And I'm back with another chapter – and it's so short, I wanna cry. This is the best I could do.

Also. Fuuuuuuuck this was supposed to get out so much earlier. I am so, so sorry. I've been going through some shit, check out my profile if you're curious. The updates for this story, and all my other stories, for now, are going to be few and far between. Just know, I AM sorry, and I AM trying, please bear with me.

The blue jumpsuit from hell was back.

"I'm so nervous! I hope I stand out!" Hagakure said as she fidgeted in her seat.

And this time, they weren't even in gym class!

"I think you'll be ok, Hagakure. We'll work together when we can, the 4 of us. Right?" Ojiro said, attempting to placate her.

Why this colour, in particular, was a necessity was honestly so far beyond his comprehension that Kyoya genuinely hated it.

"Indeed. I am a solitary creature by nature, but even I find that our friend group is strong."

Kyoya blinked back to the present, leaning back against the lockers with his arms crossed. He looked down at his three herbivores sitting in front of him, smiling up at him.

"Because we are all good followers,"

"And good followers make a great leader."

"Right, Himura-kun?"

Then their smiles all widened up at him, in unison, and Kyoya couldn't completely resist the urge to flinch back and move away from them.

"Is everyone ready!? We're going to be called out soon!" Iida all but yelled as he burst open the door. The tension in the air shifted slightly, a couple of people going as far as to calm themselves with the 'person' kanji on their palm. Kyoya smiled as he let the tension wash over him – he hadn't felt this close to 'going to war' in a long time. He could vividly remember him and the rest of the guardians, as well as a few others, gathering about in a 'prep' room of sorts before Tsuna mobilized them for battle. Those times had been some of his fondest memories.

Takeshi and Ryohei were as loud and smiling as they always were, but those smiles turned sharper and sharper as the minutes wore on. Hayato was quiet, actually quiet, as he fretted over his dynamite – no matter how often he fought with his rings and Flames, he still always carried dynamite, even if it all stayed hidden. Lambo and Chrome struck up an unlikely friendship with Dino and, later on in years, Fran, about not wanting to fight – or, more specifically, not wanting to get hurt or hurting others in their upcoming fights. (This was when he knew that even the Varia had herbivores in their ranks.) The rest of the Varia (sans Belphegor and Fran) were often secluded away in their own corner, being absurdly loud. Byakuran, Reborn (before he died), Fon, Bel, and Mukuro would convene together and quietly 'talk' about something.

(From the chuckles he could hear coming from their little corner of the room, Kyoya both really wanted to know, and was just fine where he was, thank you.)

And then Tsuna, fearful leader to all he led, friend and Family to everyone in the room, would come through the doors, announcing they were to file out and prepare. Throughout the years, that fearful leader became more and more fearless, and by the time they had all passed away, Tsuna was someone Kyoya could call a true Mafioso Boss, leader and friend.

Kyoya was abruptly pulled from his memories of a life long ago lived as Todoroki's voice called out, loud and clear, to Midoriya Izuku. A Declaration of War. One that was returned.

Ah, there was the carnivore, all hidden away under an herbivore's mask of innocence. The reason Kyoya considered the green small animal an omnivore. Kyoya grinned. It was not a happy look.

Kyoya was the last one to walk out of the room – mostly because he hated crowding and just the thought of being a part of something he hated made his skin crawl. So he shoo-ed off his herbivores and stood back a moment, letting the backs of his classmates walk farther away from him. Once he deemed that he wouldn't be labelled 'a part' of the crowd of students, he started to walk toward them.

"Oi, Kyoya." He glanced over his shoulder at the sound of Reborn's new voice and watched the man walk up to him. He hummed in the man's direction and continued walking toward his classmates. The man joined him in silence, the former hitman keeping up with his stealth so the other students wouldn't notice him behind them, since he technically wasn't supposed to be there.

"Good luck out there." Reborn muttered in Italian.

"I don't need luck." The teen answered back, just as quiet, in Mandurian, not because of their game or anything, more because it was habit by this point to respond to Reborn in Chinese. The students in front of them paused with glee as they waited to be announced to walk ahead. "But… Thank you, Reborn. And Aizawa Lao-shi.*"

Walking out of the gates was akin to walking toward a battle-field, getting announced as the Hero class that survived a Villain attack was a bit annoying as Kyoya really didn't want to known as a 'survivor', and then getting sneers of distaste from the other students as they walked out was phenomenally satisfying. All in all, it was as much of an 'emotional roller-coaster' as Kyoya could get.

And then… and then Kyoya watched as Bakugou Katsuki was brought up as Kyoya's replacement; because Kyoya, as per one of his punishments, was stripped from his spot as the highest-scoring student. So the second-place student, Bakugou, was called up to represent the students and give a small speech – a pledge.

"I pledge… that I'll be number one."

Which, to be fair, was probably better than Kyoya's "I'll bite everyone to death" he would have said, had he still been allowed up on the podium. He thought back to the several days he had been in the principal's office, practically begging to be allowed to join the class in the Sports Festival – finally resorting to telling his plan, in full to the animal.

'Alright, I suppose I can see why you would want to take part. But! I still cannot allow you to enter without restrictions. You'll have to keep the ankle monitors.' Nezu said succinctly, suspicion in his eyes.

'Then, I would like my tonfa back, seeing as I do not have a quirk, and I'll already have that as a restriction.' Kyoya countered easily.

The animal took another day to consider that and came back the day before the sports festival began – 'Ill let you choose; you can have your tonfa with the ankle monitors, or you can be without them both.'

Kyoya chose to free-hand it. He had a feeling he would be regretting that decision near the end since apparently these always ended in a one-on-one round-robin tournament to find who was, as Bakugou put it, 'number one'.

Kyoya nodded to Bakugou in appreciation of the 'pledge' the other had given, despite the jeering crowd of 'boo's the teen was getting from everyone else, and the teen purposefully slammed his shoulder into Kyoya's. Vibrant and angry red Storm Flames all but assaulted him at the point of contact, and Kyoya smirked as his own Flames brushed the Storm away. They stared each other down amidst the jeers and revelled in the feel of the challenge in each other's eyes.

Until Midnight, the R-Rated Hero whipped her flogger at the crowd of students, gathering their attention on her rather than on each other. There was some muttering between the boys about whether the Hero should really be allowed to teach at a high school. Kyoya honestly had to agree – the school should be teaching students how handcuffs should stay on people, not be broken in half and used as bracelets. It insulted him – he had, after all, used them to fight on multiple occasions.

A giant computerized 'wheel' was spinning, Kyoya could feel the tension rising and raising and raising from every person in the stadium – it would be stifling if he didn't love it so much. Tension peaked as the wheel slowed. Kyoya could feel it drawing even him in closer.

A race.

An obstacle race.

All this tension for a race? If Kyoya wasn't determined to see his plan come to fruition, he would have left from the absurdity of it. He watched his herbivores crowd around near the other, less tolerable herbivores, and his omnivore Tokoyami mingled with the Rain reincarnation and the puntable classmate with the balls on his head. They were still talking about Midnight, while the racecourse was loudly being explained by Present Mic all the way up in the speaker's booth.

It was slight, but Kyoya thought he might have seen Reborn smirking down at him from beside the overly loud blond teacher. The students all took their places in front of the starting line, the lights turning different colours as it counted down.

Kyoya slowly pulled his left arm across his chest, his right hand pushing his left elbow to exarate the stretch as he lifted one foot and began rotating his (finally free) ankle. The chime went off, all 180 students hurrying to leave the rest in the dust – every student but Kyoya as he switched sides to continue his warm-up stretch on his arms and ankles.

"Um… are you alright there?" Midnight-sensei asked as she came close, her mic echoing her words in the stadium.

"Just fine." He told her as he released his arm and bent for a toe touch.

"Your classmates all left you behind."

"I know." He pulled his arms up high over his head as he began to bend his back to stretch his core stomach muscles.

"… did you give up before trying?" she questioned with a concerned tilt to her head. "Because there is no way you can catch up from here."

"I can." He said as the palms of his hands gripped the ground near his heels, his back folded neatly in half, bottoms of his shoulder blades touching his butt. Midnight let out an impressed low whistle as Present Mic asked 'Erasure Head' what Kyoya was doing – probably looking for commentary just to keep things light.

Before Reborn could respond Kyoya used the ground as leverage, flipped his body over and into a crouch and, with a burst of gathered Flames in his legs, he was gone down the tunnel.

Whispering almost quietly, Present Mic pulled away from the microphone and leaned into Reborn's space.

"Duuuuude."

"What."

"Did you know he could do that!?" Ok, maybe 'whisper' was a strong word because quiet really wasn't in the man's vocabulary… or abilities.

"Of course I did. He's my student – I wouldn't be much of a teacher if I wasn't sure of his abilities."

"… uh-huh."

Kyoya jumped as he neared the closest student, a relatively normal-looking brown-haired girl, and used her as his first launching pad – skipping from the head of one student to shoulder of the next. He got a couple of complaints about it, but honestly, Kyoya could never find it in him to care about the complaints made by the herbivores about him. (The only time he did care was when he looked at them for a laugh back in Namimori Middle. Ah, fond memories.)

He blinked as he felt a familiar chill slid down his spine – followed by a quick gust of cold air. He was almost at the entrance to the tunnel, almost out of stepping-stones – er, students, so when the icy blast hit and immobilized most of the children, Kyoya leapt away from them and onto the low wall just to the side. He landed with precision and grace and looked down to see the floor covered with a thick layer of ice. Thanking everything he could think of that he had trusted his still honed instincts, Kyoya picked up speed as much as possible, uncaring of his Flame reserves or the inevitable muscle exhaustion he was sure to feel later in the day.

The complaints from the herbivores turned from just him having stepped on them to him 'cheating' by running along the top of the wall. Honestly, he hadn't even thought of it that way. Was this considered cheating? Had he just uprooted his plan by accident?

"While it's not very fair, it's not cheating until his feet touch the ground on the other side of the wall!" Present Mic yelled from the VIP Monitoring/ Broadcasting Room.

Well then.

He could have fun with that.

With an outright evil smile, Kyoya continued forward with all the grace one should expect of a former assassin. He watched as Robots, the one-, two-, three-, and zero-pointers from the entrance exam, stood tall in front of the students. So they were the first of the obstacles? Maybe this race would be worth his time and effort after all. But then they suddenly flash froze as Todoroki blasted past. He yelled that he froze them as they were falling, so they should be careful.

Well, wasn't that nice of him? To warn the lesser herbivores about his own ineptitude on properly freezing anything. Kyoya reached the end of the low wall right as one of the closer robots fell, and he launched himself as far as his cloud Flames could shoot him. He barely reached halfway up the largest robot and he began free climbing the cold metal. He reached the top just as

explosions sounded behind him, and he looked back in time to watch Bakugou with two others fly overhead.

One he barely recognized as a classmate with the tape that excluded from his arms – Sero, he thought the boy's name was – and Tokoyami. With sharp eyes, Kyoya leaped up and latched onto the hybrid bird's leg just as he passed over Kyoya.

"What the – Himura?"

"Hey! It's you!" Dark Shadow crowed in delight, an unsightly claw coming down to grab at Kyoya's arm to better stabilize them both. Kyoya glanced up at them as they began to descend from their jump over the bot.

"When I say 'go', kick me as far forward as you can." Kyoya said over the roar of the wind picking up around them.

"Wha-"

"I'll throw you!"

"GO!"

To his credit, Tokoyami didn't hesitate – he reeled his leg back and Kyoya could feel the power in the boy's leg as he was hurled forward. The creature cackled as he tightened his grip on Kyoya's arm as it extended and threw him an extra bit ahead than Tokoyami could kick on his own.

Kyoya grinned as he realized Dark Shadow was laughing because he threw Kyoya at the race leader – at Todoroki.

*Lao-shi = teacher in traditional Chinese