It didn't take too long to get the routine at UA. Regular classes in the morning, Hero course in the afternoon.
Our first class with the #1 Hero, All Might, was later that week. He came in all cool in his flashiest costume and told us it was time for Combat Training and - YES! - Costumes.
We got to design our own costumes, thanks to the Hero commission. Mine was meant to be as flashy, purple and teal as possible. Big high fluffy collar! No sleeves so I can use my arms freely, boots designed to channel my acid.
Eiji's costume had like, no shirt, big round arm guards, a sharp black face covering, boots and baggy pants. Seeing him that way, with the spiky red hair on top of it all, he was almost unrecognizable as the guy from middle school, with the lank black hair and the nervous face.
All Might was explaining our current class assignment. "You'll see, in fact, take two steps and you'll be there. This will be an indoor battle trial! Villain cleanup is usually seen out in the open, but statistically, the better part of it is an indoor job. Most acts of villainy are committed indoors. Imprisonment, house arrest, the black market. In this hero saturated society, any villain with intelligence is lurking in the shadows. For this test, you'll separate into 'villain' and 'hero' groups for a two on two team battle."
The girl who sits behind me, Asui, was asking, "What about the foundational training?"
All Might grinned big at her and said back, "This is foundational training. Only this time, there won't eb any robots it'd be ok to just destroy!"
A bunch of kids started asking questions all at once; All Might looked annoyed by this, and he actually got out a small cheat sheet to explain. "For this training, we'll have some 'villains' guard a nuclear weapon they intend on deploying. The heroes must stop them and their nefarious scheme before it's too late! If the heroes capture the villains, or reach the nuclear core before the time runs out, they win. If the villains keep the core the whole time, or capture the heroes, they win. Your opponents will be chosen by lottery."
Just my luck, the lots put me on the same team as the annoying guy in front of me with the Naval laser. Darn it, that guy's so irritating! Eiji was put on Team J with some guy who shot tape from his elbows.
The first two teams to go were the girl with the round face and the boy with the curly hair and arm breaker powers, (Izuku Midoriya) on the heroes side, and Bakugou (the spiky blond haired boy) and the glasses guy on the villain team.
We all headed over to a surveillance room to view the match on the monitors. "Now," All Might told us, "watch and hatch strategies of your own!"
We got to see gravity Girl and Midori infiltrate, while Bakugou snuck around and attacked them from behind, out of nowhere. But Midori got himself and Gravity Girl outta the way really fast.
"That Bakugou's a cheater!" said Eiji, looking really offended. "An ambush is so unmanly!"
"Midori actually duck away from it pretty well!" I pointed out, getting all excited watching them fight. All Might was saying "Ambushes are good strategy! They are in the heat of battle, after all." Wasn't really as interesting to me as watching that Midoria go, though. Now he was grabbing Bakugou and tossing him over his head like a judo throw!
Before this, Midori had always seemed really meek, and like his powers were no good, but now he was holding his own against the guy who came in first at the entrance exam!
Bakugou had started yelling at him, but we had no sound. Eiji asked All Might, "What is he saying? There's no sound."
"Teammates can communicate through wireless transceivers," All Might replied. "And they all have a rough sketch of the building. There's also this capture tape. The second someone's wrapped this around their opponent, that's the sign that they're captured!"
That got me thinking. "The time limit is 15 minutes, and the heroes don't know exactly where the core is being held, right? The hero side is at a pretty heavy disadvantage in this scenario," I pointed out to All Might. He grinned back at us all.
"Didn't Aizawa teach you kids our motto? Say it with me now. PLUS, ULTRA!" He punched his hand into the air, and we all followed him. Naval Laser pointed at the screen. "Ah, Monsieur Bakugou!"
We all looked back. Bakugou was launching himself at Midori, and Midori was telling Gravity girl to run for it. As Bakugou kicked at him, Midoriya started wrapping the capture tape around his ankle.
"Look at him go!" said the tape guy. "He hasn't used his quirk once, but he's still going toe to toe with the kid who got 1st place in the entrance exam!" I know, right?
Midoriya then ran for it around the corner and Bakugou started screaming, probably swearing, angry like a crazy person. It was starting to get kinda scary. Gravity Girl tried to fight Glasses upstairs, but he was too fast for her. Then Bakugou cornered Midori and shot off some giant blast at him, so big it blasted through part of the building and tore up a part of Midoriya's clothes!
"Sensei, please put a stop to this!" Eiji said to All Might. "That Bakugou kid's gone mental! At this rate, he'll kill him!"
"No," All Might murmured. Then he said "Bakugou, my boy, if you shoot another blast like that, I'll end this exercise forcibly and you will lose. Launching an attack with such an extensive damage radius while indoors defeats the purpose of protecting your stronghold. It doesn't matter if you're a hero or a villain. That was just foolish! Once more and you'll earn yourself massive demerits."
It wasn't much, but it was enough to keep Midoriya a little safe. Or so we though, until Bakugou launched himself right at the guy and started punching and beating the shit out of him. The other kids started talking about how impressive his techniques were, but i honestly couldn't see it.
"This is just bullying. If you rewind, the tape, it's clear he'd already been captured!" Eiji was saying.
"That's not the behavior of a hero," said a boy with a crow's head near me.
"I thought Midoriya actually hit above his weight, but when it comes to 'battle sense', that Bakugo's a beast."
"He's running away!" I cried out, watching Midoriya do just that. He really was good at dodging.
"Not very manly," murmured Eiji, "but 'd do the same. Something's a bit off, though. Why does Bakugou honestly look like the more worried of the two?"
I had to agree. The two were now charging at each other, yelling at each other and gearing up like they were gonna blast each other away. That blasty power of Midoriya's, which he was probably afraid of using too much, against Bakugou's bomb explosions. It looked pretty terrifying. Was this really what the hero course was going to be?
"Sensei, enough's enough already!" cried out Eiji. "Sensei!"
After a long pause, All Might started to say "Attention, both teams, the match is - "
But he suddenly stopped. It looked like something Midoriya had said had stopped him.
And then Midori launched a giant - much bigger than Bakugou's blast - explosive punch at the ceiling of the building. Debris flew upard, every single story blowing to pieces, as the debris came into the grasp of - GRAVITY GIRL. Suddenly she was batting it at glasses, and we all realized - this was what Midori had intended all along.
She had the weapon. She had it, and they had won.
Holy wowsa. I just stood there, all of us did, wondering what we'd honestly just seen.
"The losing team is fairly uninjured, but the winners are both on the ground," said tape guy.
"They lost the scuffle, but won the match," murmured the boy with the bird head.
"This was only ever just training, though," said Asui, looking real worried.
A little while later, Bakugou, Gravity girl and Glasses had come back to the monitor room, while Midoriya was taken to the hospital, his entire arm broken this time.
They all got their grade - All Might and the Top Class Girl, Yaoyorozu, said the best one was Glasses (Iida) for some reason I didn't really follow. I couldn't help but think that they were wrong…that the real best show came from that funny green-headed boy, Izuku Midoriya.
Chapter 5
My team was the 4th group to go. Me and Laser boy were but in a fight against two students I didn't really know all that well. Two really tall, big boys with funny looking faces. We were the heroes. After seeing Midoriya's match, and some of the previous ones, I wasn't looking to slack off, for sure. My teammate, though, he was a different story, paying more attention to his cape than to what we were assigned to do.
I slid straight down the hallways, waiting patiently for the next attack from the 'Villains'. I've got pretty good reflexes, so when the taller, bigger guy came at me, I was able to slip out of his way and doge his hits.
"Gotta move faster!" I told him. His punch made contact with the wall and actually broke it - he had some kinda super strength!
Pretty scary. But we had to keep going. He was nowhere near as scary as that Bakugou. I kept heading for the upper level, remembering vaguely where the weapon was supposed to be. Behind me, I heard Aoyama - my teammate, freaking out about our opponent and not doing much good to actually keep out of our enemy's way. Before I could get back in time, Sato - our opponent - had landed a hit on him and knocked him into the wall.
"Aoyama!" I called out, freaking out a little. I freaked out more when I saw that Aoyama had been knocked out. All of a sudden, I was on my own against two really big boys, and I didn't even know what the other one's power was yet.
But I wasn't about to back down. Not after what I'd seen earlier. I remembered, in that moment, what Eiji had said before, about Midori running away. "Not very manly, but he doesn't have much choice."
I had to get to the weapon first. Before the time ran out. Sato was strong but he wasn't super fast.
I went sliding down the hallway before he could catch up with me. I could hear him running, but starting to run out of breath. I had a chance, with my acid, to lay a trap. I started splashing little strategic spots of acid along the walls, the load-bearing pieces, as well as leaving my trails along the ground.
At last I'd made it to the top floor, and I heard the stronghold collapse behind me, right on top of Sato, before he could reach me. Trap set, trap sprung!
"Ashido!" came All Might's voice over the radio. "You can't go using a strategy like that again. You're not supposed to do damage to the building!"
Oh, crap. I'd forgotten about that. That's what he'd said to Bakugou. Was I being like him? I thought I was being strategic, like that Midoriya was. Daring.
But I'd made it, at least. It was just me and the other guy now.
I melted through the door and came face-to-face with him. He was a nervous looking rock boy, and he looked kinda scared of me. I moved forward, sliding along the floor towards the weapon, when a bunch of birds flew out of nowhere and started attacking me!
"So, that's your quirk!" I said, remembering now that he'd been doing that during quirk training. I tossed some acid at the birds, trying desperately to get them out of my face. I could hear the timer in the back of my head. Gotta think. Gotta do something.
The birds pulled back at the acid drops, It had actually burned them. They were hesitating. This was my shot!
I slid forward and grabbed the weapon with both hands, before the boy could do anything to stop me. And just like that, we'd won the match!
Though -
"Ashido, you made a great many errors," All Might told me as we reviewed afterwards. "Taking your eyes off your teammate and making no moves to protect him; destroying the building you're supposed to be looking after; all of these are dangerous practices if you wish to be a hero."
I thought I saw Eiji looking at me like he was a little disappointed. I felt a little disappointed in myself too…I'd won, but Aoyama had gotten taken out cause I'd been too impulsive. I really shoulda been trying to look out for my teammate, at least a little. But hey, at least we'd won!
Eiji's team went last. He and the tape boy were up against Asui and the boy with the crow's head. I watched them, wondering how he'd do. Eiji and the tape boy set up a big maze of tape in the villains' chamber in front of the dummy weapon, to make it difficult for the duo to get inside. When they arrived, the bird boy shot out a big shadowy creature from his gut to go attack Eiji, and Eiji started fighting him, while Asui clung to the ceiling to get around the tape.
"Kirishima," I yelled at the screen, "don't forget about Asui! She'll make it to the weapon!"
"And don't you forget about Sero!" said All Might. i watched as Sero did indeed notice her, and started shooting out tape to stop her progress. She managed to duck, jump, twist and turn out of the way, though, and just when it looked like they'd run out of time, she managed to touch the weapon. Kiri's team had lost.
"Good work, everyone!" said All Might at the end of the day's lesson. "Apart from young Midoriya, there were no big injures. Nevertheless, no holds were bared! For your first full training exercise, you all did wonderfully."
"Such an honest lesson, right on the hells of Mr. Aizawa's is…kinda anticlimactic, if you ask me," said Asui.
"Honest lessons also fall in line with our 'freedom' here on campus!" said All might, cheerful as ever.
"Now then, I'm going to share that critique from earlier with young Midoriya! Change clothes and return to the classroom." He disappeared like a bolt of light.
A little while later, the door opened to the classroom and Midoriya rejoined us. Kiri was the first to charge at him. "Nice job back there! I couldn't hear what you were saying, but that was some heated standoff, man!"
"You dodged like a champ!' I told him. Before he could reply, or even look like he'd heard me, Sato jumped in my way. "That first match was so intense, it fired us all up!"
"Yo, I'm Eijiro Kirishima!" said Eiji to him. "We were just finishing up our review meeting about the exercise!" As soon as he paused for breath, I jumped in. "Hi, I'm Mina AShido! You dodged him really well!"
We all continued to greet him, everyone in class joining in to congratulate him. Still, he actually seemed kinda distracted, and after only a few minutes, he said to gravity girl - Uraraka, her name was - "Where's Kacchan?"
Oh, 'Kacchan', right. That's what Midori calls Bakugo. Cause the thing is, we got, they were childhood friends and stuff, actually. They knew each other, they used to get along real well, and it looked like Midoriya was still worried about him, even after the guy had gone and tried to beat him up and all.
I started to wonder as me and Eijiro sat on the bus ride back to Saitama Prefecture. We'd been sorta friends at middle school, friends who knew each other before UA anyway…we wouldn't end up like those two, would we? Rivals turned enemies? Cause Kiri had talked to me before like he thought I was his rival, someone to surpass, someone he thought was better than him. And that kinda thing can really mess people up…
"Ashido?"
"Y-yeah?" I said, wondering if he was going to ask me that.
"Why didn't you use your acid to fight Sato?" he asked me, frowning.
"Huh? In the battle trial, you mean?"
"Well, yeah. You coulda really let loose with your acid in a fight, like All Might said to, and like the others did with their quirks…you've got such a great power, but you didn't even try to use it."
"Oh…well, that's easy. I don't like to use acid on people."
"But don't you kinda have to, if you're gonna be a hero?"
I frowned a bit. "Weren't you the one going on about how Bakugou going all out on Midori back there was mean?"
"Well, that's cause he was being mean and unmanly about it. But there's nothing wrong with using your quirk in a fair fight…so why don't you?"
"I guess I just really don't wanna hurt people that way. My quirk can be real dangerous if I let loose with it…when I was pretty young and first starting it, I burned so many people every time I lost control with it. I can do other stuff in a fight, like punch 'n 'dodge 'n kick and stuff. But I don't wanna use my quirk on other people, if I can help it."
"Some day, you know, you're gonna have to."
"Sure, some day. But I figure I'll know what to do when I get there."
He nodded, thoughtfully. I grinned a bit. I don't think we'll end up like those two did…I think we're gonna be just fine.
A few days later, we would come to face the threat All might had mentioned. The terror of true evil.