, meanwhile, had officially tapped into madness. He barricaded himself at his desk with red Sharpies, furiously updating his OPERATION: DETONATE THE CLOWN notebook until his fingers smudged crimson streaks along his arms. At one point, Sero peeked inside and swore he saw diagrams of actual land mines made of pudding cups.  

—

Everything splintered the morning Mina staggered into the lounge, hair dripping from the shower in wild streaks of green and pink. Sparks glowed faintly along her curls.  

“My shampoo,” she whispered dramatically. “It’s… glow-in-the-dark.”  

She pointed her neon head of hair at Kaminari like she was testifying in court.  

“You laughed the loudest this week, Denki. Laughing that hard means you’re guilty. Admit you did it!”  

Denki slammed the common room table with such force the water glasses rattled. “ME?! If I had this kind of genius, I’d have pranked the entire building by accident. OBVIOUSLY it’s you. Who else but Mina Ashido could wield cosmic glitter paint?”  

By lunchtime, the two had retreated to the couch in mutual fury—only to slump into sulky silence, held together by shared indignation. Minutes passed. Then quietly, Mina leaned over, narrowing her eyes.  

“…Hypothetically. If we worked together… we’d be unstoppable.”  

Denki smirked as faint sparks danced between his fingers. “Chaos crew. Acid and Lightning. Dude—we’d own this campus.”  

Across the lounge, jaws dropped. Uraraka whispered, “If those two really team up… U.A.’s doomed.” Even Todoroki muttered, “That would be… inconvenient.”  

Nobody noticed the green-haired boy sketching in the corner, pretending to be absorbed in notes while his heart thumped like a secret drum.  

—

Izuku’s latest entry sparkled with neat precision lines and doodles of his friends mid-meltdown:  

- Bakugo, scribbled with hair like a dynamite fuse, screaming at his exploding potatoes.  

- Mina and Denki on the couch side-by-side, sketched with jagged storm-cloud doodle lines above their heads.  

- Kirishima, chest puffed, pointing forward like he was leading a crusade.  

Above them, Izuku inked the headline:  

> Phase 9 – Controlled Paranoia Escalation  

Below:  

- Status: Committee formed.  

- Collateral: Fractured trust, unholy alliances pending.  

- Suspicion levels: High enough to crack concrete.  

- Outlook: Fun.  

And in the corner of the common room, Izuku sat cross-legged, pen tapped idly at the page, lips tugging upward in that small, private smile nobody ever questioned. The Committee had gone to war with ghosts—and he was handing them the ammunition.  

The more they scrambled, the less they suspected him.  

And tomorrow, he promised, the prank storm would only grow wilder—because now it would strike classmates and teachers alike.  

Matching Mayhem

At precisely 6:30 a.m., the dorms of Class 1-A stirred awake.  

Alarm clocks chirped faintly from half-open doors. Sleepy groans crawled through hallways as pajama-clad teens shuffled against the tile. Feet dragged in mismatched slippers, hair stuck out in improbable shapes, and one by one, the students rallied in a collective migration toward breakfast.  

Yet, this morning—something was wrong.  

Not chaos at first. Not panic. Just… little things.  

The air purifier on the wrong setting. Bookshelves filled with strange items. Posters not belonging to them. Blankets that smelled faintly, undeniably, of someone else’s hair products. These details stacked slowly, weight pressing upon their drowsy minds until finally, clarity hit like a hammer.  

They weren’t in their own rooms.  

Denki Kaminari was the first to blurt it out.  

He cracked both eyes open groggily and rubbed his temples, fully expecting the familiar bohemian chaos of his own space. Instead, he found himself staring at a ceiling plastered edge-to-edge with fluorescent sticky notes: different colors, different fonts, motivational nonsense scrawled like the world's most caffeinated teacher had gone berserk.  

“Zap out loud!”  

“Every mistake is 1% closer to genius!”  

“Shine brighter, charge higher!”  

Denki sat bolt up, hair frizzing. “Haaaaa—what?!” His voice cracked. “I don’t… I don’t pep talk myself like this!”  

Across the room, his backpack was neatly organized. His game controllers were coiled perfectly. He had labeled socks. It was, unmistakably, someone else’s sanctuary.  

On the second floor, Yaoyorozu jolted awake, instinctively reaching for her study notebook—only to find her hand sinking into a tangle of guitar strings.  

She blinked around in mute horror.  

The desk was buried waist-high in headphone cables. A wall of posters loomed—bands with names like “Bassquake Rebellion” and “Drone Hex Static.” Empty soda cans masqueraded as pen holders. A lava-lamp pulsed in the corner, its glow casting fluorescent pink bubbles across the floor.  

“I…” She lifted her trembling fingers toward a crooked standing lamp with duct-tape on its shade. “…would never choose this lamp.”  

Kirishima Eijiro—normally unshakable—awoke in a cavern of vibes.  

Dozens of lava lamps lined the edges of his room, bubbling in neon hues that painted his honest jaw bright green, then bloody red, then melancholy purple in flashes. Slow jams hummed faintly from a speaker mounted upside down. He sat upright with hair spiking aggressively, his reflection scattered across fifteen different goo-globes.  

“This… this doesn’t fuel manliness. This fuels… groovy suffering.” He whispered the words with dread, even as his abs lit up by alternating bursts of toxic teal light.  

Sero emerged from a fleece cocoon, yawning happily—until his yawns hit cloth.  

Plush. Fuzzy. Soft.  

He sat up, and promptly screamed.  

Every surface was frogs. Plush frogs stacked in towers. Frog pillows circling the bed. Frog figures lining shelves. A frog-patterned blanket tucked in neatly under his chin, and frog slippers already waiting at the foot of the bed.  

“Ribbit…” a toy croaked when he shifted.  

The realization dawned. “Oh no. I’m in Tsu’s room.”  

His head dropped into his hands. “I can feel Flipper the 27th judging me.”  

Aoyama glittered on, untouched by stress.  

He awoke with the duvet tucked impeccably around his sparkly form, curls fanned neatly atop a pillowcase bearing little smiling grape decals. His bed smelled faintly of grape juice and cheap deodorant. To his left… a nightstand sagged under sticky toys, heroic posters of Mt. Lady with corners bent, and an open magazine he definitely wasn’t prepared to look at.  

“Mon dieu…” Aoyama whispered, lips pursed. “I am among peasants.”  

A groan from the corner confirmed it—Mineta’s room. His domain. The exact opposite of Aoyama’s precision sparkle.  

Even asleep, Mineta snored like a hamster caught in a rain gutter.  

For most students, it took minutes—screams, stumbles, frantic denials—to accept the room swap.  

But in Midoriya’s case… that same discovery never came, as he knew exactly what he was waking up to.

The tone was off. The colors wrong. The shelves weren’t lined with hero figurines and neatly catalogued notes, but with scrolls of painted kanji, instruments shaped like talons tucked in shadow, stacks of parchment that smelled faintly of parchment and despair.  

Izuku blinked, and stretched.  

Across the room, perched cross-legged in a meditative stance beneath a dresser shaped like a coffin, sat Tokoyami. Cloak swirling faintly in the draft, his expression unreadable but his feathers ruffled in agitation.  

“I sense a disturbance,” Tokoyami intoned gravely. His voice rolled like an oracle of doom. “The shadows are misaligned.”  

Izuku clutched his blanket like a security shield. His pupils shrank. “…Wait—you’re—not supposed to be—this isn’t—?!”  

Tokoyami’s eye glimmered, pupils sharp under the dim glow of an ominous raven-shaped lamp.  

“The bed is not yours.” His tone was absolute. “Nor is mine mine.”  

Izuku’s gaze darted around. He took in the decor: walls layered with gothic poetry scrolls. A half-eaten apple resting on the desk, teeth marks eerily resembling a crescent moon. A calendar pinned proudly above the desk titled “Caws and Reflection: Year of Ravens.”  

In the corner, beneath a window where dawn light struggled through heavy black curtains, a small collection of raven feathers rested like relics in a ceremonial dish.  

Tokoyami, stoic as a gravestone, clutched a simple black notebook in his lap. Etched on the cover in silver gel pen:  

Poems of Pain: Dorm Edition.  

Without a word, he flipped it open to a crisp blank page and scribbled, quill scratching with surgical misery. His voice droned low and dramatic as he read aloud:  

> Room once mine, now lost to light,  

> Bright green boy disrupts the night.  

> Shelves confused, the air off tune,  

> My sanctuary now feels immune.  

Izuku stared. His thoughts flew in a dozen frantic directions. Logbooks! Prank phases! Evidence! How was this part of the experiment?!  

“…Sorry,” he mumbled finally, half laughing, but his voice cracked nervously. “This is… definitely weird.”  

Tokoyami’s eyes slid shut in grave meditation. “I forgive you,” he murmured, voice dipping toward eternity. “Though fate may not.”  

The silence that followed was broken only by Dark Shadow yawning theatrically from under the blanket. “Dude,” the shadow murmured. “This is way too early for gothic tragedy.”  

Izuku’s blood ran cold.  

— 

Down the hall, chaos roared like a wildfire.  

Mineta arrived first, stomping into the common area in fury, his hair bristling like electrified grapes. Draped around his tiny shoulders was a silk robe hanging almost to the floor—clearly Sato’s, because the embroidered lettering on the back glittered: “POWER BAKER SUPREME.”  

“WHERE,” Mineta shrieked at the room, arms flailing, “ARE. MY. GRAPES?!” His voice cracked, echoing off the rafters with the indignation of a child who had been robbed of his only form of identity. “Whoever stole them, you’ve crippled my nightly snack system!”  

Nobody answered—not immediately.  

Because Uraraka staggered in next, hair a tangled nest of copper and black wires. She looked like she had wrestled a small robot in her sleep and lost. On her feet gleamed glow-in-the-dark sneakers that blinked with every step, flashing neon messages like “Property of Denki” across her toes in electric blue.  

“I tried to sleep like this,” she groaned, shoving a bolt of wire out of her bangs. “I really did. But does Kaminari literally lie on his cords like a pillow? This isn’t human.”  

Her voice cracked again as one sneaker blinked too cheerfully: “Zap Zap, Nap Nap!”  

Bakugo followed almost immediately, storming in like a war god barely resisting divine fire. His hands were clenched into fists, smoke wafting from his palms. “If I wake up next to another commemorative trophy that says ‘Best Smile Award’ I’M SETTING THIS ENTIRE PLACE ON FIRE.”  

Nobody doubted he meant it. Half the room instinctively took two steps back from him.  

Then came Jirou, dragging something large behind her. Not her amp. Not her guitar. No—a massive beanbag chair shaped exactly like a donut, pink frosted with rainbow sprinkles. She slumped into it in silence, earjacks twitching just once before she finally muttered:  

“Okay, confession time. Whoever did this has committed a war crime. But also…” She sank deeper into its marshmallow absurdity, chest rising in reluctant comfort. “…I kind of need to know where they bought this.”  

That was enough to snap the fragile calm. Everyone shouted at once—Mineta about missing grapes, Uraraka about wire hazards, Bakugo about his trophies, Jirou about donut furniture procurement.  

Kirishima churned his fists and added, “Not manly at all—my sword posters got swapped with ballerina swans!!” Mina twirled in wearing one of Yaoyorozu’s stored velvet robes, declaring herself “Lady Dorm Chaos.” Denki just laughed, insisting this was all “TOTALLY EPIC—like Quirk Survivor: Room Edition!”  

The sheer noise almost shook the glass in the windows.  

—

Morning at U.A. – The Teachers Stir  

At precisely 6:00 a.m., when the staff residence wing began its usual sleepy rituals, disarray unfolded.  

Target 1: Aizawa Shouta  

Aizawa lifted his head from his sleeping bag with the groggy expectation of stale coffee and the faint, comforting dust smell of his scarf draped on a chair. Instead, his vision met lace.  

Pink lace curtains.  

His eyes tracked downward—a silk bedspread. Frilly pillows. Lavender-scented candles in glass jars crowding every available surface. His capture weapon was replaced with a plush teddy bear wearing a domino mask.  

He frowned deeply. Turned his head. The walls positively radiated drama and rich perfume. Posters of herself in measured posing—autographed. Glitter specks where the sunlight spilled in.  

Midnight’s room.  

A low groan escaped him. “…I hate everything.”  

Target 2: Midnight (Nemuri Kayama)  

Meanwhile, Nemuri woke in suffocating darkness. No silk sheets. No perfume. Just the smell of stale laundry, the prick of scratchy blankets, and a long gray scarf coiled around her midsection.  

She sat up, bumping her head into a ceiling light that hadn’t been changed in ten years. On the wall: a bulletin board littered in half-ripped notes and a calendar marked only with sleep blocks. A stack of empty instant coffee cans decorated the desk like mausoleum pillars.  

Midnight blinked slowly as realization struck. The bed itself had been replaced by a cocoon-like sleeping bag.  

“…Wait.” She tugged at the scarf knotted around her. “What the hell—this is Eraser’s room!”  

She slapped her palm against her forehead. “Oh, I’m not forgiving anyone for this.”  

Target 3: All Might  

All Might’s mornings usually radiated routine: motivational poses in the mirror, his catchphrases blasted toward the sun. Not today.  

Today, he awoke waist-deep in neon posters plastered with vibrating slogans: “YEAHHHHH!” “PUMP THE VOLUME!” “GO PLUS ULTRA AT 130 DECIBELS!”  

All Might blinked.  

The bed wasn’t a bed—it was a pile of beanbags stitched with lightning bolts and mixtapes. A giant foam finger pointed toward him from the corner labeled “#1 Fan of Me.” Speakers hummed even though no chord plugged in.  

“Hoooh?” he whispered faintly, rising in bewilderment. “This feels very… not… All Might.”  

From the desk, Present Mic’s sunglasses glared back at him.  

Target 4: Present Mic (Hizashi Yamada)  

Hizashi woke in palatial silence. The type of silence that came from grand mahogany shelves, expensive rugs, and portraits of himself—as All Might—standing triumphantly with a sparkle tooth gleam.  

He blinked once. Twice. Rolled onto silken duvet.  

“...Bro,” he whispered to himself, awe tinged with mockery. “I’m in the golden palace.”  

From the wardrobe, capes in red, white, and blue spilled like waterfalls of ego. Present Mic pulled one dramatically over his shoulder, strutting toward the window like a runway.  

“Man, Toshinori, this is—this is next level vanity display!” He laughed, but even he couldn’t deny how fun it was to bask in All Might’s absurd self-shrine.  

Target 5: Cementoss  

By 6:15, Cementoss stirred to strange softness. He patted his bedside—silk. Cushions. Sheets that moved. The mattress beneath him felt fragile.  

Then his elbow sank into sequins.  

Pink sequins.  

He rolled over, eyes focusing on a mural of neon atomic hearts painted across the wall. A vanity desk covered in bottles of perfume and candy-striped boas. Midnight’s backup wardrobe.  

“…This isn’t… concrete,” he rumbled, sitting upright to find feather pillows clinging to his chalk-like arms. “…I will require therapy.”  

—

By breakfast, the staff lounge had imploded.  

Midnight stormed in with Aizawa’s scarf around her neck, shrieking, “You think I chose to sleep in your dust dungeon, Shouta?!”  

Eraserhead only muttered, “Kill me,” dragging glittery teddy bears behind him.  

Present Mic nearly bowled over Recovery Girl to boast, “GUESS WHO SLEPT IN A HERO MUSEUM LAST NIGHT!? HEY, TOSHI, YOUR CAPES FIT NICE.”  

All Might flushed crimson, insisting, “It’s motivational decoration, NOT EGO SHRINERY!”  

Meanwhile Cementoss simply dragged a sequined pillow into the center of the lounge and dropped it wordlessly on the table. Glitter dust drifted like a trail of blood. “Explain. Now.”  

The noise carried down three floors. Students in the cafeteria froze as shouts, curses, and—most terrifyingly—Midnight’s cackling fury reverberated through the walls.  

—

Late that day, order half restored, Izuku sat once again with his ever-growing notebook.  

Pages filled with meticulous sketches and notes:  

- Aizawa wrapped in lace pillows, glaring a hole through existence.  

- Midnight swaddled in Aizawa’s ratty sleeping bag, mascara smudged in rage.  

- All Might awkwardly paddling through beanbags like he was drowning in Present Mic’s ego.  

- Present Mic preening in All Might’s capes, sunglasses flashing.  

- Cementoss scowling, half-buried in sequins.  

At the top, Midoriya wrote with painstaking care:  

> Phase 10 – Faculty Room Reversal Protocol.  

>  

> Status: Devastating success.  

> Faculty Morale: Shattered like crockery.  

> Entertainment Value: Sublime.  

> Collateral Collisions: Pending therapy sessions.  

One more doodle joined the margins: Aizawa sipping extra black coffee, staring at a sign stuck to the faculty lounge door in cheery bubble letters:  

“Operation Teacher Swap: COMPLETE 😇”  

Izuku covered his mouth to smother his laughter. His heart raced—half from mischief, half from warmth. The teachers had cracked. His classmates had bonded in insane suspicion.  

Tomorrow, he thought, would spiral even further.  

Because Phase 11 wasn’t just about chaos.  

It was about turning the U.A. campus itself into his playground.  

—

Meanwhile, in the safety of the faculty lounge, Aizawa Shouta faced the truth with dead eyes and a lukewarm coffee.  

Dorm logs sprawled across the monitors—hundreds of blinking data points. No signs of forced entry. No motion alerts. No camera glitches, no malfunction warnings. The entire dorm’s surveillance cycle sang with digital perfection.  

And yet—it had happened.  

Every single student had awoken in the wrong room. Chaos was guaranteed. Property lines were blurred beyond recovery. He was going to get at least four damage reports.  

At the bottom of the surveillance list was a single file. A blinking attachment left in the main security panel, stamped in jarring Comic Sans font:  

“Operation Bunk Swap: Successful 😇”  

The emoji sparkled.  

Aizawa closed his monitor, rubbing his eyes with both hands. His mug trembled. “…Stronger coffee,” he muttered, voice flat as iron. “I need stronger coffee.”  

From the corner of the room, Present Mic burst out laughing until his knees hit the floor.  

Later that night when the dorms finally re-aligned after a day of yelling, finger pointing, and threats of glitter grenades, the silence by nightfall almost felt peaceful.  

In one corner of the lounge, Izuku Midoriya sat beneath a makeshift constellation lamp. Small pinpricks of false stars glowed on the walls, a quiet galaxy of fairy lights and cutout decals borrowed from Yaoyorozu’s craft stash. He sipped hot tea, the mug warming both hands.  

Across from him, Tokoyami perched like a philosopher under shadow, cloak folding into the beanbag they had dragged over. His feathers caught the glow of their artificial stars, making him look ethereal in the hushed quiet. In his hands: the dark notebook. Poems of Pain: Dorm Edition.  

He finished scratching lines onto a fresh page. His voice carried heavy but melodic across the quiet room as he read:  

> Rooms may change, and peace may fade,  

> But prank-born bonds cannot degrade.  

> Though chaos reigns and beds rearrange,  

> These bonds transcend such fleeting change.  

Izuku stared at him, equal parts horrified, amused, and deeply fond of the absurdity surrounding them. His pencil quietly sketched the moment into his own logbook: Tokoyami haloed by starlight, tragic poetry clutched in his claws; Izuku, tea halfway to his mouth, laughing nervously; ghostly outlines of their classmates screaming in the margins, “WHERE ARE MY SHOES” and “NOT MY FROGS.”  

Underneath it all he printed with practiced precision:  

> Phase 10 – Emotional Misdirection via Mild Spatial Chaos.  

> Success Rating: Delightful.  

> Poetry Outcome: Exceptional.  

The two of them sat in silence for a beat longer—the hush of the dorm peaceful after a day of screaming voices and wild accusations. Dark Shadow yawned once in the background.  

Izuku hid his smile against his mug. Tomorrow, he thought, will require even more absurd coordination.  

The prank war had crossed from comedy into art form—and he was nowhere near finished.  

Chapter Text

The Slip

The common room of U.A. was unusually crowded that afternoon, buzzing with the hum of students sprawled on couches and thrown together like a lazy family reunion. Between bouts of laughter and casual chatter, the chaos of the past weeks was never far from everyone’s minds. On one battered table lay a clutter of notebooks, textbooks, and stray pencils—an island of studious calm amid the riotous dorm energy.

Izuku Midoriya sat cross-legged on the floor, his focus flickering between a complicated calculus problem and the unusual notebook nestled beside him: a vivid green cover, battered edges, and a secret he guarded more carefully than his class notes. This was no ordinary notebook. Within its pages lived the logistical heart of his prank war—the phased schematics, doodles, and mischievous plans that had orchestrated weeks of chaos and laughter: from “Kazoo Infiltration Phase” to “Bakugo Glitter Eruption” and “Faculty Swap Ritual.”

It was a balance Izuku tried hard to maintain, keeping his notebook hidden beneath a stack of textbooks, always prepared to explain away any suspicion with a quick pivot to hero studies. Today, however, fate had a different plan.

In the shuffle of the crowded common room, a sudden knock sent Izuku’s elbow cascading against the table’s edge. The green doodle log tumbled free, flipping open midair before landing with a dull thud between the legs of several chatting students.

For a heartbeat, no one noticed.

Then, a sharp gasp shattered the hum: Hagakure, standing lazily nearby, reached down and plucked the notebook up. Her many eyes scanned the scribbled pages, her fingers tracing the looping handwriting and vibrant sketches, eyes widening in dawning realization.

“Kirishima!” she called, voice tinged with disbelief. “You *have* to see this… It’s— it’s a prank book!” 

From across the room, Kirishima bounded over, his face flushed from recent training.

“Holy— Is this for real? This *can’t* be Deku’s, right?”

The green notebook lay open now, foregrounding a cartoon of Bakugo mid-glitter explosion, his hair a sparkling nightmare; the next page, a schematic of All Might waist-deep in foam ball chaos; another, careful notes about “Silent Kazoo Step” and “Decoy Cluck Attacks.”

The obsessive detail in the margins was unmistakable—dates, timelines, estimated reactions, even a rating scale for “Collateral Comedy.”

Hagakure grinned wide, floating even higher. “It *has* to be a decoy… Nobody’s *this* thorough without wanting to be caught.”

Kirishima shook his head slowly. “No joke. This handwriting matches Deku’s notebook I saw after last practice…”

Suddenly, ears perked up from every corner of the common room. Students paused mid-conversation, eyes darting between the notebook and Izuku, who had remained blissfully unaware until the hushed gasps reached him.

A cold weight settled on his chest as he looked up, catching the dozen pairs of curious, shocked, and incredulous eyes fixed on him.

The game was over.

His perfect, secret record shattered on the floor of the common room. The invisible thread pulling all the prank strings was suddenly visible—Izuku Midoriya, the mastermind, caught not by discovery but by clumsy accident.

He swallowed, cheeks burning as his classmates gathered closer, their expressions reading a mixture of wonder, amusement, betrayal, and something like admiration.

“I… I can explain,” Izuku began, voice wavering with the tangled threads of guilt and pride. His breath caught, his usual steady resolve cracking under the weight of a room that had shifted from curiosity to accusation in the blink of an eye.  

But before the class could confront him, before the sea of suspicion and questions could crash over him like a tidal wave, Izuku made a sudden, impulsive break. With a quick shove to the coach, a startled Mineta stepping out of the way, and a sprint that sent loose papers fluttering like chaotic confetti, he dashed from the common room, heart pounding and mind racing faster than his feet.

Izuku’s dash from the common room set off a chain reaction—like someone had thrown a spark into a powder keg. Chairs toppled, loose sheets of homework scattered across the tile, and the clang of feet rose in clamorous pursuit behind him.

Uraraka was the first to leap from her spot, gravity lightening her steps with a surge of her quirk. “He’s heading for the east wing!” she called, bounding off with the spring of a practiced hero-in-training.

Iida, engines roaring, snapped into “Emergency Protocol”: “Team Alpha, secure all exits! Team Beta, intercept at the corridor!” His arm chopped in sharp commands, glasses gleaming as he dashed in regimented pursuit, followed closely by Yaoyorozu who snagged a walkie from her utility belt, already conjuring caltrops should Izuku try a stealthy escape.

Kirishima and Mina took a manly approach—barreling down the hall as a tag-team, shouting encouragement and battle cries. Bakugo—irate and laughing—propelled forward with mini-explosions at his palms, barking “Don’t let Deku out-prank us again, you extras!”

The chase spilled into U.A.’s labyrinthine halls. Izuku’s breath hitched as he zigzagged past display cases, barely missing a vase by centimeters. Sero fired tape like tripwires behind him, but Izuku ducked low, rolling under a bench and popping up near the library. Shoji split his limbs, reaching in three directions at once in a gentle attempt to intercept.

Through the math wing, around the science labs—Izuku darted past startled faculty and classmates, adrenaline surging with every shriek and shout. Hagakure’s invisible voice called orders from somewhere overhead, and invisible hands tried to snag his sleeve. Aoyama attempted a flashy, dramatic block at the main stairwell but tripped on his own scarf, allowing Izuku a brief window of escape.

He burst through the double doors into the courtyard, breathless and desperate, hoping, just for a moment, that maybe he’d slip away. The campus felt suddenly vast, the echo of his sneakers and the erratic pound of pursuit battering his mind.

But Class 1-A wasn’t giving up. Todoroki fired off an icy mound to slow his dash; Denki sparked threateningly down a side path; Sato—man of muscle—simply lifted a bench and set it down to block a third route.

Corners closed. Shoji extended a massive, gentle arm and swept Izuku up just as Mina slid in, arms open for the tackle. Sero hit the final mark, looping layers of tape around Izuku’s waist with practiced skill.

Izuku writhed in the cocoon of tape and arms as the class gathered around, panting and flushed, a triumphant, wild circle. Bakugo strode up, face red, hair wild: “Caught you, nerd. Next time, keep your secret journal with your laundry.”

Shoji hugged him gently, tape binding him to the safety of the team. “You’re not getting away this time, Midoriya.”  

Uraraka grinned and poked his cheek, “You’re crafty, but not crafty enough for all of us!”

Every face—laughing, breathless, mocking and amazed—crowded close. Izuku couldn’t help but smile, shoulders slumping in resigned amusement.

His fate was sealed—but his secret legacy would soon be legend.

— 

Moments later, the panicked echoes of footsteps drew Aizawa Shouta toward the commotion, summoned by frantic messages from the ever-scrambling Vigilante Committee. The common room was tense as he stepped inside, the green prank notebook clutched loosely in his hand like a grenade ready to detonate.  

Aizawa’s tired, half-lidded eyes flicked over the cover before flipping it open. His gaze sharpened—the usual weary indifference replaced by a mix of exasperation and grudging curiosity.  

The notebook was a tome of mischief and meticulousness: pages upon pages of Izuku’s schematics, doodles, and timelines chronicling every prank phase. "*Kazoo Infiltration,*" "*Bakugo Glitter Eruption,*" "*Faculty Swap Ritual*"—each detailed with precise notes on logistics, reaction times, and comedic value ratings.  

Just then, the common room door opened with a rush.  

Sero was leading Izuku himself—awkward and squirming—his arms and legs wrapped tightly in layers of packing tape. The sticky bonds strained as Izuku protested faintly, his voice muffled and tinged with embarrassment.  

Shoji’s calm, many-eyed arms cradled Izuku in a gentle but firm bear hug, keeping him from writhing free. The sight was surreal: the usually determined green-haired strategist reduced to a taped-up captive, held hostage by his own classmates.

Aizawa’s gaze swept over the chaos, his expression the living definition of ‘over it.’ With slow, deliberate motions, he closed Izuku’s green notebook, the sound echoing in the suddenly-hushed room. The air felt dense—clotted with the unspoken realization that the days of division between suspect and victim had ended, replaced by something more formidable: a united front.

He lifted one exhausted eyebrow, sighing with theatrical resignation. “Looks like the ghost has a name,” he muttered, each word edged with dry sarcasm and the special flavor of tired defeat only a homeroom teacher could perfect.

Around Izuku, the shifting crowd melded together—faces that had been locked in suspicion now burning with camaraderie in shared mischief. Friendships forged by chaos and confusion overtook differences, and for the first time, the whole room breathed like one body. The **vengeful coalition**—formerly fractured and just a bit paranoid—was born.

Bakugo stepped up, his stance pulsing with electric disdain, palms still crackling from the adrenaline of the chase. “If you think this is over, Deku, you’re dead wrong.” His eyes sizzled, equal parts threat and a begrudging, competitive respect.

Uraraka, voice steely but eyes sparkling, nodded with conviction. “We’re done playing defense.” Her tone rang with resolve—a promise that the next move would be theirs.

Kirishima mirrored their determination, knuckles flexing with anticipation. “Time to pay up,” he announced, fiery resolve etched on his face and in his posture.

Mina, spiraling with glee, struck a dramatic pose next to Izuku’s taped-up form, winking impishly at the crowd. Beside her, even Shoji’s comforting grip softened with the shift in mood.

Izuku, cheeks tinted with embarrassment, wore a sheepish smile as he let the reality sink in. He had started all this for fun, for laughter, to relieve the pressure of endless training and competition—but the prank war had mutated into something wilder. Something new.

He exhaled, bowing his head in apology, sorrow and hope mingling in his voice. “I’m sorry, guys… I’ll admit I got a bit out of hand. But wasn’t it all worth it to hear each other laugh and have at least a little bit of fun?”

The class faltered, overt tension dissolving into an awkward pause. For a heartbeat, the fatigue of suspicion was replaced by the gentle glow of new understanding. Shoji’s arms loosened unconsciously, and even Bakugo paused a single, silent breath longer than usual.

But not everyone was convinced. Aizawa was immune to the sentimentality of his problem children. 

…Almost.

“You filled my sleeping bag with caffeine grounds this morning,” he recounted, deadpan as only he could manage. “Which reminds me: you owe me a new sleeping bag.”

Izuku chuckled nervously, inching toward further explanation. “Well, you see, sensei—”

But before the lecture could begin, Izuku acted. In one fluid motion, he twisted free from the loosened tape, rolled forward, and hurled a smoke bomb at the center of the crowd. A billowing cloud erupted, filling the room with spicy smoke and shimmering flecks of glitter.

Amid the coughing and confused shouts, the only thing that could be heard was Izuku’s laughter—high, light, and infectious—as he sprinted toward the exit, feet pounding against tile.

“Run, run as fast as you can! You can’t catch me. I’m the Gingerbread Man!”

The class broke into disbelieving giggles, half annoyed and half delighted as the chase began anew through the halls of U.A., echoing with laughter, threats, and the wild energy of one last escape.

Izuku, the mastermind, was still a legend—and still not done running.

Operation Payback Declared

The tension in the common room hung thicker than ever, a boiling soup of outrage, disbelief, and the faintest flicker of reluctant amusement. The veil had dropped; the architect of the months-long prank war had been exposed. But the tables had turned—now it was the class’s turn to strike back.

In the cozy staff lounge, the students and faculty convened for a meeting unlike any before. The once-scattered rivals were drawn together by a shared purpose: a **vengeful coalition** against their prankmaster.

Tenya Iida, buttoned collar sharp as his gaze, stood resolute at the head of the cluttered table, a makeshift command center of notebooks, power bars, and overly strong coffee. His voice rang with precision and authority as he announced the mission’s goals.

“Operation Payback will be executed under strict protocol,” he declared, brandishing a freshly printed timetable. “All prank phases must be coordinated for maximum impact with minimal collateral damage.”

Beside him, Momo Yaoyorozu unfolded detailed blueprints, pacing her plan for gadget deployment and logistics. Her voice was cool, tactical, imagining the chaos blended with calculated precision: glitter neutralization kits here, sound jammers there, and booby traps built with their own quirks in mind.

Mina Ashido, lounging with a tempestuous grin, waved a glittery baton like the conductor of anarchy. “I’m designing aesthetic chaos. We’re going full color-dance-vibe-mode. You want glitter? Ohhhh, we’re giving glitter with *attitude.*”

The group laughed, the sound sparking the fire of team spirit.  

Then, in a moment no one expected—except perhaps for those who knew him best—**Katsuki Bakugo** slammed a fist against the table, static sizzling from his knuckles. His scowl was fierce, but his eyes gleamed with a combative fire.  

“If we’re nailing Deku, *I’m in.*”  

The room fell silent but charged with electricity. It was an unprecedented alignment: Bakugo, the lone wolf, pledging his explosive talents for the cause of *payback.*  

The words were brief but heavy. “If we’re taking him down, I want first strike.”

The hall echoed with murmurs and nods. The coalition was complete—students and staff, united by the promise of retribution.

The plan was christened with solemn pomp: **Operation Payback**.

They would fight fire with fire, madness with controlled chaos, mischief with meticulous precision.

And they would take back their peace.

Aizawa, inching in with his usual air of exhausted skepticism, muttered dryly, “You all better not blow the whole school up.” Yet even his tired eyes held a spark—a grudging acknowledgment that perhaps this counterattack was long overdue.

As the meeting progressed, strategy morphed from discussion into electric determination.

Schedules were drafted, roles assigned, prank devices inventoried and planned—bakugo would handle the explosives, Mina the aesthetic assault, Iida the coordination, Yaoyorozu the tech, and the rest in supporting roles. The faculty lent their experience in staging large-scale operations.

The decisions were frantic but thorough; laughter punctuated serious debates. Plans grew grander by the minute.  

The greatest prank war in U.A. history was about to enter a new—and chaotic—phase.

And Izuku Midoriya? He would soon learn just how fervently the tables could turn.

—

For two full days, the once orderly halls and sprawling training grounds of U.A. High School transformed into a chaotic yet carefully orchestrated construction zone. The familiar grounds pulsed with unusual energy as students and faculty alike converged to build the grandest, most intricate prank operation the school had ever seen: **Operation Payback**.

From dawn to dusk, the hum of collaboration mixed with bursts of enthusiasm and occasional grumbles of frustration. At the heart of it all was Training Grounds Gamma—an expansive facility normally reserved for muscle-building and quirk mastery that now doubled as the epicenter of prank innovation.

The normally stark Gym Gamma was slick with makeshift decorations: smoke machines positioned beneath bleachers puffed tendrils of fog with perfect timing, ready to shroud unsuspecting targets. Cementoss, the living concrete quirk user, commanded the landscape itself, reshaping walls, erecting precarious stone barricades and trenches that twisted labyrinthine pathways throughout the grounds. The once flat training ring now felt like a sprawling stage for an epic theatrical production.

Nearby, Power Loader buzzed with quiet efficiency, rewiring power conduits and lighting systems to synchronize flashing alarms, motion sensors, and sound effects throughout the campus. Each wire nestled carefully under floor tiles, every junction polished and ready to conduct the pranking symphony.

Recovery Girl supervised with an amused grin, approving every clever device labeled “safe yet psychologically effective.” Her nods were rare but authoritative, and she reminded the team repeatedly to avoid injuries while maximizing chaos.

Hound Dog dug literal trenches around key locations—perfect for surprise falls or hiding prank-trigger triggers—his loyal dog-like quirk transforming strategic corners into traps of unpredictable hilarity.

In dorm lobbies and study rooms, students assembled gadgetry: glitter bombs, kazoo soundpacks jammed into earjacks, confetti grenades crafted with expert precision. Yaoyorozu’s blueprints covered walls, detailing every trap and contingency, while Mina choreographed “vibe patrols”—teams tasked with enforcing unpredictable dance breaks during prank execution windows.

Bakugo, surprisingly thorough, ran bomb tests in secluded corners. His explosive tendencies modulated to avoid damage, but his intensity lent the operation an edge of sheer danger that sent thrill down the spines of collaborators.

Amidst the madness, the lounge became a command center, alive with shouted updates, laughter, and planning debates. The air was thick not with tension, but with anticipation—the kind born from a perfect storm of friendship, competition, and artistic mischief.

Flags of glitter and hand-lettered banners hung across halls: *“OPERATION PAYBACK: Let Chaos Reign.”* X marks for prank zones were drawn grandly in halls, staircases, and classrooms.

The entire school was no longer a place of rigid order and discipline. It had become a living, breathing stage for mayhem, a carefully controlled carnival of grit, grin, and glitter.

As night fell on the second day, the transformed campus seemed to pulse with a mischievous heartbeat, every corner a potential stage for comedy or battle.

The greatest prank war in U.A. history was ready to erupt—and the students and teachers alike waited with bated breath.

And as the morning sunlight spilled across the dorm windows of U.A., casting long, soft beams that glinted off polished tile and scattered papers. The air was filled with the usual chorus of half-awake students rubbing eyes, slapping at alarm clocks, and stumbling toward breakfast. Yet, on this day, Izuku Midoriya felt an unusual stillness beneath the normal bustle—as if the campus itself held its breath.

Blissfully unaware of the looming countermeasure, Izuku sat in his cramped corner of the common room, fingers tracing a carefully detailed design in his notebook. Phase 12 was in motion—a plan to replace the dorm shower water with glow-in-the-dark paint, a delightfully harmless prank destined to turn every midnight rinse into a luminescent adventure.

His thoughts raced with anticipation, jotting notes on paint viscosity, dilution ratios, and timing mechanisms to align with students’ late-night routines. He grinned at his ingenuity, oblivious to the gathering storm.

Rising from his seat, he stepped outside into the sprawling heart of U.A.’s campus. The courtyard stretched before him, framed by the imposing towers and classrooms that had become both home and battlefield. But something was off.

A pale mist curled lazily at his feet, swirling with unnatural silence. The distant chatter and footsteps usually bouncing off the walls were absent. Doors that should have opened and closed with lively students were shut tight, windows darkened as if the building itself had fallen into hibernation.

He glanced around, brow furrowed in confusion. The familiar hum of technological life—electric doors, whirring fans, the faint beep of security cams—was muted. The silence was heavy, unsettling.

Tentatively, Izuku took a few steps deeper into the courtyard, boots lightly skimming wet stone, edging toward the main buildings. Fog thickened, wrapping the pathways like a ghostly cloak. Shadows stretched long and ambiguous in the soft haze.

He called out, voice tentative, “Hello? Anyone here?”

No reply. Just the echo of his own voice bouncing into the stillness.

The campus, once vibrant and teeming with life, now resembled a paused theater stage, caught mid-scene without actors. Doors once glowing with welcoming lights stood like tombstones. Benches and trash cans sat abandoned; the wind stirred loose papers like forgotten scripts.

A shiver ran down Izuku’s spine, the eerie calm calling into question everything. His step faltered as he realized the trap was set—the quiet was the lure, the silence the snare.

Somewhere deep in his mind, a flicker of doubt sparked too late. As mist thickened around him, the curtain rose on **Operation Payback’s** opening act—and Izuku found himself standing alone, swallowed by shadows and silence on a campus transformed.

Apocalypse 

The mist had barely begun to thin when Izuku Midoriya stepped farther into the courtyard—and froze.  

His eyes widened in disbelief at the sight before him. Overnight, the familiar heart of U.A. High had been swallowed by ruin and reborn into something monstrous. The pristine academy had vanished, replaced with a nightmare of rubble and fire so convincing that Izuku’s stomach twisted.  

The walls—once clean and white with polished steel frames—were scrawled over with crude writing and black scorch marks, charred burns licking upward like claw marks. Across the entry gates, massive banners hung in tatters, torn cloth whipping in the smoky breeze:  

“QUIRKLESS REBELS RULE NOW.”  

Furniture lay broken and upturned across the courtyard, jagged wood and splintered desks jutting outward like spears. Trash cans were propped on their sides and smoldered with glowing embers, fire crackling under the careful eye of unseen supervisors. Smoke curled skyward as if the campus itself was groaning under some invisible apocalypse.  

Izuku’s knees buckled for half a second. His breath stuttered. He rubbed his eyes with both fists, gripping the corners to force clarity, but the sight remained untouched.  

“This… can’t be real,” he whispered hoarsely. “Did I—did I fall asleep in the common room? Is this—some kind of fever dream?”  

His voice cracked in the silence, swallowed by the wasteland. His usually meticulous mind stuttered in chaos.  

He spun slowly in place, searching for any sign of life—any evidence that this was some elaborate setup, a trick of his overtired brain. But the longer he stared, the more the silence pressed down on him, thick and suffocating. Every ruined detail felt tactile, real: the acrid smoke singeing his lungs, the faint heat pricking his skin from the barrel fires, the grit of ash clinging to his shoes. No dream had ever carried weight like this.

Still trembling, Izuku crept farther into the courtyard, footsteps echoing too loudly. His senses sharpened—every draft of wind, every shadow stirred like it might conceal something waiting for him. And then the atmosphere itself seemed to shift, alive, as though the false ruins had been holding their breath only to exhale around him.

All around him, the soundscape deepened. Hidden speakers—wired secretly by Power Loader—erupted with distant sirens, broken static, and the low grind of machinery. Footsteps echoed unnaturally in the fog as if hordes of unseen rebels were marching just out of reach.  

Cementoss’s handiwork made the campus unrecognizable. Walls were misshapen into jagged barricades, crude fortifications and collapsed hallways where none had been before. Stone rubble littered pathways like bones scattered in haste. Tall towers of jagged cement jutted out from the training grounds, resembling bombed ruins.  

Faint streaks of neon green glowed on the pavement, like radioactive leakage from some unseen reactor. Fluorescent glowstick puddles were strategically shattered into sparkling remnants, painting the illusion of toxic spillage.  

And there—standing stark against the bleakness—a crooked signpost jammed into the earth:  

“ALLIANCE OF REBELS AGAINST HERO SOCIETY. TRESPASSERS WILL BE CRUSHED.”  

Izuku staggered backward, hand clutching his notebook tight against his chest as though it were a talisman.  

“No, no… this doesn’t make any sense! What happened here?!”  

Suddenly, a metal clang rang out. From the shadow of a burned-out barricade, figures emerged. Their silhouettes were terrifying—faces smeared with dark paint, coats ragged, movements prowling like predators.  

Mina Ashido was first to appear, grinning behind dark goggles and swinging her glitter staff like a warlord’s banner. Bright dust trailed behind her in shimmering arcs, but in the smoky gloom it looked like sparks of molten ash.  

She shouted into a tinny megaphone, voice distorted:  

“Rebels of Quirkless Dawn rise again! The Hero Society is dead!”  

A chorus of distorted jeers screamed from hidden speakers in response.  

From above, shadowed in the fog, Bakugo leapt onto a crumbled wall. His hair was wild, his uniform torn to a villain’s parody, black stripes smeared across his face. Explosions crackled in his palms as he bared his teeth in manic grin. Smoke and orange flashes backlit him, leaving him looking more warlord than classmate.  

“DEKU! You stepped into OUR territory, you damn idiot!” he bellowed, the sound booming with the reverb of speakers placed strategically behind him.  

Izuku staggered back, palms trembling. His throat caught. *Kacchan… what—a rebel general?*  

Then, like ghostly apparitions, more figures slinked from the fog. Shoji loomed with his many arms draped in scrap cloth like an eldritch scavenger. Jirou trailed wires from her earjacks, twisting them into spiked whips that sparked with the illusion of electricity. Kaminari, his hair wild, clutched a bent metal pipe wrapped in buzzing light strips. Even Denki’s goofy grin looked menacing under the glow.  

Above all, banners with tattered edges declared the new law of the land:  

“REBELLION DAWNS.”  

“HEROES ARE DEAD.”  

“ONLY THE WASTE SURVIVES.”  

Izuku’s heart was pounding so hard it hurt. Logic tried desperately to claw through, finding footing, but it slipped with every surreal detail. The kind, familiar faces of his classmates were distorted into anarchic warlords. The warm colors of his academy twisted into gray ash and ruin. His notebook clattered to the cobbled ground as his hands trembled.  

“This… this has to be a dream,” he mumbled, panic-worn laughter edging his words. “There’s no way… no way this is UA. I—maybe I fell asleep while working on my shower prank… maybe the coffee—maybe—”  

His feet dragged through layers of glitter-ash as he stumbled forward like a dazed survivor. The fires hissed. The sirens wailed. His shadow stretched long and skeletal behind him as the fog thickened, wrapping him like a cocoon of unreality.  

The prank—Operation Payback—had claimed its opening victim.  

Izuku Midoriya genuinely believed that he had woken into the end of the world.  

He tried to shake the thought from his head, tried to laugh it off, but the sound died in his throat. Every breath he drew only filled his lungs with smoke and ash, every blink revealed more cracks, more ruin, more proof that what surrounded him couldn’t be dismissed as fantasy. His world of heroes and training exercises had been stripped bare, replaced by this twisted stage where nightmare and reality bled together. The more he searched for comfort, the more the familiar foundations of U.A. seemed to sink away beneath his feet, leaving only wreckage to guide him forward.

Izuku’s pulse thundered in his ears as the fog coiled tighter, pressing down on every sound and thought. He tried to remind himself of where he was—U.A. High, a school built on discipline, pride, and order—yet every step deeper into campus chipped away at that certainty.  

The building towers loomed overhead like carcasses of some fallen civilization. Steel beams stuck out like broken bones, windows shattered and patched with crooked boards. The once-bright dormitory windows flickered with sickly yellow light, like candles in the ruins of a forgotten city.  

Izuku forced a breath, straightened his back, clenched his fists. *This isn’t real. It can’t be. But what if it is?*  

—

The crackle of fire and distant screams grew louder as he entered the main hallway. The familiar tiled corridor had been remade into a battlefield. Desks were overturned into barricades, their surfaces scarred with painted scorch marks. Graffiti sprawled across walls in angry red letters:  

“QUIRKS ARE SLAVERY.”  

“REBELS FOREVER.”  

“ALL HEROES WILL FALL.”  

Izuku’s throat tightened. Tremors shook his hands as he stepped carefully around broken shards of glass underfoot.  

Suddenly—*CLANG!*  

Metal shutters crashed down behind him, sealing his retreat. The lights flickered. A distorted voice blasted from hidden speakers:  

“INTRUDER DETECTED. HERO SOCIETY SPY. ELIMINATE ON SIGHT.”  

His blood ran cold.  

From the ceiling ducts, ropes dropped, swinging makeshift “wrecking balls” made from painted dodgeballs wrapped in tattered bandages. They whooshed toward him, forcing Izuku to duck and roll, adrenaline shooting fire through his lungs.  

His back hit the floor. He gasped, then scrambled to his feet, dodging another swinging trap. He didn’t even register the laughter of hidden classmates muffled behind walls—every motion to him felt like a real fight for survival.  

His lungs burned as he pushed himself forward, each frantic step echoing in the suffocating dark. The swinging ropes behind him slowed, their creaks fading into the distance, but the adrenaline refused to let go, each heartbeat still screaming run. Shards of glass cracked underfoot as he stumbled onward, the tight hallway stretching, warping, until suddenly the oppressive walls gave way.

Izuku burst through the end of the corridor, expecting relief—but instead, his breath caught in horror.

The hall broke open into the cafeteria—their old gathering place now a warlord’s feasting ground. Metal trays were stacked like shields, tables carved with hostile strikes and burned runes. At the far end, a bonfire burned in the open, flames whipped by a hidden wind machine.  

Around it, shadowy silhouettes sat in circles, heads painted with skull masks and helmets cobbled from junk parts.  

As Izuku entered, heads turned in unison.  

Kirishima stood first, shoulders squared, his hair ragged and spiked like a raider chief. A jagged metal pipe rested across his shoulders. His crimson eyes glinted with predatory menace through face paint.  

“Another lost ‘Hero’? Heh,” Kirishima growled, sharpening his teeth with a metallic rasp. “You don’t belong in our wasteland. You’ll crumble just like the rest of them.”  

The figures around the fire rose in eerie synchrony. Kaminari’s grin flashed with stuttering sparks, Jirou whipped her wires into the air with a snap, Sero flicked duct tape like chains from his wrists, each movement staged with violent rhythm.  

Izuku’s entire body shivered. These weren’t his friends. They couldn’t be. Their eyes, their posture, their cruelty—it was alien, devastating.  

Still, that stubborn spark within him—his refusal to yield—lit. His voice cracked but carried across the room:  

“No… I… I won’t give in. Even if everything’s fallen apart—I’ll survive this wasteland. I’ll protect whoever’s left.”  

He raised his trembling fist, half expecting One For All to roar inside him.  

Mina screeched into her megaphone from above the rafters:  

“Let the hunt begin!”  

The cafeteria exploded into chaos. Glitter-bombs burst around him with shrapnel showers of false ash. Tape shot toward his arms like grappling snares. Wires cracked near his ears with jolts of static-simulation. He ducked under the tables, sliding across the grime-streaked tiles, gasping as his back scraped against overturned trays.  

Every attack felt like a strike against reality itself, and Izuku barely cleared the gauntlet alive—launching himself through smashed doors into another corridor with raw desperation.  

His chest heaved as he staggered into the night air, lungs burning from smoke and terror. The silence outside struck him harder than the chaos within—an eerie pause, as though the storm had only grown still to sharpen its edge. Glitter ash clung to his uniform, glowing faintly beneath the pale moonlight, and every step echoed too loudly against the cracked stone beneath him.

He froze, realizing too late that the nightmare wasn’t over. The momentary escape from the cafeteria gauntlet was no victory at all—it was only a passage. Ahead of him, the world seemed to wither and collapse into ruin, as if he had stepped not out of U.A. but into another time entirely.

The air outside reeked of ash. What had once been the central training yard was now a battlefield wasteland. Fences twisted into jagged shapes. The grass was burned black and replaced with patches of fire barrels and smoking craters dug by Cementoss. Tattered flags flapped in the tragic winds:  

“REBELS OWN THE BONES OF HEROES.”  

Izuku stumbled forward, eyes wide and dazed, sweat dragging paths across his dirt-smudged face. His heartbeat was wild.  

From the foggy edges of the yard, torches lit up. A circle of figures stepped out, clad like tribal conquerors.  

At their center: Iida.  

But no longer the orderly student council president. His uniform was torn, epaulettes slashed into insignias of rebellion. His glasses were gone, replaced by dark war paint, his usually clean hair plastered with streaks of ash. His motions were stiff, militant—a commander of a ruined army.  

“Izuku Midoriya,” he bellowed, his voice transformed through a megaphone filter, deep and condemned. “You cling to the corpse of Hero Society. You are its last torch—and we will extinguish it.”  

The circle tightened. Classmates pounded their weapons against the ground. The sound reverberated like a war drum: *boom. boom. boom.*  

Izuku fell to one knee, staggering, dizziness threatening his thoughts. His voice cracked, guttural and broken:  

“This… isn’t… real. It *can’t* be real… but it feels real. It all feels—”  

His chest heaved. His eyes burned.  

“—still even if it is just an oddly detailed dream… I’ll still fight to my last breath.”  

He clenched his jaw, fists trembling, ready to hurl himself into the collapsing world no matter how absurd it seemed.  

The rebel army cheered like wolves circling prey.  

And somewhere above, hidden in shadows, teachers and classmates alike exchanged stifled laughter, marveling at how thoroughly Izuku Midoriya had been consumed by the nightmare stage they had built.  

The apocalypse had swallowed him whole—the wasteland was alive with chants, clashing drums, and the glow of fire that painted everything in the lurid tones of catastrophe. Izuku stood in the dirt yard, heart pounding like mad thunder, chest heaving from trial after brutal “ambush” the rebels had thrown his way. Sweat beaded down his face in streaks of grime, his fists raw from skidding against stone barricades.  

And before him stood their commander—Tenya Iida, swathed in ash and ragged white stripes, gripping not a prop but a heavy steel axe that glinted beneath the fire barrels. His glasses were gone, his eyes wild with feverish conviction.  

The crowd of “rebels” circled tightly, silhouettes distorting in the smoke, their chants deafening:  

“BREAK THE HEROES!”  

“LONG LIVE THE REBELS!”  

Iida’s voice cut through it like a blade. Amplified by his megaphone and his own fanatic energy, it came out guttural, ritualistic:  

“Izuku Midoriya… last flame of Hero Society… the wasteland demands your END!”  

He raised the axe high, flames licking across its steel as though goaded by the chaos around him. Midoriya’s breath caught in his throat. This wasn’t theatrics anymore—the weight and hunger in Iida’s eyes drilled through the role-play. His stance was too rigid, too committed.  

Izuku stumbled back, shoes crunching rubble, his voice trembling as he screamed at the too realistic axe.

The axe hovered just above Iida’s shoulder, muscles tensing as though ready to *fall forward*.  

And then a sharp, commanding voice cut through the madness like the crack of a whip.  

“IIDA! DROP IT!”  

The smoke seemed to recoil as Aizawa plunged into the circle, scarf snapping outward like serpents. In a blur, he entangled Iida’s arms mid-downswing. The axe clattered uselessly against cement with a brutal *CLANG!* sparks showering the dirt.  

The chanting halted abruptly, laughter choking in guilty throats. The wasteland rebels froze as Aizawa’s burning eyes cut across them, his tone venomous with restrained fury.  

“What part of *safe prank operation* sounds like swinging around a real axe?!”  

Iida, face slack with adrenaline-drunk haze, blinked rapidly as Aizawa all but hissed, yanking him a step back from Izuku. In that moment, he realized how far into the mania of the role he had plunged. His voice faltered:  

“I—I was only… I—”  

“No excuses,” Aizawa muttered, his capture scarf retracting with a reptilian snap. “You nearly turned a prank into attempted murder.”  

The circle of classmates exchanged looks—Mina, Jirou, even Bakugo—expressions all twisted between horror and disbelief.  

And Izuku? He was still standing, frozen, eyes wide, his breaths shallow and desperate. His brain stumbled against itself as reality unraveled.  

“…Wait,” he whispered softly. He glanced around at the half-destroyed illusions, the too-perfect fires that now carried the faint unmistakable scent of power regulators. He saw speakers stashed behind barricades, glitter-paint puddles glowing near wires. He stared at the axe, cold and real at his feet.  

His eyes widened in dawning horror.  

“Wait, this isn’t a—”  

*CRUNCH!*  

The world went white.  

Izuku’s sentence barely escaped his lips before something *blunt* slammed against the side of his skull. His head snapped to the side, knees buckling instantly as his vision erupted into sparks and static. He stumbled, arms sprawling, and crumpled against dirt.  

Standing above him was Denki Kaminari, still gripping the bent shovel he had swung with all his chaotic gusto. His face bore a wide, zealous grin.  

“LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION!” he bellowed triumphantly, chest heaving as if he had dealt the killing blow in an epic saga.  

The yard erupted into gasps and horrified screams. Mina’s voice cracked through the haze, panic-sharp:  

“DENKI! WHAT THE HELL?!?”  

She tore forward, dropping her glitter staff in the dirt, rushing toward Izuku’s collapsed form.  

Denki blinked, his grin twitching uncertainly now that the hammering chants fell quiet. He looked down at his hands gripping the shovel, then at the unmoving Midoriya sprawled before him.  

“Oh…” he muttered faintly, his blood running cold, voice wobbling as realization crashed down. “Oh.”  

Lifting the shovel slightly like it suddenly weighed a ton, his eyes darted over the stunned faces of his classmates.  

“…I think we killed Mido, guys.”  

Chapter Text

Izuku’s Trial  

The first thing Izuku became aware of was the throbbing at the base of his skull. The second was the weight of ropes pinning his arms and legs to a chair that creaked under him with every shallow breath. His eyes blinked open, heavy and unfocused at first, then widened sharply as the scene came into view.  

The familiar gymnasium of U.A. had been transformed beyond recognition. Where normally banners of school pride would have hung, tattered black sheets draped across the walls, lit by harsh floodlights that threw shadows like high court pillars. Bleachers had been pulled down and rearranged into ascending rows, crawling with “rebels,” his classmates in ragged costumes who leered down at him with gleeful mock-malice.  

At the far end of the gym sat a raised platform built from wooden risers and desks nailed crudely together. Upon it lounged the so-called Rebel Committee, a council of faculty members who looked ridiculous in cobbled-together “judge” personas but carried themselves with exaggerated gravity. Vlad King wore a patched robe over his muscles, tilting his head like a sage; Recovery Girl had swapped her nurse’s outfit for a frilly shawl covered in faux war medals; even Aizawa sat slouched in a great chair draped in a shaggy banner, his scarf coiled at his feet like a judicial snake.  

And at their center, in all his booming, theatrical glory—Present Mic.  

He pounded a gavel onto a stolen cafeteria tray, the metallic clang ringing across the chamber.  

“ORDER! ORDER IN THE COURTROOM!” His voice reverberated like thunder through the speaker system hastily set up for dramatic effect. He leaned over, blonde hair bouncing as he grinned down at Izuku, his shades flashing under stage light. “This tribunal of the Quirkless Dawn hereby brings the accused—one Midoriya, Izuku—hero name ‘Deku’—to glorious, glittering JUSTICE!”  

The crowd of students roared in laughter, stomping the floor, chanting “JUSTICE! JUSTICE!” while Izuku squirmed violently against the ropes.  

“W-wait!” Izuku’s face flushed scarlet, his eyes darting helplessly between classmates and teachers. “Wh-what is this?! I—This isn’t—!”  

The gavel slammed again.  

“Silence, prisoner!” Mic bellowed in mock courtroom thunder. “Let the record show the defendant is already squirming in terror before charges have even been read.”  

Kaminari leaned over the railing in the bleachers, cupping his hands around his mouth. “He’s guilty! I saw him planning the chicken thing!”  

“Not yet, not yet,” Mina called, her face smeared with glitter war paint as she shook her prop staff. “Let the man roast on the stand! I’ve been waiting for this!”  

Izuku whimpered slightly, tugging at the ropes again. Despite the absurdity, his nerves jittered. His notebook, his weapon against chaos, was nowhere in sight.  

Present Mic then drew out a parchment Momo had created, crisp paper rolled into a comically massive scroll. He snapped it open with theatrical flair, pretending the weight nearly pulled him down.  

“Charges against the accused, as follows!” he shouted, voice booming across mock stone walls.  

- Count One: Assault by Glitter.  

Mic leaned toward the audience dramatically. “Reports indicate that the accused deployed multiple exploding glitter canisters across dorm showers, classrooms, and—let’s not forget—the teacher’s lounge! Victims—er, survivors—claim the glitter lingers on their clothes weeks after application. Along with other such offenses with said glitter. Is this not, my fellow rebels, a crime against humanity itself?”  

The bleachers erupted in cheers, several students throwing handfuls of glitter into the air like confetti.  

Izuku groaned into his shoulder. “I didn’t—I wasn’t assaulting anyone—it was just a harmless prank!”  

Mina leapt up onto a bench, waving her staff. “Objection overruled! Glitter can scar souls, Midoriya!”  

The crowd howled.  

- Count Two: Poultry Sabotage.  

Mic adjusted glasses, lowering his voice into slow, mock-serious tones. “A most heinous act. The accused is charged with smuggling chickens into the cafeteria ventilation system, resulting in three days of clucking mayhem, feathers in the mashed potatoes, and, worst of all…” His voice broke theatrically as he held a hand over his chest. “…All Might’s lunch tray was stolen by a rogue rooster.”  

Gasps of exaggerated horror echo from the stands. Mineta cried, “Not the Symbol of Peace—betrayed by poultry!” Bakugo snorted somewhere in the seats, though even he was stifling a laugh.  

Izuku’s face burned, his head dropping. “Th-they weren’t supposed to escape the cages…”  

Mic then spoke up again as he raised his hand to silence the students. “And let us not forget the laxatives in said chocolate and puddings during lunch time! Though hilariously funny it was an act that should not be overlooked! Seriously, that was pretty good. I still have the recordings of the cafeteria.”

Ectoplasm cleared his throat to stifle a laugh as Bakugo yelled. “Just you wait until I get you back Deku! That was below the belt and you know it.”

Despite himself, Izuku laughed as he smiled at Bakugo. “Literally.”

“Deku!”

- Count Three: Psychological Duct Tape Torture of Faculty.  

Mic slapped the scroll dramatically, glaring down. “And this, perhaps the cruelest crime of all. On three separate occasions, the staff of U.A. were wall-papered—literally—in duct tape by devices engineered by the accused. Victims claim they overheard Midoriya muttering about ‘pattern optimization and adhesive ratios’ while cackling like some cardboard warlord!”  

Uproarious laughter rippled through the room. Kaminari stood up on a bench, slapping his knee. “I still remember Aizawa stuck in his sleeping bag! He just… laid there! Like a cranky worm!”  

Even some of the faculty committee cracked small smiles—though Aizawa did not. His unimpressed stare lingered, half daring anyone to bring it up again. 

Izuku’s face was crimson, his legs kicking lightly against the bindings. “I-I… It wasn’t—I didn’t mean to—They weren’t supposed to torture anyone!” His voice cracked as he tried to wriggle free, much to the delight of the gallery.  

Present Mic slammed the gavel once more. “The jury has heard enough excuses! This is not the time for science fair reconsiderations—this is the DAWN OF JUSTICE!”  

The bleachers erupted again, stomps shaking the gym floor. Izuku’s heart pounded. And yet—despite the red-hot embarrassment, the way every laugh dug at him—he couldn’t help a flicker of reluctant amusement himself. His classmates had gone so far… turned the gym into a parody of a rebel court, weaving plot holes into a mock trial like it was a grand finale play.  

And worst of all… it was working.  

And as the tribunal leaned forward in unison. Recovery Girl coughed into her shawl, then tapped her cane against the fake dais, croaking, “Proceed to judgment.”  

Present Mic raised the gavel high. His smile gleamed. “By full authority of the Rebel Council of U.A., we now call for sentencing!” He pointed the gavel at Izuku’s pale, flustered face. “Does the jury of your peers find this Hero Society spy guilty of the charges?”  

A chorus thundered back: “GUILTY!”  

Izuku swallowed as the sound made his ropes feel tighter.  

Mic raised his arms as the shouts swelled to a crescendo of stomps and chants, the entire gymnasium echoing like a gladiatorial arena.  

“And so—by decree of the rebellion—we shall declare the fate of Midoriya Izuku!”  

Izuku blanched, eyes wide as the world spun. His classmates leaned in with shining eyes, the prank’s climax wrapping around him like a noose of chaos.  

And through the haze, his only thought was a mixture of horror and awe:  

They really turned the whole school against me.  

And as the verdict came with stomps, cheers, and a deafening echo that rattled Izuku’s lungs. “GUILTY!” his classmates cried, their voices bouncing like war drums off the converted gym walls. A red spotlight trained down upon him, bright enough to bleach his face.  

Izuku squirmed in the ropes, heart hammering in his chest. He had expected—no, hoped for—a merciful sentence: maybe an overplayed “banishment,” maybe a few hours scrubbing glitter confetti out of the floor tiles. Instead, Present Mic raised a hand to call for silence and with a booming grin declared:  

“By decree of the Rebel Council… his crimes shall be returned upon him!”  

Cheers erupted from the bleachers. Izuku’s mouth went dry. He wasn’t going to prison, wasn’t going to be “executed” by Bakugo’s exploding fists—but something about the words made his gut twist harder than any previous prank.  

They were about to make him live his own pranks but with their own twist.  

And before Izuku knew it the ropes were cut, and before Izuku could even draw a steady breath, Jirou had already slipped behind him with a grin too gleeful to be safe.  

“Hold still, Midoriya,” she purred, earjacks twitching as she signaled the others.  

“What are you—wait—STOP—!”  

The next instant: feathers.  

A squawk erupted from the depths of his hoodie as warm, frantic motion battered against his ribs. Another squawk followed, then a frantic flapping of wings as multiple chickens wriggled their way into his uniform. Feathers exploded outward in clumps, sticking to his hair and face. One beak jabbed his collarbone. Another clawed nervously against his side.  

Izuku shrieked, leaping in place, arms flailing as if he’d been overtaken by some strange parasite. His classmates doubled over with unrestrained laughter. Mina pointed, glitter streaking down her cheeks from crying so hard. “Oh my—look at him—he’s a walking chicken coop!”  

Kaminari nearly fell off a bench, clutching his stomach. “Justice is served with poultry!”  

Izuku stumbled, breathless, feathers fluttering behind him like a broken angel’s wings, chickens still jammed in his hoodie and squawking their outrage into his ears. For the first time all year, he finally understood how traumatizing his rooftop poultry prank must have truly been for everyone else.  

His reprieve lasted just long enough for Recovery Girl to shoo away the birds (“Honestly, Jirou, he’ll catch something if you keep them in there”). But before he could even gather his dignity, noon came, and with it, lunch.  

The lunch line parted with malicious grins as students stepped aside for him. Plates clattered and trays slid, and at the end of the counter sat Lunch Rush himself, barely able to stifle a smirk under his chef’s hat.  

Izuku’s tray hit the counter with a faint thud. On it: a mountain of mashed potatoes, layered thick and sloppy, steam rising like a beacon. And scrawled across the top in neon orange ketchup letters, sprawled grand enough for the entire cafeteria to see, were the words:  

NERD SUPREME.  

His cheeks went instantly red.  

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”  

The cafeteria exploded with laughter. Students chanted “NERD SUPREME, NERD SUPREME!” until the rhythm pounded in Izuku’s ears like a march of shame. Kirishima nearly choked on his food as he told him how good the pudding was today. Mina fanned herself as though about to faint from delight. Even Todoroki blinked twice, lips twitching at the faintest suggestion of a smirk.  

Izuku buried his face in his hands, groaning into his tray. He felt the weight of every staring, delighted eye.  

So this was what humiliation felt like.  

And when he thought, Surely it can’t get worse.  

It could.  

Later that evening, Izuku slipped on his sneakers to retreat into blessed solitude—only to feel something squishy spread under his socks. Cold at first, then slick. He tugged one shoe off and gasped in horror.  

The soles glowed.  

An iridescent green, spreading in blotches, shining like radioactive slime. A concoction of glow-in-the-dark paint—meticulously applied, still sticky—had soaked through every pore of the sole. His socks were soaking. His feet shone faintly beneath the fading light of the hallway.  

No matter how much he scraped the inside with tissues, the glow clung stubbornly, piercing out the seams of his sneaker like bioluminescent veins.  

The dorm hallways erupted into renewed chaos as everyone gathered for the grand reveal. Kaminari whooped, “Neon Deku, coming through!” while Mina smeared glow-paint under her eyes like war paint in tribute.  

Izuku dragged himself to the staircase, one shoe squeaking with moisture, glowing footprints trailing behind like bright, humiliating breadcrumbs.  

Forgiveness and Fun  

The finale came at night.  

Dragged back into the gymnasium—his prison-turned-stage once more—Iida stood tall like a master of ceremonies. At the center of the room, Midnight herself descended dramatically in a swirl of spotlight smoke, carrying in her arms an absurd bundle.  

“Izuku Midoriya!” she declared, voice dripping with theatrical command. “You are hereby crowned the Symbol of Shenanigans!”  

She whipped out a cape so thick with glitter it shimmered like a collapsing disco ball. She draped it over his shoulders—glitter exploding into the air in a dazzling, choking storm. Then she lowered onto his messy curls a crooked cardboard crown that read PRANK KING EMERITUS.  

The gym walls thundered with stomps and cheers, classmates chanting in unison:  

“SYMBOL OF SHENANIGANS!”  

“SYMBOL OF SHENANIGANS!”  

Izuku’s face burned, but he couldn’t stop the small, quivering smile tugging at his lips beneath the humiliation. For once, the chaos wasn’t his design—it was at his expense. Every prank returned, every joke flipped into his suffering—it was ridiculous, painful, endless… and strangely touching.  

The glitter itched. The crown sagged over one eye. The chickens were still in the corner eyeing him like conspirators.  

But Izuku let the smile slip through anyway, glowing faintly in the fractured light of playful vengeance.  

For the first time, he had tasted the other side of the war—and Operation Payback had won.  

And as the glitter still floated lazily in the air like stardust, catching the gymnasium lights as the thunder of his classmates’ laughter reverberated through the walls. Chants of “SYMBOL OF SHENANIGANS!” still rang out, rattling off every corner, but amidst the din of chaos and mock judgment, something inside Izuku finally broke—not in defeat, but in release.  

At first it was just a small chuckle, a slip through his clenched jaw. Then, against his will, the laughter grew. It tumbled out of him in ragged bursts, until soon Izuku Midoriya—the reluctant prankmaster, their captive fool—was doubled over in the glitter cape, shoulders shaking with uncontrollable laughter.  

The entire class froze, stunned. It wasn’t the awkward, nervous laugh they all knew. This was hearty, loud, genuine. The kind of laugh born from carrying too much weight and finally letting it go.  

Uraraka tilted her head. “Uh… Deku?”  

Izuku wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, smudging glitter across his cheek. His voice cracked through his fit of laughter, words spilled out between breaths.  

“I—I can’t keep it up anymore!” His chest hurt as he tried to steady himself, clutching at the hem of the sparkling cape. “This… this was never… it was never about trying to torment you all!”  

The stunned gym fell almost entirely silent, save the occasional squawk of one forgotten chicken still clucking in the corner. Dozens of eyes bore into him—half confused, half eager for the truth.  

Izuku took a deep breath, forcing the air past lips trembling from giddiness and exhaustion. His green eyes burned with sincerity, even through the ridiculous cardboard crown slipping down over his forehead.  

“It was April Fools’ Day,” he said simply.  

For a half-second, they only blinked at him. Bakugo gave an incredulous snort. “The hell are you even talking about?”  

Izuku pressed on, voice steadier now, tugging the crown straight like it somehow gave him authority. “On the very first day I started this… well, I—I looked around at all of you. Everyone was working so hard. Training until you collapsed. Studying until you fell asleep at your desks. Pushing past your limits until every single one of us was walking wounded.” He paused, his throat tight but his words clear.  

“And then I realized… nobody had celebrated April Fools’ Day. Not one of us. Not a single laugh, not a single prank. Nothing but endless training.”  

His eyes flickered down, glitter dripping from the cape to the gym floor around his sneakers. “So I thought—what if I just... gave us that? Gave all of you a reason to laugh, a chance to actually relax? Even if it meant putting a target on my back. Even if it meant everyone hated me for it. I wanted you to stop carrying the weight alone.”  

Whispers rippled across the crowd. The smiles that had been sharp with victory softened to something quieter.  

Izuku dragged in another breath, confessing the truth that had gnawed at him the entire war. “Every dumb trap, every ridiculous prank—it wasn’t about humiliating anyone. It was my way of saying, breathe. Let go. It was… care. A really, really stupid version of it, sure, b-but—” He stumbled over the words, flustered now in vulnerability. “I wanted to see you laugh! Even if it was at my expense!”  

Silence held the room for a long, fragile beat. Glitter still shimmered in the air, tiny stars suspended between the hush of confession and the chaos of what came before.  

Then, Mina broke it. Her voice was soft but laced with that ever-present mischief. “Deku… you mean to tell me… that this entire war…”  

Izuku winced, bracing himself. “Yes.”  

“…started because you wanted us to chill out and laugh?”  

Izuku nodded, cheeks flushing crimson.  

The pause lasted only a heartbeat more before the gym erupted—not in mocking laughter this time, but in genuine hilarity mixed with groans. Sero facepalmed so hard it echoed on the bleachers. Kaminari fell backward off the bench in stitches, rolling on the floor. Jirou grinned at him, shaking her head, earjacks twitching with restrained chuckles. Even Todoroki cracked a faint, rare smile, muttering under his breath, “Dumb… but effective.”  

Bakugo, unsurprisingly, lunged half out of his seat, pointing at Deku like he was a pest. “You started a months-long apocalypse of chaos—JUST BECAUSE YOU WANTED TO CELEBRATE APRIL FOOLS?! ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR DAMN MIND?!”  

But his outrage only fanned more laughter throughout the room.  

Izuku blushed deeply, looking down at his glitter-drenched cape, embarrassed but strangely relieved. A smile tugged weakly at his lips. “M-Maybe… maybe I am.”  

And as the dust was still settling—literally. Glitter shimmered stubbornly in the gym’s rafters, some of it floating down with each shift of air like a cursed snowfall. Pieces of duct tape clung to shoes, pant legs, and hair despite everyone’s best efforts. The war was over, the council disbanded, but the aftermath of Operation Payback was undeniable.  

Aizawa stood at the edge of the chaos, bags under his eyes looking deeper than ever. He groaned sharply, dragging a hand down his face as though trying to scrub the memory from his skin.  

“I swear,” he muttered, his voice dripping exhaustion, “if I find glitter or coffee in my sleeping bag again, somebody’s failing this semester.”  

And yet—even in his perpetual irritation—there was a hint of reluctant fondness in his eyes as he stared at the group of students now doubled over in laughter. Maybe it had been chaos, maybe it had been a semester’s worth of frustration tied into exploding pranks, but at the end of it all, his kids had shared something rare—a chance to let loose. And he, despite himself, was glad for it.  

Across the room, All Might pinched the bridge of his nose, his massive frame casting a faint shadow over the mess. He exhaled, equal parts exasperated and amused.  

“My boy,” he said, shaking his head while giving Midoriya a sharp-yet-proud smile, “only you could turn this school into an apocalypse over April Fools’.”  

His massive hand slipped to his forehead in a full, theatrical facepalm. Behind the bemusement, though, his eyes betrayed pride—pride in Midoriya’s cunning, absurd as it was. After all, leadership sometimes meant knowing when to thrust people into battle… and when to make them laugh.  

Beside the teachers, Bakugo was far less tolerant. He practically erupted like a volcano, stomping toward Midoriya with fists popping dangerous sparks. His voice cracked like a whip across the gym:  

“LISTEN UP, DEKU! YOU—AND ALL THAT SHINY CRAP—” he jabbed a finger toward the glitter still glinting in Midoriya’s cape “—ARE OFFICIALLY BANNED. YOU HEAR ME?! NO MORE GLITTER! EVER! You’re not allowed to touch it, buy it, or even think about it again unless you want me to blow your nerd face clean off!”  

The class burst into renewed laughter at Bakugo’s explosive edict. Someone threw glitter from the balcony by instinct, and Bakugo bellowed threats into the rafters as Midoriya shrank nervously under the tirade.  

But then Izuku paused. His laughter tapered, and a flicker of memory jolted him. He turned slowly, blinking wide eyes at his classmates.  

“Wait… was Iida really holding a real axe?”  

A quiet, guilty silence fell over the room.  

Every eye flicked toward Iida, who shifted on the spot, stiff as stone. His glasses caught the overhead light, reflecting only shame. Sheepish smiles crept over most of Class 1-A’s faces, but Iida himself bent forward at once, bowing until his forehead nearly touched the floor.  

“I APOLOGIZE PROFUSELY!” he cried, bowing again. And again. And again. His body snapped back and forth in rhythmic sincerity. “It was a dreadful lapse of judgment! I was overtaken by the… the role, and I went too far! I accept full responsibility! MIDORIYA, I WAS RECKLESS!”  

Izuku’s jaw dropped slightly as he watched the blur of bows, then let out an awkward laugh, waving his hands in front of him. He reached out and gently patted Iida’s shoulder to still him.  

“It’s okay, bud! Really!” Izuku gave a nervous smile, the feathered cape still crooked around his neck. “We just gotta… work on those anger issues, maybe tone down the uh… bloodthirsty zeal next time.”  

The class howled at Izuku’s attempt to soften the blow. Even Todoroki, steady and unreadable as ever, leaned forward with the faintest crease in his brow.  

“Yes,” he said flatly, staring directly at a mortified Iida. “We should.”  

The icy suspicion in his gaze was enough to make Iida stiffen entirely, like stone frozen mid-apology.  

Uraraka tried her best to ease the tension, giggling nervously and tapping her fingers together. “W-well, um, don’t worry everyone! It’s not like nothing came of it—Denki and Iida both got detention!”  

“What?!” Denki yelped from the back, still holding his shovel like a guilty prop. “I didn’t even mean to knock him out that hard! I just—long live the revolution, you know?”  

“Don’t. Say. That. Again,” snapped Jirou, smacking him on the shoulder with her earphone jack.  

Izuku only rubbed his temple and laughed softly, shaking his head, letting relief pull down his shoulders again. Even with axes, shovels, glitter, and chaos, this was his class. His team. His—family.  

And for the first time since Operation Payback began, his shoulders felt lighter—as though the war’s weight had shifted, no longer on his back alone, but dissolved under the warmth of shared laughter and understanding.  

In the ashes of rebellion banners and staged apocalypse, what remained wasn’t vengeance, or shame, or even triumph.  

It was bonding.  

And Izuku Midoriya—the Symbol of Shenanigans—finally allowed himself to laugh with them.  

— 

When the laughter died down again, it didn’t fade entirely. It lingered, soft and glowing under the rafters of the gym. One student giggled, another replied, and soon it swelled into a chorus again—a warmth that erased the sharp edges of pranks, paybacks, and punishments.  

Bakugo finally slumped back, scowling but exhausted, sparks fizzing quietly as though even his rage had burned itself into reluctant amusement. “You’re lucky everyone’s laughing, Deku. Don’t push it…”  

The room stilled, then practically shook with fresh laughter, even at the begrudging admission.  

Stories poured out next—Mina declaring her favorite prank was the glitter showers, Jirou reminiscing triumphantly about watching Aizawa taped to a ceiling, Kaminari retelling his “glorious revolution” speech to a captive Denki audience. Teachers even joined in, Recovery Girl snorting her disapproval even as she retold how Mic had gotten caught in one of Midoriya’s duct tape contraptions and still announced his rock concerts the next day with adhesive residue clinging to his shoes.  

Layer by layer, the war dissolved—not into bitterness, but into bonds. What had been torment was transformed into fondness. Glitter and duct tape became shared war stories, inside jokes etched into memory. For once, laughter came not from chaos, but from camaraderie.  

— 

Later that evening, the gym was empty again, save for two figures.  

Izuku sat on a bench still dusted with glitter, quietly peeling the tape off one sneaker. Across from him, Aizawa leaned back against the wall, scarf pooled like shadow around his neck. The silence sat heavy but not uncomfortable between them.  

Finally, Izuku looked up. For once, he wasn’t babbling, wasn’t hurried—just earnest. “Thanks, sensei. For… letting this happen. For not shutting it down completely.”  

Aizawa opened one tired eye, regarding him for a moment. Then, with the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth, he replied, “You’re idiots. But… idiots that trust each other. That’s worth something.”  

The words carried more weight than a lecture ever could. Izuku nodded slowly, his own rare, warm smile spreading across his bruised, feathered face. In that small exchange—quiet, unadorned—they both understood.  

U.A. wasn’t just about training heroes. It was about creating family. People worth laughing with. People worth fighting for.  

And as the prank war’s memories began to fade into stories they’d someday retell, every heart in Class 1-A carried the same truth forward: that unpredictability, chaos, and friendship were all equally powerful.  

Together, they were stronger than any prank.  

One Last Sparkle  

It took days to clean.  

Buckets of sudsy water sloshed across every hallway; broom bristles scraped at stubborn glitter embedded in the seams of the tile. Students groaned as they bent, scrubbed, rinsed, and repeated. Every shaft of sunlight that cut through the windows only betrayed more hidden sparkles, each one clinging like a reminder of just how long Operation Payback had lasted.  

“Glitter is eternal,” Mina moaned dramatically, sprawled across a mop like a fallen soldier.  

“Eternal and cursed,” Jirou muttered, plucking a sparkling speck from her earjack cord.  

Even Bakugo, wielding a mop like a weapon, snarled at the floor. “If I see ONE MORE FLAKE—just ONE MORE—”  

The rest of 1-A laughed, groaned, and pressed on. Aizawa passed by once, rubbing his temples, muttering something about deducting points if the mess wasn’t gone by Friday. All Might dropped by, offering encouragement—only to sneeze as dusted glitter clung to his nose.  

It felt, at last, like closure. Like peace. The war was over, the school restored.  

Finally, the last glitter pile was flushed into a drain just outside the dormitory. A cheer rose through the group—loud, relieved, triumphant. Uraraka pumped both fists, Kaminari collapsed onto the lawn, and even Todoroki raised an eyebrow of rare satisfaction.  

“Done,” Iida declared stiffly, mopping sweat from his brow. “At last, U.A. is free from the tyranny of sparkles.”  

For a heartbeat, silence. Relief. The burden lifted.  

Then—  

PSSSSSHHHHHHHHHH!  

A loud hiss filled the air. The walls of the dormitory groaned as hidden vents popped open—vents no one had thought to check.  

Suddenly, a geyser of confetti and glitter blasted from every corner of the building, raining down in a magnificent, unstoppable storm. Shimmering rainbows erupted overhead, flooding the courtyard in a sparkling blizzard that clung to every shirt, every hairstyle, every shoe.  

The class froze in horror, helpless as they were doused head to toe in the sparkling mess once again.  

And then, drifting faintly from the upper dorm window, came a triumphant recording Izuku had hidden weeks ago, his voice crackling through a speaker with cheerful finality:  

“APRIL FOOLS… one last time!”  

The courtyard shook with simultaneous groans, laughter, and furious shouts. Mina shrieked with joy, Kirishima bent double howling, Kaminari rolled on the glitter-streaked lawn, and Bakugo detonated sparks skyward, screaming “DEEEEKUUUUU!” loud enough to rattle the windows.  

Through the haze of glitter rain, Izuku stepped out from the doorway, sheepish and grinning, hair already dusted like a green-topped disco ball. He scratched his cheek.  

“W-Well… figured we couldn’t end without one last punchline.”  

For a heartbeat, his classmates gawked, torn between vengeance and uncontrollable laughter. Then, slowly, the laughter won.  

They collapsed into sparkling heaps under the rainbow storm, groaning but smiling. Under the chaos, the bonds of Class 1-A shone brighter than the glitter itself.  

The prank war had ended. But the memory—impossible to clean, like glitter—would stay with them forever.