Later that day, Tsutsumi returned to the dorms. After agreeing to hand the whole issue over to Nezu, he was finally able to step away from it. He wasn't exactly angry anymore. Being targeted and failed didn't make him furious so much as irritated, mixed with suppressing the complicated feeling that ran through his mind.
Hold back, or raid the Commission's HQ.
That thought still floated around in the back of his mind.
His future self's warnings hadn't faded. Finding out about his mother too early led to endings he didn't feel like dealing with right now, which meant restraint, no matter how unpleasant it was. Since Nezu had agreed to handle the matter and take responsibility for exposing it properly, Tsutsumi no longer needed to act personally.
That alone helped him calm down.
"What's with the look?" he asked as soon as he stepped inside, noticing all of his classmates gathered in the dorm's living room, staring at him like he might explode again.
His bored gaze swept over the room. "Did Glasses get stabbed trying to hug another serial killer again?"
"Could we please not bring that up?!" Ida protested from the back. No one acknowledged him.
"Ryo, wh-" Jiro started, then stopped herself and corrected it. "How are you feeling now?"
"Normal," Tsutsumi replied. "Nezu said he'll handle it. I gave him the evidence."
The tension visibly drained from the room. A few shoulders relaxed. Someone let out a breath they'd clearly been holding in. Hearing that Tsutsumi hadn't decided to personally dismantle a government organization was, apparently, good news.
Before long, the atmosphere shifted. What had been stiff and awkward slowly turned livelier as people started talking again, dragging snacks out and settling into the main living area. A gathering formed naturally, no one officially calling it one.
When it came to rule-breaking, if their class rep claimed number 2, then no one would dare to claim number 1.
They are afraid that he might just throw what remains of his reason out the window and raid the Hero Public Safety Commission's HQ.
After all, his failed exam result here was unjust. Sure, he didn't give it his all like many of them, but that didn't give them a justifiable reason to fail him like that.
At first, some of them had argued about his reaction earlier. That argument ended the moment someone asked them to imagine being in his position. Most of them realized that. If something like this happens to them, then they probably could only lower their head and accept, being unable to do anything about it. Unfortunately, or fortunately, this happened to someone who could do something about it.
So the class quietly shifted from divided opinions to unspoken agreement: they'd back their class rep. Or at least try to stop him from crossing the line.
Tsutsumi himself, however, had already mentally written the exam off as a complete waste of time. Now that he was no longer one bad thought away from slipping into Violent Emotion, he was content to let Nezu work with the evidence and stay out of it.
He never wanted to be a hero in the first place. Entering U.A. was just a means to an end, finding his mother. Even that goal was on pause now, thanks to the consequences tied to finding out too soon. And knowing that the people responsible for granting hero licenses were actively against him didn't exactly motivate him to keep playing along.
What was the point of continuing the hero course if he couldn't even graduate properly?
Still, it was too early to make a final decision. Nezu had promised to handle it. If the principal failed… then Tsutsumi would simply leave U.A.
"Oh?" Tsutsumi raised a brow as the TV caught his attention.
A documentary played across the screen.
The Story of the Gray-Haired Monster: Oguri Cap.
The name clicked instantly. After all, that was his Uma Musume twin sister from another dimension.
Seeing that this version was a male racehorse didn't surprise him nearly as much as it probably should have. Alternate realities and all.
The Oguri Cap here was simply another version of the Oguri Cap he knew.
"Azu," Tsutsumi said quietly, not looking away at first, "collect all information on racehorses from the Showa, Heisei, and Reiwa eras."
His gaze lingered on the screen for another moment while Azu finished downloading the information, before he turned the TV off. With something more interesting lined up, he stood from the sofa and headed for the door.
Seeing him about to leave, his classmate quickly blocked his exit.
"Relax," Tsutsumi said, hand in his pocket. "I won't be gone long."
His eyes drifted to Jiro, who was staring at him with a look that clearly said she didn't buy it.
He noticed and gave a small, almost casual smile. "Don't worry. I'm not going to cause trouble. I just need to clear my mind."
Jiro crossed her arms. "Really? You're not about to raid the Commission's HQ or something similar?"
"If I actually planned to do that," he replied, "do you think I'd bother coming back to the dorm first?"
She paused, then let out a quiet sigh. "…Fair point."
"You're going to travel somewhere, aren't you?" she asked, already putting the pieces together. She'd seen this routine before.
"Yup." Tsutsumi held up a card. "Like I said, I won't cause trouble. Need anything?"
She thought for a second. "Bring back souvenirs this time. And not just your poorly taken pictures."
"Sure," Tsutsumi said simply.
He activated the card.
Attack Ride: Invisible!
Without any buildup, he vanished right in front of them, leaving nothing behind but the faint impression that he'd been standing there a moment ago.
The room went quiet for a beat.
Everyone slowly turned to look at Jiro.
She walked back to the sofa like nothing unusual had happened, picked up the remote, and switched on the TV, changing to another channel. While some of the boys return to their room, now that their class rep has left, they don't have much of a reason to stay.
"Jiro-chan," Hagakure asked, quickly sitting down beside her, "what did you two mean by that?"
"Ryo has a hobby," Jiro replied calmly. "Traveling and taking pictures. You already know how bad he is at the second part."
The others gathered around, curiosity clearly winning out.
"Wait, he's bad at photography?" Sero asked. "That's… kind of surprising."
He was surprised to find out that his Class President is actually terrible at something besides his personality.
"I remember him posting something in the group chat once," Ojiro said. "I couldn't even tell what it was supposed to be."
"Yeah," Kirishima nodded. "That was when he went missing for a while, right? Everyone was arguing over whether it was a wall or a floor."
"Well," Hagakure said, pulling out her phone, "he took about 469 pictures for me once."
"That's a lot," Kaminari said.
"Only 73 turned out decent," she finished.
Everyone leaned in as she showed them the photos. The images were warped and glitchy, but they clearly showed Hagakure's face, something most of them had never actually seen before.
And they all looked quite good after she had spent her time picking which one to keep and which to delete.
"…Whoa," several voices said at once.
"So that's what you look like," Ashido muttered, impressed despite the distortion.
"Imagine if he took it while she was wearing her hero outfit." Mineta murmurs, already imagining Hagakure's naked body in a real photo.
Asui's long tongue shot out, slapping him across the face and throwing him straight into the nearby window.
...
Meanwhile, inside the teachers' office, U.A.'s staff were busy going through the materials Tsutsumi had handed over. Reports piled up on the desk, documents spread out in neat but increasingly dense stacks. Nezu's small palm swept through the keyboard before him as he annotated, cross-referenced, and quietly organized everything into something far more dangerous than raw evidence.
At the same time, he made sure a few carefully selected details slipped. Nothing concrete, nothing that could be traced back to U.A. directly, just enough loose threads to give reporters something to chew on. Suspicion spread faster than accusations ever could.
Unbeknownst to most civilians, Nezu was well aware of the darker side of hero society. Classified cases, sealed files, and inconvenient truths tied directly to the Hero Public Safety Commission weren't new to him. One case in particular stood out clearly in his mind.
Lady Nagant. Real name: Tsutsumi Kaina.
She had been a Pro Hero directly recruited and trained by the Commission. For years, she operated flawlessly, completing missions with quiet efficiency. Then, without warning, her name became associated with an assassination attempt on another hero. With no public trial, press coverage, or new reports. She was just transferred to Tartarus.
To the public, she simply vanished.
To those in power, her location was never a mystery.
Nezu had long suspected something was wrong. Kaina's background, the abrupt incident, the way everything was quietly swept aside, it didn't fit the pattern of an ordinary fall from grace. The more he reviewed, the clearer it became.
Tsutsumi Kaina hadn't been trained as a hero. She had been trained as a tool.
Her Quirk, Rifle, made her ideal for assassination work. Once she was no longer useful, or perhaps once she became inconvenient, the Commission discarded her without hesitation.
The reason her case never went public was likely due to some form of agreement. Otherwise, her children wouldn't have been allowed to live as freely as they did. The fact that she managed to leave everything behind for Tsutsumi Ryoko and Tsutsumi Miyu said more than any official report ever could.
Nezu suspected the Commission had initially left the siblings alone because Ryoko's Quirk description was incomplete. The records focused only on the belt, its appearance, and surface-level functions of opening and closing. Nothing about its deeper capabilities. As for Miyu, she was listed as Quirkless, harmless, unremarkable, not worth attention.
That assessment no longer holds.
After witnessing what Tsutsumi Ryoko could do, Nezu had begun to question Miyu's status as well. Ryoko had once mentioned that his sister had been kidnapped, yet no police records supported the claim. Investigations had turned up nothing and were eventually shelved.
Back in the present, Tsutsumi's expanded display of power had clearly drawn the Commission's attention. They weren't just observing anymore; they were actively targeting him. Directly fail him and then conveniently offer a faster path forward under their supervision.
Poaching him from U.A.
Something Nezu absolutely could not allow.
Another factor weighed heavily on his mind: All Might's report. Tsutsumi didn't just mimic Quirks, he had access to them at a level that bordered on complete replication. Including All Might's own.
And worse, his strongest form.
All Might had personally witnessed Tsutsumi testing that form, Complete. A villain he had struggled against had been eliminated instantly.
Tsutsumi's mindset was already unstable enough. Not malicious, but fractured, pulled between restraint and destruction. If the Commission managed to get their hands on him, it wouldn't take long before they pushed him past a line he couldn't step back from.
Turning him into a villain.
A villain with that kind of power wasn't just dangerous. It was catastrophic.
...
The next day, inside 1-A classroom.
"Where is Tsutsumi?" Aizawa asked.
The heavy dark circles under his eyes looked even worse than usual, a clear sign that he'd barely slept after working overtime the night before. Between paperwork, reports, and Nezu breathing down everyone's necks, it hadn't exactly been a restful night.
Nezu, in particular, had been taking the situation seriously. Tsutsumi being wronged by the Hero Public Safety Commission wasn't something he intended to let slide.
"He said he'd be out for a bit," Yaoyorozu replied. "But he didn't say where."
She hesitated slightly as she spoke, glancing at Aizawa's exhausted face.
That was enough to make Aizawa shift his gaze toward Jiro. "He isn't going to raid the Hero Public Safety Commission HQ, is he?"
The room went quiet.
No one answered right away, as this question is what many of them have in their mind.
"If Ryoko really wanted to raid that place," Bakugo said flatly, "he wouldn't have bothered coming back to the dorm last night."
Aizawa paused, then sighed. "…Fair point."
He rubbed his eyes and looked back at the rest of the class. "Do any of you know when he's coming back?"
The class collectively shook their heads.
"…Alright," Aizawa muttered, turning back to the board. "Open your textbooks."
Class resumed as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
At this point, the homeroom teacher of 1-A didn't even look surprised. Tsutsumi's disappearing for a while had quietly become one of those things everyone just accepted. He'd show up eventually, probably acting like nothing happened.
Afraid that the villains might attack Tsutsumi? He is more worried that Tsutsumi might attack the villains.