"This food is amazing!" Denki shouts into the air, between him indulging in large amounts of the buffet food. There was a large array of food, along the giant table, to choose from. Making for a variety of food choices amongst the students, from both class 1-A and 1-B. Considering, both the classes ate their dinner together.
"I agree, this is served from heaven!" Eijiro agrees, doing the same intense indulging as Denki.
"This will be the only time you'll be well fed, so enjoy it." Pixie-bob states ominously. Yet, this only made the students feel more inclined to eat furiously. Except for a few students, who ate a much smaller amount. One of which, being Kokei. He sat at the end of the table for Class 1-A, he seemed to be just picking at the deluxe course meal In front of him.
Mandalay noticed this, so, she approached the boy. "Food not up to your standards?" Mandalay questions smugly, but gains no real reaction from Kokei.
"No, the food's great." Kokei responds in such a monotone voice level, it was hard for Mandalay to hear him over the loud noises of everyone loudly chatting and munching.
"Uh huh," Mandalay hums, peering down at the gloomy Kokei. "Say, i can't hear you very well, and, it's obvious you're not hungry so, wanna go to one of my favorite spots?"
"Ooooh, she wants to get with you!" Jenny awes like a child, "do it!"
Kokei sighs softly, dropping his eating utensils and standing up. This caught many of his classes' attention. "Okay."
"And, here we are." Mandalay states, Kokei and her were near the top of a wooden tower that stood tall beside the forest lodge. The moon's raise of light made it feel more of a afternoon than nighttime. "Whatcha think? I'll be able to hear you here."
Kokei stared at the moon for a few moments, then leaned on the wooden fence that boarded off a steep fall. "It's.. majestic." Kokei says unenthusiastically, not even looking to the moon now and instead peering at the forest below him.
Mandalay doesn't respond for some time, but she did observe Kokei's mellow attitude. Eventually, she begins to speak again. "Well, let's start off with some introductions! Let's both say our names and one thing that's interesting about ourselves." Mandalay attempts to contrast Kokei's depressed demeanor with enthusiasm. But, it doesn't help much. "My name's Shino Sosaki and i nap most of the day. Your turn."
Kokei keeps his firm stare at the ground as he speaks, "Kokei Kyōryokuna. And uh.. I got Third place at the Sports Festival."
Mandalay gasps, "third place?! That's amazing! You must be really strong to have gotten that far." Kokei nods in response, not speaking at all. "Why weren't you showing off your skills in the forest? As i recall, you were one of the people near the back. Why's that?"
Kokei shrugs, "guess i wasn't feeling it."
Mandalay lightly sighs and takes a step closer to Kokei. "Kokei, i can tell there's something plaguing your mind. You can talk to me."
Kokei shakes his head, "it's nothing for you to concern yourself over."
Mandalay gently places her hand on Kokei's right shoulder in a comforting way. So much so, that she was able to make Kokei create eye contact with her. "It's alright, you can tell me anything."
Kokei stares into Mandalay's eyes, she reminded him so much of Sobokuna. Her comforting touch, her warm aura. Kokei imagined if he used Infrared Ray on her it'd even reflect the color Red, though it was unlikely that she loved him already. "My foster mom was recently killed." Mandalay gasps and goes to say something, but Kokei stops her. "Don't pity me, i hate that." Kokei peers at the ground, "she was such a great woman.. always rooting for me and my crazy goals. She'd be standing in my corner, at all times. Any feat I'd accomplish, big for small.. she'd congratulate me the same." Kokei smiles, remembering her. "She was.. the best." Kokei looks into Mandalay's eyes again. "I wanted to become something that she'd be proud of, i wanted her to see me do great things.. i wanted-.. i wanted-.." Kokei keeps cutting himself off, tears arising in his eyes. He didn't want to cry, he thought of it as weakness. But, Mandalay reminded him so much of his mother that it was hard to resist. "I wanted her to stay happy forever."
With those words, the full flood of tears overcome Kokei's eyes. Mandalay sensed this, so she lovingly wraps her arms around Kokei and holds him close to her. "It's alright, I understand." She says comfortingly, Kokei wraps his arms around her as well. "All you can do now is keep her in your memories as you move forward. It's what she'd want."
Kokei sniffles, "I.. miss her." He admits between sobs and small whimpers. And for the entirety of his crying, Mandalay held him and caressed his hair. Exactly like his mother, it made him feel both happier and sadder. But one thing was for certain, Mandalay gave him a certain sense of comfort and closure. And after he bathed by himself in the hot springs, since he was gone when his class went together, Kokei felt refreshed. And for the first time in a long, long time, Kokei slept soundly.
"Class, your real training will begin now." Shota announces to the group of students in front of him. It was now the sunny next day, every student was refreshed and rejuvenated after the events of yesterday. "We'll begin with something you all may remember. Bakugo, come up to me." Everyone looks to Katsuki as he nonchalantly walks up to Shota. Shota hands Katsuki a ball, then points to the forest beside the plains they were in. "Throw it."
The class is deduced to murmurs on how Katsuki will be able to send it to the moon now, due to his immense growth since first semester. Katsuki reels his arm back, then quickly throws it forward with an explosion on top. "Die!" Katsuki shouts with the throw, tossing the ball to the best of his abilities.
The ball soars, and so does the classes' anticipation. Until finally, Shota speaks and informs the group on Katsuki's stats. "708.6" Shota announces, causing for a loud awe of confusion to overtake the class. "That's only 4 more meters than the beginning of the year. This is because you've all only been training your mental prowess and stamina. While your quirks have stayed the same. And this training camp is gonna help you with just that, gaining stronger quirks."
"Destroy!" The loud shout causes for a even louder blast impact into the attacks' target: an entire Stone Mountain. This was Kokei's training, tasked with the simple job of destroying the mountain. Kokei had both his palms pressed together and was aimed at one point of the mountain base. "Damn, it doesn't even dent."
"It's a solid mountain, obviously it won't budge." Neito states, "what an idiot."
"You should probably go to a higher point on the mountain, it'd be less dense." Shihai brings the idea up, but Kokei shakes his head.
"No, if i want to achieve the tremendous feats i aspire to, i need to be able to do this." Kokei responds, "I'm sure Toshinori can easily do this.. so i need to be able to too." Kokei closes his eyes, imagining Sobokuna. And instead of becoming sadder, he gains a determined smile on his face. "I'll do it for you." Kokei whispers, then, he stands firm and readies himself for another blast. But, before he did, he checked his surroundings to ensure no one was watching him and what he was to do.
Once he knew the coast was clear, Kokei buffs his arms using Springlike Limbs. The mini-black lightning bolts surround his arms as they increase in size repeatedly. And once they had at least doubled in size, Kokei adds 2 kinetic boosters and 2 strength enhancers. Then, he finally launches the blast at the side of the mountain. "Destroy!" Kokei shouts, a hard slam of power colliding with the mountain.
This harsh blast causes for a lit of strain on Kokei's arms, but, he still kept through with it until the end. And after his blast was over, Kokei checked the progress. And to his surprise, there was only a fair dent in the rock. It deepened only a few feet in and half the size of Kokei, a small cradle instead of a large hole. Kokei grunts, "damnit.. That was one of my strongest blasts!" Kokei slams his fist into the side of the mountain, instantly fracturing his wrist which caused him to groan in pain. "Ach-!"
"Y'know, i have something to help with your destructive capabilities." All for One states, "two quirks- actually."
Kokei shakes his hand about as it is regenerated back to pristine condition. "What is it? Or uhm- what are they?"
All for One grins, "they're named Multiplier and Rivet. That's at least what i call them. Multiplier multiplies the number of your arms, and Rivet is the steel that holds them together. It's very easy to understand the concept."
'Multiplying the number of my.. arms? That sounds really weird and gross.' Kokei thinks, "well whatever. I'll give it a try." Kokei says aloud, closing his eyes and focusing on the quirks one by one. Beginning with the quirk that made more sense: Multiplier.
Kokei imagined having more arms, a duplicated amount of them. He imagined them extending out from his shoulders, making him look like some creature from a cartoon. And then, when he opened his eyes, Kokei observed his imagination to be truth. He had an extra arm on both sides, both arms looked copied from how identical they were to his normal 2. They both emerged from Kokei's shoulders, though, which made for an awkward sight. "Woah, it worked." Kokei announces, starring his his arm extensions in a type of disgust.
"Great job, it'll look better once you use rivet as well. It'll be able to hold your arms together in a bunch." All for One instructs, "use Rivet too."
".. alright.." Kokei says awkwardly, closing his eyes again and imagining a type of metal plate holding together his new arms. Kokei sighs, opening his eyes and seeing his thoughts being real once again. Wrapping around both his arms and holding them together, was a type of Rivet. It not only outlined his arms, it embedded itself into Kokei's arms, like it had morphed with them into a nasty mix of skin and metal.
This rivet is what held together the doubled arms on both his sides. "It worked," Kokei states, pressing the palms of his four arms together. Then, black lightning sparks surround these arms while he charged up another strong attack using the exact same setup as before. "Destroy!" Yet this time, the results were much different.
When the dust settled from the intense blast Kokei had launched, there was a deep and wide chunk carved out in the giant mountain. Now, easily double the size of what he was able to achieve mere moments ago. But, the strain on his arms were much greater as well. Kokei lowers his arms to his sides, turning them back to normal and making the two new arms disappear. He was entirely back to normal. "..i did good."
All for One huffs, "yeah, ya did."
"Dinner time!!" Mina loudly and happily shouts, the light of the evening sun drafting over her smiling face. "What's on the menu?"
Pixie-bob grins, standing beside the other two members of her group: Wild Wild Pussycats. One being Mandalay, and the other being a swole man who doesn't look involved with their theme at all. "As i said the other day, we won't be cooking for you again." Suddenly, the table that presumably held another buffet of amazing, has its drape removed to reveal an array of ingredients. "Here are the ingredients for curry, the ovens are inside, get to it."
The students are reluctant to begin with the instructions, so, Tenya takes charge. "Alright, team, let's cool some curry!"
Throughout the curry creation process, the students seem to have a certain type of fun. The fun that's humorous since they all had little to no idea what they were doing, but it wasn't really about the final result and rather the journey to get there. To many people's surprise, Kokei was even one of the people socializing and having a good time, a side of him they hadn't seen in a very long time. So much so, that after the curry creation was over, Kokei even kept socializing with his peers as though he was making up for lost time.
"And uh, that's why i was able to do so good on the first day." Kokei finishes explaining to his table, he was telling them how he came to use the unique strategy he used for the Ball Throw on the first day.
"Huh, for some reason i never thought you were doing a volleyball thing." Ochaco admits as she takes another taste of her curry.
"Yeah, i thought it had to do with something more strategical." Tenya accommodates Ochaco, as he rubbed his chin to help him think better.
Izuku looked around himself and the other tables, like he was looking for something- or someone. "Are you alright, Deku?" Ochaco questions innocently.
"Uh, yeah." Izuku responds, standing up and taking his bowl of curry. "I have to go do something, I'll talk to you guys later." With that, Izuku hurriedly leaves. Ochaco seemed to watch Izuku as he left like a sad puppy. Kokei, specifically, noticed this and took it into consideration. As well as noticing the peculiar way his heart thumped while he looked at Ochaco, he hadn't felt like this for a few days now.
Until suddenly, "hey, Katsuki!" Denki shouts to Katsuki, even though they were a mere table apart. "Wanna talk about how Kokei almost beat you, at the Sports Festival, using only one hand?"
Katsuki growls, catching everyone's attention. "I was going easy!" Katsuki shouts back.
Kokei sighs, 'here we go again.'
The third day of training went by at around the same speed as its previous. The only notable thing that occurred was Pixie-bob announcing that the classes would be engaging in a type of scary forest walk later in the night.
Kokei trained off in the mountains by himself, tasked only with the destruction of a mountain. And, building off the progress he made the day prior, it was easy to get further in development. Though it was straining on his body, Kokei wanted to train himself to be able to keep using strong and draining attacks even when he was tired and weak. He felt it'd come in handy in his future, not matter what it entailed.
Eventually, when the sun began to set again, both Class 1-A and 1-B gather up to create their own dishes. And, after they finished eating their food, the classes gathered outside the forest to engage in the Pussycat's mini-game. Those to passed the final exams, that is. Class 1-A was to explore the forest in pairs while 1-B attempted to scare the kids.
Kokei decides to team up with Izuku, although Izuku advocated for himself going alone as to make himself the one who'd be alone. Since, the amount of students gone from 1-A would make it uneven. But Kokei was able to convince him to not, and instead, they enter the forest together.
The dark forest of doom, during that time of night the only suitable lighting was from the blaring moon. And even that was fairly dim compared to the leaves covering its rays. Surprisingly, Izuku seemed to be very nervous about the forest. He flinched every time someone popped out and scared him, while Kokei either loudly gasped or didn't show any expression at all. He was a lot less shaken.
As Izuku and Kokei walked down the forest trail alone, Kokei couldn't help but strike up conversation on the topic he was most interested about. "So.. you like Ochaco?"
The sudden abrupt and personal question catches Izuku off guard, making him do at double take at Kokei and begin stuttering. "W-w-why would y-you ask s-something like that!?" Izuku questions, clearly flustered.
'Looks like their feeing's mutual.' Kokei thought as he looked away from Izuku and back to front and center. "No reason, i just know you two are good friends is all."
Izuku does a sigh of relief and lowers his shoulders, displaying the metaphorical weight that was lifted off him. "Oh, man, you need to stop asking one-offs like that!"
Kokei chuckles, "my bad, my bad, but seriously though."
Izuku looks to the ground, twiddling his fingers as he tried to come up with a pliable response. "Wel-" But before he could finish his sentence, the loud sound of a cawing crow overtakes his voice. The sound comes from one of the treetops, then another caw comes from a tree behind the two. "Who the-"
"Kro.." Kokei answers, peering at the crows. 'If he shows up alone, i could knock out Izuku and kill Kro. Where would i rid the body? And what if he screams? No no, a scream is usual for this haunted forest. Then again, is he even worth killing? He knows some information others don't, but it isn't too detrimental.' Kokei ponders, and as he did, footsteps slowly come closer and closer. Kokei gets into a fighting stance, while Izuku shaked and shivered, waiting for the jump-scare.
Eventually, the footsteps come so close that the two could begin to make out the shape of a body. The body shape looked malformed, even giving shivers down Kokei's back. And suddenly, a low and deep voice speaks from behind the pair. "Boo." As they spoke, the air from their breath bristles on Izuku and Kokei. Making them both lunge away in complete fear.
"Pfffft, it actually worked! Again!" The voice from behind the boys says in between loud laughter. And who it was behind them, was none other than Juzo Honenuki.
"Ah- Juzo!?" Izuku questions, "if you were behind us.."
"Then who was in front of us?" Kokei finishes Izuku's sentence, both the boys turning to the still approaching figure. And as they slowly got into eye view, it was much less frightening than what their imagines foretold. It was just Kro, he had a few crows around him to make his body look scarier and bigger than it actually was.
"Yo." Kro greets with a wave, "did we scare them?"
"Yeah, bro, that crow intimidation thing you do works too well!" Juzo commends Kro, even clapping to show his impressment.
"Yeah.. that was pretty good." Izuku admits with a sigh, "I'm not even that impressionable, you're all just too good at fear!"
"Maybe you guys should be villains instead." Kokei states with a sly grin.
"Nah, we'll just scare off the villains so that we won't need to fight." Juzo says with a chuckle, holding his stomach to ease his laughter. Then, he worriedly points something out. "Hey, do you guys see the fire up there too?"
The other 3 boys look to where Juzo pointed, seeing the raging blue fire near the mountain top. The fire reached up high, blazing incredibly. "That's not part of the mini games." Kokei says, 'looks like the villains are here.'
"Oh no, Kota!" Izuku shouts, doing a long jump toward one pf the mountains near the burning one.
"Wha- where are you going!?" Juzo asks Izuku, it was obvious Juzo was getting nervous.
"To ensure Kota's safe!" Izuku shouts back, venturing further into the forest until he was out of view.
Then, Kro begins to walk in the direction of the burning mountain without saying anything. "And where are you off to??" Juzo questions nervously.
"To see what's up with this fire." Kro responds simply, not looking back or slowing down as he spoke. "Bye now." And then, there were 2.
"Well, you should go group up with some people from our classes so you can find out what's going on." Kokei instructs Juzo, making him only more confused. Kokei reaches into his pocket and pulls out the tracking chip he had, throwing it to the ground and stepping on it. The blinking red light on it breaking apart immediately.
"Oh my god, and what're you gonna be doing!?" Juzo inquired as he was getting more and more frustrated. "And what was that!?"
Kokei begins to float up into the air as he looked to Juzo, "i have some business to take care of. And that was a tracking chip, so the teachers knew were i was. For safety." With that, Kokei stands atop a tree and uses Black to morph with the darkness. 'Katsuki,' Kokei begins, 'I'm coming for you.'
"Hmph, this must be it." Dabi tells himself, he was just outside a white building within the forest. It was near the end of the 'haunted forest' and beside the mountains of which he was setting up in flames. It wasn't only the mountains he was burning, though, he also burned all the tress that he passed by to get where he wanted to go. Causing for a full on blue flame forest fire to ensue behind him.
"I'm guessing you're the one who's burning the forest." A voice speaks to Dabi from within the forest, slowly, the person who spoke to him emerges from the trees. It was Kro, hands in his pockets and all. "Right?"
Dabi peers at Kro, snarling as he looked the student up and down. "Yeah, that's me."
Kro nods, "glad i found the right person." Kro responds, and as he spoke, many of the crows surrounding him begin to subtly spread out around the two. "You must be a villain as well."
Dabi nods, "mhm." Dabi looks back at the white building he was monitoring, then back to Kro. "Now leave."
Kro shrugs, "Can't cooperate with that."
"Really now?" Dabi asks as one of Kro's crows gently stand on Dabi's left shoulder. Then, another one follows its friends' lead and stands on Dabi's right shoulder.
"I need to put out your flames, so defeating you is necessary." Kro answers blankly, staring directly into Dabi's eyes.
Dabi scoffs, then goes to move his left arm. But nothing happened, same with his moving his right side. "Hm..? I can't move." Dabi states after his futile tries at moving.
Kro smirks smugly at Dabi, "i know. My crows are efficient."
Dabi stares at Kro, then, he begins to chuckle. "Heh, i get it now. The legends are true, you're his bastard child." Dabi states, making Kro narrow his eyes angrily at Dabi. "Isn't that right, young Kurono?"
Authors note: well, things are surely heating up!.. yeah, it was a cheap joke, but i took the opportunity and ran with it. So, looks like things are getting intense and it seems like Dabi knows something(s) about Kro. He atleast knows more than anyone else, so far. Stay tuned for the next part, in which, Kro's backstory is revealed.
