~O~

"Do you want to know what really happened in Midoriya's room?" 

The ash blonde in question quirked up an eyebrow and sat a little straighter. What happened in Midoriya's room? Did that mean Nezu knew who attacked the green head? If he did, he shouldn't be telling Bakugou, right? Everyone was supposed to think that the students were clueless on the topic of there being a real traitor. But if the principal had caught onto them with his high specs then...

That left the ash blonde with two options.

Nezu knew Bakugou knew about there being a real traitor and also that the ash blonde would probably try to go and find the traitor himself, which he would. In that case, Nezu wanted to share his insights with Bakugou so they could both come to a much more accurate conclusion than they would individually. Which, as a whole, was a load of bullshit. Nezu did not need to team up with someone to know who the traitor was, let alone a student. Secondly, even if he did, talking to a student about it was just too unrealistic. He would have talked to Aizawa or Present Mic or literally any other teacher — they were experienced pro heroes for fuck's sake — in this regard and not him.

So, that left Bakugou with the only other and more viable option; Nezu suspected him to be the traitor. Which was fair. Fair given how he and his team had been acting throughout the exercise. If we go by the teams and their behavior during the whole thing, the suspicions could easily be narrowed down to either Midoriya or Bakugou and since the green head was busy being half dead, that left the ash blonde out in the open. Especially if Nezu had seen him looking through those files this morning through the cameras he suspected to be malfunctioning...

Wait — That was it wasn't it? Nezu and Power Loader lied about the cameras. Nezu suspected the students to learn about the traitor sooner or later. They lied about the thing with the security cameras from the very start. Yeah, maybe the traitor messed up one or two but all of them? No. No, of course not. The principal wasn't that stupid. He lied every time so the students would hear it at least once and once they knew the faculty had no control over the cameras, they knew no one was watching them and if no one was watching they were free to sneak around.

A trap Bakugou not-so-gracefully fell in.

"That is... If you don't already know," Nezu added.

Yup, he thought Bakugou was the traitor. Now, how could he get out of this situation? Lie through his teeth? What should he lie about? He didn't have a clear idea of things anyway. He was planning to confirm his suspicions by evening after the interrogation session. Right now, he only had two names and he still wasn't sure because he did not have enough evidence against any of them.

"I don't," Bakugou replied phlegmatically.

The principal chirped, "Well, in that case, this is going to be an interesting conversation!" The ash blonde could tell it wasn't but the rat seemed to differ, "Firstly regarding the exercise itself, do you have any suspects, Bakugou?"

"A few guesses. Nothing solid." The boy shrugged.

"Well, how about this then," Nezu suggested, "You tell me your guesses and I may share some of mine."

"Your guesses?" Bakugou parroted. Did that mean Nezu would share his suspicions for the two traitors? If that was it then it was clarified that he knew the ash blonde knew of the two traitors. Bakugou scoffed, playing dumb for the time being, "What the hell is that supposed to mean? You designed the entire thing. You don't have any 'guesses' here, you know the real deal."

"Is that so? Why I'm certain you know what 'guesses' I'm referring to, don't you?" Nezu chuckled slightly but once he heard a low growl escape the boy's lips, he waved dismissively, "Oh, if that ticks you off then we can just go back to the main topic. Tell me your suspects and I'll tell you who attacked your classmate."

The ash blonde decided that this rat was not to be trusted in any field at any time. If the whole hacked security camera concept was a lie then the poorly done fingerprint scan also had high chances of falling in the same category. They gave out a random name so they could narrow down their suspicions to the one person who would come looking for the information, it worked but only not on any of the traitors. Internally cursing, Bakugou replied with his second suspect instead of the first, "Monoma."

"Anyone else?" Nezu questioned, eyes closed, softly humming as he opened a drawer behind his desk.

"Just him," The ash blonde was quick to reply.

"Are you sure?" The principal took out a rectangular object and flashed it before those ruby red eyes with a smirk. The flash drive from this morning, the one with all the files. A trap, he knew it. He should have seen this coming but he didn't and now everything he said wouldn't pull him out of the major suspect list.

"What—"

"Say it, Bakugou. Who else is on your suspect list?"

"No one. But you most of all right now, you damned rat."

"Last chance, kid. It will be best for you if you tell me the truth. I may let you in on what might happen next and let me tell you it won't be fun," Nezu then quietly added, "Not for Midoriya at least."

That was not just any slip up, another trap set by a rat. Why the hell was he so dead set on hearing it from Bakugou that he did, indeed, look into those files when he wasn't even supposed to know of them. And, of course, the green head was the target who would have known the traitor hated the guts of the literal problem magnet. But if the traitor had already attacked him once, what other plans do they have for him? Kill him? Old news. The way Nezu said it meant something else. Something different. Something Bakugou quite didn't know. "Dammit..." The ash blonde mumbled beneath his breath.

Now how to evade this one? Say a random name and play the rat's own game against him? He doubted it would work. He was low on time, he couldn't be late for the interrogation session and put even more suspicions on him. He still needed to know what happened in Midoriya's room to get to a better conclusion plus it was highly unlikely Nezu could tag him as the traitor and effectively put him out of the game right now. Everting took time and so would this. Therefore, accepting his defeat temporarily, he mumbled out, "Jurota Shishida..."

With a satisfied hum, Nezu added, "Don't you know snooping around my files is not considered a heroic deed? Well then... How many files did you go through this morning? Don't try to escape now, I have you cornered here."

"Three, what of it?"

"Well, isn't that strange." The principal placed the device on his desk and said, "Our faculty only saved one file and the drive still only has that one file. Now where did the two came from and where did they go?"

Bakugou scoffed, "Tsk... How the hell would I know? You're the one who needs to start taking better security measures if you don't want a bunch of fucking moles roaming around your school."

"So, you do know there's more than one traitors. How fun." Nezu hummed, "The rest two files, if you were wondering, were the result of the malfunction. The were added the moment the flash drive was plugged into the computer and destroyed completely when plugged out. A one time use that sadly expired after your little fiasco this morning. My question here is, what was in them, Bakugou?"

"A code and a picture."

"Elaborate,"

Bakugou only fished out his cell phone from his pockets and opened his gallery where the pictures of the two files' data were saved and handed it over to Nezu, "I haven't decoded it yet. Though you can see the other yourself, here's the picture."

"Hm... That's strange. There's really two of them... I see now, so that's how it is." Nezu observed the picture closely.

"What?"

"Show me the code, Bakugou." Upon that, the ash blonde stood up and swiped the screen so the picture of the code was. It was silent for a good few minutes during which Nezu worked to decode the entire thing. Bakugou felt somewhat relieved that he didn't had to decode and possibly out himself as a glorified nerd. Deku was the nerd, not him. No he was not in denial, fuck off.

"Ah ha! So, here's what truly happened..." Nezu started, "As you know we have an actual traitor on hand and another person who is controlling them. The second person isn't actually the second traitor, in fact, there aren't two traitors at all! Just like I thought, there were two minds at work, not two traitors. The first one, the traitor doesn't even want to be the traitor. They are not doing anything willingly. They might as well not know what they are doing at all! In this world of quirks, this second person has the first in the palm of their hands by force. What does that mean? Of course, as we know by the code, the second person is All For One! That dastard has been controlling one of my students from the shadows like they're some sort of puppet. The picture where the appendage was being cut off tells us about who this first person is. If you look closely at the edges, you can see it. It's not clear but its right there, out in the open."

Needless to say, Bakugou listened to all that closely.

Nezu continued, "All For One added the malfunction to my computer through this student. And the student found his control to be slightly wavering. So, in that small moment of freedom, they slipped in these clues. Something they were hoping All For One wouldn't notice as some sort SOS message. The reason why the traitor's message was encoded like this meant that they were hoping that All For One would overlook it as a part of the virus. The picture was attached as a proof. I say, it was also coded when still in the flash drive and automatically decoded itself when it was opened. To prevent All For One from knowing about any of these, the traitor made sure the files would delete themselves once the device was plugged out. Good thing, you took pictures of them!"

"The number '15' carved into Midoriya's wrist was also a hint! A second coming really, in case the first wasn't found. But your friends found the first one and told you of it, didn't they? You just decided not to tell the teachers."

"You mean that note? Wait, we thought Deku misread it for 18 1-B?" Bakugou quirked up an eyebrow.

"Yes, yes, that could be how it is. It was either a repeated hint or something related to Monoma. There's a high chance it's a warning sign saying Monoma is the next victim. But personally, I don't think he's involved at all and the '15' was the correct number because then the little trick in the decoded version of the code tells us who the traitor really is. Otherwise, it's all a bunch of meaningless numbers. So, in essence, the traitor tried to reveal themselves to the faculty under All For One's nose, isn't that great? I'll ask Hound Dog to clear his schedule for them. They'll probably need a lot of therapy after this." And then Nezu added,

"And last but not the least, this is what happened in Midoriya's room——"

~O~

When Bakugou left Nezu's office, it was already evening and he found that he was already five minutes late for the interrogation session. He quickly jogged to Class-1-B's dorms where everyone currently was.

So much for not letting people think you were the traitor.

He was about to go ahead and join his team in the interrogations he assigned them but just then someone came and went past the dorms building in a blur, too fast to be seen who it really was. The ash blonde immediately turned to look in the direction he saw that person run towards.

If he saw right — which he did, they came from the main campus and ran towards Ground Beta.

Ground Beta was a part of the decoded message — written in some sort of disarranged text.

Bakugou simply followed.