Death

by tmb1112

Death is a Quirk that can only kill. A perfect Quirk for a villain, but what if the boy who manifested that power just wanted to be a hero? Enrolling in U.A. might not be enough when all your Quirk can do is kill people. Follow Zach Sazaki from his first day in Class A on a story that spans years, as he learns to be a hero, finds out more about his Quirk, and too much to summarize!

170. Chapter 170

Disclaimer: I don't own Boku no Hero Academia

Chapter 170:

"So they do have places like these at Shiketsu too," Mineta said while looking around and up over his head at the dome high above.

All of Class A was gathered on one side of a huge forest in a dome on Shiketsu's campus. They were on the east side of the dome, while to their right in the north was a high stone area that resembled half of a mountain, though the mountain did disappear into the curved wall of the dome before reaching its peak. The rocky area over there was built into the wall, and trees started halfway down it in a scattered and more sparse spread than in the dense woods between the east and west sides of the dome.

The structure itself was one of the biggest on Shiketsu's campus, reaching eighty meters tall in the center with a gradual curve out to the base that stretched over a dozen kilometers in circumference. The enemy base on the west side of the dome was impossible to see from Class A's own base behind Mineta who stood on the front lawn looking up into the sky through the glass dome high above. Although they were closer to the edge than the middle of the training ground, the dome got much steeper right close to the wall so it was still very high above the shortest boy in Class A who stared at those gray clouds up above and got a bead of sweat on the side of his face. If it snows, would it get pitch black in here? There've gotta be lights somewhere, right? It might just rain. It wasn't that cold out… Mineta shook his head around and refocused, looking behind him at the base again.

The base was no more than a two story building with some vines running up the stone support pillars in front of the first floor that held up the protruding section of the second floor. There were windows on the front of the whole second floor, as well as on the front of the right side of the building's first floor. The left side of the first floor behind those pillars was where a set of double doors were with a wide flight of stairs behind them leading up into the long back room of the second floor. In the middle of that floor, surrounded by Mineta's own Pop-Off balls, was a red flag with "U.A." printed in the middle of it.

"Throw some more around," Yaoyorozu called over to the short boy ahead of her who turned his head a bit to see her coming around the side of the building from the back. Momo Yaoyorozu was checking the situation behind their base, and she saw that there was not much space back there between their base and the dome's wall to be flanked from, but she still left Kirishima over there with one of her earpieces to keep on the careful side. The lower walls of the dome were not made of glass like most of it was, instead looking more like black walls of a building (except in the rock section where the walls were covered by the mountainous surfaces). The black walls wrapped around from the east side of the dome to the west, around the south side that was more of a marshy area with a lake at the far south edge, sparse and low tree cover, and wet ground that got dryer and turned more into solid dirt farther towards the middle of the room and the forest that was the majority of their testing ground.

Mineta turned his head to Yaoyorozu who was one of two designated as 'tacticians' for their class. "Already did," he said. "Might want to watch your step."

Yaoyorozu looked around the grass area of what was kind of like a front lawn to their base. Mineta had done a good job of hiding the dark purple balls on the lawn, as she had to look closer to notice where they were hidden under patches of dirt or partially covered by some grass. Her head turned back a little and she saw small bumps just in front of each of the support pillars at the front left of the house. Very smart, Yaoyorozu thought while raising her head to the windows and then the doors past those supports again. If our opponents try to use the pillars, one of the few things they have for cover before entering the building, they will most likely stack up on this side and accidentally step on a Pop-Off. She turned and nodded at Mineta who nodded back trying to suppress his smug grin at how she saw his set up.

Momo reached a hand up to her right ear and tapped the button on her earpiece that connected to all her classmates. "Todoroki."

"Yes?" Shoto Todoroki turned his head and looked down through the window from the second floor of their base.

Behind him, Tsuyu Asui looked over too and then watched as Yaoyorozu and Todoroki talked, no longer with her attached to their call. The way Todoroki responded while holding down on the button of his own earpiece made the call a private one for when both Yaoyorozu and Todoroki released their buttons simultaneously. They were making eye contact with each other through the second floor window, but Asui was looking a different way out the windows on the left side of the building towards the swamp and lake areas. Asui thought back on the previous year though and the wave-pool at U.A. she had gotten stuck in as the water she had been swimming through pushed one way then pulled the other over and over again. She'll expect me to return there for a rematch. But I have to think of the class first.

That Dendo isn't one to come around from behind, Kirishima thought with a low frown. This position isn't permanent, he reminded himself after his previous thought that made him too upset. Something's going to happen that makes me move from here. With Zach with them too, and the way this is set up, there's no way this goes down without me fighting one of them. I'd rather Zach. Really? In this kind of setting? Kirishima frowned deeper and closed his eyes for a moment. What kind of "setting" am I waiting for? His eyes opened and his clenched fists tightened harder at his sides. Your Death can't hurt me. I'll never let you get our flag.

Todoroki tapped the button of his earpiece twice to shift channels, as Yaoyorozu had explained to their whole class right when she handed them out. We have the advantage in communications that they don't. No assistance from the teachers, Todoroki rose up his head while looking out the second floor windows. He stared across the forest and up to the top of the black wall across the training ground from them. The wall extended higher up over there, and the black wall seemed a different shade too so he suspected that was where their teachers had gone after showing them to their bases. Only what we had on our hero costumes. Only what we brought in doesn't mean much though, with Yaoyorozu on our side.

"Those communications' devices certainly create a disadvantage for your students," Ectoplasm said with a glance to his right side at the man standing there also with his arms crossed.

"It's only fair, considering your class has only nineteen people compared to our thirty," Kimona replied with a glance left at a man who used to be a sidekick together with him at the same agency when they were younger. The two of them both looked back forward at the glass and the dozens of camera angles showing the students all over the dome on them.

There were seven teachers in total watching from the spectating room outside of the dome's training area. Three were teachers from Shiketsu itself: Kimona who had the students of Class 1 for one period of the day, Ms. Anastasia who was the head nurse for Shiketsu High, and the class' homeroom teacher Hazano Worrod who sat at the only control seat in the spectating room. Hazano had the controls for the score which was displayed enormously over the top of their spectating room on the inside of the dome's glass, as well as across the dome on the opposite wall at the same height. The score was still 0 to 0, with 'U.A.' at the top of the red tinted rectangle, and 'Shiketsu' at the top of the blue one next to it that had a huge number 0 in the center.

"It isn't as big a disadvantage as you'd imagine," Midnight pointed out to her colleague. Ectoplasm looked to a screen she motioned at and hummed himself at what he saw from the Shiketsu side of the arena. Midnight was there with Ectoplasm who had driven the bus, along with U.A.'s resident nurse who came for the day, and Class A's homeroom teacher for their third year: All Might.

Ms. Anastasia sat on the opposite side of the room as Recovery Girl, her declared "rival" that the only slightly older woman from U.A. scoffed at upon arrival. The other old woman was as short as Recovery Girl too, though she was much more impressed with the fact that All Might was in the room with her than Recovery Girl was as she was used to the former Number 1 hero. Hazano and Kimona had both gone to the joint training the year before at U.A., and the magic had worn off a little for them though they still were very respectful of the former Symbol of Peace. All Might walked up next to Hazano on the left side of his control seat, and he faced the images splitting the wide glass window for the hundreds of hidden cameras over the training grounds.

"All Might. I want to treat this like the real thing." All Might watched his successor closely on an angle of the front of the jail cell. The image was right at the center of the glass window touching the line that split the images apart down the middle horizontally on the glass. The U.A. side's images were all on the top half as their half of the dome was farther from the spectating area on the west side, but the image that had Midoriya Izuku in it was touching that line right above an image of the opposing team's jail cell. There was movement at both, but All Might focused on his green-haired student who said something in a firm voice that had the other five people still standing around him all nodding and then turning and running off. "Against Zach, leading a group of powerful enemies… It's something that I can see being a scenario of a real fight in the future. More-so than our usual training, this is direct preparation for when we have to fight. Since, I believe, I will have to fight him."

I will not question your motivation, Young Midoriya. Not yet. You do not need me to interfere anymore. Your mind is set, and you will fight today as hard as you can to win. I wish to see you win too. If you wish to discuss your reasoning at a later date, I would be more than happy to. For now though, you know something about Sazaki that I do not. Something that has made you more serious than I have ever seen you before. All Might watched his student who stood before those cell bars with the most focused expression. Good luck.

Midoriya's eyes darted right and left across the forest ahead of him. His head turned partially to the left so he could look fully in the direction of their base a little ways off through the forest around the edge of the dome. The cell for the other team would be diagonal from me, wouldn't it? They could be directly across from each other thinking of the dome as a circle, but it could also just be a straight line from east to west. Not knowing the enemy base's layout is part of the set-up. Discovering their locations and learning our environment is part of the training. With such a large arena, there hasn't been mass fighting like there was so early in the last training. We're all taking it more cautiously. Scouting our larger arena, establishing new strategies based on the parameters of the test and the environment we've been given. No urban area like last year had. Just wilderness. A couple of buildings. Open air. Strong enough glass that I've been told not to worry about smashing it from afar. All Might didn't look too sure of that, but I can't focus on being careful with that if it's not part of the examination.

I need to win. I need to beat him. Because if I lose here, then in the real thing… maybe I'll have learned from my mistakes and can train to beat him next time. That's not the way to think about this though! I have to win. That's all there is to this. I need to show Zach that he's not unbeatable. I need to show everyone that he's not the strongest. Midoriya bit down behind his own lips, Including myself.

Deku focused again and his eyes narrowed towards the woods straight ahead of him where one of the teams had just gone out into. Tokoyami and Koda were behind Midoriya on either side of the huge cage of metal bars that was still low enough that it was hidden by the tops of the trees around them. And just in front of that cage but behind Midoriya, knelt Jirou Kyoka who had her earphone jacks plugged into the ground, ready to relay any new information immediately to their team's second tactician in front of her. Jirou heard the heartbeats of several of her classmates close to her. She could hear the heavy breathing and footsteps of another nine from Class A who were running farther away to the west and their enemies who had to be somewhere in the forest if not flanking from one of the sides.

I'm surprised he didn't try talking to all of us right at the start, Jirou thought, an annoyed expression on her face as it came to mind. Not that I care. The others talk about him like he's still their friend though. Like everything's totally fine. So what was up with that look he had as we arrived? He looked like he was completely one of them. Like we were all strangers. Jirou rose her gaze to Midoriya's back while still listening closely to all around her in a 100 meter radius. I need to be as focused as Midoriya there. He's much more assertive than usual. Really taking this seriously. Guess it must be a precursor for him though. When Zach ultimately reveals his plans, it's going to be him who has to take Zach down.

…The first team to 25 points wins, Midoriya's eyes shifted over the trees in front of him to the top half of the score banners across the training grounds. And with 1 point per enemy captured and returned to our jail, we don't need their flag. 10 points for the flag though, means we only have to take down half of their team in total. Ultimately, they don't have to take me down though. Or Bakugo, or Todoroki. Other than Zach, I don't know if anyone in Shiketsu could take the three of us. But if they get fifteen of us and the flag, the other four remaining will have still lost. That doesn't mean we can just keep five people hidden though. Everyone needs to work together to get the flag first. The ten points are essential from a starting perspective. It's the primary objective. Losing our flag before capturing theirs would be like a loss in itself, even if the end result is victory. Winning the battle and the war. Capturing their flag, not letting ours be taken, and defeating them. All are important. Whatever it might represent in a real battle, we can't accept a victory without getting that hostage, or bomb, or important thing that is necessary to get from the villains! And we also cannot let them take something of equal value from us! Total victory! I need to show him that I can do it too! That I can win a total victory even without… without doing whatever it is you're going to do here.

Deep in the forest, running with a group of four others around her, Ashido gulped as she heard a noise and spun her head only to conclude that it was her imagination. What kinds of tactics does he have to beat us with? I wouldn't even think about it if I didn't know the truth- why not? All those battles he talked about in Arcasia- the fake ones! He still made it out like he had all these amazing battle strategies and won every fight! But, but the idea that all those things happened here, on our world! That he was fighting like that! We're about to go up against- against… I want to beat him anyway. Ashido lifted the corners of her lips and shook her head around from behind Sato who she was running with. I want to beat Zach! He looked like he's going to take this really seriously, and that's because he knows how strong we are. He knows we can beat him… I think.

Sero looked to his side at the pink girl to his right. Ahead of him was Aoyama, Sato, and Ojiro ahead of all four of them. Ojiro led the pack of five through the forest that he was actually swinging through by the branches with his thick tail. All five of them were wearing their hero costumes that had been updated a lot since the last time Zach saw them, yet they felt like Zach did not take very close looks at their upgrades when they got off the buses at the front of the training dome. Her confidence is shaky, but at least she's not hopeless. Mineta just kept saying that since it's capture the flag, maybe Zach'll fight without using Death like he did last time. I doubt it though. Against all of us. Against Midoriya and Bakugo, Todoroki and Iida too, he can't stop everyone without using his Quirk. He might be strong, much stronger now with Death being so much more under his control, but if he tries to do this without going all out, Sero curled his hands into fists. We're going to make him regret that.

Farther to the north and on the west side of the forest, a group of four Shiketsu students were moving carefully but still quickly through the woods themselves. Himazuri was at the front of the group as their radar, though Trabo ran at her side with one hand holding her by the shoulder to help her go. If Himazuri closed her eyes, blocking out one of her senses, her mental hearing increased nearly twice as much. The range of her Quirk, Mindreading, spread into the surrounding forest in all directions the same distance as she could not focus one way to hear farther.

When she arrived at Shiketsu High almost three years earlier, Himazuri Hikari could only hear the thoughts of someone she was looking at directly and targeting. Her powers had advanced slowly, but not long after getting her provisional license in her second year, during a particularly stressful moment at her internship in a fight against villains, her powers set expanded. Himazuri realized that day that she could hear villains around the corners. At first she thought the villains she was fighting who she had just run from to get some cover were speaking in low voices, but she heard one of them mention how he did not want her to hear him approaching the door, and she realized the voice she was hearing was in her own head from within his. And in the treacherous three-on-one she found herself in that day, those three villains never saw her again before the tasers she had on her stabbed into their backs.

Himazuri snapped her hand up as she heard a voice in her head. Her hand was held in an open fist, getting the other three behind her to stop short. Two more voices filled her head as they entered her range, and she put up three fingers with a quick look back at the others behind her and a dart of her eyes up into the trees. Alright one is a bad one, Himazuri removed one of the minds from the ones she was targeting. Her lips curled down slightly more, but she remained focused and did not linger on the words that echoed in her head. "I know Midoriya already asked it of you last year, but there are others whose thoughts I need you not to read. Please, don't read these five certain minds, as they have deep, personal secrets…" I'll trust you, Zach. As much as I can't normally, you want to win this as badly as any of us. I know that much. And even if this jeopardizes our chances, I'm willing-

"What's going on?" Trabo asked the girl just on his left who had pulled her shoulder from him when she threw her arm up.

Himazuri's eyes had just widened, and she whispered in quick response, "They stopped too. One of them hears us."

"If it's a girl's voice that knows that," Iida started, after what Shoji just said aloud to repeat after what he just heard in a low whisper through dense forest ahead of them. "It's the Mind Reader. A priority," Iida's calves ignited and flared.

They're after me?! Himazuri took a step back while speaking quickly to the others around her what was happening just ahead. And one of them's hiding her thoughts. Which girl is it?! "I'm their target! Ingenium's rushing forward!"

Iida sped around a tree which gave him a view of the four people ahead of him. A yellow beam flew by his left side and slammed into a tree behind his back closer to where Shoji was sprinting forward and had to yank to the side as the splinters broke off. Enjino stepped in front of Himazuri and had his right hand pointed towards Iida, his whole arm breaking off into light now as he used Beam Body to increased the width of his beam that Iida dodged at first. Iida continued to dodge though, cutting a sharp corner to sprint around the side of the whole group of four so he was at their backs before any of them could turn around.

"They're surrounding us-"

"It's still just the three of them," Himazuri assured everyone from where she stood now in the middle of the group. "Shoji, Iida, and- and…" Himazuri turned her head and looked to the side where this girl was running towards her, thinking super loudly in her head, 'UNICORNS UNICORNS UNICORNS' Himazuri expected to see her any second based on how close she was, but despite her Quirk telling her this person was right in front of her- "It's-"

"Light Refraction!" Hagakure shouted out her super move, while leaping up in the air on the side of the group. The signal caused Iida and Shoji to rush in from the front and back, where they had been standing with eyes squinted and ready to slam shut for a moment once they heard Hagakure's voice that started a second before her super move. Calling out that signal doubled to warn her comrades to close their eyes and to get her enemies to all start turning to her so as to get the most effect out of blinding them.

Hagakure landed with the Light Refraction stopping, and she darted backwards to get back into the woods and away from the group.

Iida and Shoji ran forward at their blinded and shouting opponents. Short on time, Shoji thought. They knew the flash of light would draw attention from a farther range than their fight had been already, and with only a few of them there they had to move quickly. Hagakure was quick to escape backwards, while the two stronger boys acted fast on their disoriented opponents. Iida came up behind the group and jumped up, slamming his knee into the back of the guy who was trying to reach out and grab Himazuri. He slammed him into the ground, then landed on his left foot and fired hotter flames out of his right leg that he spun for the other guy close to where he just hit Trabo into the ground.

Iida's leg was inches from hitting his opponent, when the guy he was kicking at suddenly blurred on a duck down while stepping away from the U.A. student. Him! Iida thought, re-planning his assault as he recognized the power in front of him. His opponent had changed up his costume since the last time they met, wearing dark purple this time instead of the dark red color he had last year. Iida stomped his right leg down and his Engines flared up on both legs, Only use Recipro once he's between Steps.

Spinning towards Iida with squinted eyes, was Elinari Shuu. The shortest boy in Class 1 of Shiketsu's third years, Elinari did not have to duck far as Iida's kick was aimed high up on his chest. He faced the much taller enemy in front of him, his face scrunched because of his squinted eyes, but his expression intense nonetheless. Iida did not expect as harsh a look back at him as he recalled this student's personality from the previous year to be a more boastful and carefree one. Elinari had even bragged about his Quirk after the initial training stages where it was no longer a secret, so Iida knew more about his Quirk than he did most of the Shiketsu's.

Elinari Shuu's Quirk, Quick Step, could speed him up for 2 seconds at a time with a fifteen second interval after he used up his time. The lengths used to be much worse: longer in the intervals and shorter for the actual usage, but he had increased his ability over the years as they all had. Iida suspected as much though, and accounted for changes in the lengths to actually be overestimating Elinari's ability at the moment, which the boy with short chestnut-brown hair could see. Shit, one of the worst guys to show up against me, Elinari was in a fighting stance, and he moved forward for Iida like he was going for an attack. I need to get him somewhere harder for that Quirk of his.

Elinari and Iida both darted their gazes over to the side once during their interaction, but they remained focused on each other despite the other fight going on in the seconds after Hagakure's Light Refraction. Shoji had come straight in from the front of the group, and his first blow was enough to knock down and knock out the boy with the Beam Body Quirk. As Enjino hit the ground though, Shoji's second arm reaching out to wrap around Himazuri got smacked away by a girl whose eyes shot open wide showing she was squinting them like that on purpose.

Despite being unable to warn her classmates on time, Himazuri did manage to slam her own eyes shut in the moment Hagakure was flashing her group. Her eyes stayed squinted to convince Shoji she was as blinded as the rest of them, in preparation to push his arm aside and rush him straight on. Two more arms emerged out of the insides of two of Shoji's arms, and he grabbed her on either side of her body and squeezed hard enough that she let out a scream of pain. The shortest and smallest girl of Shiketsu was unable to capitalize on the moment she had gotten past him, her weapons falling from her hands as she was squeezed by what felt like a gorilla.

Three down- Elinari thought while sprinting up a tree, grimacing at the sound of his classmate's scream. His body blurred up the trunk and then stopped moving so fast, his Quick Step reaching its limit. He started running down the thick branch he had reached, but his eyes widened as he looked down towards the tree trunk ahead of him that came close to the branch he was moving down towards the thinner end. Iida had not run at the same tree behind him that Elinari blurred to and sprinted up, instead picking the one ahead of Elinari that he was now sprinting up. This caused his opponent to skid to a stop on a branch that shook and made the boy start losing his balance and have to throw his arms out for support. Iida jumped off the tree he was sprinting straight up with his Engines speeding him faster than before and yet still not in Recipro.

The precautionary measure on Iida's part paid off, and he used his Reciproburst without saying a word. He was still in midair coming down towards the branch that Elinari was backing up a step on now, when his body twisted in midair while he curled himself up and grabbed at his knees. He aimed his body at a different tree where three shuriken just came flying at him from, and he shot insanely fast towards the girl who let out a gasp as he saw her the moment the shuriken were leaving her fingertips. Iida also flinched though, even as he shot through the air far faster than Manzo Elia had time to dodge. Manzo is a girl?

Iida saw a protrusion in the front of the black bandages wrapping around this other young hero where a woman's chest would be. In the previous year's training, he remembered how this person had caught them off guard several times with her ability that they assumed was just like Hagakure's at first. The student who had not said a word to their class last year turned invisible again and started to move, but Iida's Recipro ended and he swung his leg around slowing down, but still moving fast enough and in steel armor that pounded into Manzo's back and left side. Manzo's body became visible again, and Iida jumped towards her and reached out his arms, catching the person who he figured he might have just knocked out, and then dropping to the ground while holding her.

"Manzo-" Elinari started calling down to the girl who he thought he might have had to catch too. Instead, he saw Iida wrapping her up in capture tape upon his landing, and he jumped off of the branch he ran down again in Iida's direction. Iida turned his head partially towards him, but the U.A. student did not look very worried, as much as Elinari could tell through the slit in Ingenium's mask. Elinari gasped, his body hunching forward and his legs kicking out in front of him. He suddenly understood why it was Himazuri screamed, as two large hands had gripped him around the sides and he felt his ribs squeezing inwards.

Shoji retracted his arms that extended over and over into the air to where he saw Elinari leapt off. He dragged that student back down despite the boy's attempts to speed up, and Shoji got to wrapping him up like he had Trabo and Himazuri. Enjino was unconscious so Shoji did not feel a need, along with the fact that Enjino's Beam Body made it difficult to tie him up in the first place. Shoji knew this at the start though and went for him with the intention of knocking him out, as tying up Enjino would have only resulted in him beaming through the tape.

Iida sprinted over to Shoji, and he reached up to his earpiece that he tapped over the outside of his helmet where he had stuck it after Yaoyorozu gave him his specialized one. "Shoji and I have rounded up five enemies. One is Trabo, so it may be one of his Triplets. Making for the jail now."

"I helped too," Hagakure called out.

Shoji picked up four unconscious opponents, while Iida held Manzo over his right shoulder and curled his arm in to make sure he was supporting her weight. "Let us move," Iida said to his classmate. Shoji nodded at him quickly, and the two of them ran in the direction Hagakure had, which was also back towards their side of the training dome and their team's jail.

Shoji turned his bottom left hand into an ear. "It doesn't seem there is anyone around us."

"Great job you guys," Ashido mentioned on the open channel, since no one else had said anything in their headsets yet.

"Careful on the way back," Midoriya added.

Back at the U.A. jail, Midoriya stared out into the forest with an intense expression and uncertain eyes. "Who else did you catch?" He added after telling his classmates to be wary.

"Manzo, Himazuri, Elinari, and Enjino," Iida listed off.

Shoji glanced towards his classmate in semi-surprise for a moment that Iida recalled all of their names immediately. Shoji refocused on what he was hearing though at the sight of Iida's intense expression. Our footsteps make too much noise while running. If we pause to take small recon breaks though, we increase the chances that they'll catch up to us. Do they even know we've caught their comrades yet? Where is Zach? What is he doing right now?

This isn't right, Midoriya thought, his right hand up in front of his mouth and a frustrated look over his face. I've planned out a hundred battle strategies from Zach's perspective. All of them would rely on Himazuri and her mind reading. But then, what is Zach's relationship with her? How does she not know who he is? He's kept his secrets from her for so long now. How? Does she know? Or did he send her out to get captured early… because then she'd be close to us! Midoriya's face lit up, but then he scrunched it again after a second. No. That doesn't make sense. Letting her get captured is stupid. Especially with four others. There would have been easier methods that didn't take out someone with the best chance of taking our flag like Manzo. Even if she could read my thoughts from behind me and somehow transfer our plans to her teammates from the jail, even if they somehow knew that one of us was going to stay next to the jail the whole time even though they can't be broken out once they've been put in! It's too much of a tactical disadvantage to lose her when our plans could change over and over through the training. Maybe her range expanded since last year, but definitely not to the area of this whole dome. And more importantly, how could she transfer messages around to people? Her Quirk isn't like Mandalay's was…

Zach got around Zeira's Quirk. "Mental Infiltration," Midoriya remembered asking Midnight what Zeira's Quirk was back at the recent hero licensing exam. "She cannot use it more than three times in a day, but it has a success rate of a hundred percent." Midnight thought it would work no matter what. Maybe, Himazuri just can't read Zach's mind. How does he do that? I need to learn- Focus! Why would Zach allow this? Is it part of his plan? I overestimated how much control he has had in the past too. What he revealed on Inazuma Island, was that the "plans" I accused him of over and over really did not exist. I believe that. I, I think I believe that, for now, his goal is to become a hero. It was the gap between Kaminari's betrayal and his own departure that I have been stuck on. The last version of him we remember, is the fake version that tricked us all in a long-con that lasted weeks. I assumed he progressed even further to the point where he could drag something like that out over months or even years. But not everything Zach does is part of his plan. Sometimes he has to adapt, like when Darling shows up out of nowhere and everything about his current life changes. So how will he adapt to losing four comrades and one of the Trabos? Shit!

Midoriya darted a glance behind him to the cell bars at his back again. We can knock out the Triplet brought over here before tossing him in the cell. Covering his eyes and his ears is an option too. WAIT! They definitely know that their classmates have been captured? Could the other two Trabos locate him immediately? Are they drawn to him or can they only see what he's seeing? I assume Iida thought of this and took out Trabo first, but if not. Midoriya reached a hand up for his earpiece.

"Three of the top ten," Satoshi muttered while running through the woods, glancing around at the others near him to see if they all felt as anxious as he did about what he just said. No one else spoke though, and Satoshi steadied his expression and turned back forward with a more intense and focused look. Calm down, he told himself, closing his snake-like eyes a bit and pushing his feet harder into the ground with each step forward. It wasn't our group, but out of all the forward teams I didn't think it would be Manzo's. She's still 7th, Enjino's up to 8th, and Elinari got bumped down but he's still 10th. Trabo says it didn't take many of the U.A.'s to take them down too.

"Stay focused and keep moving for the intercept point."

"Primary attack team ready for action." Adashi Veleno said in a low voice. The dark-skinned, five foot eleven teenage boy, glanced over his shoulder at the four people standing behind him. He looked at them and specifically the boy ranked second in their class who had until that term been the strongest in all of Shiketsu. Inasa nodded back at Adashi, and the third and fourth ranked in their class stepped forward on either side. Dendo and Hisashi gave each other serious looks which Inasa saw on either side of him and made him get a more intense expression too rather than the big smile he had over his face.

"Forward teams 1 and 3 have met up and are going silent."

The reason Midnight was able to point out to Ectoplasm earlier that the Shiketsu students were not at as big of a disadvantage communications' wise, was because some of those students did have earpieces on them that they were speaking into. Hazano watched his student who had handed out a half dozen of those to his fellow students as the training was commencing. In the teacher's head he imagined the time he spent in the Costume Development Lab with Sazaki over the past week, making the same earpieces his other students were using now. "…Cooperation between heroes during villain attacks could be improved if all heroes who respond are able to communicate directly from the start. Keeping five or six such headsets on my costume all connected through my helmet's network, can establish that communication line immediately in any situation."

They're all on his network now. His wavelength, Hazano shifted his eyes around and watched the other students in his class who the teachers around him were talking about in low voices.

Down in the training arena, one of U.A.'s tacticians was standing just outside of their flag base with a worried look spread over her face. I can't predict him, Yaoyorozu thought. It had been almost a minute since they heard from their classmates about the first capture, and her other classmates were still speaking over the headsets with Midoriya doing the most to organize them. What will his next move be? I- I can't analyze his strategy when I don't, really know who he is.

Yaoyorozu took in a deep breath, and she let it out slowly to calm herself down. Her heart ached though and she bit down thinking about a conversation she had had with Zach a long time ago. When he came back from the War Boys, I confirmed it. He didn't lie to me. When he didn't want to answer something, he wouldn't. I wanted that kind of relationship again… but you, Yaoyorozu curled her hands into fists and her look became more frustrated. If he had come straight out and told me… That's not what bothers me! It's that back then, as much as he hid from me, he didn't lie. Now, even though he's still hiding so much, he lied to me. Instead of just holding those things back- which I would have preferred! He deliberately lied about stories that he told me straight to my face, attempting to convince me of those lies, up until last week and only because he got caught!

"YEARS!"

Yaoyorozu's dark expression flinched and softened for a moment, only to get more frustrated again. She rose a hand up to a button on her earpiece and said in a low voice, "Hurry up to the jail, Iida. I am worried that something will-"

"They're attacking us!" Hagakure called out, her hand holding her earpiece while she leapt backwards away from the attackers who suddenly came out of nowhere.

"How far are you from us?" Midoriya asked quickly. "Show us where you are!"

Instead of trying to answer Midoriya, Hagakure curled her elbows in and let out the biggest and brightest flash she could.

Iida and Shoji had to put down the people they had captured. All of them were either unconscious or tied up, so they wouldn't be going anywhere as long as the two strong guys from U.A. could hold their position. They also needed their hands free, as they were faced by a group of three boys who had attacked them from the trees at first only for both Iida and Shoji to dodge them. Those boys were now wary of Hagakure too after that huge flash that nearly blinded them and would have had she not given away her location when she dodged the attacks that had come too close to her when the enemies should have been aiming for Iida and Shoji.

Iida's eyes focused on one of the small black weapons imbedded in the dirt near him, and then his eyes shot back up at the Shiketsu students in front of him. "Imino is here too," Iida warned the others, his eyes scanning the woods for where the blue-skinned teen with pointy ears was hiding.

"You won't find him!" Kotsumura called out, running ahead of both Satoshi and Porrolo who shot forward behind him.

Satoshi's lower body was pushed flat to the ground and snaking around behind him, his legs together and his upper body pushed back with his eyes wide. The vertical slits of his eyes narrowed even more as his snake-like tongue snapped out of his mouth, and Porrolo stuck his hands down so white sparks came out of each of his fingertips where the small holes under his nails were. The two of them raced after Kotsumura who was smiling confidently even as he ran at Shoji and Iida.

He's letting that 19 ranking go to his head, Porrolo thought towards his best friend, though he was trying to focus on his powerful enemies who were not caught off guard at all by their sudden ambush. Never gone above 20 before though, so it was a pretty high jump for him. Porrolo snapped his right hand out towards Shoji's upper right arm that was hooking towards him, and Shoji pulled it back to dodge the sparking electricity Porrolo tried to fire at him. It got weaker the farther from his fingertips it got, but Shoji still pulled away quick enough anyway and attempted an attack from the other side.

Shoji had to jump backwards this time though, as two more sharp bat-shaped knives came flying around the trees and collided into each other. The collision caused the weapons to increase the speed of their spins towards both him and Iida, and Iida was already slowing down as Kotsumura smacked a sticky glove onto his back and got dragged along when Iida was dodging back from Satoshi. Iida jumped up in the air and his calves glowed blue, flipping him even with his power being depleted so his Engines had not been going very fast anymore.

"Waa-" Kotsumura let out a yelp as he was flung in a flip with Iida, then he 'oof'ed as Iida crashed down on top of him intentionally. Iida reached back and slid Kotsumura's hand out of his glove, leaving the blond down on the ground moaning and gasping for breath. Then Iida turned and he pulled his head away fast from yet another bat knife flying towards him. The trajectory- Iida realized that the direction the weapon was coming for him this time was too far from the trees they had initially been coming out of. The realization was too late though, and he ran back towards the students they had dropped not far from them. Porrolo stood on one side blocking off where he knew Hagakure to be and where Shoji had dodged back to, and Satoshi snaked in front of Iida and pulled his body back with his cheeks puffing out like he was filling his mouth with venom.

At the moment they were sure they had blocked their opponents from their downed comrades, smoke pellets hit the floor behind them. The clouds of smoke expanded out to shadow over Porrolo and Satoshi too. Iida did not miss a beat, and he stepped back and looked down to his right side where there was a blond boy laying still in a lot of pain and not going anywhere. Iida's eyes started to grow wide though, as someone was sliding across the ground on the back of his heels that skid with ease even on the dirt surface. There was a wire extended out from his right glove all the way to a tree across a gap that Kotsumura was laying in, and that wire was retracting fast to drag Zach across the ground.

Iida's eyes caught on Zach's costume for too long, and his Engines were still stalling from using Recipro (even at the half speed it was at from Kotsumura's Deplete). Iida did not know what he was expecting from Zach's hero costume, but it was nothing like what he was seeing now. Zach skid across the ground in a vibrant blue costume of both shirt and pants that were tight to him and showed off his muscles while making him look even bigger than usual. The costume had green highlights up on the shoulders, down on his knees, and on the sides of his blue-and-black boots too. His steel utility belt was green as well and the handle of the grappling gun Zach had was black, but even that had some green on it as it had been down on the belt and matched the design.

There was a large 'L' in the middle of Zach's chest too that Iida's eyes locked onto for a brief instant as his gaze scanned over his old classmate. The thick red L had an outline of green, over a black background that had a white X crossing through it behind the L. Shoji turned too as he thought about taking Kotsumura if their enemies were more focused on getting their comrades back than anything. He saw Zach and froze too, as Zach looked back at the two who he had brought back to life before.

Zach's eyes shifted over Shoji quicker and back to Iida to lock on his gaze. It was the first time they had seen each other since Inazuma Island. He's thought about turning me over. In his head he's wondering what I'm thinking. Wondering if he made the right move to say nothing. He doesn't know. He's still indecisive. But at the least, you gave me today. Zach's eyes filled with a brief moment of gratitude, then he looked away and reached down, snagging Keiji off the ground and lifting him up with his left arm with ease.

"Zach!" Hagakure called out.

Shoji shook his head around, and he lifted a hand to his earpiece quickly, "Zach is here. We're losing the people we caught."

"No we're not!" Ashido called out, her voice loud but not over the comms. Shoji turned his head and looked back towards the smoke that he, Hagakure, and Iida all started running at. "We've got them cut off Midoriya!" Ashido called into her headset this time, responding to their team leader who redirected them while heading that way himself to catch the Shiketsu students in a pincer move.

"Forward team 3 is getting pinned down," Kerushi said into his earpiece, while running a new direction and carrying Enjino over his shoulders.

Another of U.A.'s own forward groups had come back, and the team of five were fighting against the Shiketsu students who came and were taking back their comrades. Porrolo Ven was wrapped up in white tape and struggling to get out, while Satoshi just continued to snake forward at Sero even though the Tape had wrapped around him too. Sero pointed one elbow behind him and used a branch above and behind him to swing backwards, while snapping up his left elbow after already firing another long piece of tape at Satoshi's long back. The Shiketsu student shot forward faster, leaning his body forward to snake towards where Sero was going to come down… only to find he was struggling to move any farther.

Satoshi's vertical irises darted back behind him to see that the piece of tape connected to his back was also connected to a tree back behind him. The tape was stretching out but not breaking, and Satoshi struggled harder only to lose sight as more Tape wrapped around his eyes.

Trabo X had to drop the unmoving Trabo and leap backwards, while the remaining Trabo rushed in at the back of the blond who dropped in and nearly smashed his Triplets with his strong tail. A bright beam flew past the front of Trabo and caused him to stop short, his eyes darting over to another U.A. blond who had his arms behind his head and his stomach stuck out forward. Trabo X yelled out, but Trabo was too slow to look back forwards before that thick tail smacked into him and sent him flying into a tree behind him.

Only the spiky-haired version of Trabo remained, and Trabo X called over towards Kerushi who just had his path blocked off from getting any farther back towards their side of the dome. "Can't we hurry this up?!"

"Shut up!" Kerushi called back over. He put Enjino down carefully, then he glared up at the pink girl and the guy with spiky brown hair who stood across from her. The two of them had each just taken down a tree of their own, Ashido by melting through with her Acid, and Sato by smashing it down after eating a sugar cube. The trees had fallen in Kerushi's path, and he glanced backwards only to see even more enemies coming up on them as the team they originally got their comrades back from were right behind them again.

"Why do you want him to shut up?" Ashido wondered. She put her hands on the trunk in front of her, and she flipped herself up over it. While she was flipping, she swung both arms down at Kerushi and splashed Acid at him, and some at the other boy laying next to him who Kerushi had put down carefully. She forced Kerushi to adjust his dodge to stay close to them and protect his classmate while fighting at the same time.

Sato was not thinking too hard about it, as he had eaten the sugar and was pretty much in fight-mode. Ashido was not the only one to hear what Trabo X called out though, and Ojiro remembered how this spikier-haired version of Trabo acted compared to the others last year. "Something's going on," Ojiro warned-

"Inasa's here!" Mineta shouted in panic.

"It's an attack at our base," Todoroki said, his voice calmer as he went out to meet the enemy.

"Not just Inasa," Yaoyorozu continued for the others as she shot backwards using a jetpack and hooks attached near the top of their building to keep her from getting yanked away by the strong gusts surrounding their base. Several trees fell ahead of her as a few green slashes smashed through them, and the trees crashed down with deafening cracks through the woods. The path opened up for Hisashi who barreled over the trunks and smashed them into splinters below him.

Hisashi Kuredo stood ten feet tall, and hair grew out on his arms and legs as he sprinted forward on two legs but with his arms curled down in front of him punching at the ground on every four steps or so. The black fur around his body started to suck back in though, while lighter blond fur grew instead and in a mane around his head. His arms fell forward and claws extended out of his paws, and he moved more nimbly to dodge to the right and left away from the cannon attacks coming from the roof of U.A.'s building. He leapt up in the air, and a pair of long wings spread out to either side while his body was shrinking and his legs getting much thinner.

Inasa decreased the speed of his wind in the path between Hisashi and the roof of U.A.'s building, but an ice wall shot up between them and stopped Hisashi in his tracks. A Slice cut through the bottom of the wall, and ice rained down between Todoroki, and the three enemies in front of him. Inasa paused and smirked while looking straight forward into Todoroki's eyes. Then he looked to his right, and to his left, and both Dendo and Hisashi nodded at him with serious looks before turning and sprinting in curved runs away from Inasa in flanking maneuvers on the base.

That Dendo is taking orders from Inasa? No, he's just following the plan, Yaoyorozu's eyes focused down on the green-haired teen who was one of her opponents she was most wary of. The others said he became quick friends with Zach. The fact that he was at Zach's house for that 'fight day' the others talked about didn't make any sense. Not after the way he acted last year. Somehow, Zach convinced him of something. He made friends with Dendo, and Dendo's actions now are Zach's-

"Zach's going to try and sneak into the base," Iida warned.

Everyone trying to organize and communicate through their headsets hesitated for a second. Even Bakugo paused what he was doing across the dome where he found the enemy team's base and was watching the defenses carefully. Bakugo had seen one of the enemies in front of him reach up to an earpiece that Bakugo noticed before the teenage girl had turned her head, but other than Reika, Bakugo did not see anyone else with a communicator like that. He takes our flag, I'll take his. If I get it first though… A smirk covered the bleach-blond-haired teen's face, and Bakugo blasted explosions behind him and towards the Shiketsu base.

"Kameko!"

"Bakugo's here!"

"Just like you said. He's here," Reika reported, before lowering her hand and grinning straight at the single U.A. class member rushing at their defense team of six.

"How do you know, Iida?" Midoriya questioned, right after Iida had warned them but a moment after Bakugo made for his attack.

"We know," Shoji said. Mezo Shoji finished tying up Kotsumura who had been limping away back towards his teammates on his own, then Shoji picked him up and ran forward after where Hagakure had continued going. The fighting was still going on ahead of them, and they could hear the sounds of their comrades in the midst of combat over there. They ran forward, even without Iida who had turned back after he realized where Zach must have gone when the attack on their home base started.

Iida explained over their comms, and Midoriya grit his teeth harder but looked back and forth at the other two he was running from the jail with. Even with Iida coming back, Deku turned his head and glanced towards the direction of another huge ice wall and where the sounds of cracking trees were louder than from the fight between many more students just ahead of him. "Koda, Tokoyami," Midoriya began. "Back up the others," he said, and the other two nodded at him and continued rushing off the direction they had been going. Bakugo's across the dome, Midoriya thought while leaping up high in the air over all the canopies. He looked across the dome and spotted an explosion, And he's already started attacking. He'll get the flag he said, and I believe he can do that if Zach's on offense with the others at the top of their class. Kameko could stall him, but we can stop them completely here!

Against Inasa alone, I could handle this, Todoroki thought while facing off against his opponent. I've gotten much stronger over the past year.

"You've gotten a lot stronger this last year!" Inasa shouted at his opponent who just thought the same thing.

Todoroki frowned that they just thought the same thing, though he frowned more as he wondered about the mind reader in Shiketsu's class. He reminded himself that she was over in the fight between a lot of his fellow students and their own, but that frustrated him even more. He refocused though. Kirishima's intercepted Dendo, and Mineta and Tsuyu can hold off Hisashi while Yaoyorozu guards the flag. If Zach goes up there now, I'm sure we'll know.

This has to work, Yaoyorozu thought, while she stood in front of the flag where she traded places with Asui a moment ago. I'm staying on the open channel, so I can keep my hands low and speak to him without him noticing. As long as he doesn't, mention anything over the open channel that would… Yaoyorozu could not doubt her plan, and she made her expression more intense while focusing on the main entrance to the room. Sticky Pop-Offs covered the floor in seemingly random but very specific placements, and there were motion sensor traps on various other places in the room thanks to Yaoyorozu herself.

"Your students are underestimating U.A.," Ectoplasm said, looking to his side at Kimona for a moment only for that teacher to frown back at him and humph with his arms still tightly crossed.

"Our students are more used to fighting in various terrains," Kimona countered. He did not say much of what was going on down there, only that the students he was watching may have had better plans than Ectoplasm thought.

"All-Terrain does have an amazing power," Midnight agreed with Kimona. The fact that they were in the middle of a city inside of a huge man-made dome was impossible to tell while looking down at the nature below. The teacher and pro hero of Shiketsu who made this arena had also come to U.A. on various occasions too to assist with making training facilities like this one.

"I admit, this is a nice training ground. All-Terrain's ability is one thing I know Mr. Principal is jealous of," Ectoplasm mentioned. Then he finished though, "It's the one place where Shiketsu excels beyond U.A.'s ability."

Hazano's lips curled down at the corners in a more subtle way than his fellow Shiketsu staff who were getting too competitive with this. All Might lifted his hands defensively to try and pacify everyone, though he added himself in less a competitive way and more like he was just observing it, "However, I must agree with my colleagues. Attacking the base where the flag was at the same time as attempting to save their comrades, Class 1 has spread themselves too thin. And with Bakugo facing such small resistance, not that those students are not trying their best…" All Might trailed off for a moment, as a pair of students thinking they got the drop on Bakugo's flanks each got grabbed and slammed into the ground with explosions on their bodies that made the teachers wince.

Hazano's eyes shifted up to one of the screens in particular where he last saw a few of his students before they went after the flag. Not every angle can be seen from up here. I don't know if or why Sazaki would have them hide from us, but perhaps it is a coincidence. What is not a coincidence, is that Adashi went with the primary attack team and is not there with them. Using it only on the strongest members of the class…

"The plan is too straightforward," Ectoplasm said firmly. "Midoriya has adapted to it at every step. Even…" Ectoplasm's eyes narrowed on one of the screens, a more confused look coming to his face like it did to several other teachers.

"I think, you're the one who's mistaken," Hazano said in a low voice while darting his eyes from one screen to another and another again. "My students are not the ones underestimating U.A.," Hazano stared directly at one image of a teen with spiky black hair who reached up for his visor and slid it down over the front of his face. "It is yours, who are underestimating Sazaki."

Zach stood alone in the forest. He stood in the shadow of a tree on his own, his breathing calm and steady. Sounds of fighting were loudest just ahead of him on the other side of the tree, but he could hear the other two fights on opposite ends of the dome as well. I didn't know if Bakugo really would go straight there, but I know Kameko can hold him off now. Inasa and the others are strong enough to hold Midoriya's attention long enough. It's time to make my move. Zach's visor extended up over the top of his head to give him a dark-blue helmet. His bracelet on his left hand opened and covered his hand, while the watch on his right folded down over his hand for Zach to curl his fingers inside of. The visor over his eyes was dark tinted, and Zach put a hand up to the side of that helmet while pulling a small black device off of his belt with his left hand.

"Going dark," Zach announced.

Ojiro faced off against Kerushi, his expression steadier than his panting opponent's. There were Shiketsu students on the ground all over the area that had become more of a clearing with so many trees felled through the fight. The U.A. students were surrounding them, with only Aoyama holding back near Koda because of an injury. Insects swarmed over and throughout the clearing, and Tape blocked off the gaps between trees in a wide circumference of the seventeen Shiketsu students on the ground or still holding their ground against their opponents. Some of the Shiketsus were outside of the opening, having been dragged back by U.A. students who got them from the others who were just trying to bring them back to their own base it seemed.

Kerushi was panting heavily, but the corner of his lip still cracked up, while not far from him, Trabo X lifted his hands up and he pressed his hands down on top of his head. Ojiro's eyes darted over to that student who pressed his black hair down to his head, and his heart rate skyrocketed while he darted his gaze over to one of the versions on the ground whose hair was flat. That moaning version lost his pained look a bit, as his lips curled up more in a way befitting Trabo X than the actual original version who just pushed his hair back down. Why?! Ojiro thought, his mind racing as he tried to think of all Trabo and his Triplets had done so far.

On the west side of the dome, Bakugo turned back towards the large Tortoise Fortress facing him on the first floor of the base below where the flag room had been. Bakugo had blasted the floor apart to get below Kameko as he fell, but the flag was inside of Kameko's "Fortress," and Bakugo was struggling more to get through him than he did to get through the other five in the defensive team. He had just turned back from the long-haired blonde girl who was the second to last to fall on this squad, and he had her earpiece up in his opposite ear as his own team's. "Going dark?" What does Zach mean by that? Why would they purposely cut off comms, unless he's getting close to Jirou or Shoji? Even then, something's up here.

Bakugo turned his head, and he leaned out of the way as a brown spike shot out of the Tortoise Fortress moving faster than Bakugo had seen Kameko attack before. Bakugo looked outside and his eyes darkened as an uneasy feeling swirled in his chest. He lifted a hand to the comms on the left side of his head, "I've got your flag." Bakugo let go of the earpiece fast to cut off his voice.

"That's not true!" Kameko shouted out, his face moving on the plate-like surface on the outside of his huge shell. "Don't listen to him!"

He doesn't have a headset of his own, Bakugo's thoughts raced as he put together everything happening around him. No one's responding. If they heard, they would at least have to change up their plans to make a counterattack. They would need to communicate with each other, even risking my hearing them. Knowing Zach, he'd have codes for a situation where one of us got his earpieces. He's the one who brought these after all. Why would he cut his own comms? Bakugo reached for his other earpiece while dodging away with an explosion this time, "Oi Deku."

"What is it?" Midoriya responded quickly, leaping up high in the air so that he could grab at his ear and respond to Bakugo as fast as possible. His eyes darted across the dome for a second, then to his right at what he heard Bakugo growl on the other side of the line.

"Sero! You listening? Oi Ashido," Bakugo grimaced more while flipping backwards and getting out of the base that Kameko was guarding too tightly. What the hell's happening right now?

Midoriya shifted his gaze from the fight going on below over to the right once more even on his descent back down. Then he darted his eyes straight towards Inasa who was moving too swiftly around in the air for any of them to catch, and who was being the most troublesome with his winds slamming all over the place. Zach did this on purpose, Midoriya's eyes focused on the former strongest member of Shiketsu's Class 1. To try and force someone fast enough to get over there and check. He wants either me or Iida, or Todoroki, to leave the base. He wants to force the strongest to leave the base and the flag unprotected. I can't leave the flag that unguarded while we're already up against such strong opponents, especially if Zach could appear at any moment. "Yaoyorozu, keep trying to reach the others. They must have used a radio jammer…"

Zach had clipped the jammer back to his waist, before pulling out a pair of knives from his waist. Each of the rectangular pieces he pulled off of his belt were replaced by new ones that filled in the spaces left by the blades he just removed. Those small hilts extended out into knives that Zach sprinted while holding down to his sides with the blades pointed back behind him. Each of the blades had green hilts and silver steel sticking out of them, five inches long and sharp.

Here we go, One of the only other Class 1 members not accounted for by U.A.'s students made his move too. Shoji was busy fighting, and with so many loud noises from the fight around him he was not able to scout around them as he was doing before. He could not hear everything unless he was actively creating arm-ears, unlike Imino who heard Zach approaching fast and made his move, pulling out a pair of bat-knives. These two bat-knives looked different from his normal ones though, as each of the knives were covered in another tool he used often.

Hagakure's head turned. The invisible girl had been making a loop around the exterior of the opening to make sure no one was able to escape from any gaps between her classmates, and she reached up to her earpiece quickly. "Something's flying into the opening. Everyone- hey! HEY!" Hagakure spun and shouted towards the others closest to her who looked her way in confusion. They didn't hear me?!

The bat-knives hit the ground in different parts of the opening. U.A. students and Shiketsu students were in the middle of fighting, when the two dozen smoke pellets erupted all at once and flooded out in every direction from the collisions of the knives with the floor. Smoke from the two explosions crashed into each other and billowed up, while also pulsing out all the way to the outer ring surrounding the opening. It seemed to be slowing down before reaching the members on the outside completely and looking in, but then more blasts of smoke caused the smoke to expand even further out.

None of their classmates should have a Quirk that can do this! It must be Imino, Sero thought while covering up his mouth with one arm and looking around carefully in the smoke. He aimed behind him, attached his tape up high somewhere outside of the area, and he shot himself out of the smoke backwards just as Ashido backflipped out of it not far from him. Sero looked towards Ashido as she came out of the smoke, ready to tell her something, but he got confused as he saw Ashido holding a hand up to her ear and already talking. "Hey," Sero called over to the girl who looked his way in surprise, then confusion at the way he was looking at her like he did not hear a thing she was just saying. Are our comms busted? Is something blocking the signal?

In the heavy smoke, Dark Shadow grew larger and Tokoyami curled his fists tightly at his sides with a darker look on his face. The more Dark Shadow grows, the more I have to accept him or he'll grow wild. The more I have to act like Dark Shadow myself. Tokoyami's eyes snapped open and he ground his teeth inside of his beak, his eyes dark but at the same time cocky and looking for a fight, looking for someone to crush.

First thing, is to take away all ability to call for help. Zach shot a grappling hook out of the edge of the smoke where a girl was backing up to stay on the outside and make sure no one escaped. The hook wrapped around the invisible girl who was still talking as she tried to get her comms to work. She let out a yelp as she was suddenly yanked into the smoke, where a tall, muscular teen, slammed his right fist into her gut. Hagakure's voice and all her breath shot out of her mouth, then she collapsed to the ground as Zach continued to move away from the girl who could no longer give off a bright flash to alert those far from them that they might need some help over here.

Shoji and Ojiro are top of the list too. The strongest one with sensory powers who can regroup everyone without comms, alert them to what's happening. And the one who has the most martial arts prowess, who once alerted to my presence could possibly hold off long enough for a plan to be made. Zach bent down, his thermal vision showing him where three people tied up on the ground were inside of the still-expanding smoke that Imino just added a few more smoke pellets to. He slashed knives across the capture tape around some of his classmates as he ran past, then he let out a whistle twice in rapid succession, first high-pitched and then low.

Zach sprinted off straight at Shoji whose stature he could tell apart from all the others in his thermal vision. If he heard that, he'll switch to sensory to figure out what we're doing. Zach saw the red silhouette of Shoji's bottom left arm transforming into something while his other arms retracted from the long barrier he was making between trees at his back. Shoji had been shouting out to locate Imino, and to not let up on their perimeter just because of the smoke. Zach's steps became nearly silent, and he appreciated a shout of pain from behind him even if it was from one of his Shiketsu classmates who attempted to get the drop on Ojiro in the smoke.

Zach dove forward, right between Shoji's legs parted the smallest amount that he was still able to slip through. Shoji's eyes darted down above his mask, his legs starting to close in as he saw Zach emerge from thicker smoke and go for between his legs. Moving his legs in like that took him out of a stance that had better balance, so that as Zach kicked backwards upon his landing, he dropped Shoji down to his right knee instantly by kicking that leg in the back of the knee. Zach slammed his left fist into Shoji's left kidney while crouching up behind him, making Shoji hunch to the side he was already turning to, dropping down on his arms and knees now as he gasped in pain and shock at how much that punch hurt.

A knee slammed into Shoji's gasping face, and then Zach reached around his neck and strangled his former classmate too disoriented from that kick to come up with a good counter. Zach sprinted back into the thicker smoke leaving an unconscious Shoji on the ground, and he darted towards the edge of it where he had seen Koda's form earlier along with one other. As he was taking down Shoji, he noticed an insect moving away from him into the smoke at the top of his vision. There were too many insects and the thermal readings on them were too small to notice for him to target one specifically. He sprinted faster, and he fired a grappling hook ahead of him while popping his heels back to skid across the ground, leaping up as he was about to hit a tree branch to send himself flying up over it.

The back of Zach's costume glowed blue, and he raced out of the smoke right as Koda turned to Aoyama and said something. Aoyama saw Zach and he leaned his body backwards, his Navel Laser glowing bright. Koda swung a punch, but Zach passed by him without slowing as he easily dodged the attack. Zach got to Aoyama and around his back in an instant, before throwing his arms around Aoyama Yuga's front so his hands locked just above the dazzling boy's laser.

Aoyama tried to fire, though there was a hesitation as Zach gripped him tightly around his front. Whether it was fear that his beam would rip through the glove on Zach's hand, even though Zach grabbed above his bellybutton, or that he would destroy Zach's hands, or just a flinch from Zach getting behind him so fast seemingly flying without using his Quirk, Aoyama hesitated. That brief hesitation made it so the laser never got very high, as it whipped backwards instead due to Zach suplexing his former classmate into the dirt.

Insects swarmed up underneath Zach's visor and forced him to close his eyes. Those insects all fell out of his visor, dead, before he had landed. He spun his head towards Koda and raced at the large boy with a boulder-like face who opened his eyes wide and pulled back as Zach sprinted at him. "Go warn Midoriya-" Koda started shouting up towards other bugs above him.

"They won't make it fast enough," Zach said, while jumping up in front of Koda with an elbow lifting up like he was going to smash it down on Koda's skull. Zach's right knee jammed up into Koda's chest and sent him slamming back into the tree just behind him. Zach dropped down and then spun, slamming an elbow into the same place and hitting Koda back into the tree so hard it cracked this time. The breath Koda just took back in after gasping in pain, completely flooded out of him as his eyes rolled back. Zach caught him with his left hand, then lowered him down before sprinting back towards the smoke that had replenished itself again.

Inside the smoke, Imino moved around seamlessly. No one knew where he was, while he knew where everyone else was. There was only one area he was staying away from, and that was the huge dark presence in the middle of the clearing that reacted to sound more than sight anyway. Imino's smoke pellets worked best to take away people's sight to use his Echolocation to a greater advantage. There were those who adapted to his attacks though. Even if they could not escape his smoke quickly, there were those who had trained themselves to hear too and not rely on their eyes while fighting, and so Imino had adapted to that as well to have counters against people who could do such things. Against something like Tokoyami wrapped in a very large Dark Shadow though, Imino was not going to rely on any of those counters.

"Yeah, I get that in that last moment I could have used them and you would have missed, but if we had separated again I would have needed those pellets to set back up. I had used a lot in the fight already-"

"You were running out? …No, even if I was pressing you, that's no excuse. You shouldn't ever run out of those smoke pellets. If they're that integral to your fighting style, like my knives are for mine, you can't ever run out. Let alone in a single 1-on-1 fight, the fact that you were even thinking about that shows how few you carry. What if you were fighting villains and I was the first of several? What if I wasn't even the most powerful one you ran into during that raid? You can use the excuse that you used up all your weapons on the first enemy, but it's on you to have that surplus even if most of the time you won't need it…"

Imino reached down into the second of four large pouches of smoke pellets that he had always only carried one of. His costume looked bulkier and like it had more unnecessary pouches and bulges than it did before, but he appreciated it now as he threw a cluster of smoke pellets in a direction where three of the U.A. students were together and trying to come up with a plan to de-smoke the area.

"It just keeps coming!"

"The fact that he targeted us means he knows what we were trying to do," Sero countered, making Sato turn to him with wide eyes and then nod in understanding. Sero frowned himself in the spreading smoke though, and he said, "Move back for a second though. Tokoyami! Try clearing some of the smoke!" Sero yelled it out, hoping Tokoyami could hear him wherever he was right now. This would be so much easier with Midoriya over here. We really need him right now. "Aoyama and Hagakure! Make some signs that we need help over here!"

"We could get Koda to send over a swarm of bugs too," Ashido suggested over towards where she knew Sero was, even though all she could see was his silhouette as she backed off towards the perimeter again. "Make an arrow in the air, or something." She turned her head back into the thickest part of the smoke, and she gulped as there was suddenly not much noise coming from in front of her anymore.

The clearing had suddenly become very quiet. Tokoyami felt the urge to yell out in anger towards Sero for telling him what to do, but the dark boy wrapped in a huge black shadow resisted it at the sudden anxious feeling welling up inside him. His arms spread to the sides and his claws grew huge, and he swept in front of him with left then right then left. Wind blew around the area as Tokoyami waved his huge arms, and as he was finishing each swipe he made his follow-through go upwards to push the smoke into the air.

A bright flash went off inside the smoke, and Sero nodded his head while looking in from the edge of the clearing again. Alright, they can all hear me, he thought. He swore he saw a huge black movement in the smoke before a lot of it blew up in the air, thinning out how smokey the area was. The flash too encouraged him that Hagakure heard what he called out and was acting on it. The reason she did not reply to him was that she was simply invisible, and calling out her location before making that flash would have given her away and given their opponents a moment to stop her.

Ojiro turned his head though towards the sight of the flash. That's not Toru's. It didn't look like part of Aoyama's beam either. "That's not us! Tokoyami!" Ojiro shouted.

Sero turned to his left with the other two near him, and they spotted Ojiro for the first time in a while not too far from them. He was still mostly on his side of the perimeter, but he was looking the other way towards where he thought Hagakure should be based on the last time he saw her. "This is bad!" Ojiro called out, having had a bad feeling for a while. He had tried to keep it together through all of that, and his classmates looking over towards him stared in surprise at the number of Shiketsu students on the ground around him. All three of the Trabos, Kerushi, and Enjino were all down on the ground near Ojiro who had closed his eyes in the smoke there and fought his enemies without as much of a struggle as they were going through without their eyesight.

"Gaahh- RAaaaa…"

"What was, that?" Ashido looked into the thinning smoke hesitantly. She stepped back, and then she pulled to the side quickly as a dark form came flying at her.

"Is that…" Sato was slow to figure it out, but he was quick to reach down and pull out more sugar cubes.

Tokoyami bounced on the ground, hit again, and then skid to a stop just in front of Sero, Ashido, and Sato.

"Someone has to go tell Midoriya," Ojiro said quickly.

Sero darted a look towards him, clenching his teeth hard as he knew that was directed at him. He's right though. I need to-

"You think I'd let you?" Zach wondered, while stepping forward enough that his silhouette showed. He walked forward farther, and he emerged from smoke that Tokoyami had done a number on as much more of the clearing was visible now.

"Over here! It's Zach!" Ashido called out.

Sato had just devoured a lot of sugar cubes, but his eyes still locked on Zach's face with emotion in them and an expression shifting strangely for his usual dumbed-down form. Sato's muscles bulged though and after a second his face looked more enraged at what Zach just told them.

"Guys?!" Ashido called out.

"There weren't as many others here as you thought," Zach began. "And the ones who were here…"

Why is Zach doing this? Sero calmed himself down and darted his eyes past Zach and around the area. The smoke is thickest right over there, near the middle but close to Ojiro- "They're getting their comrades!"

Ojiro darted his eyes to the enemies he had taken down around him. Zach sprinted towards Ojiro in that moment, done with the intimidating talk and just staring down his former classmates. They had been stuck on his costume, his expression, what he was saying about their situation, but Sero and Ojiro adapted quick. Sato charged as soon as Zach started moving too, while Sero grabbed Ashido and pulled her back when she gulped and curled her fists, ready to charge in too.

Ojiro stepped between Zach's comrades and him. He slid his right foot forward while lifting his fists in a fighting stance, then he smacked down his tail right as Zach sped up his sprint towards him. He flipped up in the air and swung his tail down at Zach who ducked low and dodged the tip of Ojiro's tail that still would have carried a lot of force. He pointed his right hand back and a flash of blue came out of his right palm without actually firing anything. The flash acted as much as a distraction as an actual flash bang as it had grown bright in the moment Zach flared it, but Ojiro was just acquainted with attacks meant to mess with his sight.

The blond boy with a thick tail leapt up in the air high with help from a smack of his tail, allowing Sato to run in below him and jump towards Zach with his fists lifting up and combining over his head in one fist held high. He came down hard while Zach dove to his right, though Sato still smashed both hands down into the ground and created a crater in the dirt that blew rocks and dirt and smoke in every direction from him. The direction Zach dodged was towards his comrades laying on the ground, and he tossed two of them farther away before getting hit in the back by a piece of ground that made him stumble forward though he maintained his footing.

Zach spun his body and leaned his head back, dodging a line of white tape coming close to his head. The "line" of tape did not go very far back as Zach realized while it passed in front of his face though, and he turned more and then leaned his body left and right to dodge the thin and short pieces of Tape firing rapid-fire at him, now with Acid fired from afar moving in the gaps between the Tapes. Sato sprinted forward and leapt out of the crater, while Ojiro moved around the area and made for where Zach had tossed two of his comrades close to the thickest area of the smoke that was still pretty thin in itself. It was thin enough, that Ojiro saw the movement inside the thicker area, though he pretended not to see it yet.

Ojiro leapt up in the air and over the spit of venom coming out at him, and Satoshi pulled his upper body back in surprise as Ojiro had not even looked his direction first. He turned to move away, as they were told not to get in the way of this fight. We're just supposed to get everyone back- A tail smacked down on Satoshi's back, then Ojiro flipped backwards and spun his right leg, nailing Imino hard though Ojiro's eyes darted back as he felt fingers curl around that foot. He looked closer and saw who it was who caught his foot, and he swung his tail towards Imino which forced his opponent to push back on the leg instead of try to follow up with an attack on him.

If we just hold them here for a little longer, Midoriya will realize Zach isn't over there and come this way, Ojiro thought. He landed and glared towards Imino who was next to one of his downed comrades he was not leaving behind even though Satoshi was not moving at all now after that last tail attack he took.

"Ojiro!" The blond heard the shout from behind him, where he assumed his other three classmates were holding Zach. His head started to turn, and his tail whipped behind him to knock away his opponent he figured must have been about to get him.

Zach dove over Ojiro's swinging tail, moving behind Ojiro's back as the blond turned to the right so that Ojiro never caught a glimpse of Zach at all. Ojiro only saw his three classmates all looking towards him, Ashido and Sero unable to do anything as their attacks would hit him, and Sato just sprinting at him in fury. Ojiro's head had turned first, and the steel elbow lodged into his gut when he was starting to turn back in realization. His eyes bulged and his whole body trembled, then those eyes the size of saucers shifted down and he saw Zach right up close to him, his right hand grabbing his left fist in front of his chest. Zach's left elbow was dug deep into Ojiro's solar plexus, and finally Ojiro's tensed form slumped over Zach's elbow that he removed to allow his friend and enemy to collapse to the ground.

"Sato wait!" Sero shouted, realizing at that moment how bad their situation was.

"Sero!" Ashido grabbed him and spun him to face her. "Get Midoriya! Or get out of range of the jammer or something! They can't get us all the way to their jail if he knows what's happening!"

Imino threw down a few more smoke pellets that drew the attention of the two making plans, as Zach fought their last remaining classmate in the area. Zach and Sato disappeared into the smoke too, while Zach still had on his helmet with the thermal-vision visor, and while Sato did not.

"Try to hold him here," Sero said, looking back at Ashido for a moment apologetically. They both understood how bad their situation was, because they knew that even together the two of them did not stand a chance here. They knew better than anyone else in that clearing, just who they were up against.

"I'll try," Ashido replied, attempting to give him a hopeful look despite just more sweat forming on her face at the thought of being alone against Zach now instead of fighting with Sero.

Sero turned and without anymore delay, fired Tape towards a tree in the east to get back towards his base. I can't mess this up! The sound of fighting over there is still so loud! It's only been a minute or two, but Zach's taken everyone- Sero fired his next piece of Tape while releasing the first one, but Zach did not go after Ashido or even finish with Sato first. A knife flew through Sero's second piece of Tape, and Sero did a spin in midair while starting to drop instead of rise to another branch. He aimed towards where the knife came from to counter Zach, only for black bandages to drop down from the branches above him where he was sure no one had been a second ago.

"Wai-" the black bandages tightened around him, and they yanked him up into the tree where a bruised-up Manzo Elia glared at Sero through the slit in her black mask that revealed her eyes. She put a blade up to his throat before he could call out again, and then she held her breath.

"Sero! Sero?!" Ashido ran after where she had seen Sero getting attacked, but she blinked a few times in confusion as he was nowhere to be found.

Manzo used her Quirk Breathless and continued to hold a blade up to Sero's throat. She then moved her other hand to his mouth as he looked like he was going to ignore that knife, knowing that she was not actually going to use it. Sero's arms were bound to his sides, so all he could do was squirm back and forth as Manzo's hand covered both his mouth and his nose. He was trying to take a breath, which caused him an intense panic as no breath was able to come in. His eyes got bloodshot, and then the entire tree shook and started to fall.

Manzo opened her mouth and let out a breath while jumping away from the tied-up Sero. "I knew it," Ashido said, while facing away from the tree and towards Zach instead. Sato had just smashed through that tree behind her that she directed him to when he came running out of the smoke looking for Zach who had hit him over and over inside it only to fail at knocking out the sugared-out teen.

Sero ripped his arms away from each other as the tree was falling. She's good, but not as good as Aizawa sensei, Sero fired tape ahead of him, and then a thin black line went through his back and he kept dropping to the ground. Manzo caught him with black tape before he hit down too hard, which both Sato and Ashido were worried about with panicked looks over their faces.

Sorry Sero, but I can't let you tell Midoriya, Zach lowered his right hand that he had lifted in the shape of a gun.

Ashido turned back and stared with huge eyes at the index finger Zach had pointed out before pushing his thumb down over it. There was a wisp of darkness coming out that fingertip of the glove like the smoke coming out the barrel of a pistol.

Inside the spectator's box for the dome arena, the teachers and nurses were staring at one of the screens alone in shock and awe. Hazano even looked surprised for a moment, though he said after a second, "He used his Quirk."

All Might turned his head back to the right and down at the man next to him sitting at the control seat for the training zone. The scrawny former pro's already wide eyes shook more at the look on Hachiman's face, "You're, surprised?"

"Sazaki rarely uses his Quirk in our class," Hazano replied. "He says that he is in school to train, so it would be pointless to use his Quirk. Even in a fight like this against his former classmates, I did not know if he would use it."

Ectoplasm wanted to mention how cocky Sazaki had become, but after what he just witnessed… or rather, what he missed most of as Sazaki did it inside the cover of smoke, he found himself speechless. He thought back on when Sazaki first used his Quirk on him, while practicing at the Training Kitchen Land, or Training Gym Gamma. I was out for a couple days after getting hit by that kid's Death Grenade, and that was back before he could control it well. He destroyed the Subspace Devils like they were nothing. That was with him using his Quirk, but even that day we saw him step it up after getting cornered. He holds back so much at all times. Even without using his Quirk though-

"He waited so long though," Ms. Anastasia began. The nurse looked confusedly over towards Hazano, "Why allow his classmates to get so hurt first before moving in himself? Even if they do manage to get them out of there now, many of them are seriously injured or can no longer fight. I understand that he may have wanted them to get a chance too first, and they all proved much improvement since last year."

"It's not about that for them," Hazano said, which immediately met him with confusion from the rest of the staff. "I told you, they're underestimating Sazaki. You all are," Hazano said it in a low voice, less like he was praising a student and more like he was stating a fact that the others were not knowledgeable of.

"We know his strength," Midnight assured.

"And they know Sazaki better than-" Recovery Girl started about the students of Class A.

"I wish I could say, that the improvement you've mentioned in my students is thanks to my teaching," Hazano said, looking up and to the left at All Might who had made mention of it to him a little earlier. All Might looked at Hazano in confusion, only for everyone around him to stare at Hazano in shock at what he said next. "In the past month and a half, my class has improved more than they have in the last year combined. Maybe two years," Hazano added, tilting his head to the side and looking back forward afterwards with a deep frown but no hesitation in his voice like he thought he was going too far with that.

"What are you talking about?" Midnight asked.

Kimona had stared at Hazano in surprise for a moment, before thinking on how his students had been acting recently and getting a strange, unnerving feeling in his gut. Ectoplasm saw his strange reaction and then glared at Hazano for saying something strange like that all of a sudden, "And you're saying, it's due to Sazaki-"

"Yes," Hazano replied to his colleague who froze and opened his bright white eyes wider at Hazano's admission.

Hazano shook his head though that none of the others around him understood what he was saying. From the very first day, Hazano thought. He could see that moment when he realized it himself. As suspicious as he had been before about Sazaki's tech and the strange way he was acting, he thought about Zach's fight against Manzo and could still imagine the look on her face out in Gymnasium A. He saw the shattered look on her face as whatever Sazaki said to her, combined with the way he had fought her, messed up the biggest weakness he had seen in her for years. Something that held her back so much, gone in an instant. I wasn't sure of it that day, but the way she's acted since…

Inside the training dome, on the east side of the facility opposite where the teachers all were, Midoriya flipped over in the air and slammed his leg down into Inasa who was just pushed up high by the ice that wrapped up his lower body. He smashed Inasa down through the ice all the way into the ground where he collided hard not far from where Dendo just hit the ground skidding in the dirt. Ahead of them and dangling off of Class A's damaged base was Hisashi, in a net still attached to a cannon Yaoyorozu had planted to the roof of the building. That cannon looked identical to several others she had been firing with normal attacks and not nets so Hisashi never saw the wider capture-attack coming.

Mineta was exhausted, but he finally made his way back out of the trees he had been thrown through when the line of Pop-Offs holding him to the ground were ripped into the sky due to Inasa yanking that whole chunk of ground up with his wind. Midoriya raced to Inasa and Dendo with his capture tape out, tying up the two who were down but neither looked unconscious yet. "How's the flag?" Midoriya asked, darting his eyes behind him as it had been a few seconds since he last asked. This was the moment where they might let their guards down the most too, right as they were defeating other enemies who they had been in such an intense fight with.

"He's not here," Iida responded, though he looked at the flag closely as if making sure it was not a double. I don't understand. That would have been the moment! Is he waiting for one of us to take Inasa and the others over to the jail?

Over in a clearing to the northeast, Bakugo glared around the area that was clearly the scene of a very large fight. Where the hell did everyone go?! "Oi! Deku! LISTEN!" Bakugo ground his teeth as no one was responding to him anymore. So the jammer was over here. What the hell is going on? Why didn't I see anyone on the way over? Where is their whole team?! Bakugo had too many questions. His one-on-one fight with Kameko was taking too long, and though it sounded to him like Deku had things under control back at their own base, the fact that they had no communications with half of their classmates was finally too much for him to ignore and just keep playing offense.

Is that it? Bakugo glared over towards some black device he saw sitting on the ground. He jumped towards it, and he smashed his right hand in the green gauntlet down to blow it to pieces.

In Zach's helmet appeared camera angles that were previously blocked due to his own tech. "Bakugo's back there. I'll draw him away," Zach said, looking around to the others moving around the outside of the dome with him. He took four bodies off of his shoulders, two of his own comrades who couldn't walk and two of the enemies from U.A. who they had captured. "Remember to stay off the comms. He probably has Reika's communicator on him," Zach reminded the others still standing among his Shiketsu comrades.

"Where's Zach?" Todoroki asked, his voice low and menacing as he glared at the three Shiketsu students they had captured.

Inasa rose his head up and he smirked at the boy with half red hair and half white. Wind started rushing down, only for Inasa's whole body to get frozen on top of tied-up. Even Inasa's face was frozen over for a second, though Todoroki lowered his left hand that he put in front of Inasa's face and quickly melted that ice to give him some room to breathe. Dendo parted squinted eyes and looked to his side with grit teeth while Hisashi looked a lot more scared by Todoroki's sudden reaction to Inasa just grinning at him.

Todoroki could blame it on that wind though like Inasa was trying another attack on him, and he glared at the boy who started coughing once he could breathe again. "Don't try anything or we'll knock you out. I'd rather put you in our jail without doing something like that."

"You guys just don't get it," Hisashi started, losing his scared look and chuckling as the U.A. students all glared at him. He gulped at Todoroki's cold breath that hung in front of his face after what Hisashi just said, but the fourth ranked Shiketsu student shook his head around and chuckled again in a lower tone from inside the net they had gotten down from hanging off the base's wall. Midoriya, Kirishima, Todoroki, Mineta, and Asui all looked down at the captured opponents while Yaoyorozu and Iida guarded the flag from inside but listened along as well. Jirou and Uraraka listened from over at their jail where Midoriya had them posted up, making sure no ambushes were set by their enemies for when their teammates were bringing captured opponents back. Bakugo listened too from the clearing where he suddenly snapped his head to one side seeing a flash of light, and then movement and a sound of branches cracking coming from his north.

"What don't we get?" Midoriya asked, his voice rushing as he stepped closer to his opponents.

Hisashi chuckled again and his eyes shifted up at the base one more time before locking back on Midoriya's eyes. "You won't catch him until it's too late…"

Midoriya's entire body tensed up. He took a step back, while Yaoyorozu's eyes bulged inside the second floor of their base at the same time. Iida looked at her in confusion at that reaction, as what he heard just had him getting more on-guard to protect this flag that their enemies were so confident Zach was going to get. Midoriya's heart pounded, his head snapping to the right and looking through the trees towards an area ahead of their jail where he had not heard very loud sounds coming from since the end of their fight, suggesting the fight over there had ended before this one was over.

"I'm going after Zach now," Bakugo suddenly said over the comms. "He's away from their base, but everyone else is missing. Broke the stupid radio jammer." Bakugo was pissed he had to relay all that, but after what he just heard Hisashi say over their comms, he needed to relay all that information right then. "You can hear me, can't you?" Bakugo added in a low voice. It did not matter which of the comms he was talking into that he had left on open channels, his voice was meant for everyone and for one specific person alone. "Stop running from me," Bakugo growled, as he saw more darkness move up ahead of him in the opposite direction of where he was coming from.

Bakugo sped up with two large explosions, and then he blasted ahead of himself too and stopped where he was. He bounced himself in the air with explosions down at his sides, and his wide eyes narrowed back normally before he kept moving again. The woods had become darker though. The canopy was actually thinner, without any green leaves, but everything around him had blackened and died. Branches were cracking and creaking, falling down to the dirt and making it seem like the trees could not hold them up anymore. Bakugo heard more noise ahead of him though that sounded like footsteps rather than falling branches, and he shot down through a tree and to the other side of it while the dead tree broke and fell behind him.

He had neared the edge of the forest, and Bakugo rose his head up the stone wall on the north side of the training dome. He glared straight ahead of him, halfway up the wall, to a cave that looked so perfectly aligned with him that it could not be coincidence he had run into it. Bakugo's fingers twitched with explosions coming out of them. And the corners of Bakugo's lips twisted up high as he stepped towards it.

Midoriya sprinted through the forest moving as fast as he could for the clearing that Bakugo just mentioned being in. He reached it, and his eyes darted every direction from the chaotic battlefield that had over two dozen felled trees around it along with several craters in the ground. There was white tape hanging off of trees but no sign of Sero. Huge claw marks dug through bark, and smoke still lingering around there in certain areas where it had been thickest latest in the fight. No sign of him!? Nothing dead anywhere! If he wasn't here and wasn't at their own base though- is he back at ours?! Midoriya spun backwards, then forwards, the determined and steady expression he had had before completely shaken as he found himself alone in the woods with no idea which way to go.

"Midoriya, something's up with the three we caught…"

Midoriya's breathing sped up even more. His eyes darted back behind him towards where those three powerful Shiketsu students were, then ahead of him towards where his other classmates surely were. Where did Bakugo go? The others had this under control before we lost contact, and if Zach's not with them then how did something like this- what even is this?! Where is everyone?! Midoriya's heart raced faster, and he heard Zach's voice in his head in a conversation the two of them had not long ago.

"…In war, every action I took was a deception. And I won that war I was the underdog in by far. And when I lost battles, Midoriya, it was because my enemies didn't believe in the ploys and false information I tried to get to them. They didn't fall for my strategies and they expected my maneuvers. They had to think I was there when I wasn't, but they also had to think I wasn't there when I was. That way I could get right up to them without them knowing and catch them off guard. Rush them fast and hard before they can get their bearings."

He told me how he fights wars! Midoriya started running forward again, but he was not using his Quirk this time as his hesitation got the best of him and moving too fast in any direction seemed wrong. The place he least thought Zach to be in that moment was on top of him, making him freeze where he was and to do so suddenly at that. All of my actions so far were based on where I believed Zach to be. I took every step based on his location, but Zach is a master of combat who predicted exactly how I would react, who knew that Iida would think he was going for the flag if he left Kotsumura to have to retreat back to the others on his own. I thought Zach wasn't ahead of me anymore when I was actually rushing through the woods towards Zach's position. And then while at the base even as I got new information I stayed where I was because I thought Zach was there!

"I can't believe it," Ectoplasm said with a shake of his head, stepping closer to the glass and darting his eyes around all the different camera angles. "How did we not see this?!"

"It's a very large dome," Hazano replied. "Adashi picked a spot that we don't have an angle of."

"Midoriya," Todoroki's voice filled Midoriya's headset. "We've made a huge mistake."

Ding.

Students all around the training dome lifted their heads and saw the score change. The banners of red and blue up on the dome's glass that showed their team scores had changed, with the blue rectangle for Shiketsu getting a number 1 on it instead of 0 like it had been so far same as U.A.'s.

Right before that point was being granted to Shiketsu, the three students who used to be the top three in their class had all started smirking at their enemies in front of them. When Midoriya ran off they attempted to keep it up, but they ran the risk of their opponents knocking them out now even though they were already on the ground. The damage they had mattered, and so they decided enough was enough. "Adashi!" Inasa shouted, and Todoroki looked behind them towards the woods where he could now see there was another student standing far off. It was the name of that student that made Todoroki and his classmates feel they had missed something vital through the fight so far.

He improved it!

It's not really them?! Mineta thought in shock, staring directly at Inasa as he thought it. And still that powerful?!

Todoroki was thinking the opposite as Mineta. "You've gotten a lot stronger this last year!" He was tricking me. Mentioning it so I wouldn't notice that he hadn't progressed much from last year. But we couldn't have guessed that Adashi got that much stronger that his Quirk could allow them to use more strength, and on more than one person!

"You really thought that's how strong my winds were now?" Inasa asked, as his body was fading away in front of Todoroki and getting pulled back towards Adashi. Adashi himself was fading like that ahead of them too, his soul pulling back into the forest as were Dendo and Hisashi's.

Much closer to the direct center of the dome's training forest, Adashi's actual body leaned backwards and he pulled the chunk of his soul he removed back into his own body. Adashi Veleno's Quirk, Out Of Body, could remove the souls of others and send them off with as much power as their regular bodies, only that power got weaker the farther they were from their actual bodies. Only halfway across the dome though, was not a very far drop in power, not enough for the U.A. students to assume it was Adashi at least, especially when last year he could only use his Quirk on one other person at a time. At least, that was what Adashi told them the year before when they asked him to explain it after he had used it once in front of them. Even back then, I could already use it on two people and myself. I would have told you if we ever had an internship together or fought against actual villains, but just in case this training was the next time we were going to meet with each other. Adashi smirked and then flinched backwards twice, and thrice as finally Inasa's soul popped back into his own body with a jolt.

Adashi bowed his head after pulling them back, and Dendo hoisted up his classmate who he held over one shoulder while turning and running back towards the west. Inasa hesitated longer than his other two classmates who immediately started running the other way, but despite wanting to go show Todoroki just how much wind he really could use, he just grinned after a second and spun around too to head back to their own base.

Even Dendo using so many Slices on trees, Kimona sensei thought from up in the spectating room. It was meant to show how much power he had right from the start, keeping anyone from thinking for a second that they were just weakened copies. Even I never saw this coming, and I should have realized when Adashi was with them early on. "Those three working solely as a diversion," Kimona started. "I wouldn't have seen it coming."

"We have to go help the others!" Kirishima shouted around at the others close to him.

"Midoriya. Are you getting close to their jail? They might-"

Ding. Ding Ding. Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding.

Midoriya was not moving at all in the forest. He was face-to-face with someone he couldn't have been facing after what Bakugo had last told him.

The teachers spectating their students were stunned, except for one of them who had just added all those points to the score as he watched each student from U.A. thrown into the jail. After the first U.A. had been thrown in, Flugeru snapped at the others arriving to wait until all of their opponents were there so they could put them in all at once. It made it so that in a single moment, the score went from 0-1, to 0-9, Shiketsu leads.

"In the last month plus since Sazaki has been in my class, every one of my students has drastically improved," Hazano said while the other teachers around him were staring in shock at what they were watching unfold. It was a complete opposite of what happened the year before, where U.A. turned the tables on the Shiketsu students who had been looking so strong at first when the U.A. class did not know what their opponents' Quirks were. The teachers around the room looked to Hazano who continued in a stern voice, "He dragged out their biggest weaknesses. Their character flaws, their traumas, anything that held them back from being the best they could be."

"You've been talking up Sazaki this whole time," Ectoplasm began. "And I saw him just take down a ton of our own, but what does this-"

"The way he got in the position to be able to remove them all from the equation like that, was because of the trust his classmates have in him, and because of the strength they've acquired in the past month or so." Hazano denied Ectoplasm's counter and looked to his left side to the dark teacher who stared at him so confusedly. "He destroyed everything holding them back, their biggest issues, most of the time without saying a word but just through his actions." The other six in the room stared at Hazano who continued while looking back at the screen that had Sazaki on it. "Most of the time his classmates did not even realize what he was doing or that he was trying to help them."

All Might stared at the back of Hazano's head with his breath speeding up at how impressed and knowing his voice was about this. All Might's gaze shifted back to the screen that Hazano was looking at that did not just have Zach on it, but Midoriya too. Hazano continued while he looked back to that screen, "He took out ingrained senses of superiority, or built up students who didn't think much of themselves. He relieved the fears of some while instilling fear in those who were too overconfident or ignorant to the reality of the world. Sazaki was, he is, magnetic. My class despised him when he arrived, taking a place in the classroom that many would have preferred unfilled."

The other two Shiketsu staff members got darker looks but continued listening in as Hazano spoke about his newest student. "A former U.A., celebrity, vigilante, murderer, fugitive, villain, convict, who they all thought had malicious intentions. But yet, he was strong, and good, and kind. And most of all, he's a teacher."

Midnight and All Might both opened their eyes wider at that final statement. They each thought about the boy they were staring at back when they saw him at the licensing exam. As they were thinking about what they saw Sazaki do there, Hazano continued, "I heard about it from teachers who had some of the younger hero students who took the licensing exam with Sazaki, that they all improved greatly after the test. Sazaki had what? A few minutes with each of them? Each of the U.A.'s and the Shiketsus and all the others at that licensing exam who he interacted with during it?" Hazano paused and his voice got lower, "But here, he's spent hours and hours, days and days, weeks and months now, and he still has that demeanor. The urge to just teach those around him how to be better."

No one else around Hazano was speaking now. He went on as they watched the screens and all the students on it, while Hazano went on, "Sazaki's experience alone puts him far beyond any of my other students, but it's his willingness to teach and to lead that sets him much farther apart than his skills or strengths. When Sazaki made a decision, a plan, for what he was going to do today, he convinced my students to go along with this plan immediately, even though it may have gone against whatever goals they had coming into this before he mentioned it."

"What was that goal?" All Might asked without pause from what Hazano just said.

The homeroom teacher of Class 1 glanced to the former Number 1 hero, then he looked back at the screens in front of him and shook his head. "When I was leading them to their base down there, Sazaki suddenly spoke to his classmates. He asked them a very simple question: whether or not they wanted to take this training seriously." Hazano paused and then continued again, "They were confused of course, but all of them agreed that they were going to take it as seriously as possible. So, Sazaki made a suggestion. He suggested something to his classmates that has changed the flow of the day immensely, in my opinion." The other teachers all stared at Hazano waiting to hear what it was, as none of them knew what this suggestion was or what those students down there were thinking.

"My class went into this with one mission. The entire class together was united in a single, sole mission. They're not looking to show off, not looking to prove to U.A. anything, not looking to fight specific students…"

Midnight stared at Hazano with her eyes widening more, as she felt like some of these things were reasons she had seen clearly on her own students' faces before coming in here. Those, would just make the kids more determined though… She thought, though she thought it hesitantly.

Many of them wanted to beat Zach, others wanted to show off against their Shiketsu rivals, Ectoplasm gained a more hesitant expression too.

Hazano continued, "Every step they've taken from even before the training started was for the single goal, of winning without losing anyone."

All Might stared at Hazano in surprise, then he frowned and asked in a questioning tone, "Did they really think they could do it-"

"Zach convinced them they could," Hazano replied before All Might had closed his mouth. He looked to that older man and continued, "But it wasn't about beating U.A. Sazaki had asked my class beforehand whether they wanted to treat this as a game or something serious. Because this was a force of powerful Quirk users, more powerful and experienced than them, but he thought they could do it. Even though he said right to their faces that the U.A.'s were more experienced, no one felt diminished by him. They all know that he knows both classes better than anyone from either class knows each other. And Sazaki said that U.A. was stronger, but he also declared that he was a Shiketsu. And he said that they could win." Hazano paused and his hands clenched over the control panel in front of him. "But he also said, that if they were treating this like a serious situation then they should imagine themselves in it. Up against a group of powerful Quirk users stronger than them, like they could come across groups of villains that are stronger than them in the future, smart, powerful, and he asked if beating them was enough?"

Hazano shook his head and spoke in a steadier but lower voice, "Because no one there walking to the base with him thought they would win with everyone remaining, and he asked them if the time came and they went up against the same group only they were villains, where there was no capture tape and cages, but it was to the death…. Would they be fine going in there knowing they would lose people?" Hazano left a second's pause and then shook his head darkly as he remembered how his own students looked at Sazaki after hearing this. "He told them that situation could happen, and they should prepare for it in this instance which might be their only chance to have a real preparation for it. And so, all of the Shiketsu students down there, are treating this as if losing a comrade means they actually just let them die. Because Sazaki convinced them that if it happened here, it would happen out there. Your students can't predict him because they're not treating this like a training simulation right now. They're all taking it far more seriously than your U.A. students because for whatever reasons they have to win, they don't come close to the resolve of our kids."

"Just changing the way they feel about their classmates being captured," Ectoplasm began. He hesitated after starting it, but then he continued with a shake of his head, "It won't change the entire dynamic between classes. It won't change how strong they are in comparison."

"I underestimated the difference as well," Hazano began. "But I've seen it now clearly since I left them down there." He shook his head in near disbelief while looking at that score he just set himself. "After Sazaki had convinced them to follow his plan, he continued to create a strategy that they all listened to, because if they were going to accept that one of them being captured would mean them dying, then they could not waste time arguing with the person there who had the most experience in such situations. And they all believed, because Sazaki suggested it in the first place, that he had the plans to put in place for them to win without losing a single comrade which none of them could imagine beforehand."

"They're trusting him out there. Going along with his plans, because he's raised the confidence of those who needed it, and destroyed the arrogant and cocky attitudes of others. He shattered the things that held others back," Hazano grit his teeth and continued in an uneasy but firm voice, "And he molded them all into better heroes who understand more than anyone how capable he is. To Sazaki…" Hazano ground his teeth, and the heroes around him suddenly realized that as much as Hazano was talking him up, he was not saying this all in a positive voice. "My class at this moment are a predictable tool for him to use in this fight. My students, their personalities, their Quirks, their level of ability, Sazaki understands them all. He observed them closely from day one, and he improved on them in our classes, and he had gotten them all to trust him to a level that he can now command them without argument." Hazano was saying it like he was realizing it and speaking it aloud for the first time, and the other teachers were surprised that he would go so far in what he was saying.

"This does not diminish the ability of my own students, but the opposite. The fact that they are willing to let Sazaki take the lead, a person they've only known for a month and a half, against people they had wanted to prove themselves against long before, it shows how far they have improved from last year. It shows, how massive an impact Sazaki has made on not only their skills but their maturity as heroes. And it is how I know how far they have improved in the short time since Sazaki has joined my class. Their physical and mental states have all been heightened solely by being alongside him for this long. Their skills, heightened. Their weaknesses, exposed and worked on. I wouldn't say something like this lightly, but Sazaki really has taken the reins of my class. He has the most skill of any student I have ever encountered, the most power, and the most experience. If I had to say, Lifebringer is likely the closest person to being the Number 1 hero... and that's including the pros."

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A/N Thanks for reading! Sorry for the long break everyone, but I hope you enjoyed the chapter! The joint training begins, and half of U.A. is swiftly taken down as Zach leads the Shiketsu class against his old classmates. How will Midoriya and the others adapt now that they have 1/3 the numbers as the Shiketsu students with not one of their opponents captured yet? Anyway, I hope you guys like the setup for the joint training as well as the starting fights. It took me a while to write this one because there was a lot I had to re-read on to accurately have so many characters in this one. The next chapter's coming along quicker because of that as I've read up on a lot already, so I'm already into my next chapter now. I also don't have many hours of work this week on my schedule, (though I do have to help my bro move into NYC next weekend), but I'll get up that next chapter before then anyway! So once again, thanks everyone for reading, faving, following, and reviewing! Leave a review below telling me what you think, comments, predictions, or questions about the story! Time for review responses:

papaprep chapter 169 . Jul 23

looking forward to see class A getting beaten up by zach

Lol nice call! XD

orangelarcenist chapter 169 . Jul 23

Great Chapter (as always), I really enjoy the inner monologues Class-A Members have when it come to Zach. Can't wait for Zach to see Jirou again... I bet it's gonna be interesting to read. Also, I'm super hyped for the battle between Shiketsu and UA. Lastly I'd like to say that I'm sorry for your loss. (Don't know if it's apropriate to
say it in a review like that since it's your private life, but it's you who shared it with us.)

No meet up this chapter between them, but it's coming... sometime! No spoilers. Thanks for the condolences, and I hope you enjoyed the start of the joint training battle!

GuestP chapter 169 . Jul 24

Woah, a lot of emotion and thoughts going around in this chapter, understandably so. The way you're able to separate the thoughts amazes me, especially when they're in different POVs.
JOINT TRAINING YAYY! I've been waiting for this my WHOLE LIFE YEAH BABY
Great chapter, and as always I loved your writing!
I'm sincerely sorry for your loss, and I wish you peaceful sleeps and tranquil mornings.

Thanks and thanks for the review! Glad you're excited for these chapters, and I hope you enjoyed the first one!

Just a reviewer chapter 169 . Aug 2

I love this fic but here's a few things I would suggest changing.
First off, the summary. The summarys bad, it reads like an edgy 'what if' wattpad self insert kinda story. It in no way reflects your writing, change it please. It's actually why I put this story on hold for so long.
Second, the first one or two chapters are a bit of a chore to read. They're full of flashbacks and backstory that, while important, is not something we want to read so much about at the start of the story. Maybe rely less on flashbacks, reveal less, or have these things be inferred from other sections of the story.
Third, just a small suggestion. Maybe give each chapter a short title, so that by looking at it in the future, you can remember what happened in it as well as the time line of the story. It also makes it easier to spot important events and story changing points.

I've thought about changing the summary many, many times. What I hate more than a cringy summary though is a spoiler, and even just spoiling what happens after the first 20-30 chapters would've made it worse for me personally as a reader. If I changed it to mention how we follow Zach learning to understand his powers and improve- it just shows that he will figure that stuff out that the initial chapters don't give away but instead have hints leading up to big reveals of. Anyway, I'll think about changing it again but those first chapters def not gonna. Biggest problem with OC-oriented stories in my opinion is that readers don't care about them. You all came to the My Hero Academia fanfic section to read about your favorite characters, not some guy I just made up, which is why people are slow to pick up OC stories. Without anything to get the reader instantly invested in the character, I think it'd be harder for people to really get into the story and want to know what's happening with Zach. Might do the chapter name thing though, but it'd take a while of going back and changing and deciding all 170 of them now, so I'll have to pick out an hour or 3 to do that. Alright, so, thanks for the review and the critique points. Hope you continue to enjoy the story!

Super Power Sensei chapter 169 . 18h ago

Review of chapter 169 on 07/22/19
Uploaded 08/04/19
(Sorry this took so long. Dealing with life and constantly reflecting on this story)
Congratulations, you did it. Multiple times in past reviews and post notes you've talked about making more human characters. Well, no longer do I imagine these characters as stereotypes...

Alright, so I'm just going to cut the rest of the review before it fills up half this chapter (lol always glad getting these long ones tho). Won't comment much on the initial paragraph of ideology. I don't know if it's how I feel either, but I do disagree with one point you made about how killing doesn't signify lower moral standards. Yeah, it might be considered "different" morals, but the more civilized/moral the world has become the less capital punishment has been used to the point it's almost been eradicated from many modern countries. In this future society led by heroes, even All For One doesn't get killed for all he did, and to us that might seem silly and like it would be morally fine to kill him, but morals change and to the people in the present they usually feel they've improved from what they were in the past. Maybe we don't see it as right certain things in this story, but I think in the BNHA world the sense of what is the accepted morality is shown clearly with the fact that no one even talked about "why isn't All For One getting the death penalty?" We might not agree from the standpoint of normal people in our own world, but this is an AU splitting off of a fantasy futuristic world... Anyway, I don't actually know where I'm going with this response. Might just be my own ramblings in response to yours, but I do appreciate the time you put into that considering you had Zach's exact quotes for that review. Like the random thoughts at the end, but I'm not going to really mention any of them just cause most would be spoiler-related here. All cool suggestions though, and we'll see what happens with that... whenever we see those guys/ Life City/ tech advancements again. Thanks for another great review, and I hope you enjoyed the new chapter!