To Hold the Stars || BAKUGO KATSUKI

Prelude

With their classes canceled the next day, Nomi took the opportunity to sleep in, even if the events that transpired the day before kept her from truly getting any rest. Agitation, anxiety, and fear plagued her thoughts, and questions circled her brain endlessly: Who wanted to kill All Might? What if the attack on U.S.J. was only the beginning of something much, much bigger? And who was the half-burned man she had spoken to?

Eventually, she gave up on sleep and played around on her phone instead, plugging in her earbuds to listen to music and hopefully drown out her screaming thoughts. She must have dozed off at some point, though, for when she next opened her eyes, the sun was well and truly up, and the city outside her window hummed with chatter and car horns.

She pulled out her earbuds and sat up, kicking off her covers. Her window AC unit rattled to life with a groan, blowing on the cold sweat that had formed on the back of her neck. She shuffled into the bathroom, rubbing at her demon eye the whole time. It ached something fierce, and she fumbled in her medicine cabinet for her trusty bottle of aspirin and the pain-relieving eyedrops she had as backup.

She hadn't mentioned her Quirk's freak-out to anyone, not even her father. She wasn't sure what to make of it herself. The only person she knew she could depend on for any answers was currently in the hospital, and she didn't know when Aizawa would be released. She gently probed at the scars around her demon eye and scowled.

"Don't do anything like that again," she warned it, "or else I'll get rid of you for good."

Fortunately, her eye did not speak back.

Her father was gone when she ventured downstairs for food, but she wasn't surprised, considering it was still a weekday. She had the whole apartment to herself for the day, which meant that she could forego her eyepatch. It was an entirely different experience without her eyepatch, and as much as she despised her eye, it still amazed her how ordinary things became extraordinary when she could truly see. She could count every individual grain in her cereal, and watch the dust motes dance in the slivers of sunlight that peeked through the curtains as she ate. It was times like these when she didn't mind her demon eye. She didn't have to worry about frightening anyone when she was alone, and the exhilaration of her enhanced eyesight became a wonder instead of a reminder of the power it held. She could just be.

She flipped on the small television in the living room and settled on the floor with her cereal. The screen flickered to life just as the mid-morning news started its broadcast.

"Good morning, Musutafu," the anchorwoman said, blinking her startlingly large and purple-faceted eyes. "Police are still investigating the incident that happened yesterday at U.A. High School's Unforeseen Simulation Joint, where a coalition of dozens of villains under the self-proclaimed banner 'the League of Villains' attacked a first-year class of students. While only one of the twenty students was injured during the incident, two U.A. teachers were taken to the local hospital with severe but non-life-threatening injuries."

Nomi ceased her chewing at the reminder of Midoriya and her teachers. Her cereal suddenly tasted like ash.

"Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi gave a press briefing late last night confirming that the villains' goal had been to lure out All Might—Japan's Number One Hero and a teacher at U.A. as of this year—in an effort to kill him and shake the public's faith in heroes. Though All Might himself did arrive at the incident, he swiftly put an end to the attack, and more than two dozen villains were arrested by local police.

"U.A.'s Principal Nezu is expected to give his own comments later today with classes suspended, so stay tuned for those further updates."

Nomi switched off the television as the news went to the weather, her appetite now gone. Dread weighed in her gut like a stone as she recalled Principal Nezu's words mere days ago: that someone, or a group like the League of Villains that had attacked her classmates, was declaring war. Against U.A., against All Might, or against hero society itself, she didn't know, but she had a feeling that all of it was connected.