"Yes, you are", I said to Bakugou.
He was as white as snow, he knew he had f*cked up, but it was too late, the weak "I'm sorry" that he muttered wouldn't save him.
I dragged him back to the front of the class and started talking, more like berating Bakugou.
"Bakugou, I'm disappointed in you, you do realize that, today, you didn't act like a hero, but like a villain," I gravely stated.
"You refused to cooperate with your teammates even when your abilities were extremely ineffective against the villain, and instead continued to pointlessly fire explosions left and right. Dangerous explosions, I might add, you injured a total of 24 civilian bots and would've even killed one of them. Those are the civilian bots that the teammates you were supposed to work with didn't manage to save, and they saved many others." I continued Bakugou realizing in exactly how much trouble he would be.
"You caused extensive property damage and even injured one of your teammates as a result of your total disregard of others' safety. You didn't act like a hero today, but like a villain. You kept going due to personal reasons, overlooking everything else, and ignored my three warnings, telling you to stop, while the Sludge villain had completely stopped fighting you."
"How do I know that you will be any different as a hero? How do I know that you will, like a hero is supposed to, prioritize the civilian over yourself? We don't know that… Go back to class, I will be talking with the principal about your case. Count yourself lucky I don't immediately expel you, right now, on the spot. If this was only up to me, I would," I finished, and Bakugou, thoroughly humiliated, but knowing better than to be angry, left and got back to the classroom without a single look at the rest of his classmates.
Not that I had dealt with Bakugou, I could finally start the exercise for real.
"I trust you all that nothing like this will happen again. So, Team 2, your turn against the sludge villain. Team 1, you will go last, after Team 5 so you have time to create a new plan, you should be able to defeat the Sludge villain, or at least to rescue the hostage even without Bakugou."
After a small moment of awkward silence, Team 2, which consisted of Shoto Todoroki, Koji Koda, Tsuyu Asui and Toru Hagakure got into the mock city. They should be able to defeat the Sludge Villain fairly easily.
As I predicted, Team 2 was able to beat the Sludge Villain without much effort, Shoto Todoroki simply froze him while the rest of his teammates searched the buildings near for civilians that might've gotten injured. When there was a hostage, things pretty much the same thing happened except that Tsuyu Asui used her giant tongue to rescue the hostage while the villain was frozen. They did a very flawless job.
My class continued and each team faced off against the villain, and I was happy to see that they all worked together and had generally good plans.
Team 3 realized that the eyes were one of the Sludge villain's weaknesses and Momo Yaoyaorozu used her quirk to create tear gas and flash grenades to blind him then, they incapacitated him.
Team 4 used Ochaco's quirk to make the villain float, and since the villain was made of sludge, it could barely move while he was not affected by gravity, then Drak Shadow, Tokoyomi's quirk, bullied the Sludge villain while it was completely defenceless.
Team 5 also had it easy, Kyotaka used her quirk on the sludge villain to make him feel immense pain and mess with his sense of balance, which kind of incapacitated him.
Finally, the last ones, Team 1, were the ones that struggled the most, as they were missing their most powerful member, even if Bakugou had a little behavioural problem, you couldn't deny that he was still pretty strong. They still managed to defeat the Sludge villain, though, when Kaminari used his quirk to discharge 1.2 million volts of electricity on the villain. The only problem was that he was an idiot for an hour afterward, and thus couldn't defend himself but he had teammates to do that.
Overall, I was impressed and very satisfied with everyone in this class except Bakugou, they had managed good teamwork when they met not even a week ago. It was not perfect, obviously, it was true that some of them had their issues, like a certain pervert, but it was nothing unfixable.
I ended the class on a good note but I told Todoroki to stay behind, I had to speak with him.
Once everyone had left, he asked me, a bit confused and surprised that I had asked him to stay, he asked me:
"You wanted to talk with me, Shuzenji-sensei?
"Yes, it's about your father, Endeavor."
His face instantly steeled itself the moment I mentioned him, and there was a coldness in his look, he very clearly hated him, a lot.
"What about my father," he coldly replied to me.
"It's nothing bad for you, but for him…. Simply put, these last few months, Knockout has been investigating your father, I'm sure you know that. But he also contacted us, the police and Hero Assossiation, to inform us he would be bringing down Endeavor and that he would appreciate our help, but would still destroy him no matter what, even if we didn't want it."
Todoroki's face softened a little when he heard me, and wanted to speak, but I was not finished.
"Of course, the Hero Assossiation wasn't particularly happy with that, but, as always when Knockout was implied, they couldn't do anything except comply. And they did, and you might have noticed that Endeavor popularity these last few months dropped a lot. It wasn't a coincidence, we are preparing Japan for his forced retirement," I continued.
"Now, you might be wondering I am telling you all of this, and it's simple. First, it would make things infinitely simpler for pretty much everyone if you made a declaration in which you confessed everything that Endeavor did to you, but don't feel forced to do it, Endeavor will be forced to retire no matter what. "
"Secondly, and more importantly, since Endeavor has abused you in the past and your mother is currently in a psychiatrist hospital, you won't have anyone to house you and take care of you. Obviously, you have grandparents, but they live pretty far away and when the scandal will explode, paparazzi and journalists will eat you alive. That's why we would like to offer you to stay here, at U.A., like a boarding school, for an undetermined period of time," I finished my speech and Todoroki clearly was very unsure about what he should do.
"You don't need to make the decision now, I'd say you have a week. Now I'm very sorry, but I have the fate of a very angry student to determine," I added.
I turned to leave, but before I could, I heard Todoroki murmur a very soft and earnest "Thank you" to me.
"No problem, it's the heroes job to ensure that the villains are brought to justice."
As I was walking toward the principal's office, where I would discuss Bakugou with him, I thought back on what I had done to find proof against Endeavor.
It had taken many, many breaches of privacy, hacks, a bit of "convincing" on bribed individuals, months of waiting and many other criminal acts, but it was all worth it. I had gotten enough proof to end Endeavor many months ago, but I had purposely waited for Shoto Todoroki to enter U.A., so he could have somewhere safe to say, a counselor if he needed one, people to speak to others than Dabi, and hopefully, friends.
Now, I could just hope that it wouldn't be big of a hit for society and that Hawk was ready to be the number 2, and soon number 1 hero.
Sorry for no chapter yesterday, but there will be two today instead.
Also, if we finish, like last week, if we finish high (top 45) in the rankings, I’ll drop extra chapters, so vote!!!