In hindsight, it ought to have been obvious; but then again, nobody ever did decide whose responsibility figuring it out should have been.
Sunday morning, nine o'clock; the common room was shrouded in darkness, and it was all Tokoyami's fault.
"Um," Kōda said, and pressed his finger hard against the light-switch. At least, he thought it was the light switch; but it was terribly hard to see, and the thing wasn't moving, so it might have been some unknown object that had gotten itself stuck to the wall. You never knew, in a dorm full of irresponsible teenagers. "That's odd."
"The light," Tokoyami said, voice issuing from what was probably one of the room's corners and causing Kōda to let out a rather unheroic squeak, "Has abandoned us for today. It is of no consequence; sit down, Kōda, and join us in our vigil."
"Tokoyami taped the light switch down," Hagakure said, unusually flatly, but otherwise about as bodily visible as usual. "And killed the lightbulbs. And installed blackout curtains. And stole all the matches."
"All the batteries down here are dead, too," Shōji added from somewhere nearby, lightly enough that on anyone else it would have looped back around to being pointed. As it was, the words just came out as an observation of minor importance, because Shōji was about three steps closer to enlightenment than most of the people who walked UA's halls.
And the room itself, for that matter.
Tokoyami didn't reply to the accusations on his person, but the air radiated an aura of smugness. Kōda wondered if Tokoyami had thought to factor in things like phone-torches and the bulb inside the refrigerator, but decided not to test if his classmate had the tenacity to both perform basic maintenance on running electrical appliances, and attempt to requisition Bakugō's phone. "Well, um," he said, and blinked. It really was quite dark, for so many hours past sunrise. "It's working, I guess."
The air grew smugger, if that was a word; which it ought to have been, considering both the reality of the room's mood and the existence of Monoma Neito.
"Why do we even need blackout curtains?" Ashido's voice asked irritably, from an indeterminate location vaguely to the left of the kitchen. "And why do you have to test them out now?"
"Revelry in the dark," Tokoyami said, his tone irreproachably solemn, "Is at its most potent with the denial of the heavens' light."
"That's not what you said last week," Jirō said, accusingly. Her spot on the couch, at least, was made exceedingly obvious by the glow of her phone against her face. The light was, tragically, far too faint to light up much more than that; such were the perils of dark mode. "What happened to the 'power of the moon' and 'void pierced by the blood of the stars'?"
There was a pause, made emptier by the lack of visual input.
"The light of midnight," Tokoyami said eventually, "Incites a madness unknown and unseen by the feeble eyes of the daytime star."
"Ooh," Hagakure said with a little too much interest, in time with a thump like a body hitting fabric and a distinctly feminine, indistinctly muffled shriek. "That sounds... poetic?"
"I can't live in these conditions," Ashido groaned, through what sounded like several layers of couch-cushion. "Save me from the edge, somebody..."
Jirō shot her probable direction an irritated look. "You've been here for seven minutes. You'll live."
"Seven's an unlucky number," Ashido complained. "Just listen to it, why don'tcha? Besides, don't you think its shape looks like some sort of ancient killing device?"
Jirō's brow twitched. The room felt vaguely contrite.
"Um," Kōda said. "I don't think so?"
"Y'know, you're being kind of dramatic yourself, Mina," Hagakure commented, thoughtful and sincere-sounding, and thus probably about as innocent as Tartarus's average inhabitant. Before the room could unpack that, though, there was the sound of unusually firm footsteps coming down the hallway, and then the elevator door burst open - somehow - and any commentary on Ashido's dramatics was promptly lost between Bakugō yelling about idiots, Tokoyami hissing like a wet cat, and an awful lot of squinting through the sunlight, let in by a set of torn-down blackout curtains.
"Man, I think I'm allergic to one of these plants," Kaminari complained, rubbing the side of his neck. He was lying on his front, propped up on his forearms - or forearm, really, considering one hand's frustrated occupation - and his communicator lay discarded in front of him as he grumbled, peering rather ineffectually through the tall grass. That was always the issue with trying to hide in nature - much like the beliefs of babies brought to life, the drawback of nobody seeing you was often that you saw nothing too. "This itches."
"No sneezing," Uraraka whispered, sternly, from her spot next to him. "We've got a teacher to catch."
"It's unfair that a guy in black and white can hide so well in all this green," Kaminari muttered. "You don't think he's, like, secretly a ninja or something, do you?"
"There's not much point to a ninja that isn't secret," Uraraka said vaguely. "But Underground Heroes are kind of like ninjas, aren't they?"
Kaminari squinted through the grass. It was unclear if he was thinking, or trying to manifest x-ray vision. It might have been both. "Does that make us samurai?"
"I don't think I'm rich enough for that," Uraraka grumbled, and then, "Do you hear that?"
Kaminari paused, cocking his head to one side as if he had mobile, animal ears and not pathetically stationary human ones. "You mean Iida and Bakugō?"
Indeed, if one strained their ears enough, they could make out the faint sound of a whisper-shouted argument about the severity of knee injuries. Despite the fact that neither boy was within sight, the most impressive thing about their conversation remained how quiet it was.
Uraraka shook her head. "No! I meant - over there!"
There was a dry crackling coming from across the field. Kaminari frowned.
"Huh. You're right. Shame we can't tell who it is." He paused. "You wanna jump on them, anyway?"
"Sensei'll string us up by the ankles if he catches us trying to attack our classmates," Uraraka said gloomily; the grass rustled in agreement. "Think we can move over there and take a look without giving our position away?"
Kaminari screwed his face up in thought. It was still like that when the grass flashed with movement an altogether bluer green than that of vegetation, and there was a low, distinctly adult grunt of pain. "Was that-"
"Let go, Midoriya," Aizawa's voice said, irritated and sounding a lot like its source had been hit by a truck, and Uraraka winced.
"Ah, he was barely a few metres in front of us. That's embarrassing."
Yaoyorozu popped up from the grass. "Sensei? Are you alright?"
"Fine, Yaoyorozu." He stood up; there were twigs in his hair, and a bruise on the side of his face, but he looked otherwise none the worse for wear. "Everyone regroup over here." He paused. "And, Midoriya, don't go so hard on your quirk when you're only aiming to capture."
Midoriya's head and torso appeared above the grass. His head was tilted questioningly. "Um. Sensei? I didn't use my quirk."
There was a brief, confused silence.
"No sparks," Kaminari said.
Aizawa raised his eyebrows. "Kaminari?"
"No sparks," Kaminari repeated. "When Midoriya uses his quirk, there's this. Shiny. Sparky stuff. We didn't see any of that."
Aizawa exhaled, slowly, and pinched the bridge of his nose as if his brain had only just processed the effects of being slammed into the ground by several dozen kilograms of overexcited, superpowered highschooler. "Alright. Midoriya, when not using your quirk, remember that you still have a responsibility not to apply potentially concussive force to people's heads."
"Sorry, Sensei," Midoriya said. He sounded sheepish. "I heard your breathing change and didn't want to lose track of you."
Uraraka squinted. "Did you hear his breathing? Like, at all?" she whispered.
Kaminari made a face. "I - thought that was the grass, maybe?"
"Are we going to do this again?" Jirō asked, slightly too eagerly, from her spot across the field. "I want a go at crash-tackling you, Sensei." She paused. "Or anyone, really. I'm not fussy."
"Ooh, pick me!" Kirishima chirped.
"Um, can someone come find me first?" Mineta's voice came from a vaguely leftwards direction. Supposedly, he was standing up, but there was neither hide nor hair of him to be found; impressive, given his purpleness. "I can't see over the grass."
Aizawa looked like he was regretting his life choices.
"That's an... interesting dress, Yaoyorozu," Satō commented mildly. "Are you sure you want to wear it in the kitchen?"
She blinked, glancing down at it. "Hm? Is there something wrong with it, Satō?"
He made a slight face, shrugging his shoulders. "Well, no, there's nothing wrong with it. I don't think so, anyway. It just looks... expensive." He paused. "And flammable."
The pan behind him sizzled loudly, as if to punctuate his statement.
"Who's flammable?" Aoyama asked, sticking her head around the corner. Her eyes widened as they fell upon Yaoyorozu. "Oh, formidable. Is that English Edo Period?"
"Just the style, not the fabric," Yaoyorozu told her, smoothing out her skirt. It really was a fancy piece; patterned and many-layered, with lace at the edges and a broad shape. "I just - I wanted to try it out, you know? I did a lot of dressing-up, as a child, but only things like my mother's kimonos, and that kind of thing"
"Ah, yes, you don't need to justify it to me," Aoyama waved a hand. "This sort of experimentation makes us more fashionable, oui? You know, I actually went through a Fairy Kei phase... En fait, I brought the skates with me to the dorms, but... ah... I tripped on them and nearly fell out of a window, so I threw them away. Sensei would be angry if I broke my neck outside of heroics, non?"
"I think he'd be mad if you broke your neck either way," Satō said. "You should probably try not to do that. Hey, taste this?"
He held out a rather crispy something on a pair of tongs; Aoyama skipped over and, ignoring the hot oil beading on its surface, snagged it between his teeth. "Hgm," he said, chewing vigorously. "Oui. C' bon. And very oily. Not crinoline safe at all." He paused. "Todoroki could probably put you out though, non? His family is très rich and traditional; he must have had his fair share of. Ah. Kimonos on fire? To get used to."
"Todoroki's not here," Satō said. "Something about his Dad getting sick."
"Oh." Aoyama said. "That's - not so good, for him."
Yaoyorozu hummed. "I'm sure Todoroki will tell - someone - if he needs help."
"He'll tell Midoriya, I'm sure," Aoyama said, and made puppy eyes at Satō, who rolled his own, and handed him another morsel from the pan. "Euh, anyway, I wasn't talking about Todoroki, I was talking about his Père. Was Todoroki not talking about sending him an Eski for Father's Day, last week? I don't think they like each other very much. Todoroki must be excited, non?"
Satō snorted. The pan sizzled.
"I think I'll risk the fire," Yaoyorozu said, decisively. "Satō, can I have one of those?"
Satō sighed. "You all only love me for my cooking."
"Who left the windows open?" Sero complained. He rubbed the side of his neck, fingernails digging into the skin. "There's bugs in the dorm now, and they're biting people."
Which wasn't notable, exactly. But it was odd that it had happened twice, and outside of mosquito season to boot.
"Hey, now, don't be mean to the bugs," Kirishima said, scoldingly. "They're doing their best, y'know."
"At least it's bugs and not spiders," Jirō muttered. "Remember the redback incident?"
"I don't want to remember the redback incident," Sero said grimly.
"So," Ashido asked, plopping herself down next to Iida and shoving a vegetable dumpling into her left cheek, "How long has Blasty been into eating raw meat, exactly?"
"Eh?" Midoriya paused in his quest to inhale is lunch, blinking at her like an unusually mouldy kitten. "You mean like - like sashimi, Ashido?"
"No," she said, voice slightly muffled, and pointed her chopsticks at him. "I mean like raw ass puréed chicken, Midoriya. Out of the heckin' tray."
Across the table, Aoyama made a noise that was either an unusually consonant-dense French swear word, or a disgusted retch. It might even have been both. Aoyama was talented like that.
"Since... never?" Midoriya said, tentatively. "That's... really gross, Ashido. And unhygienic. Um, are you sure -"
She leaned across the table, grabbed his chin, and none-too-gently turned it to face where Bakugō was sitting and eating his lunch. Out of a clear plastic tray that definitely belonged in a supermarket refrigerator. Voraciously. With a fork.
"Rest your eyes upon that," she said, with what sounded like despair mixed with glee, "And weep."
Midoriya, continuing with the theme of kittenlike behaviour, made a sound like a small animal being strangled. Which wasn't exactly weeping, but was probably close enough.
Uraraka twisted around to see for herself, and hummed consideringly as she took in the scene. Iida made to stand up - presumably to educate Bakugō on the dangers of foodborne pathogens - and she grabbed him by the sleeve, tugging him back down into his seat. "Y'know," she said, "If he hadn't picked chicken, of all things, I might understand him."
Asui patted her arm consolingly. "It's sad when you only have salad. That's why I eat bugs. Would you like me to send you some?"
"Thank you, Tsu," Uraraka said sadly. "But it just doesn't taste the same."
"Blood," Ashido agreed, and the table lapsed into silence; mostly confusion, on the boys' part, and some sort of mourning vigil on that of the girls.
Shinsō, who had up to this point been pretending he didn't exist, took advantage of the break in conversation to speak up. "So," he said, "Now that we've established that your class lacks the ability to function, can I go?"
"Eh," Uraraka said, snapping out of whatever vague fugue she'd been in. "I'm pretty sure at least one of the blonds called dibs on you next. Either Kaminari or Monoma. I wasn't really paying attention."
"What madamoiselle means is that you can try to run," Aoyama chirped, "But you can't hide!"
"We encourage kidnapping here," Asui said flatly. "It's a safety measure. People are easier to retrieve if you simply kidnap them back." She sighed. "It's tried and tested. Unfortunately."
"Where is Monoma, anyway?" Ashido asked, leaning back in her seat to glance around the cafeteria. "Mentioning usually summons him to, like, gloat and stuff. Doesn't he usually sit with Kendō?"
"I believe," Iida said lightly, "That Monoma is in detention." He paused. "For biting."
"Midoriya move," Ashido muttered under her breath, and Midoriya choked indignantly.
"I - I haven't bitten anyone yet, Ashido! Don't be mean!"
Uraraka met Aoyama's eyes and silently mouthed "yet" at him as Shinsō watched with morbid fascination. Neither of them seemed too put-off by it, a fact which seemed entirely discomfiting to the transfer student - not that he often looked comfortable in general.
"That's what we lost Todoroki to," Asui told Ashido casually. "He bit back."
"Osmosis," Ashido said, nodding knowledgeably.
"Actually, for non-water substances, the correct term would be diffusion," Iida said, and then snapped his mouth shut as if he'd divulged a particularly important secret, or said one of Bakugō's moderately-rude curse words.
"Still your influence, Deku!" Uraraka said cheerily, and patted his hand. "Isn't that great?"
The boy in question appeared to give up on life and began attempting to drown himself in his lunch. Owing to the fact that it was solid, and he seemed reluctant to get any on his face, he didn't get very far. The rest of the table seemed unperturbed by this. Shinsō took that as a cue to copy him, and the rest of lunch passed without any more mention of biting, or chickens.
"He's always been able to do that," Hagakure said blithely, before Ojiro could even start to ask the question. Next to her, Tokoyami nodded gravely.
"I must admit to some jealousy," he intoned, "But the darkness must be shared."
Ojiro squinted doubtfully at them, then at Shōji, who continued to cling to the ceiling, utterly unbothered by anything around him. This would not have been terribly unusual, except for the fact that Shōji, despite being the class baby, measured a good two metres tall and was more than adequately broad across the shoulders. The creature Ojiro was looking at, on the other hand, was more like thirty centimetres in length, relatively skinny - and looked a lot more like a bat than a human, quirked or not. "Are you sure this isn't a new development?"
"Eyup!" Hagakure chirped. "Pretty sure! Didn't'cha hear Midoriya going on about it the other day?"
Ojiro continued to look doubtful. Shōji flapped about for a moment, and floated down to land on Tokoyami's head.
"The light of day clouds your mind," Tokoyami said. If he'd been grown-up, he might have been intimidating, between the cloak, the sharp eyes, and the bat; unfortunately, Tokoyami was fifteen, and thus about as frightening as a squirrel.
Ojiro crossed his arms; his tail thrashed irritably, behind him. "Why does he have six wings?"
"All bats are like that," Hagakure told him. "It's in all the zoology books. Bats are unique among mammals because they evolved the ability to fly three times over."
"Their resemblance is to seraphim," Tokoyami added. "As creatures of the night, this marks them as guardians of the veil."
Shōji-bat squeaked cutely and adjusted his perch on Tokoyami's head.
Ojiro scratched his head. "I genuinely can't tell if you're all screwing with me or not." He paused. "I mean, I know you're screwing with me over the wing thing, but..."
Hagakure clasped her hands together. "Oh, we'd never, Ojiro!" she cried; one could almost imagine her huge, sparkling eyes. It was like something out of a shōjo manga.
"I would," Tokoyami admitted blithely.
Ojiro raised his eyebrows at him. Tokoyami wilted, shamefully.
"Your gaze holds demons," he complained, and Ojiro huffed.
"Let me guess, new quirk awakening?"
"Yeah," Hagakure grumbled.
"And you can't figure out how to turn him back?"
"And we can't figure out how to turn him back."
Shōji squeaked again.
In the end, it came to a head on Saturday evening.
"That's a lot of glitter," Satō observed, stepping carefully over the trail to avoid tracking it into the carpet. "Big afternoon?"
"Oui," Aoyama said, and shot him a pleasant, closed-mouth smile. "There's so little time to go out after class, non? One must cram so much sparkling into so little time..."
"One's going to have to cram a lot of sparkling into a vacuum cleaner," Jirō said flatly, "Because I'm not going to be the one to clean that up, no matter what the chore chart says."
Aoyama twinkled merrily. "C'est dommage."
From the corner of the couch, on top of the folded-up blackout curtain, Todoroki raised a hand tentatively. "Maybe -"
"No, Todoroki," half the room chorused, and he put his hand back down again, brown furrowing minutely.
"I was going to suggest using Mineta's quirk like a lint-roller," he said, mildly reproachful in a way he, honestly, had no right to be. "What did you think I was going to say?"
Mineta edged away from him as subtly as the former could manage - that is, not at all. Uraraka muttered something about exorbitant antifreeze costs and broken smoke alarms, and shot Mineta a glance that was perhaps a little too considering.
Aoyama sparkled.
"It's like he's generating it out of thin air," Kirishima said, eyeing Aoyama's incessantly glittering form as if it held the answer to the secrets of the universe. "That's... so manly."
Kaminari sighed; clapped Kirishima on the shoulder. "My man," he said, "I love you. Really. But there's glitter in my bed and I don't know how it got there. Please don't get any ideas. I don't think I can take it."
"I don't think it can be helped," Ojiro offered. "I found some in my shoes the other day."
"I found some when I was brushing my teeth!" Midoriya offered cheerily, and there was a mildly puzzled pause.
"Like... from the sink, or on your teeth, or coughed up, or...?" Ashido trailed off. "I kinda don't want to know, actually."
"I think there's some in my eye," Asui commented blandly, and Sero slapped his hands on the table.
"Okay, that's enough! There's something seriously wrong with all this sparkling, guys! There's glitter in every pair of socks I own and it can't all come from Aoyama, right?"
"Well, I don't think he's generating all of it," Satō pointed out pleasantly. "Some of it's definitely normal glitter. I checked if it was edible because it was getting all over the pans, and I didn't want anyone to get sick, you know?"
Sero spluttered. "That still implies he's generating some amount of glitter! People don't - sparkle in the sun!"
There was a pregnant pause. Aoyama laughed in a distinctly unnatural manner, like a fancy lady who'd run out of anxiety medication.
"Maybe he's a vampire," Bakugō suggested. Fifteen eyes turned to look at him in bewilderment, and three in unholy glee. Ashido raised her hand in the air, as if they were in class and not standing around their common area.
"You never told us you read English classics, Blasty! Are you -"
"I'm Team Murder," Bakugō said flatly, which explained nothing.
"If sparkling makes you a vampire, we would all be vampires by now," Yaoyorozu pointed out. "I'm sure it's something simpler. Otherwise we'd all be acting quite strange, wouldn't we?"
Midoriya frowned. "Well, now that you point it out, there has been some odd behaviour, lately. Mineta bought a stick yesterday instead of ordering more magazines-"
"It's a cane," Mineta complained, "And it's fashionable! Right, ladies?"
"- and Uraraka punted Iida through a wall on Thursday and it didn't hurt him at all -"
Iida coughed. "I wouldn't say I was entirely unhurt... the spirit may be damaged as the body is, Midoriya!"
"-and I've never known Kacchan to eat uncooked meat before but he did." He paused. "Also, Shōji can turn into a bat now."
"He's always been able to do that," Hagakure and Tokoyami chorused. Midoriya frowned at them.
"I-I'm pretty sure he couldn't. I would have written that down."
"Would you, though?" Sero asked doubtfully, and Bakugō sent him a rather vicious smile, sharp and glittering.
"You want a list of stuff the nerd's got on you in those damn notes of his, Soy Sauce? Lemme see, he's got a full breakdown of every Super Move you have -"
Sero raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.
"-and your shoe size, because that's real important."
Sero squinted down at his feet. He'd never told anyone his shoe size. "Oh."
"Actually," Bakugō said, slightly too gleefully, "If I recall correctly, he's got all your measurements in there. Height, weight, shoulders, waist, hips, leg circumference..."
"Um."
"At some point he went and found a complete list of all your significant health events, before and after entering UA," Bakugō continued, because he enjoyed tormenting his classmates.
"Okay," Sero said, in the tone of someone who wanted the conversation to finish now, please.
"I'm pretty sure," Bakugō ploughed on, "That Deku knows what brand of toothpaste I used when I was ten, because he's a freaky stalker."
Midoriya, apparently finding that final proclamation to be the sticking point, smacked his hand against the wall. "I am NOT, Kacchan! I only collect information that's relevant to our heroism! And you know what brand of toothpaste I used when I was ten, so that d-doesn't count, anyway!"
"Colgate's bullshit!" Bakugō snapped back.
"Nine out of ten doctors recommend it! And that charcoal stuff makes your mouth taste worse in the morning, not better!"
"It's my goddamn mouth!" Bakugō threw his hands up in the air. "And it's not like you're gonna taste the inside of it, since you keep-"
Kirishima politely put a hand over Bakugō's mouth before he could say anything he might regret - however implausible the admission of that eventuality was. Asui put one over Midoriya's mouth for good measure - because you never knew when he was going to try to fit his foot into it.
"Can we go back to the vampirism?" Jirō asked. "Because the bat thing's getting to me. Shōji, do your teeth feel any sharper?"
Shōji blinked slowly at her from behind his mask. "I don't have canines," he said. "So I don't -"
He paused.
"My mistake, I do," he said - paused again - and then, wondering aloud, "...did I always have canines?"
He was promptly subjected to various squints of confusion from the class. They, of course, could offer no real answer, on account of never having seen his mouth before.
"So Shōji doesn't remember his dental records." Ojiro said lightly, but his tail twitched nervously. "That doesn't say much, though. If it was vampires, it would have to be all of us, yeah? So we'd all have - side effects. Right?"
"Well, what are the side effects of vampirism?" Yaoyorozu asked, fiddling with her cuff. "A vulnerability to the sun, supernatural strength and reflexes, a longing for blood, physical transformation, pallor..." She trailed off.
"Archaic forms of dress," Satō said pointedly, glancing at her nightdress.
"All of those are either difficult to check for or explainable," Iida said, adjusting his glasses. "Aside for the longing for blood."
"That one's commonly covered up by eating meat or animal blood, though," Kaminari pointed out. "And Bakugō's right - sparkling might be a sun thing, y'know?"
"How?!" Sero wailed, and received no answer.
"I think we're going about this the wrong way," Asui said. "If we want to seriously consider this as a possibility, then someone must be the source." She tilted her head, slowly; the class followed her gaze, and eventually there were nineteen sets of eyes on a rather stark white Aoyama.
"You got anything to say, Sparkles?" Bakugō asked menacingly. Midoriya, for his part, pulled a notebook out of nowhere and flipped it open to a new page - which might have been more intimidating.
Aoyama's eyes flickered from one classmate to another in feverish twitches. "Euh... in my defence, not everyone was intentional, and not everyone was me. And I used mouthwash?" He laughed, shakily. "Ah... don't try to stake me. S'il vous plaît. I don't think I can take all of you."
Light glinted off his teeth, sharp and radiant under the room's LED bulbs, and the class fell into stunned silence.
"Oh my fucking god," Bakugō said. "Frenchie, I was joking."
"IS THAT WHY YOU ALWAYS SMILE WITH YOUR MOUTH CLOSED?!" Hagakure shrieked, arms moving to her head as if pulling her hair out would help her make sense of the world around her.
Aoyama looked away and pointedly didn't answer the question - which was answer enough in and of itself.
"We're all gonna glitter for the rest of our lives," Jirō said blankly.
"My socks," Sero agreed mournfully.
"They'll be long lives," Aoyama said tentatively. "Vampires are - hard to kill. Even with quirks. We're not very - easily suspected, or taken down."
"So much glitter," Tokoyami said hollowly. "The night sky gleams with the light of the stars; can such pale imitations hope to call ourselves its servant?"
"Forget all that! Bakugō's gonna eat raw chicken in front of us for the rest of his life and you're worried if sparkling in the sun makes you less goth?!" Ashido demanded.
Bakugō shot her a look that plainly said that he hadn't been planning to eat any more raw chicken, actually, but now that she'd brought it up he absolutely was. It was a very complex look, delicately balanced by the myriad twists of his facial muscles, and supported by his loud proclamations of the fact.
"So this isn't just one long practical joke?" Kirishima asked, slightly blankly, and Aoyama sent him a vague frown.
"Monsieur? You know when I bit you. You were awake. Hard to miss, non?"
"I thought that was a bro thing," Kirishima said indignantly, which just about summed up the amount of braincells that 1-A had managed to put towards the situation.
By the time Monday morning rolled around, the class had mostly made peace with the situation - if not the glitter.
"Someone should bite Sensei," Ashido said, offhandedly, as they waited for class to start, and was pinned by twenty horrified stares.
"What the hell is wrong with you?!" Mineta shrieked. "Are you trying to get us killed?!"
"Or expelled!" Iida exclaimed, as if that was the greater danger. Or perhaps simply the more pertinent one.
"Well if we don't do it now we're gonna regret it eventually!" Ashido exclaimed. "What if he gets - gets hit by a flying brick, or something?!"
"Sensei's like a roach," Asui said. "He'd survive a building falling on his head. So I don't think we need to worry about bricks."
"I saw you eat a roach last Tuesday," Kaminari pointed out. "So if we're going with that metaphor, we've still got to worry about things chewing on him."
"Aren't you advocating for chewing on him?" Jirō pointed out boredly. "Seems counterproductive."
"Lightly chewing," Ashido insisted, crossing her arms with a pout. "Like a vaccine! You know?"
The class mulled that over.
"Is that smart, or stupid?" Sato asked.
"Integer overflow," Sero suggested, to vague nods.
"Suppose we do bite him," Midoriya said tentatively, "Can I ask - um, where, exactly?"
"Does it really matter?" Kirishima asked. "I mean, if we throw enough people at him, one of us has to succeed, right? It doesn't matter if it's an arm or an ankle or whatever."
"Brute force it," Bakugō agreed. "Solves the obvious damn problem, doesn't it?"
There was a cough from the corner of the classroom. "What the hell are you guys talking about?" a voice demanded, and the class turned in near-sync to see Shinsō, leaning against the wall and looking somewhere between bewildered and scandalised.
"How long have you been standing there?" Ojiro asked, puzzled, and Shinsō blinked at him.
"Um, since Kaminari kidnapped me?" he said indignantly. "Since that's something you lot do, apparently?"
The class's eyes swivelled to Kaminari, who laughed awkwardly, rubbing his neck.
"Uh, kidnapping and not covering up your condition properly are classic vampire activities?" he said, voice slightly higher pitched than normal.
"I'm sorry," Shinsō said loudly, "Classic what activities?"
Iida dropped his head onto the desk with a sob. "Basic opsec," he whimpered, and Uraraka leaned over to rub his back soothingly as Bakugō exploded, verbally and physically, in Kaminari's general direction.
"Does this mean we have to kill him?" Hagakure asked petulantly, over the ruckus. "Because I think Sensei'll be real mad."
"I mean, Todoroki did probably get Monoma," Shōji pointed out quietly, voice only barely loud enough to overpower the sound of Bakugō trying to crush Kaminari's windpipe. "He's going to get Got anyway."
"I'm going to get what?!" Shinsō half-shrieked, in what appeared to be a mix of hysteria and an instinctive attempt at quirk activation, and was summarily ignored as the class ran a cursory check on potential nonviolent methods of de-escalating the situation. Being vampires, and hero students, they found none. Glances were thrown across the room. Kirishima shuffled extremely conspicuously across to block the doorway; and Yaoyorozu sighed.
"Someone hold him down. I'll get the mouthwash," she said, and that was that.