Something Different

10: Preaching Evil

[2121 words]

The day the students went to the USJ approached quickly. And Izuku was conflicted. On one hand, he could warn the heroes about the attack entirely, and the whole incident wouldn't even happen. Nobody would get injured or die. However, on the other hand, the League would probably change their plans and go after something else—likely UA's main building.

If that were to happen, then Izuku wouldn't be able to discern the possibilities. At least if the attack happened in the USJ, the events would play out just like they had previously. Izuku would have the advantage of foresight.

Izuku figured that it was wiser to not change the future too much. With that out of the way, he managed to gather as much information about the attack as he could. Apparently, over a hundred villains had signed up for the attack—Izuku had gone through each and every one of them, noting those with dangerous Quirks. That included the villain with an electricity Quirk that had disabled the alarms in the previous timeline.

If Izuku could find him within the crowd of villains, then the battle between All Might and Nomu may never happen. Instead, Izuku had hopes that the UA staff—that would be arriving earlier, this time around—would be able to resolve the situation. Then again, knowing Tomura, he might order Nomu to go after the heroes…

…And that could end badly. Izuku might even need to step in and use his trump card. That would be the worst possible outcome; he couldn't risk exposing his skills so early in the game, could he?

"Midoriya, I've been curious…" Izuku merely glanced to the side and continued to scribble in his notebook. To others, his writing looked like an entirely foreign language—well, technically, it was. Izuku created his own coded language that only he could understand.

"Yes, Asui?"

"Call me Tsu," the feminine frog ribbited, "Anyways, I was wondering where you learnt all your battle skills. It couldn't be self-taught, right? Ribbit."

"I joined dojos when I was young," Izuku kept his sentence short and straightforward. It showed that he was uninterested in the topic, and that his classmates should just discard their inquiries.

It seemed that they didn't understand, as Kirishima immediately asked another question–"Oh, that's so cool! Which dojo did you study in?"

Kacchan tsked, causing Izuku to stop scribbling on his book. He rolled his lips in. Shit—he had forgotten that Kacchan was there. Under the pretense that Izuku hadn't noticed his small sound of disapproval, he proceeded to write down more information on his book. It was all analysis on the villains that they would face in the USJ.

"Um, I don't remember…" he dismissed Kirishima's question, voice a mere whisper.

"Did he really join dojos when he was young?" Jirou peeked her head from the seat behind Kacchan, wearing an expression of curiosity. He wasn't going to call out Izuku's lie, was he?

Kacchan chuckled, noticing the way Izuku's shoulders tensed. His expression soon twisted into anger, however, as he turned to look at Jirou. "Yeah, so what?! I joined too!"

Izuku's eyes widened, pen slipping from his hand and accidentally drawing a line across the page. He grimaced as it tumbled to the bus' floor. Ignoring the glances of his classmates, Izuku picked up his pen and, once again, began to write.

"What are you writing down?" Uraraka looked over his shoulder, her brow creasing as she looked at the bunch of squiggly lines on the paper. "Um… Are you drawing an ocean…?"

"I'm writing down a bunch of expectations that I have for this lesson," Izuku uttered softly.

Uraraka hummed as she laid her head on his shoulder, a frown on her face. "Can I know what it says?"