I'd like to rectify a mistake I made in the last chapter. As someone pointed out, I said Yaoyorozu created Mina's jacket out of "thin air," when she really creates it using matter from the food she eats. Sorry for the misinformation.
After their teacher drove off with the bus, Class 1-A filed into the concrete building. "Oh, crap!" Mina facepalmed. "Don't tell me we forgot Toru!"
"I'm right here," said the girl in question. "I sat across from you on the bus." Yaoyorozu could tell from the direction of the voice that Hagakure was standing right next to Mina.
Toru Hagakure would have been like any normal girl her age, if it wasn't for the fact that her entire body was perpetually invisible.
Mina blushed a deeper shade of pink. "Oh, I thought that seat was empty." Another realization dawned on her. "Hold on, how are you not wearing anything?"
"This is how I sleep!" said Hagakure. "Besides, I just have to be near Todoroki, who will keep me warm with his left side."
Eighteen deadpan glances shot over to the half-ice-half-fire boy, but if Todoroki was embarrassed, he did not show it.
"Careful where you swing your tail," Rikido Sato whispered to his friend, Mashirao Ojiro. Ojiro nodded, stifling a laugh.
"So are we going to ignore the fact that we're in a tsunami zone?" asked Hanta Sero. "Every instinct of mine is telling me to run."
Yaoyorozu answered: "The way Aizawa spoke suggested that the tsunami was more of a convenience than a hindrance. I think the UA teachers planned this all out."
Iida nodded. "I know Power Loader has the ability to create earthquakes and explosions. Maybe he's behind it all."
"So you're saying our teachers are behind the tsunami?" asked Sero. "UA does not hold back, do they? Blowing up model towns is one thing, but evacuating a whole city…"
The class entered the building's lobby, which took up the whole first floor. The lobby looked like, well, a lobby. It had a few couches and a front desk. Normal is good, Yaoyorozu thought. Less likely for Class B to distinguish this place as our base.
The second floor housed two rooms: the girls' bunks and the kitchen. Sato checked the pantries and the refrigerator, finding prepackaged foods like soup and hot pockets as well as ingredients like flour, milk and sugar.
"We have enough packaged food and ingredients to feed an army." He looked at the class. "Which is what we are, I guess. I can make some cookies, later, if you want." The girls squealed in delight. They all knew Sato made the best desserts ever.
Meanwhile, someone was causing a commotion in the girls' room. It was Minoru Mineta, no surprise.
"Remove yourself from the bed this instant!" commanded Iida, his arms furiously gesturing. "Do you possess any self-respect?"
"No," Mineta answered, hugging a bed. He was stuck to the mattress by two sticky purple spheres, which he had detached from the top of his head. Mineta looked ridiculous, but Yaoyorozu knew from experience that once something (like a bed, or a person) had touched one of his spheres, it was impossible for it to get unstuck.
"Looks like I'm stuck here for the night. One of the girls will have to sleep with-" He shouted in surprise as the mattress was lifted into the air by Ochako. After she had degravitised the mattress, carrying the weight of Mineta's tiny body was an easy task.
"Unhand me, woman!"
"Not a chance!" yelled Ochako. "Now, does any of the boys want to trade mattresses with me?"
"I got you," said Mezo Shoji, walking up to the third floor, where he assumed the boys' bedroom was. Ever since Shoji and Mineta had teamed up for the UA sports festival, Shoji had felt obligated to look out for the victims of his classmate's escapades.
The class followed Shoji and Ochako upstairs to the third floor. Here, the boys' quarters housed thirteen beds. Shoji lifted a mattress from the nearest bed as Ochako put Mineta's mattress in the empty frame. Shoji handed the empty mattress to Ochako with an apologetic look in his eyes.
"Shoji, you filthy traitor!" protested Mineta.
"Try something like that again, and you'll be sleeping on the roof," Ochako huffed. Mineta shivered and pretended to fall asleep.
The other room on the third floor was labeled "STORAGE," and it was a walk-in closet with five spools of capture tape a few first aid kits, and a bunch of metal suitcases.
"These boxes hold our hero costumes," said Midoriya, remembering the suitcase he brought to Gran Torino's office for his workplace experience. Their costumes, which were designed to augment the students' powers, would certainly come in handy.
The fourth floor housed two rooms. The room labeled "JAIL" was an empty room with a few benches and a full bookshelf, and the room labeled "COMMAND ROOM" was a brightly lit rectangular room with a huge conference table and twenty chairs. A giant map took up one of the large walls, while a big smartboard took up the wall opposite. The third wall had a cylindrical hole in it labelled "FLAG," where Iida placed the red flag.
"Let's get some sleep and meet here by 7:00," Yaoyorozu suggested. "We all need rest." The class nodded in agreement and began to file out the door.
"I'm going to stay up and do some planning, if anyone wants to join," Midoriya announced. "I'll be in bed shortly."
Ochako looked impressed at her friend's dedication, but Yaoyorozu wasn't as excited. "Don't overexert yourself," she said, sternly. "We need you awake tomorrow." Midoriya nodded.
"I'll stay up with you, Deku!" said Ochako.
"Great!" Midoriya answered, excited. "Two heads are better than one! So I was thinking, what if we used Google Earth to find buildings like this one, and then started to weed out..." he continued his rant as Yaoyorozu left the room.
The next morning, Yaoyorozu was disappointed, but not surprised, to see the unwitting couple asleep side-by-side in their chairs.
"Wake up guys. It's 6:55. You'll need to tell us all what you found."
The duo shot up at once and recoiled from each other when they realized they were practically on top of each other. Yaoyorozu smiled. She shouldn't have been too harsh on them. She herself couldn't sleep much after all the excitement, and she doubted the rest of the class did either.
"Um, we- we'll wait until everyone shows up." Midoriya blinked, trying to remember the research they had done last night.
He and Ochako had spent 5 hours using Google Earth to look for buildings in the evacuated area that could be used as a base. There were a lot of them. Over two-hundred, in fact. After they created a list of possible locations for Class B's base, they researched each location and crossed off the unlikely ones from the list. If a building housed an office or a place that would be used by other people daily, then it would be unlikely that UA could use it as a training area. Together, the two students narrowed down their list to six possible buildings that could serve as the enemy's base.
"Does anyone want chocolate chip pancakes?" asked Sato, who received a few cheers in response. "I'm putting a big plate in the command room. We can eat as we plan."
Very quickly, the whole class gathered around the table, happily munching on pancakes.
"Okay, time to plan," said Yaoyorozu. "Midoriya, Ochako, show us what you've got."
Midoriya connected his cellphone to the room's projector as Ochako shared what they found last night: "We've narrowed it down to six possible buildings." She gestured toward the screen, where Midoriya displayed a map with six markers on it.
"So Class B's in one of these?" Bakugou asked. "Why don't we just all go and bust into each one?"
Yaoyorozu answered: "Because we have to assume that Class B knows just as much as we do. If we all left now, we'd giving Class B the chance to find our base and take the flag. Additionally, as a large group, we'd also be easy to spot."
Bakugou sneered. But the girl made sense, so he couldn't argue. "Are you saying you have a better idea?"
"No," Yaoyorozu admitted. "I'll have to think some more."
Iida raised his hand. "What if instead of using a big group, we sent everybody out individually?"
Midoriya inclined his head thoughtfully. "That would be more discreet."
"But then it would be more easy for them to pick us off one-be-one." It was Ojiro.
"We should form groups of people who know how to use their quirks well together," Todoroki suggested. "Take Bakugou and Kirishima, for example. Even if Kirishima charges head-on, Bakugou won't have to worry about hurting Kirishima because he can resist the explosions with his hardening quirk."
"True, but two people can still be picked off easily by a larger group," Tsuyu added. "How about teams of four? That way, we won't be too conspicuous and each team can be a robust fighting force."
"There are six main locations, right?" Bakugou asked. "How about we send three teams of four to each search two locations, and then we attack with everything we have once we find their base?"
The entire room went silent as everyone stared at the boy.
"What?" he growled.
"That- did you just make a plan?" Kirishima asked, astounded.
"Yeah. So what?"
Midoriya spoke for the class: "Um, you never really seemed to be a planner, y'know? You're more of a hit first, think later type of guy."
"Don't forget, dumbass:" Bakugou retorted indignantly. "I'm smarter than you."
As much as the class did not want to believe it, Bakugou's statement was true. While Midoriya, who ranked 4th in the class, was smart and dedicated, he fell right behind Bakugou, who ranked 3rd.
"Woah, I wasn't doubting your intelligence," Midoriya stammered. "It's just that I'm surprised, that's all."
"Whatever." Bakugou looked down and started picking at his fingernails.
"It's a great plan," Yaoyorozu said, steering their conversation back towards strategy, "and I cannot think of anything better. Does everyone agree?"
The class slowly murmured in agreement. Midoriya pondered for a moment, and then slowly nodded his head. Although they were wary of taking advice from their warlike classmate, Class A could not think of any flaws in his strategy right off the top of their heads.
"So now that we have our overall strategy down," Yaoyorozu said, rising to her feet. "Let's make a list of what we know about our opponents, Class B. I, for one, got to know Kendo during my workplace experience week, and I met Awase at the training camp, where we carried me away from the rampaging Nomu." On the whiteboard, she wrote out two names: 'Itsuka Kendo' and 'Yosetsu Awase.' "Kendo is strong at a close range, since she excels in hand-to-hand combat. Her quirk allows her to enlarge her hands to about the size of large car doors, maybe bigger." Under Kendo's name, she wrote 'close range' and 'hand enlargement.' "Meanwhile, Awase can use his quirk to fuse any two objects together." She wrote 'fusion' under his name. "Both are physically very strong, but that's a given for heroics students. Anyone else have anything to add?"
Iida's hand shot up. "Kendo is their class president, and she keeps the others in line. Chances are, she's leading them just as you are leading us."
Yaoyorozu added 'leader' under her name. "What else do we know?"
"Mmm, I know!" shouted Kaminari, as he gulped down the remainder of a pancake. "I fought against Ibara Shiozaki in the final round of the tournament."
"Alright," Yaoyorozu said, writing 'Ibara Shiozaki' on the board. "What can you tell us?"
Kaminari thought. "Well, she's nice. And pretty. Definitely dateable material."
Bakugou groaned.
"Tell us something more useful," Yaoyorozu said, irked.
Kaminari nodded. "Well, you all saw her quirk, which allowed her to grow and detach vines from her hair. She seemed potent at a long range." Yaoyorozu wrote 'vines' and 'ranged' on the board. "And I think Present Mic said she needs water and sunlight to do her thing." Yaoyorozu added 'weakness to darkness' to the board.
"She freezes under pressure, as well," Iida added, remembering how he could push her out of bounds uncontested during the sports festival. "Though that might have changed since then."
"Kirishima, you fought against Tetsutetsu, right?"
The spiky-haired redhead nodded. Yaoyorozu wrote 'Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu' on the board.
"He can turn his body into steel, very similar to how I can harden my skin," Kirishima explained. "We fought to a stalemate, but I beat him in the tiebreaker arm-wrestling contest because his quirk gave in. He mumbled something about 'not consuming enough iron'." Yaoyorozu added: 'steel skin', 'close range' and 'needs to eat iron'.
"Who else?" she asked.
"Monoma," Bakugou grumbled. "The idiot. He can use anybody's quirk by touching them. But he can't use two at once." Yaoyorozu jotted 'quirk copying' under the name 'Neito Monoma'. "Mind you, he blabbed all of this to me right before he lost the cavalry race. He was with that normal-looking guy who could solidify air. They were both weak."
"I think his name is Tsuburaba," Sero added. "Bakugou broke through his shield with a powerful enough strike. Also, we met Bondo, a glue dispenser guy, and Kodai, who could shrink." Yaoyorozu added: 'Tsuburaba' and under it, 'air solidification - breakable' and 'Bondo' above 'glue dispenser'.
"She can get bigger, too!" Hagakure shouted from across the room. "Very scary." Yaoyorozu wrote: 'Kodai' and, 'size change'.
"Do we know anything else?" Yaoyorozu asked. The students looked around, uneasily. It was starting to sink in that they didn't know enough about their rival class.
"Not for certain," Midoriya said. "Juzo Honenuki did something to let us sink into the ground, but I'm not sure of the details." Yaoyorozu left the board blank. "We can assume they know more about us since we had a stronger representation at the sports festival."
"Are you going to eat that?" Hagakure asked Todoroki, who shook his head no. The last half of pancake on his plate shot into the air, folded, and disappeared.
Jiro spoke up: "By now, Class B has probably started planning like we are now. Let's get out of here as soon as it turns 8:00." She motioned to her watch. 7:33.
"We must form our squads now, then," Iida said. "Todoroki, you mentioned Bakugou and Kirishima would make a good pairing. Are you guys okay with that?"
Bakugou growled. "I'll take Shitty Hair. It's not like I can find anyone better." Kirishima beamed. Compliments from Bakugou were exceedingly rare. "I want Dunce Face, too," he said, referring to Kaminari. "And Racoon Eyes."
"Really?" 'Racoon Eyes' Mina asked. She understood Kaminari and Kirishima: they worked with Bakugou during the Provisional License Exam. But her? Bakugou hadn't said a word to her since they teamed up for the cavalry battle.
"Yeah," Bakugou grunted. "You can quietly scale buildings by melting handholds with your acid. In this urban setting, where stealth is key, it would be stupid not to have you."
Kirishima's grin widened even more. With his decent strategy and generous compliments, Bakugou was full of surprises today. Did Jiro beat some decency into him when they were practicing for the Culture Festival performance? Kirishima wondered, but he quickly discarded the thought. Not even Bakugou's own mother could tame the boy.
Iida cleared his throat. "Alright, then. We have one squad decided. You can be 'Alpha Squad'. Does anyone else want to team up?"
"Yes!" shouted a disembodied voice that could only belong to Hagakure. "No way I can use Stealth Mode in this weather without Todoroki's flame side to keep my temperature up."
"I'm cool with that," Todoroki said. "Hagakure's quirk will be invaluable for this exercise, and it would be a shame not to use it to its full potential."
"I understand," Iida said. "You can be our stealth recon team. Who else do you guys want?"
"If you're doing recon, I might as well join." Jiro nodded to Todoroki. "My quirk gives me better hearing through solid objects, so I can scan buildings before we send Hagakure in."
"Then I'll join in too," said Shoji through one of his mouth extensions. "My extra body parts enhance my observation. Useful for reconnaissance."
"That's four," Iida noted. "You can be 'Bravo,'" he said, taking names from the NATO phonetic alphabet.
"Okay, great!" Yaoyorozu felt like this was going well. "We have two squads so far."
"I want to team up with Tsu," Ochako stated, turning to her friend. "We worked as a team during our internship, so we know each other very well."
Tsuyu nodded. "We've been working on some combo attacks. Together, we make an effective team."
"Iida, why don't we join up with them?" Midoriya asked. "Your speed works well with Ochako's zero-gravity, since you can carry her at full speed without worrying about extra weight. And Ochako can turn me into a flying, punching missile, if needed."
"Astute as always, Midoriya." Iida looked at his three squadmates. "That makes us 'Squad Charlie.'"
"Alright then," Yaoyorozu said. "That makes three 'base search' squads. Now we need to think about defense."
She continued: "In addition to any equipment you all might need, I can create and maintain traps, like electric fences, in our base. I hate to say it, but Mineta's sticky spheres will come in handy for traps."
"No complaints here," the boy said, excited to work closely with his favorite female classmate.
Yaoyorozu shuddered at the creepy vibe radiating from the boy. "Try anything weird and I'll have Ochako float you into orbit."
She looked around the room for anybody else who might be better off away from the action.
"Aoyama, why don't you join us?" she said to the glittery boy. "Your 'sparkle' will catch the attention of anyone we want to bait into a trap." She turned to Koji Koda, the quiet boy who scared easily. "And Koda, you can tell the seabirds to screech when somebody enters the building. A natural alarm."
Koda nodded.
"Oui, mademoiselle!" Aoyama said, oblivious to Yaoyorozu's true motive for selecting him. "I shall not disappoint."
"That's Delta Squad," Iida announced. "You guys will hold down the fort."
"That leaves Ojiro, Sato, Sero, and Tokoyami," Yaoyorozu said. You guys can patrol the area around our base and strike along with the rest of the class when we find Class B's"
"Team Echo," Iida said. "Last, but certainly not least."
Yaoyorozu wrote the teams on the board:
{Offence}
-Alpha-
Bakugou
Kirishima
Kaminari
Mina
-Bravo-
Todoroki
Hagakure
Jiro
Shoji
-Charlie-
Ochako
Tsuyu
Midoriya
Iida
{Defence}
-Delta-
Yaoyorozu
Mineta
Aoyama
Koda
-Echo-
Ojiro
Sato
Sero
Tokoyami
"Okay!" shouted Yaoyorozu. "We have our plan, and we have our teams. Let's suit up!"
As Class A was forming their strategy, Class B sat in their own Command Room, facing their team's smartboard.
"So, where do we even start?" asked Awase, yawning. He was hit hard by the 6:00 wakeup.
Class B's homeroom teacher, the pro hero Vlad King, had given his class the same speech Aizawa had to Cass A, just four hours later. He had dropped his students off at their base on the peninsula before driving off.
"We know most of Class A from the Sports Festival and the summer training camp," Kendo said. "So now we just need a strategy for finding their base and stealing their flag."
Much like Yaoyorozu, Kendo had taken the role as her team's leader. She wished their teacher had woken them up earlier like Aizawa had woken up Class A so they could have come up with more of a plan. Now, her class was facing a ticking clock without any idea what to do.
"Come on," she groaned. "Does anybody have any ideas?" The class remained mute.
"It's simple, really," a voice said from the back. "We hardly need to do anything at all." It was Momona.
"So we just wait here for Class A to track us down?" Kendo asked. "Forgive me if I'm not one-hundred percent on-board with you plan."
"Not entirely," Monoma said. "We just need to let Class A do all the investigative work, only to fall into a cunning trap of my devising." He explained his plan.
Here's chapter two. Enjoy! For those concerned about a lack of action in the first two chapters, don't fret! The best is yet to come.
As always, thanks for reading, and thanks for any positive/constructive feedback you might have! I'm always looking for ways to improve my writing, so leave a review if you have anything to say!
