Buying My Way Through the Multiverse

Next up were Team I (Ojiro and Hagakure) as the Villains versus Team B (Todoroki and Shoji) as the Heroes. Once the chosen teams left the monitor room, Gray walked straight over towards All Might and whispered something quietly into his ear. All Might seemed completely taken aback by the sudden suggestion, but he nodded along, smiled, and gave the official green light. Gray then walked back over to Eri and told her to sit tight, watch the live video feed, and wait patiently for him.

Now that the automated timer for the villains and heroes to get ready went down to zero, the loud buzzer sounded, and everyone got ready. Out on the field, Hagakure started off her strategy by taking off her boots and gloves. Gray grimaced under his hood, knowing she was completely naked right now. Shaking his head at the thought, ’Maybe I’ll ask the support department to make her invisible clothes?’, Gray walked straight over into the villains’ designated bomb room and put a large cardboard sign around his neck. It read ”HOSTAGE” in bold letters.

He planned to teach the kids a valuable lesson today. Not all information heroes had beforehand could be entirely trusted, so it was always better for them to do their own thorough investigation before jumping to conclusions. Hence why he was now sitting tied up right next to the dummy nuclear bomb, acting like a defenseless hostage. If Todoroki chose to go the exact same route he did in the original anime, he wouldn’t even let Shoji scout the building before freezing the entire infrastructure over. But what if there were innocent hostages trapped in the building?

And exactly as he expected, Todoroki walked up with swag right into the building’s main entrance. Before Shoji could even finish his initial multi-limb scout or say a single word, the half-and-half teenager simply told him to step outside the perimeter. Next, he slammed his right hand flat against the concrete wall and sent a massive wave of freezing air surging over the building. He effectively froze the entire facility solid in an instant. Gray was, of course, frozen solid to the floor as well, alongside both of the shivering villains and the payload bomb.

Todoroki walked calmly up the stairs into the fourth-floor room, preparing to secure the target, but he froze completely in his tracks once he saw Gray sitting on the floor, clearly encased in thick ice.

”Wha-What are you doing here, Sensei?” he asked, completely flabbergasted.

”It seems I was right, All Might! So you’d better pay for Eri’s shopping spree this Sunday!” Gray called out loudly towards the hidden security cameras mounted on the ceiling.

”What’s going on up here?” Shoji asked, his massive frame shivering as he finally walked into the frozen room.

”All Might never explicitly said it would be the exact same exercise parameters each time, did he?” Gray said. He flexed his muscles, effortlessly shattering the thick layers of ice encasing him and shaking the frozen shards right off his loose clothes. ”You guys didn’t even bother to scout anything out before you simply chose to freeze everything over.”

He stepped forward, pointing a finger at the cardboard sign around his chest. ”The villains could have had hidden hostages trapped inside the compound, just like right here, and you guys didn’t even bother to verify the occupants before you decided to deploy a wide-range freeze. So now, the innocent civilians got severely hurt by a reckless hero, which in turn will make this an absolute PR nightmare for everyone involved in the real world.”

Back in the monitor room, once everyone had made it back from the frozen ruins of Ground Beta, Gray walked straight up to Todoroki.

”Is there any reason you went completely solo out there and ignored your teammate?” Gray asked, his voice steady. Before the half-and-half teenager could open his mouth to defend his logic, Gray continued, ”If you had actually worked together with Shoji, his Quirk would have been able to tell you there was someone else inside the building who didn’t fit the villain profile. You would’ve known there was an anomaly before you threw out a blind attack.”

Todoroki simply lowered his head, his hands clenching into fists at his sides as the reality of his blunder sank in.

All Might stood quietly nearby, genuinely stunned. In his decades of fighting, he knew firsthand how cunning and underhanded villains could be. Real villains wouldn’t play by rigid tournament rules; they would drag innocent hostages into the crossfire and keep them hidden as shields. Gray’s unexpected improvisation was a phenomenal real-world lesson. The Symbol of Peace felt an even greater surge of relief that he had called the young man over to assist with the curriculum.

Finally, Gray turned his gaze over to the rest of the silent class. ”I will continue to improvise and change the parameters on the next exercises as well. So keep that in mind before you cross the starting line.”

The warning did its job beautifully. Over the remaining battle trials, the hero teams entered the buildings with clearer heads and a dose of caution. Just because a few of them possessed highly destructive, high-tier Quirks didn’t mean they could recklessly endanger their classmates or innocent civilians.

Gray stood by the monitors, his pen scratching rapidly against his notebook. He logged a harsh critique of Mineta’s lack of initiative. During Team C’s defense, the purple-haired boy had simply sat back on a crate, letting Momo Yaoyorozu handle the entire strategic layout. If Mineta had actually used his head and scattered his sticky grape orbs all over the floorboards and entryways, the invading heroes would have had a miserable time trying to navigate the choke points. Instead, he watched lazily while Yaoyorozu created iron plates to completely seal the room’s main entrances.

Gray put a critical remark on her part of the notes for that decision as well. Once the match concluded and the villains lost, Gray didn’t hold back.

”Sealing yourselves inside a single dead-end room is a tactical trap,” Gray addressed Momo. ”If this were a real siege, you would have just turned your hideout into a tomb. A pro hero like Midnight could easily slip her somnambulist aroma through the door cracks and put you both to sleep without ever opening the entryway. You gave up all your mobility for a fake sense of security.”

Yaoyorozu’s eyes widened, and she immediately pulled out a leather notebook of her own, rapidly writing down every word of Gray’s analysis with intense focus.

As for Mineta, he didn’t have anything to say, staring at the floor in silence. Gray wasn’t about to let the laziness slide. He stepped closer, his shadow completely looming over the small student. ”Mr. 20th place. You don’t have a single thing to say about your performance?”

Mineta stammered frantically, his jaw working, but no words came out of his mouth.

Gray looked down at him and let out a sigh. ”Listen. You’re already sitting dead last at the bottom of this class. Once Aizawa sees that you aren’t even putting the minimal effort into trying to improve, he is going to expel you without a second thought. I expect to see your face this Saturday for my training session. If you don’t show up, I’ll talk with Aizawa myself. I’m sure I can easily find plenty of highly motivated, hard-working kids over in Class 1-B or the General Studies course who would gladly take your place in this department.”

A collective shiver ran through the rest of the freshman crowd. Some of the students looked genuinely terrified. They had initially thought their homeroom teacher, Aizawa, was the only harsh, unyielding disciplinarian on the faculty, but apparently, this person standing before them was equally severe, if not worse.

Gray continued pacing the room, giving blunt, practical advice and setting up hidden setbacks for either the Heroes or the Villains depending on how mismatched the next matchups were. Once every single group had finally completed their rounds, the exhausted students began to loosen their gear, expecting the class to be dismissed.

Instead, Gray closed his notebook with a loud snap and told them to get ready for another round.

The entire class looked confused, murmuring to each other.

”You all will be acting as the Villains together,” Gray announced, his posture perfectly relaxed. ”And I will be playing the sole Hero. So get ready. I’m about to show you what the absolute peak of power looks like before you start trying to chase after it.”

Deep down, Gray grimaced and cringed at his own incredibly chuunibyou, edgy monologue, but he kept his face locked in a deadpan, serious look. Before the awkward silence could even linger in the air, All Might let out a sudden, dry cough and stepped forward.

”You don’t mind if I join you out there, do you, Gray-shonen?” All Might asked.

”You wanna help them out? Not that I mind,” Gray asked, raising an eyebrow.

A few of the students’ faces instantly lit up with bright waves of hope, thinking the Number One Hero was stepping in to protect them from the crazy instructor.

”No, no! I meant I’d be joining you on the Hero team!” All Might clarified, letting out a massive, booming laugh that echoed off the concrete walls.

In a fraction of a second, every single face in Class 1-A dropped from hope into pure, unadulterated despair. They weren’t just facing the rogue teacher anymore; they were about to be hunted down by the Symbol of Peace as well.

”Heh,” Gray smirked. ”Sure, why not.”

Hearing the sudden, panicked complaints and groans erupting from all twenty students across the room, Gray calmly knelt down. He looked into Eri’s wide, curious eyes and gave her a gentle nod. ”Cover your ears for a second, Eri-chan.”

The moment her small hands clamped down tightly over her ears, Gray brought his palms together. He delivered a single, sharp clap that instantly killed all noise in the room, the blunt acoustic shockwave snapping everyone back into silence.

”Stop complaining and get ready,” Gray commanded, his voice deadpan but cutting through the tension. ”I expect you all to put the teachings I gave you to actual use in this exercise. And uhhh... let’s see. To whoever makes the best overall impression on me during this match, I will give you a special gift once Saturday’s training session comes around.”

The word gift caught the attention of a few students like Midoriya and Yaoyorozu, their eyes narrowing as they processed the high value of whatever an anomaly like Gray considered a reward.

”Now leave. You guys will have exactly fifteen minutes inside Ground Beta to get ready,” Gray said, gesturing dismissively toward the exit door. ”The second the countdown timer hits zero, All Might and I will begin our attack.”

He hushed them all out of the room, the group of teenagers scrambling down the corridor in a chaotic rush to utilize every second of their preparation window.

Finally, once all the teenagers had officially left the room, Gray turned back towards Eri and loosened his shoulders. ”How about it, Eri-chan? Do you wanna come along down into the city, or do you wanna watch the whole match from right here?”

”Hmmm.” Eri placed a tiny hand on her chin, tilting her head as she stared at the wall of glowing security monitors. ”I wanna watch from here,” she finally said after thinking about it for about a minute, feeling far more secure inside the high-tech faculty room.

”Okay. You can just sit down right there in that big chair and watch how I go beat those kids’ butts, okay?” Gray smiled warmly, ruffling her white hair.

”Mm!” Eri nodded, a genuine, bright smile breaking across her face as she climbed into the seat.

Inside the designated building, the automated fifteen-minute countdown clock ticked away. The exact second the digital timer hit zero, every single hero-in-training inside that building felt their hair stand on end. A heavy, suffocating pressure seemed to settle over the structure. They knew from the news that Gray had fought top pro heroes for a long time, and apparently, their homeroom teacher, Aizawa, said the guy was holding back!

Faced with overwhelming dread, the students didn’t break. Instead, every single student immediately put into practice what Gray had just told them to improve on during the previous evaluations.

Mineta, driven by the terror of expulsion and Gray’s threat to talk to Aizawa, dashed frantically across the bottom-floor entryways. He pulled the purple spheres off his scalp non-stop, scattering a massive minefield of his sticky pop-balls all over the floors, the thresholds, and the main stairs. He even meticulously rigged a few hidden tripwire traps with them to snarl anyone trying to breach the front door.

Up on the other floors, a few of the recon students immediately started checking the building’s perimeter with their specific Quirks. Mezo Shoji sprouted multiple ears and eyes along his webbed tentacles, while Jiro Kyoka plugged her earphone jacks directly into the structural columns to trace any sudden kinetic impacts or approaching footsteps.

Deeper inside the corridors, the vanguard fighters were waiting in tight formations. They knew Gray could fly and bypass the ground floor entirely, so under Midoriya and Yaoyorozu’s rapid coordination, they set up separate defense teams on each floor to prevent Gray from taking them by surprise.

And if that wasn’t a headache already, the terrifying variable of All Might was also fully in the equation. Every single teenager inside the building knew with certainty that they were going to lose this match. But the unyielding fire in the eyes of a few future heroes, especially Midoriya, Todoroki, and a deeply humiliated Bakugo. kept burning incredibly bright; every single one of them was prepared to give everything they had to prove their worth to the summit standing outside.

Gray and All Might were standing on the asphalt street a couple of hundred feet away from the target building. Once Gray was done stretching his shoulders and loosening his wrists, he stood up straight and looked up at All Might.

”You ready?” Gray asked.

All Might nodded.

”Then let’s go beat up a few teenagers,” Gray said with a wide smile on his face.