My Hero Automata

Chapter 57: Kamino

Summary: Canon? What's that? Is it tasty?

Chapter 57: Kamino

Izumi was doing her best to pretend she was enjoying the party.

It should have been easy. For reasons supposedly known only to them, the UA staff had allowed the First Year Groups to hold a celebratory party, including catering and mad DJ skills provided by Lunch Rush and Present Mic respectively. It wasn't even that unreasonable, really. While UA wasn't exactly known for partying...they also weren't known for having thirty-nine First Years living in the Dorms. Nor was it at all normal for all thirty-nine of those First Year students to pass their Provisional License Exams all in a single go. The fact that such a thing had occurred made it obvious there would be a party, and the UA staff had presented the officially hosted chance as, supposedly, a way to make sure said party didn't get out of hand. Particularly with twitchy JSDF forces still lingering just outside UA's walls.

It was reasonable, really.

Most of the students, all but two in fact, hadn't had any reason to question it.

It was also a lie.

Izumi, Momo, and 2B were the only trio among the students who were aware of that little detail. Which, in turn, was because they were the only three who had been kept abreast of the news about the League of Villains. Even most of the heroes involved were completely unaware that the trio were aware. But, given both Izumi and Momo being potential targets, not to mention 2B's involvement on the cyberwarfare side, Nedzu had kept them updated. He'd informed them about the stealth raid that had quietly captured Giran, and about the deep investigation and tracking of shipments gathered from Nighteye's work on the two medical companies he'd found. About the time-limited data the operations had gathered on two major locations in Kamino ward. One, they expected to be a Nomu depot. The other, possibly a lair for All for One and certainly the primary hub for Shigaraki and his immediate subordinates. About the dual raids planned to hit those sites in...37 minutes.

All of that privileged information meant that Izumi and Momo knew this party was serving something of a different purpose than the rest of the students knew. Oh, it was serving its stated purpose well enough, letting the students celebrate the win they'd gotten in all of them passing the provisional exams. But it was also putting both UA Groups most likely to be targeted for retaliation under the direct observation of multiple heroes, at the heart of UA's security. It wasn't an accident that the room they had been offered for the party was in the Heroics Building itself, after all.

It was nerve wracking to be the only ones aware...and there was more than just the one reason. It was a secondary reason, known to none but the trio, that saw Momo casually step out of the crowd to give Izumi a hug. That hug covered the subtle transfer of pure QE from a spark of One for All, right under the noses of every student and professor present. An extra level to this charade that no one else was aware of. Not even Nedzu. A level that was straining Izumi's ability to act normally, as tiredness was weighing on her just as much as anxiety. She was using all of that energy for something, after all.

Still, despite the pressure, Izumi let Momo drag her back into the party. The best defense right now was to seem as present and into the partying as others expected, given that she was a known introvert. With Momo's help, she could fake it long enough, she hoped.

... ...

It was thirty-five minutes later that 2B noted the sudden spike of operational chatter on the Kamino area HSN network. Even as administrators, they couldn't tap into the assault team's feeds without explicit permission. A safety feature of the system that they didn't regret, even now. They could monitor usage levels in specific areas of the network, however, and 2B had been doing so all along, knowing that a sudden large usage spike in Kamino would indicate that the operation was being activated. With a signal to Momo, Izumi got busy hijacking the wall displays in the room, tapping into the news feeds. She didn't link them quite yet, but she prepped them, knowing that there was a good chance the media was going to be right on top of so many high-level heroes abruptly appearing and launching was looked to be a major raid.