Yes. Chapter 23.5 exists. Blame me re-writing the majority of chapters 24-31 to the point where a few more chapters will (probably) be added in between and-

Yeah, I didn't wanna delete the other chapters since they're all on one doc and was too lazy to change the headings. Sue me.

Kazue knew it had been coming. He just didn't know when, exactly. The brunet had been making his way through the building in the general direction of Gym Gamma after school had ended, Midoriya rambling on about some random hero he knew the name of but didn't care enough at the moment to pull up the memory.

"Kimura, come with me. We need to talk," instructed Aizawa tiredly from out of nowhere, shoulders hunched as he nudged open the door to a conference room with a foot.

Midoriya stood there awkwardly, having been cut off in the middle of his riveting analysis of the mentioned random hero's fighting style. And Kazue wasn't even being sarcastic; if he was being honest, his trainee's mental capacity for such a thing was rather impressive. If he applied that to when he actually had to fight someone else, it would give him an advantage over the type that acted without thinking.

"Okay," Kazue shrugged a shoulder, wondering how long the talk would last. He was on a tight schedule, between Midoriya's after-school training, the math homework he hadn't been able to finish in class due to having a sleeping episode—which were becoming less frequent the more he trained his Quirk—paperwork, his own training, and-

Well, you get the idea.

He pulled out the notebook filled with Midoriya's training regimen and Quirk analysis from his backpack, holding it out to the boy. "Pages thirteen to fifteen only. Start without me."

His green-haired classmate nodded with an enthusiastic smile, half-walking-half-jogging down the hall towards the gym. Ever since he'd been told about his training being planned for the next year and a half, Midoriya had tackled his training with even more gusto than before.

Kazue followed his waiting teacher into the conference room without another word or a second glance, his only reaction to the principal also present being the slight raising of an eyebrow. This... was a little more serious than he'd thought it'd be.

"Take a seat, Kimura-kun!" the principal instructed cheerfully, gesturing with a paw to the relatively long table he was sitting at the head of in a raised chair. "We'd like to speak with you regarding the attack on the USJ. Specifically, your part in it."

The brunet resisted the urge to slam his his into the nearest wall at the sheer enthusiasm in Nezu's voice. The subject was a goddamn villain attack, and he was smiling? Granted, Kazue wasn't one for expressing emotions more than the occasional twitch of a smile, being pissed off, or boredom, but still.

Nevertheless, Kazue sat down at the almost-opposite end of the table, his teacher sitting down directly across from him. It was obvious from the subject at hand why the hero would want to have a conversation, but the brunet was still questioning why exactly the principal was also there. "Okay."

Aizawa shifted in his seat, clearly having more dulled pain running through his nervous system due to the higher capacity of his injuries. "First things first," he started with a sigh. "Your Quirk isn't really Amplify, is it? Otherwise, my Erasure would have worked on you."

"Correct," Kazue affirmed, wondering if it would be offensive to sneak a glance at the wall-mounted clock. Likely, so he refrained from doing so. "Amplify was Okaa-san's Quirk. My own is a balance between that and Otou-san's."

Nezu took a sip of his tea, leaving the brunet to wonder where the hell he'd pulled that out from. "Fascinating!" he commented with a smile, leaving Kazue to drown in despair in the Pit of Enthusiasm. "Then, what would the name of your true Quirk happen to be?"

Kazue leaned back in his chair, figuring that there was no point in hiding it. He'd only done so before due to the fact that his other half had been dormant and unable to be used. "It's... Quirk Manipulation," he sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose with the hand of his uninjured arm. "At the moment, however, I've only recently been able to utilize it, hence why my official Quirk record still reads Amplify."

His homeroom teacher spoke up again after a long second of silence. "Now that we've established that, Kimura... why did you do it? Why did you jump in front of the Nōmu, if my Quirk had no effect on it?"

There it was. The question the teen had been waiting for ever since he'd been rendered unconscious by the hand of the mentioned creature. Kazue drummed the fingers of his left hand on his thigh, phrasing his next words carefully. "There was a chance I may have been able to render its enhanced regeneration and shock absorption Quirks useless for a certain degree of time," he stated, knowing fully well that Eraser Head hadn't been aware of the creature's Quirks until after he'd gotten out of the hospital. "Despite my current lack of control when it comes to Otou-san's Quirk, the situation presented itself regardless of that fact."

Kazue let his overly-formal response hang in the air for a long moment before sinking a little lower into his chair. His forehead beneath the bandage itched, while a dull pain pulsing through his arm despite the medication he'd taken before leaving for school.

"I see, I see," Nezu replied thoughtfully, once again taking a sip of tea before lacing his paws together atop the table. "You were willing to sacrifice your life for a chance, is that right?"

The teen closed his eyes for a moment longer than a typical blink before answering the question. Likely, what he was about to say would cause the principal to place him in therapy with Hound Dog for the rest of his course of education. "Yes."

"And yet... at your interview during your entrance exam, you claimed to not want to become a hero," the principal continued, albeit sounding a little less cheerful than before. "Has your encounter with the self-proclaimed League of Villains changed your mind, I wonder?"

Kazue exhaled in hidden annoyance at the question, knowing it was a logical assumption to make, yet completely wrong. "No. I still do not have any desire to become a hero. I was simply doing what anyone with half a rational brain cell would if twenty-one others were in danger," he replied, enunciating each word more than necessary. It probably showed a bit of his inner frustration at the questions, but, quite frankly, the teen didn't give a shit.

Nezu tilted his head slightly to the side, as though he were studying the brunet. His smile, although not as wide as before, was still unnerving. "Then what do you want to be, Kimura-kun? Or... maybe I already know. Would you like to figure out how?"

He received a raised eyebrow. Kazue straightened up in his chair, hand moving to rest on the table. Finally, something vaguely interesting. He liked figuring out how people knew things, even if it was obvious. "Internship students are required to write a report on the details of their week. For the past five years, those who have been requested by Aerogale have reported being trained by Dreynen's son. Minus last year, of course, as both students refused my guidance."

The principal grinned, clapping his hands. "Very well done! That brings us to our second matter. Your academic history. Aizawa-kun, if you will?"

Kazue sighed, falling back in his chair and not looking forward to the conversation in the slightest. He hadn't foreseen this part of the conversation, which was rather annoying.

"Your grades from junior high were all average at best," his homeroom teacher started flatly, sounding like he was reading off a sheet of paper. "But you were also the first person to ace the recommendation written exam since it was created. Now that we can also see your homework, it's clear you don't seem to care about your grades as long as they're not terrible or outstanding."

"That's because I don't," Kazue mumbled, this time glancing up at the clock to see that a mere six minutes had passed. Six. And yet here he was, speaking of yet another subject he cared nothing for.

Aizawa paused for a second before continuing, as though the information that his student didn't care to excel, let alone be in his class to begin with hadn't fully sunk in quite yet. So much for the school's motto of Plus Ultra. "And Dreynen doesn't mind?"

The teen barely concealed the upward twitch of his lips at the question, mentally snorting at the notion of his father caring what he did. Seriously. Katashi let him be as independent as he wanted to an extent, minus the fact that he did essentially force his son into the hero course. Of course, that didn't include the raised eyebrows of half-amusement-half-disappointment at his mediocre report cards or parent-teacher conferences. "He does," Kazue replied simply, used to people referring to his father by his hero alias rather than his surname.

"Why do you not want to excel?" Nezu suddenly broke in, looking genuinely confused for someone with an intelligence-enhancing Quirk. He leaned forward, tilting his head a bit to the side. "It's no secret to whoever's seen your exam score that you're a genius, so why not challenge yourself, hm?"

Kazue's jaw automatically clenched. That goddamn word. It never ceased to never amaze him how many people called him that after finding out his true level of intelligence. The few in his class back in junior high that had accidentally overheard his phone call with Iwata about his advanced calculus homework when school had ended. Iwata himself after being ambush-helped with his homework when Kazue wandered into the breakroom and had seen him struggling. Aerogale, too, albeit in his typical mocking tone.

He exhaled under his breath. "It's prodigy," he corrected quietly, wanting to leave more than he had before. Kazue didn't bother to answer the first question, sitting there in silence after amending the principal's misuse of the word.

"Prodigy, then. Even so, the question still stands."

Kazue's eye twitched in vague irritation despite Nezu fixing his mistake, finding the hand that had previously been resting on the table to be clenched into a fist. He slowly relaxed it before returning the limb to his side, averting his gaze to glance pointedly at the clock. "I have no reason to," the brunet finally answered, even more deliberately pushing his chair back a centimeter with his legs.

Aizawa sighed, the sound not hidden like his student's. "You can go, Kimura," he relented.

The teen inclined his head once in the general direction of both, wasting no time and standing up and slipping out the door without a moment of hesitation.

Were they talking about him as soon as he left?

Highly likely.

Did Kazue particularly care?

No.

There was nothing either could do or say that would change Kazue's mind about his 'hero academia', as All Might's obnoxious hologram had proclaimed, let alone his academics. The only reason why he'd deliberately aced the written exam was to make up for his shortcomings on the terribly set up practical exam.

Oh.

Wait.

Kazue snorted as he made his way outside of the school and towards Gym Gamma.

He'd missed a perfectly good opportunity to deliver his essay on why the entrance exams were the most idiotic, biased tests into the heroics course he'd ever had the displeasure of reviewing.

Ah, whatever. That just meant that he had time to add a few more pages to the handwritten binder that was nearing the point where it would be completely flat. It had been a pain in the ass to write out, and Kazue's hand was periodically sore from writing so much, but it would definitely be worth it.

After all, only about a quarter of the papers contained information regarding this year, as well as the previous years' practical exams. The rest... well, that was for something different.

~-~-~-~

Kazue was slightly pissed off when he walked into Class 1-A the next morning, his usual nod of greeting to Todoroki more of a jerk than a fluid motion as he slid haphazardly into his seat next to the other boy. He clenched his jaw at the memory of what had happened around seven in the afternoon, opting to pull out a manga from Hamasaki's collection–one called Demon Slayer–and read it rather than wallow in annoyance.

The brunet didn't even bother to look up, let alone say good morning with the rest of the class when Eraser Head trudged into the room and took up his position at the head of the room. Sure, Kazue was well-aware that the man likely had nothing to do with the e-mail his father had received, but the principal wasn't exactly in the classroom at the moment.

Thus, the hero became the current focus of his annoyance with the entire situation, seeing as he'd been there during the pseudo-interrogation the previous day. Kazue didn't typically 'let his emotions get the best of him', or whatever the hell that was supposed to mean, but he felt that now was more or less an excellent time for it.

After all, it wasn't every day that one's father read a letter from their principal at dinner, pausing to occasionally roll his eyes, resist the urge to facepalm, or just raise an eyebrow. All the while, the family's driver–who had invited herself in–was suppressing snickers and lifting a serrated blade in askance of murder being an option.

Kazue was half-tempted to say 'yes' after what the rat had written as he listened to the irritating words while staring at his food. Apparently, the principal was both long-winded and ignorant despite his Quirk, not exactly a wonderful combination.

The teen mentally slapped himself, carefully yet angrily flipping to the next page of the manga as he watched Tanjirō get an impromptu haircut at the hands of a sword-wielding older teenager. Or at least someone who looked around that age, seeing as age was sometimes a bit difficult to read for some characters.

What happened to not wallowing in annoyance, dumbass?

Unexpected Nezu bashing that I originally did not plan. Probably the fact that I was re-reading Mind Boggled while writing this chapter (super great fic by the way; #whenindoubtblametherat ).

Anywho... I was originally gonna have the two geniuses- PRODIGY and genius, my bad, get along,  but then decided midway through to fuck that. Whoops. Although it kinda fits for the whole 'your-entrance-exams-suck' binder, so...