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UA was well-known for their unusual curriculum and unorthodox teaching methods, and yet, Izuku was still surprised to see the newest exercise they were assigned.
Apparently using a fad from before the quirk era was the best way to train their investigative skills.
Divided into groups of five, classes A and B were sent out to specially constructed and maintained escape rooms UA kept on their grounds.
By a stroke of fate, Izuku’s group went last, after almost everyone else had already solved the room and were allowed to leave for the day. Apparently, the record was 38 minutes to solve the room, so far.
Considering the classmates within his team… Izuku wasn’t sure they would be using anything less than the full hour allotted, if they even got out on their own at all.
Todoroki, Hagakure, Yaoyorozu… Bakugou and Izuku himself.
Honestly, Izuku couldn’t tell how this would end up, other than the certainty it would go very, very badly.
Right now, a couple of specially trained workers led them towards the entrance of the room, explaining everything they needed to know.
Mostly, they just seemed to stress their quirks weren’t allowed to be used in a destructive manner, which. Well. They had Yaoyorozu with them, that specification would definitely come in handy.
One of the workers was staring at a monitor screen connected to a multitude of various electronics, all resting peacefully on the low table. There were a lot of other knick-knacks scattered on the surface right now, but Izuku didn’t pay much attention to it yet.
“Right,” their guide said, clasping her hands together. “The story! You are the five heroes assigned to find and recover a stolen bust of All Might! It’s about the size of a briefcase, and painted gold-”
“Like that one?” Todoroki interrupted the worker, pointing his hand towards a sculpture looking eerily similar to what the worker had just described, half-hidden behind the monitor.
The warker trails off, exchanging a glance with her co-worker.
“...Fuck,” the coworker agrees. “We forgot to put it back in.”
Hagakure was the first to laugh at that, her hands clutching at her stomach as she bent in half.
“Does that mean,” she choked off between the laughter. “Does that mean we already won?”
“Hell no!” Kacchan, predictably, exploded. “I ain’t gonna accept that! Give us a real challenge!”
“Then…” their guide trailed off. “Uh, how about you find out what happened to it before, then?”
“But…” Yaoyorozu hesitantly raised her hand. “Haven’t you just told us what happened to it?”
“Did she?” Todoroki asked curiously. “I wasn’t really listening.”
The coworker by the monitors sighed. “Just… Get in and find out where it was meant to be hidden.”
“Okay,” Izuku beamed at them before anyone else could raise any concerns. He was sure the workers just wanted to go home already, no less than the five of them did. “What do we have to do?”
Their guide stepped forward, pulling blindfolds over their eyes. Then, after ensuring none of them could see anything through the fabric, they were led inside the room. Their guide instructed them to leave the blindfolds on until they were told to take them off and left, the tell-tale sound of various locks clicking closed behind her.
“Alright,” a speaker cracked to life inside the room, the sound of the coworker streaming in. “You can take your masks off now.”
They did as instructed.
The first thing they could see - the first thing to focus on - were the other doors. Ones they were clearly meant to get open, locked with no less than three different locks, both the types needing a key and the ones requiring a password.
“Right,” Hagakure spoke first. “Were any of you in an escape room before?”
No. The answer was no.
“That’s… We can work with that,” she said, slightly dejected. “First, we need to look for clues! Behind picture frames, under the tables and shelves, anywhere you can think of!”
Todoroki immediately dropped to the floor, attempting to pry off the baseboard and looking for loose floorboards, one by one.
“Uh, Todoroki?” Izuku spoke hesitantly. “I don’t think they would have hid them there. How about you check under the table, instead?”
Todoroki, after a brief moment of thought, crawled towards the table,
Hagakure went to check behind the pictures, Yaoyorozu was inspecting the cupboard, Kacchan was looking at the locks like he wished he could just blast them to pieces and Izuku…
Well, Izuku went for the books.
“There’s something under here,” Todoroki informed them, and Izuku temporarily abandoned his side-quest. “But it’s a locked compartment. I don’t know how to open it.”
Hagakure kneeled on the floor to get a better look, humming thoughtfully as she inspected the table. Straightening up, she took the tablecloth off, revealing a faint outline of a circular cut-out.
“It’s probably a weight sensor,” she decided.
Yaoyorozu pointed towards the cluttered cupboard. “Do you think one of those would fit?”
Hagakure shrugged. “What better way to find out than to try?”
They wasted about five minutes trying and failing to find the right weight match before Todoroki seemed to grow bored.
“Stop,” he said, and pressed his palm to the circle.
“No, don’t!” Three voices called out. “We’re not supposed to use our quirks in a destructive way!”
“I’m not,” Todoroki said, appearing slightly confused as he slowly pressed his hand harder and harder on the wood, until they heard a soft click! from underneath the table.
Izuku kneeled down, grabbing the card that fell out of the compartment.
“Huh,” he said, as the rest sans Kacchan crowded him to get a look at it. “Kacchan! That’s a Quirk Records Collectible Card!”
That did its job, causing Kacchan to come over straight away.
“No way!” He called, snatching the card from Izuku’s hand.
“And those,” Izuku continued, pointing towards the books. “Are the official Albums.”
“There’ll be more of those, won’t there?” Hagakure sounded excited.
Izuku nodded. “I think it might be for one of the longer locks? Point Blanc - the hero on the card - was number seven in the 2339 ranking-”
“Shitty Deku,” Kacchan scoffed. “There was that scandal that kept him out of the top ten that year!”
“Only at the end of it, though,” Izuku argued. “In that year’s ranking, he was still seventh. He fell down to the high seven-hundred’s only the following years.”
Kacchan just scoffed again, placing the card on the table, stomping over to the bookshelves. Yaoyorozu followed curiously, inspecting the left-over books after he only returned with seven.
Throwing the 2300-2339 rankings at Izuku, Kacchan grabbed the 2340-2379 ones.
“I’m going to be right,” Izuku warned, flipping through the pages.
Todoroki was too busy checking behind the picture frame to pay much attention to their bickering, and Hagakure trailed off to help Yaoyorozu.
“Ha!” Kacchan opened the book, showing off an empty spot in a 2340 top ten ranking.
“Kacchan, do you need to get some tutoring from Ectoplasm-sensei?” Izuku asked sweetly, emboldened by the indisputable victory. “That’s spot 6 you’re pointing to - I have the 7th!”
Kacchan froze, his expression stormy as Izuku slipped the card into the correct spot.
“Hang on a minute,” he said, snatching the album. What’s up with Kacchan and snatching things from Izuku, really. “There’s a letter here.”
It was true- after slipping the card into its correct place, a letter appeared on top of the foil.
“So…” Izuku trailed off. “We’re just meant to find the other six or so cards…”
“Seven,” Kacchan interrupted. “There’s only one lock with letters, and it has eight digits.”
“Seven, then,” Izuku corrected himself easily. “And then put them in the right spot on the rankings.”
“I found one,” Todoroki offered, handing the card over to Izuku.
“GlowSquid,” Izuku read out loud. “Place: third.”
“Fuck,” Kacchan swore, pressing a hand to his forehead. “They were active in the… 2220’s? I think?”
Izuku shook his head. “Early 2210’s, I’m sure.”
“But they didn’t get into the rankings until they got the provisional license,” Kacchan argued - the most civil argument Izuku had had with him, possibly ever. “Which couldn’t have happened before 2222, when the reform got introduced!”
“Yes, but the rankings established before the reform focused almost purely on the social appeal,” Izuku argued. “They might as well have been in those.”
The two of them just looked at each other for a while, before rushing to open the relevant album.
“2232,” Izuku read, dejected. “Well, at least you weren’t right, either.”
Kacchan just growled, pushing the card into its rightful place.
“An L and a H,” Izuku mused. “I do wonder if it’s going to spell out anything.”
While they’re busy doing that, Yaoyorozu and Hagakure were busy leafing through the books, trying to find any significance in them.
Todoroki soon joined, discussing the likelihood that some of the formulas from the assorted chemistry textbooks could work for a passcode to one of the locks.
“Guys…” Hagakure said eventually. “Look at the shelves.”
One the shelves, tapped to the wood, were name stickers: “Albums”, “Biographies” and “Chemistry.”
“A, B, C,” Hagakure reiterated, grabbing one of the three locks to expose its underside with three numeral digits to be input. “And there’s less than ten of each kind…”
Yaoyorozu’s eyes lit up in excitement as she recited the numbers back to Hagakure, who put them in the lock. With a soft click, it opened easily.
“That just leaves two more locks,” the three of them looked amongst themselves, then back at the other two, busy discussing the card Todoroki passed them which they found inside some of the books.
“I say we leave them to it,” Hagakure suggested in a whisper, and the other two agreed easily.
Together, locating the key hanging off of the draperies took them no time at all, and the additional card they found occupied Midoriya and Bakugou nicely.
“Kacchan…” Midoriya trailed off after they fit the fourth card in.
“What, nerd?” Kacchan said, busy searching through the left-over books for any missing cards.
“Null, Null, L, Null, I, G, H, Null,” Izuku read out loud.
While it told Hagakure, Yaoyorozu and Todoroki nothing, it apparently meant something to Bakugou, who straightened up immediately.
“No way,” he said, accentuating it with a shake of his head. “You think they would have..?”
Izuku just pointed towards the doors and Kacchan stalked towards them, putting something into the lock.
The lock beeped and accepted the password.
“It was All Might,” Izuku said, noticing the confused glances from the other classmates.
Once they got the doors open, it was a matter of minutes before they zeroed-in on the cardboard-covered footrest, looking laughingly out of place in the small closet. Inside of it was a foam with an indent looking suspiciously like the All Might’s bust they were supposed to locate.
“Oh,” Todoroki gasped. “That’s what we were meant to find, isn’t it?”
The others looked at him, incredulous.
“What?” Todoroki asked, minutely defensive. “I forgot.”