Chapter 3: The Recording
The monitoring room was cold, dark, and smelled faintly of old coffee.
Aizawa liked it that way.
He sat in the central chair, surrounded by screens displaying every corner of U.A.'s sprawling campus. Present Mic leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, sunglasses pushed up into his hair.
"It feels wrong," Mic muttered. "Watching a student without her knowing."
"It feels necessary." Aizawa's fingers moved across the keyboard. "She walked into a blind spot. That's not an accident. She knew exactly where the cameras couldn't see her."
"That's not suspicious at all," Mic said dryly.
Aizawa didn't respond. He was pulling up the footage from the north corridor—the narrow hallway near the support course workshops. The one with the storage closet no one used.
The screen flickered.
And there she was.
Zoey Zatara, walking into frame. Her posture was different than in the cafeteria—shoulders back, head up, eyes scanning. Not paranoid. Aware.
She pressed herself against the wall, pulled out a phone, and answered.
The audio was faint—the corridor's acoustics were poor, and the nearest microphone was twenty feet away. But Aizawa had spent years training his ears to pick up whispers in dark alleys.
He turned up the volume.
"Wally, I will not buy you food here. You have superspeed—run over the world to buy food."
Mic's eyebrows shot up. "Superspeed?"
Aizawa held up a hand. Listen.
The voice on the other end was muffled, but the words were just barely intelligible—a boy, young, whining about something. Then:
"What kind of villains are in there?"
Zoey's response came without hesitation. Flat. Informative. Like she was listing grocery items.
"Oh, villains here are like low street thugs. They have powers and they have drawbacks."
A pause. The boy's voice again, curious now:
"Drawbacks?"
"Yeah. Super drawbacks. But not like us. We have small weaknesses. They have, like, one or two abilities total."
"Woah. They suck."
Zoey almost smiled. Aizawa caught it—the smallest twitch at the corner of her mouth.
"Yeah. They kind of do."
Then she said something else—something about a ring enchantment—but the audio crackled, and the words blurred into static. Aizawa rewound. Played it again. Still nothing.
The call ended. Zoey hung up, slipped the phone into her pocket, and walked out of frame.
The screen went still.
Silence filled the monitoring room.
Present Mic was the first to break it.
"Did she just... compare herself to someone with superspeed?" He pushed off from the doorframe and walked closer to the screen. "Like it was normal? Like she has powers too?"
"She said 'not like us,'" Aizawa repeated slowly. "She included herself in that category."
"She's registered as quirkless."
"I know."
"So either she's lying on her registration—which is a crime—or she's..." Mic trailed off, struggling to find the words.
"Or she's from somewhere else," Aizawa finished. "Where having multiple abilities is normal. Where 'superspeed' is a thing someone just has. And where their only weakness is 'small.'"
Mic stared at him. "That's insane."
"Is it?"
"You can't honestly believe—"
"I don't know what I believe yet." Aizawa leaned back in his chair. "But I know what I heard. She described this world's villains as 'low street thugs.' She said they 'suck' because they only have one or two abilities. She talked about us like we're the strange ones."
Mic ran a hand down his face. "So what's the theory? She's from another planet? Another dimension?"
"Maybe."
"Shouta, that's—"
"Crazy? Yes." Aizawa stood up. "But I've seen crazy. I've fought villains who could rewrite gravity and heroes who could punch through mountains. A girl from somewhere else with multiple abilities isn't the strangest thing I've encountered this year."
Mic opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"You're being serious."
"I'm always serious."
"No, you're always tired. There's a difference." Mic grabbed a chair and sat down heavily. "Okay. Let's say—just for argument—that she's not from here. That she has powers she's hiding. Why? Why come to U.A.? Why pretend to be quirkless?"
Aizawa was quiet for a long moment.
"That's the question, isn't it?"
He pulled up the footage again. Watched Zoey's face as she talked to "Wally." Watched the way her guard dropped, just slightly, when she thought no one was watching.
She's lonely, he realized. Whoever she is, wherever she's from—she's lonely.
"Tomorrow," Aizawa said finally, "I'm going to talk to her."
"Just like that? Walk up and say 'hey, I know you're not from this dimension'?"
"I'm going to observe her. Ask questions. See how she reacts."
Mic snorted. "You? Ask questions? You're going to glare at her until she confesses."
Aizawa's lips twitched—the closest he ever came to a smile. "That's also a strategy."
He shut down the screens and stood.
"Come on. We have a staff meeting in ten minutes."
"You're just going to act like none of this happened?"
"I'm going to act like I'm doing my job." Aizawa walked to the door. "Which I am."
Mic followed, shaking his head. "You know Nezu is going to figure it out eventually. He notices everything."
"Then let him notice." Aizawa paused at the doorway. "But I want to understand her first. Before anyone else decides what she is."
"And what do you think she is?"
Aizawa didn't answer.
He walked out of the monitoring room with more questions than he'd walked in with—and a strange, unwelcome feeling he hadn't had in years.
Concern.
Not for the school. Not for the students around her.
For her.
A sixteen-year-old girl, alone in a world that wasn't hers, pretending to have nothing.
What are you running from, Zatara?
Or what are you hiding from?