Chapter Text
Higari wasn’t sure why Nedzu had summoned him, but his instincts screamed it wasn’t just about routine security protocols. That unease solidified the moment his knuckles met the door instead of Nedzu opening it himself — a rare misstep from the usually precise principal.
Red flag number one.
Stepping inside, Higari noticed another. The office was dimmer than usual; the curtains were half-drawn, blocking the afternoon sun. Nedzu sat at his desk, paws folded neatly, but his face… it wasn’t right. No warm smile. No playful glint in his eyes. And the most damning detail of all? No teacup.
Higari swallowed nervously. “Uh… is this about the broken teaset? Because I swear, I had nothing to do with it!”
Nedzu blinked slowly. “…Broken teaset?”
Higari’s eyes widened. “Ah—uh… forget I said anything!” He waved his hands frantically. “There’s no broken teaset! Heh… yeah. Nothing to see here.”
Nedzu let out a slow sigh, ears flicking, before leaning forward. His expression sharpened, radiating the cold, precise authority Higari had learned to respect — and fear.
“No, Higari. This isn’t about tea,” Nedzu said, voice calm but heavy with weight.
Higari froze.
“This is about the USJ,” Nedzu continued. “After the break-in, I reviewed everything. Every second of footage. Every anomaly. And something doesn’t add up.”
Higari’s throat went dry. “…What doesn’t add up?”
Nedzu’s gaze cut straight through him. “The villains knew too much. Which teachers were scheduled. Which students — and their quirks. Even the layout of the facility. The only miscalculation was, ironically, All Might’s incompetence. If he had actually shown up, they might have succeeded.” His eyes narrowed. “But that’s beside the point. How did they know all that? How did they bypass Midos’ systems? How did they get past the Meowdos?”
“You don’t mean…” Higari’s eyes widened in realization.
“We have a mole, Higari.” Nedzu rotated his screen toward him. A log report filled the display: security rerouted, cameras disabled, student files stolen directly from Midos’ main server, logs deleted — all under Higari’s ID.
Higari’s heart skipped a beat. “Wait… that’s my ID. Nedzu, you can’t possibly think— I didn’t— I swear, it wasn’t me!”
“I want to believe you,” Nedzu said evenly. “But right now, you’re the prime suspect. All IDs and passwords are unique. So… how would someone else have gotten yours? You need to give me something.”
Higari’s mind raced. “It was lunch… the day of the press break-in. I was in the support labs. Hatsume skipped lunch to work on her inventions, so I stayed to monitor her. You could ask her — she probably wouldn’t remember. She’s… well, lost in her inventions most of the time.” He paused, desperation creeping in. “And Shouto… he was at the USJ. I wouldn’t put my son in danger, Nedzu.”
“He’s also the only one who ended up in a zone where he wasn’t at a disadvantage, and had minimal trouble with the villains,” Nedzu countered. “So tell me, Higari. Are you a traitor? Or… are you even Higari Majima?”
“I am Higari Majima, Nedzu! I’m not a mole! I’ve never worked with villains!” Higari’s voice cracked under the pressure, panic clawing at him. For a moment, he swore the room itself would crush him, a god-level intellect ready to destroy anyone who betrayed it.
Then, abruptly, the tension lifted. Nedzu smiled.
“That’s good to hear,” he said cheerfully. “I’m glad we cleared that up!”
Higari gasped, relief flooding through him. “You… believe me? Just like that?”
“Of course,” Nedzu said. “You’re one of my oldest employees. Besides Shouta and Hizashi, you’re the most trusted person I have. If I can’t trust you, who can I trust? Besides, I also brought assurance.” He pressed a button on his desk, and a hidden passage opened. Detective Tsukauchi stepped inside. “ “So, detective?” Nedzu prompted.
Tsukauchi gave a small nod. “Confirmed. Higari Majima is telling the truth. He’s never worked with villains. The only lie I’ve seen him tell today is denying the broken teaset.”
“That’s excellent!” Nedzu chirped. “Thank you, detective. I knew I could count on you. Now that I know Higari is still trustworthy, we can start figuring out who the mole actually is.”
“Great. You have my number if you need me again.” Tsukauchi’s gaze flicked to the door. “If that’s all, I have to get back to the precinct. Paperwork won’t finish itself… and I need more coffee.”
With a nod to Higari, the detective departed, leaving him alone with Nedzu. For the first time that afternoon, Higari felt like he could finally breathe.
The relief didn’t last long. The instant Tsukauchi disappeared down the hallway, the weight in the room slammed back onto Higari’s shoulders — heavier this time.
“So…” Nedzu’s voice was deceptively calm, but the sharp, predatory smile spreading across his face told a very different story. “What was that about a broken teaset, Higari-kun?”
Higari forced a chuckle, his stomach knotting.
I’m in danger. He thought.
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Izuku knew his Dad was running a private investigation and that the principal knew Izuku knew — and that was fine. He trusted Nedzu to call if he needed help, so he didn’t pry. Besides, he had work to do.
While Higari and his dad were tied up in a meeting, Izuku used the time to verify the new security measures. He started with the Meowdos squad. Grounded or not, he could still run system checks remotely; their sensors reported nominal, diagnostics green across the board.
He also pushed an updated “watch list” into the system .: flagged IDs that would trigger immediate pings if they set foot on school property. The list was extensive — known villains, HPSC operatives, Hawks, Ms. Joke (because Izuku wouldn’t miss watching her driving Shou-chan up the walls), All Might and anyone tied to him except Mirio, and any visitor not on the approved registry.
The next addition was the support-student idea he’d purchased from last year’s graduate: a school-wide carbon-dioxide radar grid. Tiny breath signatures would now register, and paired with the students’ IDs and the M.I.D.O.S. app in their phones, Izuku would always know if someone around is an intruder.
The sensors could distinguish animals from humans, so stray cats wouldn’t set off alarms, but anything that breathed and shouldn’t be there would. Even the Nomu still needed to breath — there would be no slipping in undetected. It was elegant in its simplicity.
The USJ incident had been the perfect field test for the Toy Box Protocol, and the results had exceeded Izuku’s expectations. From now on, the Toy Box units would patrol at night, deploying automatically to intercept and detain intruders. He sketched further expansions in his head, but for now, Protocol Security Puppet was on hold until the Funtime units were fully functional.
There was one glaring blind spot, though: Kurogiri.
A warp quirk like his was unheard and a nightmare scenario — the team had been caught unprepared. For now, the best they could do was detect portal openings the instant they occurred. Izuku was already drafting a counter-signal that, in theory, would force any unauthorized gate to collapse; in practice it would take months of development and testing. Maybe the standard teleport jammers would slow Kurogiri down, maybe not — Izuku wasn’t betting on it.
Izuku ran another dozen system diagnostics, scanning every corner of the school’s security network. Motion sensors, cameras, radars, AI routines—everything reported green. For a brief moment, he let himself feel a sliver of satisfaction.
Then, a flicker appeared—not on the school network, but on his personal interface.
Frowning, Izuku “closed” his digital eyes and scanned his own system. Logs appeared, streams of code cascading before him, and one block glowed ominously black. He froze.
Being a digital being had its perks—but it also meant that any alteration to his source code could rewrite him entirely: his personality, memories, even his emotions—all were lines of binary, vulnerable if compromised. No one had ever breached him before. Nedzu’s mainframe was airtight; inserting anything here should have been impossible.
So why was Izuku staring at a block of corrupted code inside his own mind?
He had encountered viruses before, of course. Years in the net had taught him how to deal with intrusions. But this was different. Whoever had done this didn’t just hack—they were wielding a technology quirk. But how? And who?
“Initiate hack,” Izuku muttered, raising his hand. White tendrils of his quirk shot toward the black block.
The instant he made contact, the code flared red. His vision swam. A wave of nausea hit him—the kind he hadn’t felt since he was still human. Feverish, disoriented, but he forced himself to push past it. The hacking sequence began.
His interface transformed into a vast digital maze. He was in his hacking ship, stationed at the center, facing the intrusion head-on.
A warning flashed: “Attack on source code detected.” The headache worsened. Whoever had planted this wasn’t just trying to hide—they wanted to destroy him before he could even reach them.
“Oh, it’s on,” Izuku muttered. “I’ve never lost a hacking duel to anyone who wasn’t Nedzu.” He gritted his teeth, took control of the ship, and surged forward.
The defenses were impressive: turrets firing, kamikaze drones, walls of encrypted barriers. This was the second-most fortified code he’d ever faced. But compared to Nedzu’s defenses? This was nothing.
Ignoring the pounding in his head, he weaved past the turrets and hacked through the obstacles, heading straight for the core. Ahead loomed a massive black sphere, surrounded by more turrets and walls than he could count. The source of the intrusion.
Izuku took a deep, steadying breath, then dove toward it.
Izuku’s ship darted through the final layer of defenses, weaving between bursts of turret fire. The black sphere ahead throbbed ominously, pulsating like a heartbeat, sending vibrations coursing through his neural interface.
He didn’t hesitate. His ship unleashed a volley of shots, each strike aimed to fracture the sphere’s code. In retaliation, shards of corrupted code shot toward him like deadly missiles. Izuku dodged with precision—until one struck, sending a wave of nausea rolling through him.
“System integrity: 75%,” the warning blinked in red, yanking him back to focus just in time to evade another attack.
“Annoying virus,” he muttered through gritted teeth, firing again. Sparks of corrupted code shattered against his defenses, and the black sphere spun faster, glowing an angry, searing red. “Get out of my system, stupid pile of code!”
He charged a final shot and hit the core squarely. The sphere shattered into a thousand microscopic fragments, scattering across the digital field. For a moment, Izuku exhaled, expecting victory.
But then he realized: the shards weren’t dissipating. They were converging—rushing straight toward his ship, each one a jagged, razor-sharp piece of malicious code, intent on ripping through his defenses.
Izuku’s grip tightened on the controls, white tendrils of his quirk flaring as his ship twisted through the digital storm. The fragments moved like predators, erratic and sharp, swarming with an almost sentient malice.
“Not today,” he muttered, unleashing rapid bursts. Shards shattered into static, but for every one destroyed, two more came screaming in.
“System integrity: 50%.” The warning pulsed red, each vibration pounding against his skull like a migraine.
He threw up a defensive algorithm, a shimmering lattice of energy around the ship. The swarm slammed into it, cracking against the shield, gnawing at its edges. Izuku pushed harder, stretching his awareness through the network. His form blurred, calculations spinning faster than thought, until he began to see it—patterns in the chaos.
“Come on, come on…”
He jerked the ship through a narrow gap, letting most of the fragments slam harmlessly past. But the core pieces remained, circling him, relentless, their jagged edges aimed not just at the ship but at him.
His neural interface screamed, fatigue clawing at his code. The shards weren’t just attacking—they were trying to rewrite him. Sweat, phantom and digital, trickled down his brow.
Izuku inhaled sharply. It was now or never.
“Let’s end this.”
He focused every ounce of will into a single shot—a beam of pure corrective code, burning bright with his quirk’s signature white energy. It struck the heart of the swarm.
The fragments convulsed, colliding into one another in a chain reaction. Explosions of black and red lit the digital sky as the swarm imploded, their remnants scattering harmlessly into static.
Silence.
“System stable. Threat neutralized.”
Izuku sagged in relief as the hack prompt collapsed, returning him to his virtual room inside UA’s mainframe. The room was a ruin: cracked walls, overturned furniture, static flickering in the corners.
His stomach lurched—violently. Instinctively, he summoned a bucket and bent over it, retching. Blackened code spilled out, broken fragments of the virus that had wormed into his system. He didn’t even know he could vomit anymore.
“Initiate system repair,” he rasped. “Load last backup. Run memory-integrity check.”
Diagnostics scrolled across his vision. No corrupted memories. No damage to his emotion or personality cores. Relief washed over him. He could fix the rest.
He would also need to figure out where this virus came from. It was clearly designed to attack him when he tried to analyze it. But he didn’t know what it was doing before that. He would need to find out quickly.
But not now. Right now, he just needed to rest.
Izuku lay down on the fractured bed, eyes closing as the repair protocols hummed quietly in the background. He could still sleep, and he did occasionally, since he liked it. But for the first time in years, he did it not because he wanted to, but because he had to.
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In a room swallowed in shadow, broken only by the faint hiss of machinery, tubes of glowing fluid pulsed in rhythm, feeding life into the man slouched yet regal in his high-backed chair. The tailored suit couldn’t disguise the truth of the cables that tethered him, or the ruin of the face beneath the dim light.
A slow, predatory grin stretched across his scarred features as a familiar tug brushed against his consciousness. One of his quirks had triggered.
“…Fascinating,” he murmured. His voice was soft, but it carried the weight of command. “That virus was crafted to be undetectable, flawless… and yet, something destroyed it.” The grin widened, sharp and hungry. “Nedzu has his paws on something extraordinary. What a pity I wasn’t the one to claim it first.”
“Master?” came a hesitant voice.
The man didn’t turn. “Tell me, Garaki… do you believe a machine could ever wield a quirk?”
The doctor adjusted his glasses, tone cautious but eager to engage. “By all current understanding, quirks are biological. They require a living host. While I would never discard the possibility entirely, the only plausible path I can conceive would be… singularity.”
The scarred man chuckled, low and dark. “A quirk so powerful it survives its host’s death… slipping into a new vessel, even one of wires and circuits.” He tilted his head, the idea gleaming in his ruined eyes. “Imagine, Garaki, a quirk that refuses to die. Tell me—do you think such a prize could be stolen?”
Garaki’s brow furrowed, though his tone remained respectful. “If it exists, such a quirk would be beyond anything we’ve catalogued. But… if anyone could take it, Master, it would be you.”
“Flattery, doctor?” The grin became a leer. “Or faith? Either way, I intend to find out.” He leaned back, fingers flexing against the armrest, savoring the thought. “Because if it isn’t singularity… then Nedzu has achieved what should be impossible—an artificial mind capable of defeating my strongest hacking quirk. And after our ally worked so hard to slip it past the school’s defenses, too.” He exhaled, a sound caught between amusement and annoyance. “Such a shame.”