Worthless Necessity [HitoZuku]

Chapter 19 - Seas of shadows

"You seem a little distracted today. Worried about school?" Kamihara asked, turning behind him. Shinsou trailed behind him, looking around absentmindedly, before he realised that Kamihara was talking to him, "Huh?"

"It's the last day of the internships." Kamihara sighed, "What's wrong? You seemed okay this entire week."

"I'm just ... worried about a friend, honestly." Shinsou scratched the back of his neck, "I know that some things would be hard to get over... but..."

"Midoriya Izuku, right? Quirkless." Kamihara asked, and Shinsou looked up at him in shock, "I did my research. He won the Sports Festival, after all, without showing any signs of quirk usage. Don't worry about it, I'm not judging that your friend is quirkless. Quirk discrimination is a thing, but some of us heroes have actually gone through it. Take Best Jeanist, or even your teacher Aizawa. Their fighting styles rely more on their technique rather than the quirks themselves. Look at yourself, you're using your equipment rather than your quirk."

He walked towards Shinsou and patted him on the shoulder, "Look, I'm not going to try and pretend to understand what he's going through. People with ideal quirks just keep on increasing as time goes on, and I'm sure that the discrimination has gotten much, much worse. Being discriminated for being quirkless has always been way worse than just regular quirk discrimination... Honestly, I think the only thing you can do to help him is to just show that you'll be there for him. You can't force him to just spill all his troubles, things like this take time."

Shinsou nodded. It had been exactly like that with him. After he had been rescued and taken in by Aizawa and Yamada, it had taken him weeks to even start talking, even though he was perfectly aware that Aizawa could erase his quirk if he accidentally brainwashed someone. It had also taken a long time for him to adjust to a new environment, and the lack of restrictions he had. He could talk when he wanted, do whatever he wanted, it was all so new to him and it had taken him a long time to process all of it.

He had gotten help, help that brought him to where he is today.

Midoriya deserved help as well.

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Nezu hoped that Midoriya was getting enough sleep. After all, Akaguro was already behind bars, so there was no reason for Midoriya to sacrifice his already scarce sleeping time in order to make his way to and back from Hosu.

He drummed his paws on the table. Midoriya had looked horrible when he had last seen him on Friday. He just hoped that things would go a lot better after the weekend. Hopefully, Midoriya had decided to take a break, and get his much needed rest.

He had already finalised all the transportation arrangements. On Monday, 1-A where to go to the USJ to see what they had learnt in their internships and how to apply their new knowledge. That was also one of the days where only the first years were in school, with everyone else being busy with internships, field trips and lectures.

It didn't seem to bad. But Nezu had a feeling in his gut that something... something was about to go horribly wrong, but he couldn't put a finger on it.

Maybe he should try to beef up security once more, but then again, he couldn't do anything about warpers unless he had a sample of the energy they use to teleport around. Or maybe he should try and think of some universal force field that kept warpers in general out? But the amount of radiation that something like that would give out wouldn't be healthy...

He would discuss that with Maijima, and maybe Yagi. That purple misty warper was associated with the monstrosities from Hosu, and seeing as those things seemed to be modified in order to hold multiple quirks. They were definitely related to All for One in some way.

And if that was the case, then this was something that would be too large for the students to handle alone. Yagi was the only one who could stand a chance against All for One, and even he had been grievously wounded by that villain.

He needed to protect his students.

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"Midoriya!"

Midoriya heard the shout, and immediately turned around, seeing Uraraka running up to him. She had a huge grin on her face, and signed, "Hi!"

Midoriya just blinked, and she smiled, "I've been learning sign language! I only know the real basic stuff, like 'Hi', 'yes' and 'no', and it's amazing how you know how to sign fluently! It's hard!"

Midoriya had no idea how to react to that, until Iida came running up to them, "Ah! Hello Uraraka, Midoriya! I wasn't expecting to meet you here!"

Iida flashed Midoriya a smile, "Thank you for convincing me not to go after the Hero Killer. I was unfortunate enough to chance upon him, and he's way out of my league."

Midoriya merely nodded in acknowledgement, before the trio continued their way to UA, with Uraraka and Iida talking about their internships.

"It's a pity you're not in the hero course. You would have loved the internships." Uraraka commented, "Also, you won the Sports Festival, right? So will you be joining the hero course?"

Midoriya merely shrugged. He was, but not now, and Nezu didn't want any of the other students to know, so he kept quiet. But that wasn't the only reason he seemed even more withdrawn than usual.

He had a bad feeling in his gut. A flame, burning intensely, warning him that something ominous was going to happen. Something big, something horrible, but Midoriya had no idea what was going to happen. He couldn't let these... so-called friends distract him from what's important. He needed to be on the lookout for anything amiss.

Maybe he should tell Nezu that something felt wrong.

He felt Reiko and Ryuto shifting slightly in his bag, and could tell that Reiko probably felt his unease. Reiko couldn't protect herself from humans, given her smaller size, and Ryuto was way too young to even consider protecting himself.

They were his family. He couldn't afford to lose any more of his family. He could survive being killed, they couldn't. He could take hits, they couldn't.

He would do anything to protect them.

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"1-A's going to be at the USJ today, Shigaraki." Kurogiri reported, "All Might's occupied with our distractions. Most of the students are out of UA for their respective activities. The support course students will leave at lunch, and everyone in the USJ is in place. The control room has been taken over, UA's security systems are bugged, and everything is ours to use."

"Good." Shigaraki nodded, looking at his hand, "We have the Nomu for All Might. One of our flying Nomus was killed in Hosu but that was a low end Nomu. Bring along three more Nomus. Those kids don't stand a chance. We'll give those brats a fighting chance, and then crush their hopes right in front of them."

"Are we going to kill them?" Kurogiri asked.

"If they die, they die. It doesn't matter. We'll break them, break their heroes when they come to rescue them. We'll bring down the newest generation of heroes. We'll tear UA's reputation to shreds. We'll destroy those damned heroes, and finally, when we finally let All Might see what has happened, we'll bring him to his knees. The Symbol of Peace dies today, and hero society as a whole will crumble with it."