Before noon at UA, the hero course has normal lessons for the required subjects. At noon, everyone gathers in the mess hall for lunch. For the afternoon portion, we begin our daily foundational hero studies.
"I AM HERE…COMING THROUGH THE DOOR, NORMALLY!"
Our first Hero Course class was to be taught by none other than All Might himself. He was there, in all his larger than life glory, striding through the door of Class 1-A, and I could hear everyone else murmuring in excitement.
"Foundational hero studies! For this class, we'll be building up your hero foundation through various trials - plus, you'll get tons of extra credit for it!" he said, striding before us with all the same bravado he usually displays on TV. "Let's jump right in with this: Combat Training!" he announced as he held up a card labeled "COMBAT".
"And to go with your first battle, we've prepared the gear we had you send in requests for to match your quirks. Get changed, and we'll be ready to go! Everyone, gather at Ground Beta. Remember, the garb you bring into the battlefield is vitally important, boys and girls! Don't forget, from here on out you're all officially Heroes!"
To explain: Before entering UA, one is asked to submit a report on one's quirk and body specs. An affiliated company, attached to the school takes the information and makes top-notch costumes. It's a smooth system. Specific requests are accepted, so the result is state-of-the-art costume design.
I crafted mine with one goal in mind. First, the color must be entirely white, resistant to extremes in cold. A covering of ice, to completely conceal my left hand side, with a glass focus over the eye to keep my vision unobscured. As it is, when I'm in costume, on the battlefield, no one can see my damn left side.
Everyone gathered together at Ground Beta, a mock city on the school grounds. I had a moment to take in the others' costumes. Yaoyorozu's was a low cut leotard, belt and boots. I imagined she must get cold. Ida's was a full covered bodysuit, like a tank. Bakugou's was mostly red and black, including half face mask, bomb-like gauntlets, boots and a tank top cut low to show his arms and shoulders.
The last to join us was Midoriya, the boy with the finger-breaking quirk. At first I didn't quite recognize him, because he wore a strange hooded green body suit with a cap that appeared to have rabbit ears. It really didn't look particularly impressive, it barely looked as if it had been made by the professional companies. He certainly was a strange guy.
"Let's see what you're made of, you zygotes!" said All Might, standing in front of us like a general preparing troops. "It's time for the Battle Trial!"
Iida raised a hand. "Sir! Regarding the performance we'll be using, is it the mock city from the entrance Exam?"
"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. For this test, you'll separate into 'villain' and 'hero' groups for a two-on-two team battle."
"What about the foundational training?" asked a girl with frog powers.
"This is foundational training!" announced All Might. "Only this time, there won't be any robots it'd be ok to just destroy!"
Yaoyorozu raised her hand. "So, how do we determine who wins and loses?"
Bakugou growled, "Is it OK if we just blow them away?"
The gravity girl, Uraraka chimed in with "Is there a threat of expulsion, like with Mr. Aizawa?"
Iida piled on, "If we're separating into different groups, what would be the best way to do so?"
"HN! I can't hear you if you all speak at once!" said All Might, looking a little overwhelmed. "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 manage to keep the core the whole time, or capture the heroes, they win. Your teammates and opponents will be chosen by lottery."
"Is that really how we'll do it?" asked Iida; Midoriya, piped up, "Well, pros are often forced to amen impromptu teamups with other heroes they might not know very well, so this is probably testing that."
"I see!" said Iida, as if he felt he'd made a mistake. "Always looking to the future. I apologize!"
"Let's start!" said All Might, finally getting another word in edgewise.
We drew our lots. I ended up on "Team B" with Mezo Shoji, a boy with duplicator limb powers. The first teams to do combat would be Midoriya's and Bakugou's, with the former, (working with Uraraka) on the heroes' side, the latter (with Iida) on the villains'.
All Might was saying to them, before they went inside, "This scenario has the villains inside the building first. Then, after five minutes, the heroes will be let in as well. Everyone else will be able to watch what unfolds through the surveillance cameras. This will allow young Iida and Bakugou to get inside the heads of villain kind. This is a practical training exercise, so go all out without fear of injury. Though naturally, we'll cut it short if things get out of hand."
With that, he dismissed them, and the rest of us went to a monitor room to observe their battle.
"Now watch, and hatch strategies of your own!" All Might told us, as we gathered together to survey the room.
The trial started with Midoriya and Uraraka successfully sneaking into a lower floor; as we watched, Bakugou snuck up on them and jumped them with a well-timed explosion, which Midoriya barely dodged.
"That Bakugou's a cheater!" shouted a boy with spiky red hair. "An ambush is so unmanly!"
Not necessarily, I thought. You can't always let pride get in the way off accomplishing your goals.
"Ambushes are good strategy!" All Might chimed in, seemingly to agree with me. "They are in the heat of battle, after all."
"Midori actually dodged pretty well!" said Mina Ashido, a girl with pink hair, skin and horns.
As we watched, Bakugou moved in to attack Midoriya again, but MIdoriya seemed ready, as if anticipating the exact move Bakugou was going to make. He seized his arm and judo-tossed him over his head, slamming him into the floor, with force that cleared did not involve that blasting, finger breaking quirk of his.
It was impossible to tell what they were saying to each other, but the two were yelling at one another as if in the heat of a grand passion.
"What's he saying?" asked the spiky haired boy. "There's no sound through the surveillance footage."
"Teammates," All Might explained, "can communicate through wireless transceivers. And they all have a rough sketch of the building. And then there's this capture tape! The second someone's wrapped this around their opponent, that's the sign that they're 'captured'!"
"The time limit is 15 minutes," said Ashido, looking worried, "and the heroes don't know exactly where the core is being held, right?"
"YES!"
"The hero side is at a pretty heavy disadvantage in this scenario," she concluded. As she spoke, I watched the monitors. Midoriya and Bakugou were still arguing, possibly yelling at each other; Uraraka was hesitating behind Midoriya, and Bakugou looked ready to destroy something. Things for the Hero team were not looking especially good right now, in the face of that overwhelming tenacity.
"Didn't Mr. Aizawa teach you kids our motto?" All Might asked Ashido. "Say it with me now!" Plus, Ultra!" Everyone was pumping their fists into the air, happy to be cheering, when Aoyama, a Frenchman with a naval laser, drew our attention to Bakugou once more.
He blasted himself towards Midoriya, this time attempting to kick instead of fist blast him. Uraraka ran off, and in the blink of an eye, Midoriya was wrapping the capture tape around Bakugou's ankle.
He must have been expecting that move, I thought, recalling that it had seemed during the Quirk test the previous day as though they knew each other. That Midoriya called Bakugou 'Kacchan', and that Bakugou called him 'Deku'…no, not just knew each other. They must have been some kind of childhood friends, to be on such familiar footing. So we weren't just watching a matchup of two classmates right now. This was a fight these two had probably been thinking about their whole lives.
As if knowing what Bakugou would do by heart, Midoriya dodged his next move, a blast to the wall that would perhaps have knocked him out, and dodged for cover.
"Look at him go!" said another observer, "He hasn't used his quirk once, but he's still going toe to toe with the kid who got first place in the Entrance Exam!"
He's mostly been dodging and capturing, though. He won't be able to keep that up forever. Sure enough, Midoriya suddenly fled the room, leaving Bakugou to chase after him, snaring and shrieking as if going out of his mind.
"Damn, that kid's pissed, it's scary," said the electric-powered boy, Denki Kaminari. Both evaded each other, Bakugou growing more and more reckless and angry, Midoriya looking very much as if he were coming up with a plan. Upstairs, Uraraka had found Iida, but that did her no good, as he was well prepared for her arrival and had left her no weapons.
As she seemed to tell Midoriya of this on their headphones, Bakugou had finally found him, and raised a bomb gauntlet as if loading and cocking a gun.
"Bakugou, stop this!" All Might shouted, "You'll kill him!"
This seemed accurate, as a moment later Bakugou let off a blast from the bomb so large it rocked the foundation of the building.
"This is supposed to be training!" cried out the spiky-haired boy.
"Midoriya?" called All Might. We watched the smoke clear; Midoriya was lying on the ground, his clothes singed, but still alive.
"Sir, please put a stop to this!" spiky hair was saying to All Might. "That Bakugou kid's gone crazy! At this rate, he'll kill him!"
"No," said All Might, though not as if shutting Spiky Hair down. More as if considering. Then he said, into the microphone, "Bakugou, if you shoot another blast like that, I'll end this mask and you will loose. Launching an attack with such an explosive 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 massive demerits!"
It was clear that Bakugou heard him, because he threw his hands behind his head in exasperation, and then launched himself directly at Midoriya - who, it seemed, and been speaking the whole time to Uraraka over his mic. He wasn't able to move in time, and held up his hand as if to punch - but Bakugou, instead of blasting him head on, blasted himself behind Midoriya, and hit him from behind.
"He deliberately misled his opponent, and used his explosion quirk to redirect his trajectory midair to his advantage," I murmured quietly. "You wouldn't think him the clever type looking at him, but those were some subtle motor skills."
"Landing a telling blow while resisting inertia at the same time means he must be able to adjust his explosion power finely", said Yaoyorozu, as if continuing my thoughts.
"Can't say I like him, but the kid's got talent," mused Kaminari.
Bakugou was continuing to beat him Midoriya, hitting him with a punch and slamming him into the ground.
"This is just torture!" said Spiky Hair. "It's clear he's already captured him!"
"That's not the behavior of a hero," agreed Tokoyami, a boy with a bird head. That seems rather harsh…though it's clear that Bakugou is more intent on hurting Midoriya than winning the exercise at this point. There's something going on between those two.
In the face of his opponent, Midoriya was running away, like a frightened rabbit. As he reached the wall and turned back to Bakugou, they started yelling at each other once more, Midoriya with tears in his eyes. And now, they were charing at each other, as though prepared to unleash the full force of both abilities on one another.
"Sir, that's enough already!" Spiky hair was pleading, almost begging All Might. "Sir!"
"Attention, both teams!" All Might was saying "ST- "
But then, something stopped him. In hindsight, it must have been something Midoriya said through his mic.
Because instead of aiming his body-breaking power at Bakugou…he'd aimed it at the ceiling.
The blast from Midoriya shot up through the entire building, turning the ground in the room Iida and Uraraka shared into debris. Debris that Uraraka could use - as a weapon. Against Iida.
Which she promptly did, jumping through the debris to grab the dummy weapon, securing the win for -
"The Hero Team!" Announced All Might, as Midoriya collapsed under the crushing breakage of his own right arm, and Bakugou stared at him as though he'd broken his heart.
I don't think I'll ever forget those two…but at the time, I don't think I had any idea just what an impact they would make on my life.
