Chapter 3:

That's it. That's the day.

Kyoko's first day of class in UA. Saying she's stressed would be a euphemism.

She enters her class, the class 1-A, and crosses the room silently to a free desk in the fifth row, next to a window. She takes some time observing her new classmates. It feels weird being surrounded by so many people, especially people of her age and with quirks. Future heroes. But it isn't unpleasant or intimidating, quite the opposite.

There is a impressive diversity or hair colors, skin tones and appearance, even some animal features here and there. A boy with slicked back blue hair and gills, a girl with vibrant green skin and hair, another with short spiky orange hair and red eyes…

"Hello!"

Kyoko is startled by the pretty girl sitting behind her outstretching her hand. She had been so focused on the group in front of her she hadn't hear her coming and sitting at her desk. How utterly imprudent, if Monsieur had witnessed that…

"I'm Kayama Nemuri! Looks like we're gonna be neighboors! I'm so excited!"

Wow! So much energy first thing in the morning. Kyoko turns toward the voice to study her owner. She's tall, with mid-length black hair and her eyes are framed by red glasses. And her body… she looks like a woman already. And a gorgeous one. She's still smiling at her, waiting for an answer and a handshake.

"Hey! I'm Aoki Kyoko. Nice to meet you." she says with a shy smile. That's all she can manage to get even if her nervous impulse told her face to go full grin…

"Oh! Not from here huh?… Tell me everything!" Nemuri asks her sensually, waving her eyebrows, elbows on the table and head in her hands, ready to listen.

"Hum yeah... France, actually…" Kyoko answers, not really sure of what to add to that.

"Oooh my god! I love France! So sexy! Macaroons, lingerie, garter belts, french kisses…!" Nemuri goes, stars in her eyes and fire in her cheeks. Kyoko cannot help laughing at that. The girl seems crazy, but she likes her, she's … refreshing, compared to the usual Japanese reserve and polite shyness.

"Hum, yeah… That's a way to see things yes." she laughs, but they have to leave it at that as their teacher comes in the room and silence settles in the air.

"Good morning everyone! I'm Torino Sorahiko, I'll be you homeroom teacher."

Of course…

The day goes by quietly, the classes are what Kyoko expected. Hard. But she soldiers on, she'll need to find some people nice enough to lend her their notes because hers are a multilingual mess, switching to french when she doesn't know how to write a word... but she stays focused until the end.

On the lunch break Nemuri drags her by the arm to the cafeteria, and forces to tell her everything about her life in the 'Country of loooove' as she calls it. She tries to satisfy her curiosity but she doesn't have much more to say but what she saw on TV, which must not be really different from what Nemuri already knew. She's saved by the others of their classmates who come to join them at their table.

"Hey do you mind if we join you?" the boys with blue hair and gills she had noticed before asks.

"No, not at all, sit! Sit!" Nemuri answers for both of them, and she manifests her agreement with a small smile and a wave of the hand toward the empty seats next to them.

The blue boy, she learns, is named Haru, and he can live under water and control it. The two other are named Akira and Hinoe. The first one is a strong tall boy, with short black hair and a red bandana, who can transform his nails in saber blades. And the other one is a sweet shy girl, with grey hair and purple eyes, who can create human shapes, like ghosts, to scare or distract her opponents. They are all nice and friendly enough for her to feel comfortable to talk with them. Not that she's shy, but she doesn't do well in big groups, especially of strangers.

"So! Gran Torino huh! He's old! What is he? Fifty? Sixty? We must be his last class!" Akira asks, a little to loud to Kyoko's taste.

"I don't know, Yes, something like that I guess. But he's still strong and kicking." She defends her mentor, not noticing the four pair of eyes fixed on her until she lift her nose from her ramen bowl. "What?"

"Do you… Do you know him? Have you met him before?" Haru asks for them all.

Kyoko's mouth hangs open, stopped mid-breath, and she begins to stutter.

"Hum… I… I mean… Hum..."

She's "saved" from the situation by a shadow appearing behind her and a bored voice coming to her ears…

"You're not going back to your class after lunch, instead join me on the field." she doesn't even have time to turns that he's already walking away. Damn him… The table is heavily silent again…

"WHO? WAS? THAT?" Nemuri gasps, grasping Kyoko's arm and shaking it. "Sexy voiiiice-senpaiiii!..." she purrs.

The others laugh but thankfully (or not), it's not what caught their attention.

"You're not coming for the quirk evaluation?"

"What's going on?"

"Are you one of those kids accepted on recommendation?"

Kyoko sighs, cursing Aizawa in a flourished french she won't excuse under her breath, and recites the speech Principal Nezu had given her for this very occasion. Always provident…

The next day, her sudden disappearance is still fresh in everyone's mind. The eyes stare and the questions fly.

"Hey! Where were you yesterday?", "What's your quirk?", "Hey, you chickened out, hafu?"

Not really mean, but not nice either… Surprise, irritation, incomprehension, expressions were various on the faces of her classmates, but none -except for Nemuri and the three others- was sympathetic.

Kyoko doesn't answer them and goes to her desk in a tense silence. She keeps her head bowed to avoid meeting the vultures' eyes but she can still feel their gaze burning a hole in her nape, whispers creating a white noise in the room.

It doesn't take Gran Torino much time to understand what is going on as he slams the door open earning an immediate and perfect quiet.

Kyoko lets him lie for her. He'll do it better than her…

Days pass and the other student seem to forget slowly about Kyoko's 'special status'. But it doesn't change that she's still the sore thumb of the class, attracting all the attention, and she hates that. She's not the only not-japanese person in the class -there were a Kenyan girl, Russian twins and an Australian boy too – but she was the only one not to be born and raised there.

Daily, she was flooded with questions about everything and anything in her life. Some subtle and other much less.

Where does she come from? What is it like? What's her quirk ? Can she show them ? Could she train with them sometimes ? Etc.

Sometimes she pretends she didn't hear, sometimes she finds a vague answer, but more often than not, she's saved by Nemuri. She didn't expect to make friends so fast but, apparently the boisterous girl had taken a liking to her and she was beginning to appreciate her a lot too. She was fun, honest and most of all she had great sense of humor. And her weird obsession for R-rated subjects was certainly a change to the general atmosphere.

"Hey stop bothering my friend! Every girl has her secret garden..." she tells them one day, taking Kyoko by the arm to walk to their classroom.

"That's not gonna help, you do realize that right?" Kyoko laughs, taking her arm away, afraid to add more fuel to the rumors already running, and still uncomfortable with any form of physical touch. She was almost sure there were betting boards about her… But she didn't really care, it was awkward but they weren't mean. She wasn't there to be a social bird anyway. She was there to learn and it didn't leave her enough time for any other considerations.

"I don't care, next time I'll beat them up! I don't want to see my friend sad!"

Kyoko chuckles as she sits at her desk. This will be her last class of the day. English, easy. Next will be quirk training. Much less pleasant.

She arrives right on time, panting, on the field, having had a hard time getting rid of one particularly talkative classmate.

The first persons she sees are Gran Torino and Recovery girl. Kyoko stops in front of them to salute them and makes her excuses for her almost lateness. It's only after that she spots Aizawa on the other side, but he isn't alone. There are two laughing boys of his age with him. His friends? Can he even have friends?…

Kyoko comes closer, only to signal her presence so they can begin the training, but it doesn't go as planned.

"HEEY! THEERE SHE IIIiiiis!" Kyoko's eyes widen in choc and she stops a few strides away from the group. The tall loud blond is grinning from ear to ear, Aizawa has his back at her and the third guy is giving her an apologetic and kind smile. He's certainly the one she's going to like best of the three she can see that right away.

"Hey, sorry 'bout that, didn't mean to scare you, UA's mysterious giiiirl! I'm Yamada Hizashi, Aizawa's bestest friend in this world!" the blond introduces himself at a more reasonable volume. He's nice, loud but nice.

"Hi! I'm Shirakumo Oboro! Sorry for the crazy one, and for the sulking one. Nice to meet you!" the last one says, outstretching his hand. She can't help but chuckle at that. He is really nice and cute, with his freckled bronzed skin and his little bandage on his nose. It makes him look like a little boy and not like an almost grown man. "We don't want to disturb you, but we really wanted to know what Shota was up to that was so secret. And the teachers were okay so…"

Kyoko's first instinct would have been to ask them to leave, if only for their own security, but seeing him rubbing his nape with his pretty smile…

"That's okay. I guess… As long as you stay out of sight..."

"THANKS!" the two new boys beam at the same time, and she lets a small smile slip on her lips at their enthusiasm.

"Can we go now?" comes the usual bored low voice of Aizawa, who's already walking away without so much as a look of acknowledgment. Kyoko rolls her eyes at his rudeness.

"Oh, hello! Nice to see you again! Did you have a good day? I brought some friends along, hope you don't mind... Are you ready to go now?… Insufferable" Kyoko mutters, trailing behind him.

"Have something to say?" No. No way he heard her…

"No, nothing… grumpy." she forgets to lower her voice for the last part and it earns her a dirty look from him, but she doesn't care.

She takes her place on the field without another word and the training begins.

She had made some huge progress during the last weeks, especially since her one on one session with grumpy. Seeing that she was able to hold back her demonic doppelganger, even for a little while, had done wonders for her confidence.

Now, as long as there isn't more than two person, she can hold it back and unleash it when she wants to. But for that she needs to focus really hard, and it often ends up with a massive migraine if she hold back for more than ten minutes. That week however was happening a phenomenon no one knew what to think of…

It was getting bigger.

And stronger.

When she had arrived, it was about Aizawa's height. But now, it was past the 6.5 feet. No one knew why and how it was growing, but the weirder thing was that it wasn't harder to control. In fact it was quite the opposite.

They had been at it for almost forty-five minutes now, and Kyoko was growing tired. Aizawa and Gran Torino were walking around her, encircling her, making her divide her attention and extend her focus. The exercise was draining. The throbbing gashes on her hands and the heat of the sun on her skull making drops of sweat spill in her eyes were already distracting, but the extremely loud sneeze and the move of the bush at the corner of the field were the last straw. Her focus snapped and It ran toward Hizashi, now that she could see him.

Kyoko yelled at him to ran, panic overwhelming her. It took what appeared to her like an eternity as she watched the monster -her monster – running toward the poor innocent man for Aizawa to erase her quirk. Just in time.

What happens after that is a blur for Kyoko. Tears blocking her vision, she doesn't see that Hizashi and Oboro running to her and Aizawa staying rooted on his spot. Scream echoing in her ears, she doesn't hear Gran Torino praising her progress, Hizashi blaming himself, or Oboro expressing his admiration. She doesn't even hear her own voice repeating the same loop over and over again.

"I'm sorry… I'm sorry..."

It's that day all over again, the screams, the pain, the fear.

She's a danger. A killer. How stupid she had been to think she could change that. You can't change people. They had been right from the beginning, a villain remains a villain…

"I'm sorry."

With that last apology she runs, not conscious of where her feet are taking her. She just wants to run. Away from them. Away from everybody. For their own sake.

And here comes the loud blond, the cloud boy and the obsessed girl! I hope they're not too OOC, I really tried to stick as much as I could to their personalities but with adding a little youth to it!

Do not hesitate to tell me if there is something bothering you or if you liked it in the comments!

xoxo