"The losing team is fairly uninjured, but the winning team has collapsed," mused Kaminari.

"In other words, they lost the scuffle, but won the war." concluded Tokoyami.

A little while later, Bakugou, Uraraka and Iida were gathered in the monitor room for a review of their performances.

"Hm, I'd say the best in this match…was young Iida!" said All Might.

"But weren't the winners Ochako and Midoriya?" asked Tsuyu Asui, the frog girl, looking perplexed.

"I wonder why I would say that," said All Might, rather cheekily. "Who knows why?"

"I can tell you why," said Yaoyorozu almost on cue. "It's because Iida was the one who adapted the most to the situation. Having watched the fight, Bakugou's behavior was clearly driven by some personal grudge, and thus totally arbitrary. Further more, as you said, sensei, a large-range attack in an indoor arena is just foolish. The same reasoning goes for Midoriya. Uraraka lost focus halfway through, and her final attack was too reckless. If she'd treated the dummy weapon as if it were real, she'd never have launched such a large-scale attack. Iida was fully prepared for his opponent's arrival. He had a counterstrategy, and never lost sight of his mission to protect the dummy weapon. Technically the hero team won, yes, but they took advantage of the fact that this was training, and didn't respect the spirit of the trial."

She basically nailed it, I thought. She noticed more than I did. Even all Might looked impressed.

"W-well, young Iida might have been a bit too stiff, but, correct!"

"We should always start with the basics and devote ourselves whole-heartedly to learning," said Yaoyorozu, sounding and looking almost more like the General than All Might himself had done. "That's the only way to become top pros."

Impressive, I thought to myself. With that, All Might called out the next match. My team, against Mashirao Ojiro and Tooru Hagakure - a boy with a tail and a girl with invisibility powers. We would be the heroes, the others would be the villains.

Outside the building, a different one inside Ground Beta, Shoji started producing tentacles to overhear the other team.

"One of them's on the north side of the 4th floor. The other's somewhere on the same floor, barefoot. The invisible one must be planning to ambush us for capture."

"For your own safety," I told him, "step outside. Our opponents intend to fight a defensive battle, but we've already won."

With one gesture, I could effortlessly freeze the entire building, and stick our opponents' feet to the ground. A few minutes later, I had reached the top floor and was facing Ojiro. He looked terrified, shaking with only his hands raised in defense.

"You can try and fight me if you like," I told him, "but do be aware that peeling the skin off the sole of your foot doesn't help your combat abilities much."

Going past him, I made it to the dummy weapon, and secured the win with a single touch. "Apologies," I said to Ojiro, hearing All Might call out the win, and using my left hand to melt the ice. "The gap between us is just too big."

All Might gave us our reviews, and mostly just praised me. Yaoyorozu had nothing to say about our performance in particular; I noticed behind her that Bakugou was looking away, as if still upset from before.

A few matches later, we all stood outside facing our teacher. "Good work, everyone! Apart from young Midoriya, there were no big injuries. Never the less, no holds were barred. For your first exercise, you all did wonderfully."

"Such an honest lesson right after Mr. Aizawa's is kinda anticlimactic if you ask me," said Asui.

"We're free to hold straightforward classes if we wish," said All Might brightly. "Change and return to the classroom!" He then rushed away in a flash.

Thus concluded our first day of combat training. All in all, what I could surmise from the day's work was that my classmates were really something else.

A few days later, we would come to face the threat All might had mentioned. The terror of true evil.

The news that All Might had entered Ua's faculty threw the whole country into an uproar, and the mass media were pressing at the gates for days on end for a scoop. It made it really annoying to try and get in the front doors for class.

The day after our combat training, we were back in our homeroom class, with Mr. Aizawa.

"Hope you're rested from yesterday's battle trial. I took the liberty of looking at your marks and evaluation," he said. "Bakugou. Stop acting like a child. You're wasting your talent."

"Got it," said Bakugou. I'd half expected him to start yelling again, but around Sensei he was pretty calm.

"And Midoriya, are you always planning on destroying your arm? If you keep going 'I can't adjust my quirk so I have no choice, you won't get terribly far. I've said it before. Don't make me say it a third time. Once you've cleared that hurdle, you'll be much more flexible. So show a little urgency."

"Yes, sir!" said Midoriya, and with that Mr. Aizawa turned his attention to new matters.

"Now, let's get on with the homeroom notices. I'm sorry to spring this on you all, but…"

What now? Another pop test?

"We need to pick a class president."

Finally, something school-like! It felt like everyone was thinking that together now. All at once, everyone seemed to be volunteering for the job, each student claiming their own right to the position over the others. Thinking it over, though, it wasn't something I was interested in. I've never been particularly interested in leading others…and in my opinion, there was someone else way more suited for the job than me. And more suited than anyone else in class, really. The choice seemed obvious…

She was raising her hand too, in the seat next to mine. Yaoyorozu, my fellow recommendation student, though she wasn't making as loud of a fuss as some of the others.

If this was just a normal school, then being class rep would just be a lot of boring paperwork. But here, in the Hero Course, it's more like guiding the group, a position that will build up your hero foundation all the faster.

"Be quiet, everyone!" said Iida. "This is a task laden with responsibility, where you must carry and pull everyone else's weight. It's a holy office that requires the esteem and trust of everyone else in class. The only truly worthy leader will emerge from a democratic choice, reflecting the will of the people…which is why this must be settled by a vote."

"It's still to early to have developed any trust in each other," said Asui.

"And everyone will just vote for themselves!" added Kirishima.

"And that's precisely why the person who does manage to earn multiple votes will be the truly appropriate person for the job, no?" said Iida. "Is that all right, Sensei?" he said, turning to Mr. Aizawa. "As long as you all decide by the deadline, anything's fine," said Mr. Aizawa, going to sleep in his old sleeping bag.

I cast my vote for Yaoyorozu and waited patiently to see the outcome. When the votes were tallied, Iida, Uraraka, Hagakure and myself had none; 14 of our classmates had one apiece. Yaoyorozu had two, and the winner, with three votes was…

"You gotta be kidding me! Who voted for Deku!?" demanded Bakugou. Deku being his name for Midoriya.

"Well, guess we know it wasn't you," snarked Sero.

Iida was looking really upset. "Zero votes! I see how it is! Of course, since I insisted on the sacredness of the role…"

"You voted for somebody else?" said Yaoyorozu.

"Even though you wanted the job so badly? What are you doing, Iida?" asked Sato.

"So then," said Mr. Aizawa, coming out of his name, "It's president Midoriya and Vice President Yaoyorozu." The two stood before us, making quite a striking contrast; Yayorozu was almost half a foot taller than Midoriya, poised and calm, while he was sweaty, nervous and shaking, as if he couldn't believe what had just happened.

"Well," said Kirishima, "Midoriya was real fired up during our combat training!"

"And Yaoyorozu was real cool during the training analysis!" added Kaminari. "Maybe this won't be so bad."

I wasn't particularly sure. Midoriya was passionate, certainly…but would passion really be enough to lead us?

While we were eating in the cafeteria that day, the alarm system went off, indicating we needed to evacuate. The entire room charged the door, nearly crushing us in the hallway, until a loud voice from the emergency exit door caught all of our attention. Iida was standing on the emergency exit sign, his glasses fallen off and a note of firm command in his tone.

"Everybody, calm down! it's OK! It's just the press, there's nothing to panic about! It's OK! You're at UA. Let's conduct ourselves in the manner of those enrolled at the highest academia."

This information soothed the crowd; everyone dispersed, the police arrived, the reporters withdrew, and we all returned to Class 1-A.

"All right, President," said Yaoyorozu to Midoriya. "Start us off."

"Uh, we're supposed to decide who our other class officers will be, but first…I need to say something," he said, still shaking a bit, like uncertain of his own words. "I've thought a lot about this, and I think that Tenya Iida should be our class Rep! He was able to get the whole crowd to calm down, and I think that that makes him the right choice for the job."

"Yeah, he's got a point!" said Kirishima, grinning and looking real satisfied. "Iida made a great showing back there at the lunchroom. I wouldn't have minded Midoriya either, of course," he added, apologetically.

"He looked like the guy on the emergency exit sign," said Kaminari, and the two of them both grinned.

"Whatever, just get on with it already," growled Mr. Aizawa from inside his sleeping bag. "Time is wasting."

"If it's the wish of the class rep," said Iida, "then I can't refuse."

"Do us proud, emergency exit!" cheered Kirishima. "Emergency exit Iida! Don't let us down!" said Kaminari.

With that, Iida was placed as class Rep, although Yaoyorozou still looked exceptionally displeased.