Portal Panic

The Big Kahuna

****WE HAVE ARTWORK THIS WEEK!!!
AAAAHHHHHH!!! From both NDSeaborne AND NightcoreQueen!!! I AM SO HAPPY. IT'S THE FIRST ARTWORK ANYONE'S DONE THAT I DIDN'T COMMISSION OR MAKE MYSELF. THIS IS SUCH A MILESTONE YOU GUYS! I don't want to ruin the surprise, so you can find it later in the chapter.

Big thank you to NightcoreQueen and NDSeaborne for all the help with the chapter! And thanks all my viewers for being patient. I wanted to get this out by Christmas. Which...I kind of succeeded on? It's old calendar Christmas today....Merry Christmas! LOL

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All scenes with only MHA characters will be written in English, for ease of reading, but the characters are actually speaking Japanese to each other.

If a scene is being translated the entire time, and there are no language issues anywhere in an entire scene because of a translation device, the scene will just be written as normal. But you know who speaks what. I believe in you.

Wednesday, September 19th

2:18 am

Shota Aizawa lifted a cold mug and glared through crusted eyes at the green liquid within. Swirling the old matcha with a scowl twisting his lips, he tossed it back. It was his fifth cup. Most of his students preferred coffee, but he supposed he was just too old fashioned for the drink, relying instead on traditional tea for his daily dose of caffeine.

Long nights, while common for him, were always rough. But out of the last forty-two hours, he'd only spent four of them asleep. Non-consecutively.

It was frustrating. Despite his sacrifice, he wasn't making much headway on the Detnerat case. Sure, it'd only been two days since he'd started his search. But he'd watched every kind of footage he could get his hands on for the fifth thru eighth of September, and all he'd found was more tampering. Whoever these guys were, they were thorough.

So meticulous was the scrubbing that even after he'd found a lead, he was sure it'd been planted. Or at least intentionally left unedited. Two shoppers at a local H&N had criminal records. Small fry.

He'd still flagged them for the police, of course, since any detail could be worth something.

But still, this sucked.

Two short beeps sounded from the kitchen near Aizawa's current work station—aka one of the Heights Alliance lounge tables. The tired man's eyes followed the sound and he squinted hard at a flashing red "00:00" atop the stove. Getting up with a groan, he silenced the timer, lips pursing into an even thinner line.

Yesterday, Aizawa had been forced to inform his students that Hagakure was alive. The underground hero had fought the order, tried to get Nezu to hold off—her safety after so long was just too miraculous. But the principal had thrown down an ultimatum: "Tell them, or I will."

The memory of Kaminari's fist pump, of Koda and Jiro's relieved tears should have made him happy. Instead, his jaw clenched.

The sole purpose of Aizawa's quirk was to disrupt other quirks. What if the Isamu girl's trace had been messed with? Or something went wrong while Hagakure-san was still out of reach? Even if she was still alive and UA found her, they might not be able to get her home that way. 1A didn't need this kind of fragile hope. A lot of things could go wrong with villains involved.

And, regardless of what Nezu believed, "Jazz Smith" was a villain. Even if Aizawa wasn't sure which flavor yet.

He'd prove it, too.

Sliding back into his chair, he dragged his laptop just a little closer to himself and logged into a secure government server.

He'd spent enough hours on Mori's research for today. His timer could attest to that. Now he needed to give the foreigner some limelight, take advantage of the all-clear from Tsuragamae-san. She'd already been tailed for the better part of last night, but he still had a lot of ground to cover. He'd start by finding out what she'd done yesterday, then work backwards. He needed something, anything, to cast doubt on Nezu's theories.