Entropy: The Fate of the Hero System (Fanfic)

Ever since her humiliating loss at the hands of Fumikage Tokoyami in her first Sports Festival, Momo Yaoyorozu has faced an uphill struggle to be recognized for her potential as a hero. The deck was stacked against her from the start, with the Sports Festival not allowing her to pre-make equipment, but it's too late to rehabilitate the image most heroes got of her on that fateful day: an indecisive, incompetent hero who only got where she did because of her family's wealth and connections, her friends too naive to understand her problems.

So if the world won't let her help as a hero, she'll have to force the world to change — by whatever means necessary.

Entropy: The Fate of the Hero System is a My Hero Academia Deconstruction Fic series, published on Archive of Our Own by NotBurgerKing, exploring an Alternate Universe that splits off from canon after Chapter 423, after most of the canon events have already taken place.

Despite the similar name and theme, this fic isn't related to My Hero Academia: Entropy.

Works in the Entropy series:

The Everything Villain: Arsenal, completed January 23, 2023
Kota's Hero Academia: Rise of the Ultimate Villain, ongoing

Tropes in the Entropy series include:

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Series-Wide

Accusation Fic: Both stories go to great lengths to call out many issues the author finds with various characters and the worldbuilding of My Hero Academia, particularly the nature of the hero system and how U.A. is run.
Adaptation Personality Change: In canon, Momo started out as an Aloof Dark-Haired Girl until her character was further fleshed out, revealing herself to be an Endearingly Dorky Spoiled Sweet young woman. Here, the latter characterization is treated as solely a front she put on in her desperation for acceptance, with her initial characterization being depicted as her true self which she reverts to after feeling her nicer front just aided in her 0% Approval Rating. She similarly has little to no good feelings for her former class outside of Shoto and Kyoka, compared to her being the class's Team Mom and caring about all of them in canon.
Adaptational Villainy:
- The very premise of the fic is that Momo Yaoyorozu ends up becoming Arsenal, a Visionary Villain and the leader of the Fallen Hero Alliance who does battle with her former classmates and is seeking to destroy hero society, after failing to strike out on her own as a hero due to her 0% Approval Rating and seeing society as refusing to change in spite of the events of the Paranormal Liberation War. Even considering the motivations, it's still ultimately a far cry from Momo's canon self, who was a Hero through and through and Endearingly Dorky to the point she got flustered over visiting a department store.
- After years of being vilified just for being David Shield's daughter and being Momo's main supporter, Melissa Shield goes from someone still willing to help heroes in spite of her father's actions on I-Island, even building a suit of Power Armor for All Might's final battle with All For One, to invoking Then Let Me Be Evil when her friend is finally forced out of heroics entirely.
Atomic Superpower:
- It turns out Creation is a variation on this; Momo can produce nuclear energy internally to manipulate the matter forming her fat reserves at the subatomic level to produce whatever atoms and molecules are needed to form whatever she wants to make, and convert the additional nuclear energy from splitting or fusing those atoms back into more matter if she needs more of it to create what she wants.
- Homura Kakushima, one of the original characters who was in Class 2-A along with Mawata, has a Quirk that allows her to absorb radiation to empower herself physically.
Bland-Name Product: The series uses YapTube, Chatter, and Geddit as equivalents for YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit.
Brain–Computer Interface: Most of Momo's equipment is controlled using one Melissa had programmed and designed for her initial costume redesign; it takes the form of a headband that is concealed beneath her hair and can unfold into a streamlined helmet at will, which has a frontal visor that includes a Heads-Up Display also controlled using the same interface and can display a digitalized copy of the Yaoyorictionary.
Broken-System Dogmatist: Izuku at his worst overly idealizes the era of All Might and insists on trying to preserve it even when his attempts at being an Internal Reformist are either shot down by the corrupt old guard or backfire on him outright, and he has trouble internalizing that the system he defends needs much deeper overhaul at best and is fundamentally unsalvagable at worst.
Cast Herd: In addition to the various characters making up the Hell Class, there are pro-heroes, villains, government staff, social media personalities, and the members of the Fallen Heroes Alliance. The second story takes this even further, bringing in an entire new 1-A and 1-B for Kota’s run at U.A. (some background extras from canon, others original), with everyone getting their turn as a P.O.V. character.
Central Theme: Optics is a consistent motif throughout the series. Momo's horrific first impression on the public destroys her career and drives her to villainy, Izuku's refusal to acknowledge the importance of reputation is one of his biggest character flaws, Aizawa's refusal to allow Class 1-A to attend orientation drives a wedge between them and the other classes by making them look like stuck-up assholes, individuals like Sachiko struggle with the public perception of how they should behave in line with their Quirks... The list goes on.
Chaotic Neutral: The in-universe author's notes for Kota's Hero Academia Chapter 15 assign this alignment to Mei Hatsume. She has no loyalty to any faction in particular and cares only for her own mad science, and is so out of touch with reality that she isn't capable of either processing the harm her decisions might cause or being malicious for its own sake.
Cool, but Inefficient: The Fallen Heroes Alliance holds that any kind of "hero system," where looking good for the public is prioritized over getting the job done, will inevitably devolve into this. However, they are not in turn Boring, but Practical; they prioritize more effective forms of violence but still prefer violence over negotiation or compromise, and use the same kind of propaganda tactics as heroes do by violently taking out criminals in order to discredit hero society.
Costume Evolution: After hearing Izuku's ideas about how she could best utilize her Quirk for combat, Momo comes up with a complete costume redesign for herself and various weapons and gear she can create to add onto it. Once Melissa manages to provide her what she was looking for, the costume itself and the accompanying equipment get upgraded multiple times over the course of the entire series.
- The overall design, evident from the initial Flight I suit, consists of a form-fitting bodysuit made out of bulletproof weave similar to the fabric used in capture tape, but fitted with large, mechanized apertures on her arms, legs, belly, and back made out of lightweight carbonfiber-based materials, which normally stay closed and are only briefly opened via Brain–Computer Interface to expose skin when she needs to create something, thus largely eliminating the Stripperific aspect of her old costume from canon. The aperture on the back is mostly so Momo can create her new jetpack flight gear from her back as a standard add-on to the main suit, since staying at a safe distance from opponents is integral to her new fighting style.
- The Flight IV model of the suit keeps the same basic design but incorporates two fundamental changes from the earlier Flight I, II and III iterations. First, among other additions and upgrades to her self-created equipment, the Flight IV model of her jetpack is the first to be capable of supersonic speeds. Second, and just as importantly, a second version of this model of her costume is decked out in much more subdued dark grey for camouflage at night and especially during nightly flights, as this alternate costume is used by Momo when she's moonlighting as the "vigilante" Arsenal to get around the issue of her negative public image effectively preventing her from being able to do hero work at all. It is this version of the Flight IV suit that Momo takes with her when even that proves to be insufficient for her to survive in the hero industry and she becomes Arsenal full-time.
- By the time of the second story, Momo's costume is in its sixth (Flight VI) iteration, which is far more advanced still and is stated to be the first iteration capable of taking on even the strongest opponents she might run into. It incorporates miniature antigravity drives Melissa had developed^note, while the newest version of her flight gear includes even more powerful engines and thrust-vectoring capability, both of these changes allowing her to attain speeds on par with modern jet fighters or the very fastest heroes like Izuku and to execute aerial maneuvers that would normally produce too much G-Force for someone without superhuman durability to withstand.
Desperately Craves Affection: It's hinted at in The Everything Villain: Arsenal, and confirmed in Kota's Hero Academia, that this was the reason for Momo's sweeter personality in canon following the Sports Festival stemmed from a massive loss of confidence and her becoming viewed as incapable thanks to the Sports Festival, deliberately creating a new persona in a desperate bid to seek external approval from her classmates. She comes to regret this and starts reverting back to her original personality (combined with her growing cynicism and disillusionment) as her situation worsens, as she feels most of her classmates never took her seriously as she'd wanted, and as most of those who did still didn't understand her struggles with her public image. The only classmates she doesn't regret having been friends with are Shoto and Kyoka, the two she'd been the closest to and the two who (especially the former) had understood her the best.
Glass Cannon: While Momo's Arsenal suits do provide some level of protection, her fighting style as Arsenal is very much built around speed and ranged attacks. If she is ever in a position where her enemies can strike back at her, something has already gone very wrong.
Gone Horribly Wrong: The Heroic Contributions Act, which removed the hero licenses of any heroes who were "ineffective" based on the number of incidents resolved in order to appease the Stainist radical faction, had numerous unintended consequences. By setting the score based on a flat rate of incidents resolved and not taking into account the number of incidents a given hero had participated in, heroes who are effective but don't encounter many situations are forced out of the industry or into purely sidekick roles. This results in a ballooning of agency sidekick numbers, as new heroes without the connections to get called into incidents are unable to strike out on their own, but worse than that, the act effectively wipes out rural heroism where incidents are fewer compared to urban centers, leaving undersupported rural areas ripe to be coopted by radical groups like the FHA and CRC. Furthermore, it radicalizes those heroes that were forced out, leading a massive number of trained combatants to join up with organized crime or the aforementioned radical groups.
Hard Truth Aesop: The story shows that not every obstacle in life can be overcome through nothing but pure grit. This is a big reason why Izuku fails to empathize with Momo - he can't comprehend that simply trying her best isn't enough to overcome her awful first impression on hero society or save her career.
Hard Work Hardly Works: A repeated point throughout the series is that people can fail not because they are lazy or incompetent, but simply because they are never given the opportunity to succeed in the first place. In particular, after her disastrous showing in the first Sports Festival, Momo is never able to recover because nobody will call her in on cases or allow her to demonstrate her abilities.
I Coulda Been a Contender!: Several members of the Hell Class see their careers fizzle out in adulthood. Sero tops out as a sidekick and knows he'll lose his license outright if he tries to move on, Aoyama has his career ruined by revelations about him from the end of canon (namely that he was a mole for All For One) and takes refuge under Iida's wing trying to save up enough money to leave the country, Mineta is outed as a sexual predator and is both stripped of his license and arrested, and of course Momo's career falls apart due to the mortal blow she took to her reputation during the first Sports Festival.
Irony: Tenya Iida is the only one of the three Hell Class alumni to come from a prominent family and escape a PR nightmare in his early career despite being the only one of the three to have committed an actual felony (attempted murder).
Macross Missile Massacre: Momo’s “Combined Arms Strike”, which unleashes a barrage of gun, laser, and missile fire on whatever unfortunate villain she’s targeting.
Once Done, Never Forgotten: Momo is never able to escape from the shadow of her disastrous first Sports Festival; her career is smothered in the crib due to public perception of her as a spoiled rich girl, she loses her license outright to the Heroic Contributions Act, and even in Kota's era she has been reduced to a punchline.
Point of Divergence: The point where this series splits off from canon is immediately following the final battle with Shigaraki; here, Rewind is able to restore Quirks that have been stolen or given away, and Eri is manipulated by the HPSC into rewinding Izuku back to just before the final battle, thus giving them a new Symbol to rebuild a corrupt status quo around.
Power Harness: Momo's completely redesigned costume is somewhere between this and Powered Armor (as the mechanized parts are incorporated into a bodysuit made out of lightweight bulletproof fabric), and it becomes the key to Momo’s new fighting style and eventually to her success as Arsenal. Melissa develops a baseline suit for her, with mobile apertures to allow her to use her Quirk without having to constantly expose her skin and various hardpoints that allow Momo to equip herself with new weapons and components that she can create as she needs them, as well as a winged jetpack to allow for flight so she can better maintain a safe distance from an opponent. Later iterations see the addition of new equipment such as miniaturized antigravity drives and increasingly faster flight speeds, with the iteration she has by the second installment rivaling jet fighters in speed.
Secret Identity Vocal Shift: Momo's Arsenal costume has a voice modulator to hide her identity.
Shout-Out:
- Hiroto's codename and Quirk is a blatant reference to The Skinjacker Trilogy.
- Aizawa's characterization as not only being a Sadist Teacher and Sink-or-Swim Mentor but also somewhat Quirkist is based in part on DeusVerve's analyses of his mentality.
- A lot of the former Masegaki students in the new 1-A and 1-B share some or all of their names with their (older adult) counterparts in Their Hero Academia: Rise of the New Generation. Some aspects of the first event of the Sports Festival also originate from that work.
Sins of Our Fathers:
- This is the single biggest reason why Melissa's situation is as bad as it is. After her father was arrested for his role in the I-Island Incident, Melissa became tarnished by association and publicly seen as an accomplice who got away with it because there was no evidence against her. She just barely managed to graduate from high school, lost out on her opportunity for higher education, was rendered destitute when the American government froze her father's assets, and by the time of the story has had to leave America entirely to take refuge with All Might, the only adult left in her corner. Even then, her reputation in Japan is muddy enough that she effectively becomes a hermit after leaving U.A.
- As a result of Dabi's broadcast casting him as the cause of Endeavor's abuse and a fellow perpetrator instead of Endeavor's biggest victim, Shoto has been struggling with his own public image issues; it's only because everyone knows how effective he is at his work that he's able to remain a top hero, and even then he's lower-ranked than his capabilities will merit due to being incredibly unpopular.
Token White: While the rest of the cast consists of native Japanese nationals, Melissa Shield is an American expat. This gives her a unique perspective on the conflict and an outsider's insight on how Japanese cultural tendencies that exist beyond the hero system such as meiwaku are responsible for the state the country is in.
Took a Level in Badass: Momo spends the series grinding levels in badass from the wimpy Support Party Member she was in canon to a much more powerful ranged Glass Cannon who beats Bakugou in a straight fight to an incredibly powerful criminal mastermind Shrouded in Myth who only Izuku can hope to match in open combat.
Unrequited Love: At the start of the first story, Momo has realized her feelings for Kyoka and is seriously considering confessing to her when the growing realization of just how badly she's being sidelined and what it means for her future career forces her to put it off in favor of starting her hero training over from scratch to fill a more combat-oriented role. Not only does it turn out it's too late for her to change people's minds on her supposed failings, her efforts result in her spending less time with her classmates and becoming more cut off from Kyoka, resulting in her getting together with Denki before Momo can ever confess her love. By the time of the second story, her feelings for Kyoka (or anyone else) have largely died down.
Unstable Equilibrium: The Japanese hero education system, and U.A.'s practices in particular, can very easily produce a feedback loop such that a single poor performance in the first-year Sports Festival (which can easily happen even if you have a powerful and versatile quirk, simply because you had a bad matchup or the rules of the Festival prevented you from using your power effectively) can cripple your chances of ever becoming a successful hero.
- If your performance in the Sports Festival tournament looks bad for whatever reason, you aren't likely to get good internship offers.
- If you don't get a good internship, you lose out on the chance to learn from a hero and make connections you'll need later. More importantly, having a bad internship on your resume looks very bad for heroes looking it over, meaning that you aren't likely to get good internship offers in subsequent years either, especially since your peers would have made more connections and received better training in comparison.
- If you then graduate without any good internships, you now have no connections and no proof of your abilities, so you won't get jobs from any of the good hero agencies, especially with your classmates looking so much more capable on paper.
- And if you are working at a bad agency or trying to go solo, you'll find it almost impossible to get the successes you need to build your brand because people won't call you in or cooperate with you when they have no reason to believe you're cut out for the job and plenty of seemingly better heroes are around.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: All over the place.
- The overall cause of Momo's downfall and eventual Face–Heel Turn is the corrupt, image-driven nature of the hero industry and specifically the Sports Festival, but two individual people kicked off and concluded her descent respectively: Tokoyami, because the specific way in which he defeated her made her look completely useless and led many to suspect her family bribed U.A. to get her into the hero course, and Izuku, because him sponsoring the Heroic Contributions Act as part of his attempts at reforming the hero system sabotaged Momo's last-ditch attempt to prove her detractors wrong and forced her out of heroics entirely.
- David Shield was already one in canon due to the disastrous outcome from his plan to recover the Quirk Enhancer, but he's even more of one here, as him being arrested for his treasonous actions ruined Melissa's life as she too came under public suspicion, leading to the chain of events that led to her pulling a Face–Heel Turn along with Momo.
- Aizawa had nothing but protective intentions on his mind when he expelled and re-enrolled Mawata's entire class, believing it to have been a harsh lesson that would improve their effectiveness. What he failed to comprehend was that the black marks on their records from this action left them with effectively no options for establishing industry connections and receiving extracurricular training outside the mandatory internships, or for finding employment after graduation, leading to over half of them committing suicide or going missing and the remainder, including Mawata Fuwa, struggling in their careers and losing their licenses under the new Heroic Contributions Act, resulting in them first forming an Alliance of Revenge against Aizawa and U.A. and then joining Momo and Melissa to form the Fallen Heroes Alliance.
- Mawata herself is one, as her defense of Aizawa led to her classmates not being able to address the issue of the black marks on their records before graduation; this led her to become The Atoner with a martyr complex as an adult, going as far as to become a Death Seeker following her Face–Heel Turn.
- Arguably the single biggest example, however, is Eri, whose innocence and adoration of Izuku was manipulated by the HPSC immediately following the final battle with Shigaraki to get her to talk him into being rewound back to just before the battle, so that he'd get to keep One for All, which marks the Point of Divergence with canon. This, of course, was so that the HPSC could piggyback off of Izuku's growing reputation to restore the status quo of the hero system with him being their primary supporter, which was the last thing Izuku wanted, as he's an Internal Reformist who believes the hero system needs to change to avoid repeating its mistakes and wishes not to be a singular pillar as All Might had been.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Fallen Heroes Alliance in general.
Wide-Eyed Idealist: Izuku Midoriya wants to fix the problems with hero society and is shown trying to enact reforms across the series, but he's ultimately too forgiving and altruistic to fully comprehend the crux of many of the problems he's trying to fix. This results in Momo (and later, Shoto) admitting to themselves that they can't respect him as much as they want to because his worldview makes him unable to truly acknowledge the problems they're facing.
Because he didn't care for such motivations, he'd overlooked this critical detail when he pushed for the Heroic Contributions Act, failing to realize just how much heroes required external validation to function. His "Just do your best" mentality implicitly demanded that every hero should try to succeed in their goals without any consideration for the causes behind the obstacles they may face, and implied that any hero who failed to live up to their potential had only themselves to blame for it regardless of their circumstances. Most importantly, he idolized the hero industry far too much to even contemplate the idea that the field of heroism should be allowed to die out, even as he himself acknowledged and attempted to correct some of its flaws.
You Are in Command Now: Due to the fact he was the only member of the HPSC's leadership to survive the Paranormal Liberation War in canon, Yokumiru Mera is the new president of the HPSC.

The Everything Villain: Arsenal

0% Approval Rating:
- Momo Yaoyorozu/Creati: Due to her loss to Tokoyami in her first year Sports Festival (where she was pushed out of bounds before she could create a single weapon to defend herself), she is seen as incompetent. Combined with her decision to intern under Uwabami, and cast in the light of a post-war Japan that doesn't blindly trust heroes, she's seen as a Rich Bitch whose parents bribed UA to let her in. Notably, her vigilante persona, Arsenal, is not subject to this, by virtue of nobody knowing who Arsenal is under the mask (until the Rebound Agency find out).
- Melissa Shield: Many people consider her an accomplice in the events of My Hero Academia: Two Heroes, despite her genuinely being unaware of the plot until it was revealed.
Adaptational Jerkass: Mei Hatsume. While she's meant to come across as a well-meaning, if socially inept, inventor in canon, the author focuses more on her behavior rather than what she says about her motivations, and she's portrayed here as someone manipulative and completely unconcerned about the interests of others who invents solely for the sake of inventing, her curiosity trumping any semblance of moral code or tact. This is quickly emphasized in the first chapter Mei appears in, where she blackmails Momo into being her personal 3D printer, and Melissa reveals that her first interaction with Mei saw the support student badger her for any information that could be used to create a second Quirk Enhancer (which naturally gets Mei suspended when the school faculty finds out).
All for Nothing: All of Momo's efforts to become a hero and all of the sacrifices made in her name are rendered meaningless when the Heroic Contributions Act costs her her hero license.
Alliance of the Alienated:
- Deconstructed and later Reconstructed with Momo's partnership with Melissa. Momo and Melissa quickly become very close friends over their similar plight of being wrongly vilified by the media, the former for her supposed incompetence and lack of drive compared to her peers resulting from her poor Sports Festival showing and her being largely kept away from the action ever since then based on that false assumption, and the latter due to unfounded accusations of her being involved in her father's plot. The end result of their closeness is that they become further associated with each other in the eyes of the public and the other U.A. students, who assume both of them are in on the other's alleged moral failings. However, this also means they have few others to turn to but each other, resulting in their friendship being maintained and playing a key role in their disillusionment and Face–Heel Turn when Momo ends up being rejected from heroics entirely years after her graduation.
- Invoked by Shoto when he offers Momo a position in Endeavor's old agency, which he has inherited, since his own public image troubles (as a result of Toya/Dabi falsely making him out to be involved in Endeavor's Domestic Abuse rather than being its victim) have made him acutely aware of the ramifications of Momo's struggles. Momo turns down the offer, however, since her earlier experience with Melissa has led her to believe it would only lead to the public seeing all three of them as being together in "crime".
Because I Said So: Momo notes at one point that the actual legal definition of "villain" is insanely broad, with it literally encompassing anyone who uses their quirk without a license, regardless of motive or outcome (e.g. someone using a quirk to injury someone while robbing a store is on par with a nurse using a quirk to relieve pain during hospice care). As a result, whether someone is considered a villain depends just as much on how law enforcement is feeling that day as it does them actually committing a crime, if not moreso.
Broken Pedestal: Izuku Midoriya to Momo Yaoyorozu. While she initially seeks him out for advice and his analysis of how she could better use her Quirk for battle is helpful, it's brought down by two things; his suggestion of Hatsume as a support engineer resulting in Momo becoming little more than the support department's human 3D printer for several weeks, and more importantly, his refusal to accept that Momo is having difficulties with her hero career under the belief that she's just having confidence issues, as he sees her for the powerhouse she is, so clearly everyone else must see it too. What takes her from disillusioned to disdaining him comes a few years after graduation, however, as him sponsoring the Heroic Contributions Act leads to the end of Momo's hero career as The Everything Hero: Creati, as the hero community and the general public dismissing her as little more than a nuisance and constantly refusing her help meant that she couldn't meet the quota necessary to keep her license. After this, Momo can't help but view him as a Wide-Eyed Idealist who doesn't actually understand the problems of the system he's trying to fix.
Butterfly of Doom: After getting her hero license revoked, Momo laments that everything she suffers over the fic happened "[a]ll for the want of a win in some tournament."
Catch-22 Dilemma: The crux of Momo's circumstances that leads to the fic. In order to prove herself capable, Momo must have opportunities to do so, opportunities she is denied because she hasn't proven herself capable. This eventually leads to her losing her hero license under the new Heroic Contributions Act; she is regularly rebuffed when trying to solve cases since people see her as a Spoiled Brat. This leads to her not making the cutoff under the HCA.
Create Your Own Villain: The entirety of the Fallen Heroes Alliance.
- Momo and Melissa are broken down by the toxic hero system until they eventually decide to become villains in order to tear it all down.
- Aizawa is the architect of his own destruction through his treatment of Class 2-A. Putting an expulsion on their academic records irrevocably tainted them in the eyes of society, driving many to either kill themselves, leave Japan entirely, or run afoul of human traffickers. The rest become the founding members of the FHA partially out of personal revenge towards him.
Cynicism Catalyst: The entire story serves as a years-long catalyst for Momo.
Death of a Child: In Chapter 5, Momo is prevented from interfering in a hostage situation that results in the hostage, a small child, being killed.
Detrimental Determination: On some level, Momo knows that by the end of her time at U.A. the best thing she can do for herself is to acknowledge her dream of becoming a Pro Hero as a lost cause and pack it in. However, doing so would validate all of her detractors and shame her classmates and friends - such is the trap of the phrase "plus ultra". Thus, Momo continues to pursue her doomed dream.
Early-Bird Cameo: In a social media segment showing the largely negative public reception to Momo, Mawata makes a brief appearance as one of the Chatter profiles disparaging her, two chapters (and over four years in-universe) before she makes her proper in-story appearance, by which point she's lost almost all of her assertiveness (for reasons that are revealed in the sequel) and learns that her opinion of her kohai was wrong.
Eat the Rich: A lot of the problems Momo faces stem from the fact that she comes from wealth and privilege in a society that has grown to suspect both after the confrontation with the Meta Liberation Army. By Chapter 5, Momo's parents can't even leave their estate without an armed escort, and the year after Momo's graduation an armed mob breaks into the estate and maims her mother.
Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: When Melissa explains her brief "relationship" with Hatsume, Momo wonders what Hatsume would want out of Melissa, only to have a horrified realization and think "Oh. Oh no." when she concludes that Hatsume wanted the Quirk Enhancer that caused so much heartache on I-Island.
Face–Heel Turn: Momo Yaoyorozu and Melissa Shield, as well as the entirety of the former Class 2-A. They become the Fallen Heroes Alliance.
Foregone Conclusion: The story's introduction makes it clear that Momo is ultimately going to become a villain, and the tags show Melissa is going to turn heel alongside her.
Good Parents: Momo's parents are genuinely loving and two of the only people to unconditionally support her doomed hero career.
Hope Spot: Chapter 2 ends on a triumphant note for Momo with her and Melissa successfully creating a new costume with plenty of advanced weaponry, but the author's note makes it clear that it's all downhill from here.
Inherent in the System: The ultimate conclusion Momo reaches regarding the flaws in hero society.
The whole thing was nothing more than a thinly-veiled, government-sanctioned form of autocracy. No matter how many people demanded changes and reforms to "improve" it, it could never be truly fixed; not when its very existence depended on granting privileges and the right to enforce the status quo to a small fraction of the population, and on keeping the rest of the population forcibly dependent upon this elite minority.
Innocently Insensitive: Izuku Midoriya, due to his personal belief that Momo is a great hero, refuses to accept that she is having problems with her hero career as a result of her dismal public image; since he knows Momo is actually very capable, he can't comprehend the idea established heroes or the general public might not realize it and not give her the chance to show her prowess.
Leonine Contract: Hatsume's deal with Momo. Momo needs better support gear in order to perform better as a hero. However, Hatsume is only willing to offer said support gear as long as Momo is willing to give her whatever she wants in terms of supplies and gadgets. Furthermore, since Hatsume is seen as a sort of god to the other support students, Momo doesn't even have the choice of going to another student, not that any of them would treat her better than Hatsume. It takes Melissa Shield arriving at UA to break Momo out of the deal.
Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: Shoto could stomp Momo into the dirt in three seconds flat during their Sports Festival fight, but as a courtesy he allows her to arm herself before making the first move. It doesn't stop him from winning the fight, or the public from raking both of them over the coals afterwards.
Living a Double Life: By the start of Chapter 5, Momo has taken up a double life moonlighting as the "vigilante" Arsenal in order to do hero work without the stigma attached to Momo Yaoyorozu and her hero identity, Creati.
Loophole Abuse: During an incident during Momo's internship with Gang Orca, he orders her to simply follow Kyoka and do whatever she needs. Kyoka creatively interprets this and says she needs Momo on the front lines, giving her a badly-needed shot at some positive press.
Mundane Made Awesome: All Might can't resist dramatically spouting his catchphrase "I am here!" when he performs the mundane action of opening a door to let Momo into his office.
My God, What Have I Done?: The rookie hero Ignition is horrified when he incinerates a plastic villain and accidentally melts his arms, causing him to drop a child hostage to her death. Even the villain himself is described as frozen in a state of shock.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: The Heroic Contributions Act is a well-intentioned attempt to root out corruption and incompetence, but its use of absolute measurements to determine a hero's worth means that heroes who aren't given opportunities to shine like Momo will fall through the cracks. The Act ultimately proves the death knell for Momo's career as a hero.
Only Friend: By the time Momo graduates from U.A., all of her relationships with her peers have fallen apart, and she openly despises Izuku in particular for his blind optimism. The only exceptions are Shoto and Melissa, who are going through a lot of the same crap she is and are able to empathize, and to a lesser extent Kyoka.
Playing the Victim Card: When Momo realizes Hatsume is stringing her along for her own benefit, Hatsume loudly accuses Momo of going back on their deal to make herself look like the victim and keep Momo under her control.
Protagonist Journey to Villain: Ultimately, this is the story of how Momo Yaoyorozu becomes the world's greatest villain. After her bad showing at the Sports Festival ruins her career and life and she meets other individuals who were screwed over by the broken hero system, she turns villain in order to bring about change on a fundamental level.
Pyrrhic Victory: Two in the third year Sports Festival.
- Momo has an amazing showing, beating Bakugou and making it to the finals against Shoto. However, the public sees her reliance on support items as more evidence that she's an incompetent faker coasting on her family's riches, worsening her public image and rendering her triumph completely moot.
- Shoto brings home the gold, but being tainted by his association with Endeavor and seen as a monster who coasted off the sacrifices of innocents results in him being booed even more viciously than Momo.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Momo delivers a short one to Izuku after realizing he doesn't understand how societal norms play into society's problems.
Momo: Midoriya, I know that you've already inspired millions. You're going to usher in a new, fairer hero society, and I'm sure that that society will regard you as a new pillar to uphold it. But it has become clear to me, from the conversation we just had, that your desire to help other people is far greater than your ability to recognize how best to do so. [uses her Quirk to don her hero costume, ditching her dress and gown]
Izuku: Yaoyorozu, wait—
Momo: You'll never be a Symbol of Hope to me.
Sadistic Choice: When Momo realizes Hatsume has no intention of creating the support gear she needs and confronts her, Hatsume loudly accuses her of giving up on her. This puts Momo into a no-win situation directly described by the narration as a sadistic choice - either remain under Hatsume's thumb in an abusive and exploitative relationship that will likely result in Momo ending up empty-handed, or desert her and look like the bad guy in the eyes of the support department who will inevitably side with one of their own and in the process further jeopardize her already-tenuous career prospects. Fortunately, Melissa Shield arriving at U.A. provides Momo an out.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Melissa is treated as a villain for so long due to her father's actions that she eventually comes to see the entire Japanese hero system as fundamentally unsalvagable and decides to become the villain everyone sees her as for real.
Shamed by a Mob:
- This is a big enough problem for Momo due to her poor reputation that, by her graduation, she's taken to using her new costume and flight gear when leaving the U.A. campus to avoid being hounded. It continues as an adult and makes it all but impossible for her to carry out hero work, which is the initial reason she develops her Arsenal alter ego so she can pretend to be a vigilante and circumvent her optics problems.
- Momo's parents are also harassed by angry crowds, as the fallout from the Paranormal Liberation War has led to a massive distrust in heroes and the upper class, with Momo's supposed incompetence "proving" they relied on connections to get their daughter into U.A. They end up being forced back into their limousine and driven off while trying to attend her graduation, and during the four-year Time Skip between it and the next chapter, they were assaulted in their mansion by another such mob, leading to Momo's mother being rendered paraplegic.
Small Role, Big Impact: Fumikage Tokoyami has two scenes total, neither of which are particularly important to the plot. However, his Curb-Stomp Battle of Momo during the first Sports Festival starts a chain of events that ultimately ruins both her career and life and leads to her Face–Heel Turn.
Then Let Me Be Evil: Melissa proposes this after Momo argues they would be seen as villains if Momo kept acting as a vigilante despite losing her hero license.
Melissa: If we end up becoming villains as part of continuing to help as many people as we can, maybe it would be worth it.
Momo: [shocked] Mel-Melissa— did you just— Melissa, think about what happened when your father went that far. Think about how much of your problems since then resulted from that.
Melissa: Yes, and because of that I've already spent the last six years of my life being treated as a villain in the eyes of the public. I have nothing left to lose by actually becoming one, and neither do you. Sometimes you have to put your foot down and make a stand even if the entire world seems to be against you.
[...]
Momo: [grateful] But Melissa, you don't have to go that far just for my sake.
Melissa: It's not just for your sake, it's for mine as well. I'm tired of pretending I'm fine with the way I'm treated by the world. If people will only see me as a villain, if people will only allow me to be a villain, perhaps that's who I should be, just to spite them. And if we end up arrested and jailed, or even killed, like so many other villains-so what? You know that we're already heading towards disaster. Our reputations have made sure of that. We might as well send the world a message while at it.
Time Skip:
- There's one of several months between the end of Ch. 2, when Momo gets the first iteration of her completely reworked costume and equipment late in her second year, and Ch. 3, which cuts to the aftermath of her third-year Sports Festival and reveals that her struggles to prove the public wrong about her supposed incompetence came far too late to save her future career.
- There's a much longer one that spans four years between the end of Ch. 4, showing Class 1-A's graduation, and Ch. 5, which shows that Momo's fears about her future have been realized as she continues to be marginalized within the hero industry and that she's at risk of losing what little she has left for her career due to the Heroic Contributions Act being about to come into effect.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The in-universe author's notes for Chapter 4 express this opinion regarding Izuku's actions in his fight with Shoto during the first Sports Festival. While he was right in that the fire half of Shoto's Quirk was ultimately Shoto's power and not his father's, demanding Shoto use it denied him agency and the ability to make a statement against his abusive father that might have helped protect him from the backlash he would face during the start of his adult career.
Vigilante Man: Momo, by necessity, for the latter half. Though she has a hero license, people refuse to work with her hero persona due to false allegations regarding her ability in a fight. As a result, she moonlights as the titular Arsenal, using a different costume and hiding her face, and claiming Arsenal's takedowns as her own in order to up her case-solve rate. Unfortunately, it's not enough to escape the Heroic Contributions Act, forcing her to go full vigilante and eventually pulling a Face–Heel Turn.
Villain Has a Point: It's noted in an article about the Heroic Contributions Act that Stain wasn't wrong to criticize the increasing corruption of hero society, even if his standards were far too high and he took his ideals way too far.

Kota's Hero Academia: The Rise of the Ultimate Villain

Absurdly Divided School: Due to the fame and popularity most of the canon Class 1-A (dubbed the "Hell Class" by the media) garnered even before they graduated, there is a widespread misconception that U.A. puts the "better" hero students in 1-A compared to 1-B, which has understandably negatively affected every subsequent Class 1-B since then and led to much greater friction between the two classes by the time Kota begins at U.A.
Accidental Murder: Kota's water blast attack against Doromichi during their match ends up diluting the slime girl's body to the point that she's rendered clinically dead, as she's left unconscious and unresponsive, her body unable to reform itself for several hours. The only reason she was able to be revived was because he was stopped by Ashido (who was the guest playing referee) before Doromichi became diluted to the point of actually dissolving in the water.
Alliance of the Alienated:
- In a one-sided case of this trope, this is the reason Momo comes to consider Yuka as a possible successor in case she fails to destroy the hero system as Arsenal, as Yuka ends up being made out to be incapable and condemned or dismissed by the audience during the Sports Festival tournament despite in fact being very capable, much as happened to Momo herself a decade prior.
- This is also the reason Setsuna Tokage ends up sending Yuka an internship offer, as while she never ended up being humiliated and publicly disgraced in such a manner, she never managed to get a chance to prove herself in a big way either and thus knows what it is like to be badly underestimated and prevented from serving to one's full capacity in the hero system.
All Your Base Are Belong to Us: During the final planning stages for the upcoming Operation Wardrobe, which is intended to reveal the existence of the Alliance to the wider public, Mawata suggests launching an attack on Might Tower, Izuku's current headquarters. Momo keeps rejecting the idea for an entire week on the basis it's far too risky and that it makes for poor PR at this point, but when Mawata refuses to back down due to her self-sacrificial ideals, she approves a modified, much smaller-scale version of the plan that she'd come up with some time ago, just in case it became necessary. It's shown that Momo was right to be opposed to the plan when it turns out even her smaller-scale, just-in-case operation was untenable and results in Mawata being captured, a costly blow even with the remainder of Operation Wardrobe going as planned.
Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Momo has fully reverted back to this trope by the time of this story. Though still genuinely caring to those in her command as the leader of the Alliance, she rarely shows the level of affection she did when she was seeking approval from her former classmates. Homura mentions at one point she's grown more distant than she'd been when the Alliance was founded, with Melissa being a notable exception.
Anti-Mentor: While the previous story alluded to Aizawa's incompetence as a teacher, this one shows him in his full "glory". Within the first ten chapters, he isolates the new 1-A from their peers by refusing to let them attend orientation, puts them through a test that's unfairly biased towards direct physical Quirks (plus one clever technopath), expels a student on the first day just for not meeting his standards in spite of the genuinely life-ruining consequences this could have, and practices Figure It Out Yourself as a teaching method.
Apathetic Teacher: Aizawa, even more than he than he was in the previous fic.
Ascended Extra: In addition to Kota, several members of the new 1-A and 1-B are characters who debuted as children in within canon, including Tsuyu’s younger sister, Satsuki, several elementary students who appeared during the Remedial License Arc, and Yuka from an early chapter of the light novels.
Ascended Fanboy: More than a few of the hero students qualify.
- Needless to say, Kota, Eri, and Katsuma are huge fans of Izuku in spite of being on a First-Name Basis with him; a brief segment showing a group chat reveals Mahoro (who is Camie's sidekick at the moment) is also one, and they form the Red Shoes Club.
- Eri is also implied to be still a big fan of Mirio when her merch collection is brought up, and she's similarly close to Ochako as well.
- Reita Yukikawa is the biggest Ochako fan in the story, and is starstruck when she shows up in person as a guest instructor at the USJ; he's so elated when she sends him an internship offer on Eri's recommendation that he doesn't even care that's the only internship offer he got.
- Yuka is a massive fangirl of Fumikage, as a result of him having been the one to save her and help her out with her newly manifested Quirk in the light novel she first appeared in.
- The Class Rep of the new 1-A, Ren Katsushimo, is a huge fan and family friend to Itsuka Kendo, who was taught at her family's dojo. She's also a fan of vigilantes, especially Arsenal, though she's not aware of the latter's true identity.
The Atoner: Mawata Fuwa continues to feel immense guilt over continuing to support Aizawa after the whole class expulsion he pulled on cohort, not realizing until far too late that her classmates were right about how much the man ruined their futures, by which point she was no longer trusted as the class representative, making her lose faith in her judgement and ability to lead. In addition, she blames herself for being unable to save all the classmates who, due to becoming nigh-unemployable thanks to the black mark on their education records, ended up committing suicide, ended up as human trafficking victims, or met other such fates. All of this left her with a good deal of survivor's guilt and a need to prove her worth by sacrifice if need be, to the concern of her closest friends.
Awesomeness by Analysis: Izuku may be painfully naive, but he’s still no slouch mentally.
- He's the first person to dismiss the Nomu theory in favor of Arsenal being an individual with an extremely flexible Quirk that has a wide array of applications.
- He works out the true identity of another Alliance member, Radiovore, by noting that her codename indicates her Quirk is radiation-related (which isn't common), checking the Quirk Registry for any missing individuals with such Quirks, and then talking to Radiovore while in disguise to watch her reaction to him bringing this up.
Back from the Dead: Doromichi actually died after Kota's water blast. The only reason she could come back is because there was still enough of her body left to regenerate, as well as the timely arrival of first aid.
Beat Them at Their Own Game: This is one of the two main strategies of Momo and the rest of the Fallen Heroes Alliance for taking down the hero system. As Arsenal, Momo shows herself to be vastly superior at taking down villains than the majority of Japan’s pro-heroes, undermining the myth that only heroes can be trusted to take on crime with their Quirks. In addition, many of their members operate out of the oft-ignored rural areas of Japan, helping increase their support base among those that feel neglected by heroes.
Big Sister Worship: Satsuki adores Tsuyu to the point of effectively turning her room at Heights Alliance into a shrine for her sister and running out of space, which Tsuyu chides her for.
Boring, but Practical: Shinomura possesses a Quirk allowing him to control technology within a short radius of him, which is very effective in the Battle Trials, but not flashy enough to be considered for hero work in the eyes of society, which gave him a deep hatred for those with "heroic" quirks.
Calling Card: Arsenal/Momo paints her insignia both at the scene of her takedowns as well as on the criminals themselves, as a way of making sure people know that it was she, and not a hero, that was responsible for it.
Casting a Shadow: One of the main hero students the story follows is Yuka, the little girl who Tokoyami saved a decade prior during one of the light novels. As in that story, her Quirk allows her to transform into and merge with shadows to possess and control both it and any non-living solid objects covered by it, making her all but impossible to hurt and extremely powerful with her Quirk active.
Combat Commentator: Present Mic serves as this for the Sports Festival. It's deconstructed in that while he's probably not conscious of his role in the fundamentally flawed nature of the Festival, the fact that the participants have to keep the attention of a fallible human being further biases the competition into favoring what's flashy above all else.
Cool and Unusual Punishment: After his stunt at the Sports Festival, Shinomura is forced to go under extensive close combat training under Aizawa. It wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that Aizawa, in a especially petty move, forbids him from doing any training with his quirk under threat of expulsion, since he views it as nothing but a crutch as opposed to something that should be trained further itself.
The Cracker: Even more so than the equipment she invents, this is Melissa's greatest contribution as a founding member of the Fallen Heroes Alliance, and pretty much no firewall is truly safe against her given that she managed to hack I-Island as a teenager. She's mentioned as having repeatedly hacked into the HPSC without anyone the wiser, and even manages to breach U.A.'s firewall, though that one is risky enough she has to quickly cover her tracks and leave after achieving her primary objective. She's also been put in charge of the Alliance's cybersecurity to make sure this trope doesn't end up happening to them.
Crazy-Prepared:
- It's mentioned that all of the Alliance's major operations are set up with multiple supporting elements that are still independent enough of each other to deliver some result even if all the other elements end in failure. As mentioned in Xanatos Gambit below, Operation Bletchley and its supporting Operation Cavalry serve as a good example.
- During Operation Bletchley, Momo has Melissa pack her bags before she starts hacking into U.A.'s cybersecurity in case her location is discovered and she has to run for it (she doesn't).
- Despite the fact Momo actively opposes any plans to launch a raid on Might Tower, she has pre-prepared plans for such a scenario just in case she ran out of other options.
- Izuku brings facial disguises with him everywhere so he can go incognito at a moment's notice if he needs to.
Crime of Self-Defense: According to a Geddit comment, it is directly illegal to use your Quirk in self-defense, so if you're about to be murdered and there's no hero nearby your only options are to be murdered or face criminal charges for illegal Quirk usage.
Crippling Overspecialization:
- Several characters note that hero training is geared more towards promoting close combat, which is flashier and more visible, as opposed to the more pragmatic approach of using ranged attacks to take down an opponent before they can fight or flee. This is to say nothing of how rescue work is often de-emphasized, or how non-combat support quirks are ignored almost entirely. Aizawa's quirk assessment test and the Sports Festival are highlighted as the biggest examples of this.
- The limitations of close-combat tactics doesn't just apply to the heroes. Homura, in spite of being one of the founding members of the Fallen Heroes Alliance and the physically strongest member when fully charged up on radiation, only rarely gets to head out as the vigilante Radiovore (when all the other founding members bar Melissa engage in vigilantism on a near-daily basis) because the Alliance's usage of long-range tactics, stealthy infiltration and cyberterrorism means there isn't much she can do that the other founding members or some of their newer recruits can't do better.
- Shinomura mentally complains that all Aizawa's forced combat training will just result in this for him. Since ideal use of his technology quirk means that he'll likely be a good distance away from the action in most missions, he believes that close combat isn't something that he should be heavily focused on, much less exclusively focused on.
Curb-Stomp Battle:
- Arsenal/Momo's first appearance in this installment has her chase down the leader of a smuggling ring, wreck his car from long range to prevent his escape, then maim him after shrugging off his last-ditch effort to electrocute her thanks to the technology of her suit.
- While it isn’t shown, Momo’s unplanned fight with Bakugo was this, ending with Momo defeating him easily by cooking off the sweat on his hands and catching him in his own explosion.
- During Battle Trials, Yuka has her partner turn off the lights to the building to plunge it into darkness and then utterly crushes Haru Itsushimo's hero team without them being able to do anything to her.
- Ochako very quickly turns the tables against the Fallen Heroes Alliance when the latter launches Operation Cavalry, floating a good chunk of their recruited forces skyward in a single move. Unfortunately, the FHA never had any intention of actually attacking the USJ and the whole thing was only a distraction from Operation Bletchley.
- The Sports Festival tournament sees its share of this:
  - Kota easily trounces Hikaru Tokiwayuki of 1-B, partly because his Quirk hard-counters hers and partly because she underestimated him.
  - Shunmi Doromichi No Sells everything Takashi tries to do to her because her semisolid nature renders her invulnerable to his physical attacks.
  - Haru exploits the lack of cover in the ring and the ring-out rule to defeat Yuka before the latter can even do anything, as payback for her own curbstomp against them during Battle Trials as mentioned above. This is Deconstructed, as it leads to Yuka ending up being viewed as incompetent and unfit to become a pro hero, much as Momo had been a decade prior.
  - Kota utterly overwhelms Shunmi by melting her body down with his water once he figures out this is her weakness. Deconstructed, as he ended up clinically killing her and would have been guilty of manslaughter if not for her Quirk allowing her to revive once enough moisture has evaporated from her.
- During the internships, Tamaki Amakiji/Suneater enters the fray during a skirmish between a group of Alliance-aligned vigilantes and a Creature Rejection Clan cell and dominates both of them in the ensuing battle.
- Just as Momo had feared, Izuku vs. Mawata, Homura and Hiroto is a decisive victory for the former, even when all three of them are working together. Mawata doesn't manage to escape.
Didn't Think This Through:
- Shinomura decides to use his Quirk to hijack the PA system right after the end of the second event of the Sports Festival to rant about the rules being biased against some Quirks, including his own. While some in the audience agree with him, mostly it just serves to mark him as someone whose attitude is ill-suited to becoming a pro hero.
- During the third event of the Sports Festival, Yuka decides to attempt to beat Haru by charging at them while using her own uniform as cover by shape-shifting into darkness, forgetting until it's too late that while she is intangible in darkness form, her uniform isn't, causing her to be eliminated from the tournament in seconds.
Disappointed in You: Izuku loses a great of respect for Kota after he kills Doromichi during their match, and while we never get to know what exactly what he said to his protégé, Izuku's uncharacteristically cold demeanor whenever the topic comes up, plus Kota's reserved attitude in the following chapters don't paint a good picture.
The Dog Bites Back: The Fallen Heroes Alliance's exposes of corruption in the hero system allow some canonical victims of those instances to speak up in condemnation of those who had wronged them; this is very much planned on Momo's part, as having people outside the Alliance corroborate these accusations divides the heroes and more effectively undermines public support for the system.
- Most of the alumni from the canon Class 1-A, especially female alumni, are quick to share their dim views on Mineta and bring even more of his questionable conduct to light once Operation Winepress exposes his history of sexual harassment, thus inadvertently bringing more negative public attention to U.A. — just as the Alliance had wanted.
- When Operation Ashfall exposes the former hero Uwabami's exploitation of her interns, Itsuka is called up to her trial to testify; with some encouragement from her former classmates, who have remained close to her, she confirms the accusations to be true and reveals the full details of what really went on during her and Momo's internship with Uwabami.
Don't Create a Martyr:
- This is part of the reason why Izuku is opposed to the increasingly anti-vigilante rhetoric of the HPSC. Unfortunately for him, Mera is willing to go behind his back to launch a Japan-wide vigilante hunt, which is exactly what the Alliance had been counting on to make the heroes out to be the oppressors.
- On the flip side, this is why Momo is trying to ensure that public support for heroes and even Izuku's public image will be well and truly compromised before she confronts him in person to reveal her identity to the world, and even then she plans on defeating him non-lethally as she feels Izuku has too much public support for her to eradicate it entirely.
The Dreaded:
- Arsenal is feared throughout the criminal underworld due to their seemingly unquantifiable power and their track record of victories. By the start of the story, the long list of criminals they have captured — and in a few cases, killed — has reached over a thousand. This is partly Invoked by Momo, as her painful experience as Creati has taught her the importance of being taken seriously in a society where image matters more than substance.
- Izuku is this to the Fallen Heroes Alliance, to the point Momo actively discourages anyone other than herself from facing him in battle due to nobody else in the Alliance being able to challenge him, and even then plans to wait until she can ensure she has all the cards in her favor.
Entertainingly Wrong: Shinso, and many others, assume that Arsenal is actually a Nomu leftover from the PLW, unleashed by All For One as a final attack on society before his defeat, believing them to be using multiple Quirks. Of course, Arsenal is actually Momo, using her Quirk to create various weapons and devices that allow her to emulate virtually any Quirk imaginable.
Evil Versus Evil: The Alliance has been at war with several villain factions ever since they started to make their move, with the Creature Rejection Clan standing out as their primary adversary outside the Heroes.
Faking the Dead: Downplayed. Momo doesn't explicitly fake her death, instead just disappearing completely from public view and letting everyone else guess what happened. She's officially considered a missing persons case, with some assuming that she's dead, either from committing suicide or being murdered. Izuku personally believes that she's out there somewhere, using the death of her hero career as an opportunity to start a new chapter of her life.
From Nobody to Nightmare: The intro of Chapter 3 takes place from the point of view of the head of a drug and illegal weapon trafficking ring. As he muses on how he became who he is, he notes that he started off as a random manufacturing worker who lost his job and home in the wake of a League of Villains attack before being scouted by the Shie Hassaikai as a drug runner and making enough money to go freelance after they were taken out.
Gone Horribly Right: Yuka's plan to use Hiragawa's sandstorm as cover to unleash her Quirk and steal everyone's flags in a Kansas City Shuffle goes so well, not even the audience notices she used her Quirk, and instead they attribute her victory to Hiragawa alone, denying her a lot of attention.
Groin Attack: The final match of the third event of the Sports Festival sees Yarikawa Chikotsu inflict a painful one to Ichiro Tamashiro with a well-timed attack. He still beats her to receive the gold medal.
The Hacktivist: Having Melissa as one of their members, as well as planting multiple converted agents among the heroes, allows the Fallen Heroes Alliance to leak incriminating information on heroes and society in general as part of a prolonged propaganda campaign against hero society. Notable examples include the following:
- Operation Winepress, which exposed Mineta's past record of sexual harassment (including one filed complaint from his agency that had been covered up) to get him arrested, while dividing the rest of the Hell Class up over their views on him and raising questions about U.A.'s qualifications as a school.
- Operation Bletchley, a Kansas City Shuffle that saw U.A.'s digital archives be infiltrated and evidence of its failings as a school leaked online in a series of media exposes. The information released include U.A.'s failure to rein in Mineta, Aizawa's expulsion record and Nedzu's complicity in allowing him to get away with it, and the fact Izuku knew about Shoto being abused by Endeavor since his first Sports festival but refused to tell anyone.
- Operation Ashfall, which exposed Uwabami's track record of exploiting her interns by forcing them to work on unpaid commercial shoots without providing any actual training, while also indirectly revealing that Momo was one of her victims rather than being a willing participant as assumed, thus helping dispel the notion she was an incompetent Rich Bitch in order to set up the inevitable reveal of Arsenal's true identity.
- Operation Fallout is mentioned as another FHA operation in the works, and will involve releasing footage of the canon Battle Trials that were acquired via Operation Bletchley, specifically the "He won't die if he dodges!" moment, to get Bakugo charged with attempted second-degree murder and undermine Izuku's credibility by pushing him to publicly defend his friend/abuser.
History Repeats: Yuka's arc parallels Momo's arc in this story as she, a promising recommendation student with a powerful Quirk, is left unable to use it in the tournament, thus ending up on the wrong end of a Curb-Stomp Battle and being forced into a Catch-22 Dilemma as her reputation plummets.
Internal Reformist:
- Izuku has been trying to reform the corruption of hero society from within for pretty much his entire career, focusing on the root causes of villainy as well as issues like Quirk discrimination, cases of Quirk misdiagnosis and lack of research leading to improper treatment, and the treatment of vigilantes as legally being villains. Unfortunately, his idealistic outlook and conditioning prevents him from seeing how fundamental the corruption of the hero industry is, meaning his reforms aren't as successful as he wants and are doomed to fail.
- It's mentioned that Hell Class alumni who are heteromorphs and are also of relatively high rank, such as Tokoyami, Tsuyu and Mina, are currently spearheading the fight against heteromorph discrimination both through their operations against the Creature Rejection Clan and through media advocacy.
- Ochako is noted as being active in economic reform in attempts to alleviate poverty, and appears to be the only character with any interest in addressing the root causes of crime. In this way, she is actually more of an effective counterpoint and rival to Momo than Izuku is, as she seeks to use her fame to solve problems that Momo has no interest in solving due to her own deeply unexamined classism.
Ironic Name: The name of the task force created to hunt down Arsenal is "Strike Force Athena". Athena is the Greek goddess of associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft, traits that fit Yaoyorozu perfectly.
Irony:
- Momo was driven to villainy due to the severe flaws plaguing hero society, exacerbated by the increased cynicism of the public and their shaken faith in the hero system following the Paranormal Liberation War. However, it is shown to the reader that many of the villains she takes down as Arsenal are people who have been similarly forced into villainy by the same societal factors that Momo is seeking to combat and are thus among the very people she is supposed to be helping.
- Momo takes immediate interest in Yuka during the Sports Festival upon noting their similar circumstances, believing she can be a future recruit. However, Yuka begins the story not only deeply admiring heroes to the extent she refuses to believe any negative press about them and hating vigilantes like Arsenal, but also having several moments where she specifically calls out Creati as an incapable hero imposter whose few successes were due to her wealth and good looks.
It's Personal:
- While Momo and the FHA are driven by the desire to reform society to ensure that people don’t suffer the way they did, it's also shown that they have a very personal stake in going after U.A. and Aizawa in particular, for how they were screwed over during their time in school.
- Melissa notes that, while there is obviously a pragmatic element to it, Momo having an operation dedicated just to exposing Uwabami is probably driven by revenge.
- Momo also decides to keep an eye on Yuka for this reason, as she notes that there are many parallels between them to the point that she is willing to consider Yuka a potential successor should she fail to topple the hero system as Arsenal.
Kansas City Shuffle:
- Operations Cavalry and Bletchley form one, with one character even dropping this trope by name. The former is a full-on frontal attack against the USJ on the 10th anniversary of the Hell Class' USJ attack that takes advantage of an ongoing protest in front of the main U.A. campus as a distraction but is itself a distraction for Operation Bletchley which is a cyberattack on UA to gather camera footage and documents that can be used to galvanize support for the Fallen Heroes Alliance's cause. Operation Bletchley is also one in and of itself, as while Melissa leads what appears to be the main information gathering hack to draw Nezu's attention, Hiroto is possessing the head of the IT security team sent to deal with Melissa's incursion, giving him the opportunity to infect UA's systems with a virus that will allow the Alliance full backdoor access to UA files.
- Towards the end of the second event of the Sports Festival, Yuka's team pulls a very successful one by having Higarawa unleash his strongest attack to cover the entire field in a sandstorm, catching all the other teams off guard. In reality, it's only intended to provide cover for Yuka to switch from defense to offense, possess the darkness that now covers the arena, and steal the million-point flag from Kota's team as well as various flags from other teams.
Karma Houdini Warranty:
- One of Momo’s first major actions in the story is invoking this for Mineta with Operation Winepress, using cyberattacks to leak Mineta’s history of sexual harassment to the public and having him finally be punished as a result.
- Later, she also invokes this on Uwabami by exposing her treatment of her interns with Operation Ashfall, as much out of revenge as to turn public opinion in her favor.
- An operation Momo has planned for the near future, named Operation Fallout, plans to invoke this on Bakugo by revealing that he knowingly used a potentially fatal attack on Izuku ten years prior during the canon Battle Trials to get him charged with attempted murder.
Kick Chick: Satsuki's fighting style revolves heavily around kicks. Justified, because like her sister Tsuyu she's a frog heteromorph and thus has immensely powerful legs.
King Incognito: Izuku keeps a set of facial protheses handy for when he wants to avoid unwanted attention while out in public. This comes in handy when the Alliance's machinations leading up to Operation Wardrobe cause a major uptick of vigilante activity even in hero-dominated areas, as he's able to meet the Alliance founding member Radiovore while undercover and, during their conversation, observe her reactions to confirm his suspicion that Radiovore is Homura Kakushima, who was in Mawata's class and thus one year above Izuku at U.A.
Lethal Chef: Momo has been banned from the kitchens in Yomi after one fire too many.
Locked Out of the Loop: Reita Yukikawa, an Original Character with a pain-alleviating Quirk, is baffled by how his senpai Eri refers to some of Japan's greatest heroes by nicknames and is very informal with them, especially once he receives an internship under his idol Ochako thanks to Eri putting in a good word to her and sees that Ochako is just as informal with Eri as vice versa.
Logical Weakness:
- Satsuki has a frog mutation Quirk like her sister, and as such absorbs most of her oxygen through her moist skin. When Higarawa creates a sandstorm in the Sports Festival's second event, she is unable to breathe for the duration of the sandstorm and nearly suffocates due to the sand sticking to her body.
- Yuka's Quirk relies on possessing external shadows and is thus completely useless if it's daylight and she doesn't have access to cover. She does have a workaround for this by possessing the shadow created by her clothing, but this increases the amount of time it takes for her to form a construct out of the shadow she's possessed that's big enough to fight with. This isn't a problem during exercises as she then usually has both external cover and time to set up an attack, but it has disastrous results for her during the Sports Festival tournament.
- Shunmi's body being made out of a clear slime makes her incredibly versatile and near-impossible to damage, but one thing she's vulnerable to are liquid-based attacks that can seep into her and dissolve her body, as both she and her opponent Kota find out the hard way during the second round of the tournament.
- Rewind being reliant on touch means that Eri can't use it to revive Shunmi after Kota's Accidental Murder of her, since there's nothing solid to touch. It takes alternative means plus Shunmi's own unusual biology to accomplish the same result.
Making a Splash: Now that he's a teenager, Kota's Quirk has become far more powerful, allowing him to carve through concrete walls or rocks with high-pressure jets of water or propel himself with the recoil.
The Mentor: More than a few canon characters train the new Class 1-A during the internships.
- Izuku becomes one for Shunmi, helping her find workarounds to her weakness against liquid-based attacks; he advises her to take advantage of her pliable nature by carrying small containers she can squeeze herself into to take cover.
- Ochako decides to send Yukikawa an offer once Eri tells her about him following a chance meeting, as she wants an intern who's more focused on rescue and medical work. It's also mentioned that she's consistently been a mentor to Eri for much of her life.
- Setsuna Tokage serves as this to Yuka, as she's suffering from being overshadowed in the industry herself and recognizes from her friends' experience that the Sports Festival tournament was biased against Yuka and wants her to have even a mediocre connection.
- Shoto sends Shinomura an offer because, after having seen Momo's struggles and ultimate failure in the hero industry and knowing of the reasons for it, he doesn't want Shinomura to be dismissed as unfit to be a hero due to having a "weak" Quirk. Unfortunately for him, Shinomura views him as a symbol of the corruption of hero society due to his parentage, leading to a very tense and difficult internship for both.
The Mole:
- The Alliance has turned multiple pro heroes and sidekicks over to their cause for the sake of gathering intel and manipulating things from behind enemy lines. For security purposes, only Momo is aware of their identities, and not all of the agents are aware she's Arsenal. The currently known agents are codenamed Mastermind, Puzzle, Tacit, Forceful, Bondage, Swarm, Echo, Fifth Element, Anonymous, and Cartographer.
- Mawata suspects the Alliance itself might have been infiltrated by an agent of the Creature Rejection Clan or that one of their informants is working for both sides when the CRC leaks false information in a failed attempt to lure Momo in and kill her as part of their ongoing shadow war.
Moral Myopia: Momo despises Mineta for his behavior towards women and takes deep joy in exposing him as a sexual predator, but puts the deceased Midnight on a pedestal and is unwilling to acknowledge it when Melissa points out that Midnight displayed predatory behavior towards her students.
Morton's Fork: The Alliance's continuously increasing presence and growing activities hits the heroes with one. Since the members of the Alliance are operating as seemingly disconnected and often well-liked vigilantes even as they bring more fellow vigilantes and Vigilante Militias into their fold, hunting them down on the basis they're legally villains (since vigilantism is considered villainy in MHA) worsens public opinion on the heroes. But allowing them to operate unchecked means they can gain even more support from the disillusioned post-PLW general public while also secretly leaking evidence of corruption to set off incriminating scandals, making the heroes look bad anyways. President Mera chooses to go with the first option against Izuku's wishes, which is exactly what the Alliance has been goading Mera towards.
Mundane Utility: Momo muses on the fact that she has used her Creation Quirk to spawn new clothes because she still hasn't gotten the hang of doing her own laundry.
Mysterious Backer: It's briefly noted that, while Yuka is a recommendation student, she actually has no clue who vouched for her.
Named by the Adaptation: Due to most of the Masegaki students not being given names in canon, the author has come up with them for the ones that are now part of the new 1-A and 1-B.
- The student with the Tongue Tank Quirk is named Masamune Sakamoto.
- The student with the Electromagnetic Bullets Quirk is named Arata Jiyumi.
- The girl with the Viral Cosmos Quirk is named Hanako Misaki.
- The boy with the King Slam Quirk is named Riku Tsuchita.
- The girl with the Queen Beam Quirk is named Akira Hasegawa.
- The boy with the Assault Dust Quirk is named Takeshi Higarawa.
- Downplayed for Yuka, who only had a first name (her full name here is Yuka Tsukishi), and for Tamashiro, who only had a last name (full name Ichiro Tamashiro).
Nobody Poops: Averted. Momo notes that her unique physiology granted by her Quirk forces her to spend more time on the can, while Ochako takes a quick leak during a lull in the Sports Festival.
Not Quite Flight:
- One of Kota's ongoing projects is mastering the technique of flying by using his Quirk as a form of rocket propulsion.
- Yuka can psychically lift herself into the air as long as she's in shadow form, since she's not affected by gravity as a shadow.
- Naoko Takahiro's Space Master Quirk can be used to lift herself into the air if she uses it to continuously compress distance vertically rather than horizontally, though it's described as a slow, clumsy process and requires her to pull some gymnastics due to it being based around her legs and feet.
- Hanako Misaki (the Viral Cosmos girl from the canon Remedial Course Arc) can fly by creating an especially large flower and riding on to of it as she moves it through the air.
- Tamashiro can fly by producing one of his Binging Balls, which can naturally hover and move through the air, and having it carry him around.
Not Quite the Right Thing: Izuku is shown to be trying to affect positive change in society by pushing for reform to the hero system. However, his efforts are ultimately shown to be doomed to failure as the hero system itself is too fundamentally flawed to continue.
Official Couple:
- Kyoka and Denki's marriage is mentioned several times, though it's also stated to be tumultuous.
- Hawks and Fuyumi are married, and it's briefly mentioned in the first chapter that they've had two children and are expecting a third, who has been born by the time Kota starts at U.A.
- Eri is in a relationship with Katsuma.
Offscreen Villain Dark Matter:
- Inverted and lampshaded for the heroes. A politician notes that U.A. spends far more of its budget than necessary on Awesome, but Impractical contraptions for the Sports Festival, such as a flying castle in the Obstacle Course.
- Justified for the Fallen Heroes Alliance, who can afford to keep developing and producing advanced equipment because of Melissa's technical expertise and the fact Momo can provide the necessary supplies with her Quirk.
Operation: [Blank]: Every Alliance operation that involves multiple components is named like this, such as Operation Winepress, Operation Bletchley, Operation Ashfall, Operation Wardrobe, and the yet-unlaunched Operation Fallout.
Out of the Frying Pan: One segment has the remnant of a human trafficking ring desperately trying to escape from Monoma and his sidekicks and interns when they launch a raid on their hideout. After losing some of their members to the heroes, they batter their out of the garage in their getaway car and, in spite of taking considerable damage, manage to get out into an open section of road where they can leave the heroes behind...and then immediately get taken out from long range by Momo, who had been Working the Same Case to add them to her list of takedowns.
Pragmatic Villainy: The Alliance's war against other villain groups acts as both an effort to get rid of rival factions, as well as a good publicity stunt to bring the public to their side. In fact, their campaign against the CRC led to their approval amongst the heteromorph community. They also have a policy against hurting or killing civilians, as they need public support for their plans to be viable.
The Purge: As a response to the rapid increase of vigilante activity in major cities and the increasing loss of public support for heroes, the HPSC orders various heroes across Japan to carry out an operation during the internships to arrest all vigilantes, especially those who are well-known to the public, in their respective operational areas. What the heroes don't realize is that the Fallen Heroes Alliance has anticipated this move, and has deliberately provoked the heroes into attacking them so they can kick off Operation Wardrobe, where they plan to reveal their existence to the public while further making heroes out to be agents of oppression and tyranny.
Quality over Quantity: After the Sports Festival, Reita Yukikawa (whose Quirk nullifies the pain of anyone he comes in contact with) only gets one internship offer, the least of any student who got offers to begin with. However, that one offer comes from Ochako Uraraka, who is simultaneously the Number 4 hero, the first rescue hero to break into the top five, his personal idol, and an excellent match for his skillset and desired career trajectory. Needless to say, Reita is not complaining.
Razor Wire: One of the original hero students in 1-B, Sayaka Otani, has a Quirk that allows her to unfurl into a razor-sharp thread, which gives her an extended reach in combat and allows her to wield herself as this trope.
Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Overlaps with I Don't Like the Sound of That Place and Meaningful Name. The main Alliance base, which is located in the still-radioactive remains of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant, is codenamed Yomi. Yomi is the polluted underworld of the dead ruled by the former creation goddess Izanami in Japanese Mythology, fitting for the base of an organization headed by a disgraced ex-heroine with the power to create anything.
Sand Blaster: The Assault Dust kid from the canon Remedial Course Arc has become a student of 1-B here, named Takeshi Higarawa. He's one of the main powerhouses of his class and the first-year hero course in general due to his massive offensive radius.
Secret-Keeper: Deconstructed. Izuku still hadn't told anyone about what Shoto said to him about his parentage during the Sports Festival, even several years later. When the FHA find a video recording of this during Operation Bletchley and post it online, people are quick to call out Izuku for keeping quiet about the abuse until Dabi revealed it at Jaku. His fans try to defend him by pointing out that no one else would have believed him, but this falls flat when Izuku publicly admits that it was a genuine mistake and apologises rather than defend himself, further intensifying the backlash.
Shadow Walker: In addition to being able to possess shadows and any nonliving object covered in said shadow, Yuka's Quirk also allows her to teleport within that same shadow for whatever amount of distance it stretches for, which comes in handy for her during the Obstacle Course event of the Sports Festival as she can simply teleport to the other end of the entrance tunnel.
Shark Man: Yoko Sachiko, one of the Recommendation Students who Kota met at the Recommendation Exam and who quickly becomes a close friend of Satsuki, is a great white shark heteromorph. Aside from the power and speed this grants her, it's significantly more sophisticated than most realize.
Sheltered Aristocrat: Downplayed by Momo; it's acknowledged that her wealthy upbringing has given her trouble adapting to life off the grid, and she still has trouble with basic chores such as cooking and laundry.
Shrinking Violet: Aya Kaisuka from the new 1-A is incredibly shy to anyone other than Shinomura.
Shrouded in Myth: Arsenal is a mysterious figure to Japan at large, as no one knows their Quirk, gender, or even more basic statistics, like height and weight. Instead, they are largely viewed as a truly superhuman figure, possibly with multiple Quirks at their disposal, capable of truly impossible feats. This is in large part to their speed and range, as they often resolve a situation and take off before anybody can get a proper view of them or attack from long distance. Also Momo and Melissa are constantly improving Momo’s armaments and suit, which changes her appearance over time, making it harder for anybody to nail down anything concrete, to say nothing of the tools she creates, which allow her to emulate any number of Quirks.
Skewed Priorities: Played with. When Shinomura hijacks U.A.'s broadcast systems with his Quirk to deliver the audience (and hero society) a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, many decry him as villainous for his Smug Snake attitude and his Boring, but Practical Quirk. Hatsume, who is watching the Sports Festival, is impressed by the hijacked broadcast and does somewhat agree with what he's saying... but cares far more about how useful his Quirk could be for her work than anything else.
Sore Loser: The circumstances of Yuka's loss in the Sports Festival give her a reputation as such. Haru is able to use the specifics of her Quirk against her to ring her out in the first seconds of the fight; Yuka, not realizing she's already lost, launches her opening salvo only to be disqualified for attacking another participant after the bell has been called. This causes a meme of her titled "Recommendation Student Literally Cannot Accept Losing" to go viral and turn her into a pariah.
Space Master: One of the original hero students in 1-A, Naoko Takahiro, has a spatial distortion Quirk that allows her to compress distance for three meters at a time in the direction her leading foot is pointing. She can do this as many times as she wants, allowing her to travel extremely quickly.
Stealthy Cephalopod: Yosuke Moritako is a hero student in 1-A who is an octopus heteromorph, and makes good use of his flexibility and ability to camouflage on the fly during the Sports Festival tournament.
Supervillain Lair: Though the first story mentioned the Alliance's plans to convert the remains of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant into one, it's in this story where we actually get to see it; though the Alliance operates a network of safehouses across Japan and most of its members operate out of them at least some of the time, Melissa needs a place that's large enough and has established infrastructure for her engineering and tech development work that's still out of the public eye, hence this trope being invoked. Homura is usually kept on the base so she can feed off of the remaining radiation, thus keeping it habitable and fueling herself at the same time.
Switching P.O.V.: The story switches between its cast of new hero students and its villains, as well as featuring news articles and social media posts where appropriate.
Sympathy for the Devil: One of Izuku's better qualities is his refusal to ignore the circumstances that drove villains down the paths they took. His personal office prominently contains a portrait of the League of Villains (sans All For One) with the inscription "Remember them not for who they were, but for who they might have become in a better world" on the frame.
Technologically Advanced Foe: The Fallen Heroes Alliance as a whole functions as this to the pro heroes. Not only does Momo rely on creating advanced weaponry with her Quirk to fight at the level of Japan's best heroes, the Alliance as a whole has access to various high-tech equipment to a greater extent than many heroes, and cyberattacks are a standard procedure of their propaganda campaign.
Technopath: This is Shinomura's Quirk, and while it does nothing to enhance him physically, he gets a lot of mileage out of it during the Battle Trials by using it to take over the security systems of the building his team is supposed to defend. He also puts it to good use during the first event of the Sports Festival, by teaming up with another student who can reassemble the drones serving as the first obstacle into an impromptu hoverbike and then using his Quirk to fly both of them through the Obstacle Course.
Too Clever by Half: Naoko's decision to use her Space Master Quirk to win the first event of the Sports Festival comes back to bite her once she learns that taking her flag is an Instant-Win Condition in the second event, leaving her without teammates until a desperate Kota (who's already picked up Moritako and Satsuki) recruits her and resulting in their team being the obvious target.
Too Desperate to Be Picky: This is the reason Yuka picked Setsuna's internship offer, as nobody in the Top 50 sent her an offer and Setsuna was the highest-ranked hero she had available. It proves to be a better choice than Yuka realizes.
Took a Level in Jerkass: Aizawa is shown to be even more harsh and judgmental than before. In addition to being openly Quirkist, only valuing quirks that have direct combat use to the point that he views using non-combat ones as a sign of laziness and incompetence, he's dropped virtually any pretense of actually being a teacher. He never provides any actual instruction in his classes and deems anyone who has the gall to ask questions or request guidance to be morons who don't deserve to be in the course.
Vigilante Execution: While the vast majority of Momo's takedowns as Arsenal end with her leaving the other villain with her insignia on them in a place where the police can find them, it's mentioned that she has killed some of her targets in the past due to circumstances demanding use of lethal force. Officially, she's murdered five criminals out of more than a thousand takedowns, but it's implied the true number is higher than that (with Momo's own count sitting at a dozen or so).
Vigilante Militia: The Fallen Heroes Alliance, and they've also been recruiting other examples of this trope and converting them into Alliance cells scattered across Japan.
Villain Protagonist: Momo Yaoyorozu/Arsenal, as per her Face–Heel Turn at the end of The Everything Hero: Arsenal, as well as the rest of the Fallen Heroes Alliance.
Villain with Good Publicity: Invoked by the Alliance as the lynchpin of their plans, partly because the circumstances that drove them to villainy in the first place showed the impact of negative publicity and led them to realize how easily it could be turned against the pro heroes. Between the existing disillusionment towards pro heroes that had been ongoing since the Paranormal Liberation War, media leaks through various channels of the corruption of the industry and their vigilante work (especially in neglected areas), most of the founding members of the Alliance have a sizable public following in spite of nobody yet knowing they're part of a single organization. Momo in particular receives far more acceptance and respect from the public under her Arsenal persona than she ever did as a pro hero.
Wacky Homeroom: Kota's new 1-A isn't any less crazy than Izuku's had been a decade earlier.
We ARE Struggling Together: The HPSC, and particularly its current president Mera, frequently clashes with Izuku due to the latter's attempts at reform. It gets to the point that when the Commission plans a Japan-wide operation against vigilantes as a response to their increased activity (which is secretly caused by the Alliance galvanizing, equipping and incorporating other vigilante groups into their circle), Izuku is left in the dark due to his sympathies for vigilantes and has to rely on his own intuition to suspect what the HPSC has in mind.
Wham Episode:
- Chapter 6 has Momo's first P.O.V segment in the story and the reveal that the Fallen Heroes Alliance will carry out Operation Bletchley, a move against U.A. by the end of the week.
- Chapter 10 has the Fallen Heroes Alliance launch Operation Bletchley, fooling most of the heroes into believing another USJ attack is about to happen and then having Melissa hack into the U.A. archives and extract incriminating information to draw Nezu's attention while Hiroto infiltrates the school and carries out the actual main hack, resulting in U.A. being roped into the ongoing scandal about Mineta's conduct and giving the Alliance plenty of future propaganda material.
- Chapter 16 has Yuka be on the wrong end of a Curb-Stomp Battle during the third event of the Sports Festival as a result of the setting itself being biased against her, resulting in her being made out to be incompetent and undeserving of her Recommendation Student status just as Momo had been a decade prior.
- Chapter 17 has Kota temporarily kill Shunmi Doromichi during their match by accident, straining his long friendship with Izuku and giving him a reputation for brutality.
Working the Same Case: This is the case for a lot of the Alliance's villain takedowns, as a big part of their strategy is undermining the authority of heroes by bringing their effectiveness into question.
- Shortly before the start of the story, Momo and Katsuki ended up in this situation when both of them tried to raid a Creature Rejection Clan stronghold, resulting in the two of them having a brief confrontation after the Clanists were dealt with that ended in favor of Momo; the result was her becoming the first S-ranked villain in Japan since the Paranormal Liberation War while also affirming that her vigilante identity had plenty of public support, thus pushing her to accelerate her plans, while Katsuki was so badly injured by her that he's still in rehab over a year later, during Kota's first term at U.A.
- Momo's first onscreen appearance in the story has her take down a crime boss Shinso had been investigating for some time; she leaves the scene immediately before he turns up, and he notes that Arsenal has taken down some of his other targets in the past.
- During the internships, a vigilante network that the Alliance is trying to recruit as a new cell goes after a Creature Rejection Clan cell that's already being suppressed by several pro heroes, including Tamaki. This results in Tamaki and his intern Yarikawa Chikotsu attacking and defeating both parties and arresting all the Clanists; the vigilantes only manage to escape thanks to Hiroto having been sent out to coordinate with them and possessing Yarikawa to give them an opening.
- Momo runs into this trope again the following week when both she and Monoma (the latter accompanied by two sidekicks and two interns) make a move on the same gang of human traffickers that have escaped a prior raid the previous week. Monoma and his team get there first and arrest some of the villains, but Momo takes down the ones who attempt a breakout in their getaway car.
Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Momo mentions several times that the Alliance should never harm civilians, partly because they need the public to side with them, partly because she still has a sense of morals even as a villain, and partly because of her trauma from the Paranormal Liberation War.
Xanatos Gambit: Momo plans Operation Bletchley in such a way that she's guaranteed to get something from its outcome regardless of how it panned out. To boot:
- Operation Cavalry, which is intended to distract from the main cyberwarfare operation, kicks off while the heroes are distracted trying to suppress civilian demonstrators in front of the main U.A. campus, meaning that regardless of whether it accomplishes its objective, it will worsen hero-civilian relationships. While Ochako's presence means Mawata can't keep up the distraction for as long as planned, it's long enough to allow Bletchley to kick off.
- Meanwhile, the two primary components of the main operation involve both a hack into U.A.'s archives while the heroes are occupied dealing with Operation Cavalry aimed at getting specific, especially incriminating files and an infiltration of the campus that takes advantage of Nezu's response to said hacking attack to get whatever was missed and plant a virus into the system. This means that if one of those components fails, the other component will still find some success, and if both components fail, the aforementioned civilian-hero conflict aspect of Operation Cavalry still provides a PR victory for the Alliance. Melissa's hack manages to find the primary targets before Nezu is able to lock her back out of U.A.'s systems, while Hiroto's infiltration goes off almost perfectly save for a shortage of storage space on his USB drive, giving the Alliance an even bigger PR victory as they immediately leak evidence of poor practices within U.A. and have more material left for later exposes.
Xanatos Speed Chess: While individual plans are an example of this, Momo and the FHA in general are forced to speed up all of their operation in the wake of Momo’s defeat of Bakugo as Arsenal, as while the unplanned incident helped verify that there was significant support for vigilantes that they can leverage, it also gave the HPSC a good excuse to make Arsenal an S-Rank Villain priority target.

Entropy: The Fate of the Hero System

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Entropy: The Fate of the Hero System

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