---

"Life is made up of unspoken agreements:

'I won't kill you, so don't kill me,'

'I won't hurt you, so don't hurt me,'

and the most foolish of them all,

'I'll play nice, so you play nice in turn'.

Not putting any faith in these agreements isn't having trust issues, but being smart."

-C.S

---

Inwardly, he was beating himself up over forgetting such a simple concept, so self-assured over the validity of the law and the heroes that abided by it that he didn't count on this kind of desperate measure, but in the next, he was deathly calm. His predicament couldn't be solved with self-loathing, nor could it be solved via... more emotional avenues. Any reaction could and would be used against him; any misspoken word would be taken out of context endlessly on the court's stage.

He watched as they pursued over the phone and him, most importantly, with nothing but the hard-faced edges of an executioner about to divvy up punishment on those who violated the law so severely they had to be put down. Obviously enough, it was intimidation static, but it also meant that they were convinced. Convinced that he was at fault, convinced that something was up with him, or most importantly, convinced that he had enough of what they wanted to the point where they didn't care for any other potential uses he could serve.

All in all, not that good of a thing for individuals who had proven that the system was their slave, not the other way around.

No, he couldn't show any reaction whatsoever.

He'd be falling right into the palm of their hands if he did that.

He could only target both their strength and their weakness.

Public perception.

Thankfully enough, that was an area he was very, very strong in.

(And if he had a few other plans that toed the line, well, they had crossed it first. His eyes were cold, frigid even, as electricity flowed in his veins, singing a song of return and power... Truly, he wasn't in that much of a merciful mood. If they proved to be unconducive to the way of things, then he would have to go against them as they did to him.)

"...And where is your warrant for this? The last time I checked, the Ministry of Japan didn't allow for illegal search and hold operations without one. I am a legal, law-abiding citizen-," He heard something like a scoff, but he paid no mind to it, simply letting the sea of ice in his eyes melt into his mouth. "-with no criminal history. What you are doing now is illegal. Something both the government and the media don't take kindly to."

He let 'media' roll off his tongue with a particular heaviness to it, a weight that couldn't be ignored-

"Especially for so-called 'Heroes'."

-and he salted the wound further by instilling the last of his sentences with a ton or two.

Perhaps three.

Regardless of whether it intimidated any of the heroes or not—their posture was unreadable, their faces lined with experience that was hard to counteract—his little play certainly fulfilled one of his objectives. He caught their attention. So well, in fact, that they were stuck on the bait and hook, without any choice but to listen to him.

Whether he could reel his catch in was a different question.

"Oh? For a civilian boy, you sure are well-versed in the law, aren't you?"

One of them, with a faceless face and a nameless name, addressed him with the particular sort of swagger that only the unimportant could muster. At the very least, he couldn't recall him from his time at UA, an organization that the majority of those who had shown up in this little group belonged to. So that either left Deku with the option of the man not coming from UA, or simply being so unimportant that, without Gray's assistance in created an eidetic memory to boost his already good one for him, he couldn't remember the puny man.

For an indiscernible reason, he placed his bets on the latter.

A pity his situation didn't allow for giving the man the proper treatment he deserved.

"Knowledge doesn't discriminate on status, does it not? What I choose to fill my head with is a choice that is my own. Regardless, the truth of the matter doesn't change. You people, in no way, have the authority to do this. You are breaking the law."

Aizawa's eyes as they looked at him were dead to the world, tired, as they always were, but there was also a particular type of disregard to them, not in the realm of underestimation, but of a belief that the individual before his eyes truly didn't matter. They made those deathly-still eyes of his cold, something that never surfaced in the face of his students, but surfaced now.

"That's a bunch of crap. The laws are a lot more... relaxed when it comes to people like you. Villans. Just be quiet, Allen Bowman," Deku could almost feel the sneer in that word; he would have if he could get past the rapid beating of his heart. "We'll arrest you soon enough."

How on earth had they figured that one out?!

"You look surprised. You shouldn't underestimate the pros that much, brat. While you did a good job eliminating trails that linked you to your real self and even now we can't find a single hole in that ID of yours, the DNA you left on-site tells a different story. If it weren't for Nezu, we never would have known."

His face darkened in the shadowy tint of irritation at the confirmation that there was, indeed, evidence that wasn't merely circumstantial. It grew darker still as he eyed the mouse-bear hybrid of a principal, perched neatly on the shoulder of Aizawa, not a strand of fur out of place, but an almost pitying expression glued in place all the same. He had feared the creature for its intellect once upon a time and sighed in relief when nothing had come of it, but it seemed that he was still too naive.

Creatures of true intelligence didn't operate only on rationale, after all.

A rather disturbing part of their brilliance came from intuition, and it seemed that Nezu had it in spades.

Suddenly, a thought came to him, and his expression relaxed.

(The group in front of him grew tense in turn.)

"Wow, you completely got me there. Never did I think that you would find something concrete from nothing but intuition. I knew he was suspicious of me all along, but finding evidence couldn't have been easy. You truly have my admiration, Nezu," His eyes smiled, mockingly. "But please do come back with a warrant and a courtroom. I'm a criminal, probably with a forged identity fine, not a Villain."

"You-"

Random Character A called out, but Nezu and Aizawa shushed him with a side glance, a more serious look in their eyes now.

This was, after all, one of the more awkward parts of the dividing line between criminal and Villain. It was close, but it laid at the very edge of the line, closer to a criminal than villainy. They must have known it too and were trying to trip him up and get something more concrete from his reaction than what they already had on him to make their case and not eat it too.

After all, they couldn't shush everything that was going on with him with their influence as he was the media's current golden boy.

Nezu was silent for a moment before his face hardened in resolve.

"All Might. Do it. For the sake of the school and for the sake of all the crimes without justice this boy has committed, he must be the Villain."

"Principal, this-... This..."

"You knew full well that this was a possibility, however minor, when you heard the plan."

Deku watched the exchange in silence, as one of the cornerstones of the civilized world started to crack.

'I'll play nice, if you will... This unspoken rule has been broken, and for a reason that now makes 'sense', I suppose. They can quell all the backlash all at once if the one their student was bullying was revealed to be a Villain, after all. It makes little sense, but life is rarely a game of reason in the first place; they know for certain that if I am proven to be Evil, then all attention directed towards Bakugo and the school will turn into bitter hate towards me.'

He let out a sigh.

It had ended up coming to this, after all.

This messy, messy game.

Not of wits, but of might. Of power.

And no matter the result of this little skirmish, the Heroes, no, the humans in front of him would win the war.

'Unless...'

He made a split-second decision to win, to live past this skirmish and win the war, if only out of spite.

He certainly had a lot of that, after all. It was the only reason he was alive now, and he still had quite the surplus.

Might as well put it to use.

'Gray. Freeze them in place.'

That was the beginning of the end, not for the broken doll...

But for the world of black and white, of Evil and Good.

Of Heroes and Villains.

 

AN: Kinda late, kinda a cliffhanger, but that's kinda my mojo by now.

Muahahaha