The next day, the class returned to their training.
Niwa was banned from her task and Aizawa-Sensei forced her to join Midoriya and two Class B students in training with Tiger.
Her body still felt sore and she was a little sleepy, but otherwise, the training with Tiger was just flat out boring. By the time the day had finished, Niwa was glad to get the heck away from Tiger's menacing supervision.
They had to cook their own dinner again, and unlike last night, Niwa was more than happy to join her class.
Niwa stood beside Kirishima at the cooking station. Niwa used her spatula to move around the bits of pink and brown beef across the heat until the outsides were all cooked. She transferred the half-cooked beef to a bowl and called for Todoroki to take it over to the pot while grabbing another batch to fry. They were having meat and potato stew tonight.
"Bakugou, you're really good at using a knife," Uraraka said from behind in a mix of surprise and fear. "It's unexpected…"
"Whaddya mean, unexpected?! How can someone suck at using a knife?!" The blonde said loudly.
"There he is." Kaminari pointed out after delivering a new batch of raw meat for her and Kirishima to cook, "We haven't seen the capable version of him in a while."
Niwa snorted her amusement while poor Kirishima slumped with an annoyed frown and a strained sharp-toothed grin, "Everyone's too energetic…"
She chuckled at her friend, "Bit of a late night last night?"
Kirishima groaned, "Extra classes went until two in the morning…"
"Hang in there." She grinned.
"Yeah."
Once she and Kirishima had finished with frying all the beef, the pair wandered over to sit at one of the tables. Kirishima immediately slumped across the wooden picnic table and sighed deeply. "Aren't you supposed to be tired too? You even went overboard on the training yesterday." The boy said with a lazy tone.
"Yeah, well, I passed out as soon as I finished dinner. Got myself a full night's sleep and slept in a bit more this morning too." Niwa told her friend.
"I wanna go to bed."
"What's he bitching about now?" Bakugou joined them at the table.
"He only got four hours sleep. You've finished showing off your knife skills?" She taunted in reply.
"Tch, how can using a knife be unexpected?" The blonde grumbled with an almost-pout, his elbow propped up against the table to support his cheek resting in his palm.
Niwa chuckled at the annoyed blonde and glanced over to the unmoving Kirishima beside her. Wait, was he… "Kirishima?" Niwa asked the redhead quietly and gained no response other than the slow movements of his breath.
"Passed out?" Bakugou asked with a brow raised.
"Looks like. He's been working hard with the extra lessons." The pair left their friend to sleep for the hour to took for dinner to cook.
She grabbed herself a plate of stew and then another to take back to the table for her passed-out friend. Niwa glanced over to Bakugou, realizing her hands were full, "Can you grab me and Kirishima a spoon each, please?"
The boy just grunted in return and Niwa figured that was a good enough response before making her way back to their table. She placed the food on the table and shook her friend awake as Bakugou joined them. The groggy redhead woke from his nap with a tired groan and still managed a little sparkle in his eyes when he saw the food.
They were soon joined by Sato and Tokoyami at the table and dinner was quickly devoured by the hungry class.
After their food and washup, the class moved over towards the forest with excited chatter.
"Now that we've filled our bellies and washed our dishes, next is?!" Announced the blonde-haired pussycat.
Mina bounced with excitement, "Test of courage!" The pink girl celebrated.
"We're gonna test it!" Joined in the rest of the small group who had been sitting extra classes.
"Before that," Their homeroom teacher shattered the group's excitement, "It pains me to say, but the extra lessons group will be taking classes with me now."
Niwa watched with sympathy and amusement as her friends were all dragged away by her teacher's capture weapon.
"Now then! I will explain the rules!" Said the pussycat, "Class B will be the first scarers. Class A will travel in pairs every three minutes. There are tags with your names written on them in the middle of the route, so bring those back with you!"
Proof of completion, huh?
"Those being scarers aren't allowed to make direct contact. Show us how scary you are with your Quirks, instead!"
Once again, the pairs were decided with lots. After the last exam, Niwa was starting to prefer drawing lots more than arranged pairings. Though, with five people missing from the class of twenty, there's going to be one sorry person going through alone. Niwa snickered as she took a piece of paper from the blonde pussycat.
She glanced down to the paper in her hand and hummed, now who was her partner going to be?
"Team 3?" Niwa called loudly.
"Ah, t-that's me." Kyoka walked over.
Niwa smiled at her friend's shifty eyes and hesitant expression. "Not a fan of these things?" Niwa asked in slight amusement.
"I'm not good with scary stuff…"
The magenta-haired snickered, "Well, since it's you, Kyoka, you can hold my hand if you want?"
The blush of embracement rose to the earphone girl's cheeks, and she nodded quietly, "Thanks…"
Niwa glanced around at the chaos of her class. Midoriya was frozen after realizing he had drawn the single-person team, Bakugou had latched onto the nearest person with a menacing aura trying to get poor Ojiro to swap numbers and the disgusting little perv Mineta was trying to swap with Aoyama who had been paired with Momo.
"No swapping! These are the teams!" Yelled Tiger, efficiently silencing the entire class, "We begin in five minutes!"
After the five-minute time was up, Tokoyami and Shoji were the first pair to head into the dark forest. Three minutes later, a storming Bakugou and Todoroki went through.
"We're next, Kyoka." Niwa smiled and held her hand out to her nervous friend. Kyoka's hand was smaller and smoother than hers, that was the first thing Niwa had noticed.
"Next team, get ready!" Said the brown-haired pussycat, "You've got one minute to steel your nerves before you go."
The pair waited silently, and Kyoka's grip tightened around Niwa's hand.
"Go!"
Despite the Pro hero's enthusiasm, the pair walked along at a normal pace through the forest trail. Kyoka's eyes darted around, looking for any suspicious movement that could alert them as to where Class 1-B could be hiding in wait.
Niwa chuckled at her friend's skitterish jolts and nervous twitches. She wasn't too bad with stuff like this, in fact, there wasn't a hell of a lot that Niwa was afraid of. If anything, Niwa was more curious about how Class B would use their Quirks to take them by surprise.
The cicadas chirped through the quiet ambiance of the trees and the path was clear before them with eyes well-adjusted to the dark. Niwa glanced up, it was a tranquil atmosphere with the stars softly shining through the gaps in the overreaching trees. The air was still warm from the heat of the day but the light breeze flowing through the forest was more than pleasant.
The trail they walked along was wide and clear of obstacles and stretched out further into the dark. With a casual glance around, Niwa internally applauded Class B. She didn't have a clue where any of them were. She couldn't hear any rustling in the woods nor pick up on their scent. They were good at ambush.
Niwa froze, eyes widened in pure surprise and confusion as a head popped out of the ground a few meters away from the pair.
It was when the eyes of the head blinked wide open that Kyoka screamed.
Niwa winced at the loud, piercing sound but a grin still curved across her face. The head slowly emerged from the ground followed by the rest of the body of the girl who was dressed like that ghost from the popular horror film, the Ring.
The girl dressed up as Sadako reached out a hand and stepped toward the pair. Even though Niwa recognized the girl from Class B, the performance still gave her the chills.
Kyoka screamed loudly again and clung to Niwa's right arm. The magenta-haired girl chuckled, gave the 1-B girl a thumbs up before pretty much dragging her earphone friend further into the forest. After about a minute, Kyoka calmed down and released the tight grip from around Niwa's arm, Kyoka slipped her smaller hand back into Niwa's and hovered closer.
"I… I don't like t-this." Kyoka stuttered at the sound of a rustling bush.
"Don't worry too much, Kyoka. We're a quarter way through by now." Niwa reassured.
Kyoka sighed, "Only a quarter?"
"Well, after this it'll be our turn to be the scarers. You can get your revenge then."
"I wonder what we should do?" the rockstar girl frowned in thought.
"Well, I'm sure some of our classmates will-"
Niwa froze suddenly, pulling Kyoka to a stop beside her as her senses picked up, suddenly on high alert.
"What's wrong? More of 1-B?" Kyoka asked nervously.
Niwa frowned, eyes scanning the line between treetops and the night sky. She breathed deeply through her nose and frowned. "I smell smoke."
"Huh? Like cooking?"
"No," Niwa's grip tightened around Kyoka's hand just a little before inhaling the air again, "Like burning wood and foliage."
They waited in their place in the middle of the path for a short while, eyes glancing around. Something was wrong…
"The cicadas have stopped…" Niwa noted in suspicion.
"Look!" Kyoka alerted and pointed off to the right, a bright blue glow softly grew brighter in the distance. They were downwind from the glow and that was where the breeze had been pushing the scent from.
"A blue fire?" Niwa frowned, "That's not natural."
"Everyone!" Niwa and Kyoka jolted as a voice suddenly entered their heads. This was one of the pussycat's Quirks.
"Mandalay's Telepathy?" Kyoka said in confusion.
"We're being attacked by two villains! It's possible that there are more! Everyone who can move, get back to camp immediately! Even if you do come across the enemy, retreat and do not engage!"
"Villains?" Kyoka breathed in disbelief, "Why are there villains? This training camp was supposed to be a secret!"
"There's no point thinking about that now." Niwa stared at the path behind them where an ominous pink fog seeped from the trees. "We have other problems to deal with first."
"What?" Kyoka stared along with her, "It kinda looks like gas?"
"Did they start that fire to obscure the scent of the gas?" Niwa wondered out loud.
"Either way," Kyoka looked between the two ends of the path, "We're trapped."
Her friend was right. Either they turn back and go into the gas, or they wait until the fire creeping closer forces them to move. Niwa coughed, the smoke was getting thicker, and the fire would reach them in no time. Shit, what to do? They had no idea where the villains were so it was possible that they would encounter one or two of them on the way back. They couldn't take the path back, there were two villains at the starting point where that telepath pussycat – Mandalay – was.
Her mind briefly traveled to her classmates in worry but she pushed her thoughts aside for now.
"What do you think, Kyoka?" Niwa asked when her mind started drawing a blank.
"We need to get back to camp…" Kyoka reasoned, "But I'm worried about the others."
"Me too."
What the hell were they supposed to do?