I woke up early the next morning, having gotten a lot of sleep over the past few days. In fact, there was still 2 hours before I would normally leave for school, and I usually came early. So I had plenty of time to kill.

I began slowly getting dressed, still careful of my ribs. I gave them a gentle poke. Yep, still a bit tender. I was probably fine to do any of my normal exercises so long as I didn't get hit in that spot, but it was still painful.

Next, I tested the range of motion in my left arm. Apparently the rock that had stabbed into it, and then later was pushed even further in had torn most of the muscle apart. Even with Recovery Girl's healing, the flexibility of the muscle was shot. I lifted the arm as high as it could go. About 10 degrees off of being vertical.

I continued my morning routine, getting breakfast, checking the news, responding to some more messages from Kaiji and Tsuchigumo asking how I was. I looked myself over in the mirror before leaving. The only lasting sign I had been badly injured two days prior was a small scar on the side of my nose where that rock guy's fist had impacted.

Despite my efforts to waste as much time as possible, I still had an hour before needing to leave. I sat back down on the floor and began to scroll through my phone, reading any news stories that interested me.

The shock of an attack on UA had worn off by now, and people were seriously beginning to question how such an attack was possible. They were being raked over the coals, even more so than usual due to the news that a student had been badly injured. It definitely could have been worse, though. The school's reputation would barely take a hit from just this one isolated incident. It would be forgotten in a few weeks time, especially once the hype towards the sports festival came around.

Speaking of which, I saw there had been an official statement saying the event was going ahead. That had to be only a few weeks away at this point. No doubt the class would be told about it sometime this week, so we'd have the remaining days to prepare after school. I should start training harder as soon as possible. Ideally, I would figure out some way of using my quirk better in that time, maybe increasing the time I could spend using six tentacles at once before suffering from backlash.

I held up my hand, creating a small tentacle the size of a finger and letting it gently sway back and forth. I was too tired yesterday to really think about it for too long, but what was my quirk, exactly? Officially, it was Shadow Tentacles, a quirk that allowed me to create black tentacles on my body after drawing a line with my finger.

There were multiple things wrong with that. In fact, pretty much none of it was true. Like with how I thought of my sixth sense as sensing quirks, I naturally thought of the places the tentacles came out of as portals or gates. I think I mentioned it to Kaiji once before, but what exactly was it a portal to?

The obvious answer was the void my consciousness was sent to when I wasn't in control, but that just begged the question: where or what was that place? An endless black expanse of nothingness only interrupted by far-off flashes of lights like stars didn't exactly sound like a place on Earth.

Wherever it was, the fact I was creating portals to somewhere had to mean my quirk was portal creation, right? But why did the tentacles act like an extension of me, acting exactly how I want, sometimes without me even needing to think? If I were to believe the entity in the void — which I kind of had to, given that it was the only one that actually seemed to know what was going on here — my quirk was a single ability, meaning that I wasn't both creating portals and controlling tentacles. And then there was the quirk-sensing, which was a third ability that somehow had to fall under a single quirk.

I looked at the time. Somehow over an hour had passed in my musings, so I quickly rushed out of the apartment, hoping I hadn't missed my train.

~X~

I had, in fact, missed my train. Not that it was much of a problem, given that I leave early, but it did mean that the road was more crowded leading up to UA. I thanked my lucky stars that Uraraka normally took two trains after my usual one, so I still didn't have to deal with her attempts at conversation.

Security at the gate had tripled since the attack. The school had probably learnt their lesson and it wouldn't lax for quite a while this time. When the gate had been destroyed, only a token effort had been made to improve security, and it all went back to normal pretty quickly. Now, the security was tighter than it had been before. Two teachers were standing on the other side, and half a dozen regular guards were stationed in sight. As I passed through, I heard rapid footsteps and panting from behind me.

"Geez Sotoki," Hagakure panted out, coming up beside me. "Why do you walk so fast?"

I shrugged. "Avoidance."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Anyways…" she said, drawing out the sound. "It's good to see that you're okay. None of us knew what was going on, or whether you'd even be at school today."

I hummed, a bit intrigued. "That's odd, I would have expected Uraraka to have told everyone by now."

"Huh? Why would Uraraka know anything? Are you guy's like friends or something?"

"Hmm. No I think I rather hate her. She's unfortunately my neighbour."

Hagakure snorted a little. "Sorry, just the way you said that is so funny."

We continued walking in companionable silence, Hagakure humming a soft tune quietly. We made it to the shoe lockers, where dozens of students were loitering nearby.

"It gets quite busy here at this time," I commented.

"Oh yeah. How come I've never seen you walking to school before? You've always been sat at your desk by the time I arrive."

"I got distracted thinking about something this morning and missed my train."

"Oh really?" she turned to face me. "You kind of strike me as the type of person to always stick to their schedule. What were you thinking about?"

I raised an eyebrow at her. She was a lot more talkative today than usual. Normally our exchanges were pretty short, and the majority of the time was spent in silence. I shrugged. "Just thinking about my quirk. It really doesn't make much sense most of the time."

"Hmm… yeah I can't help you there," Hagakure laughed awkwardly. "Mine is pretty basic in the grand scheme of things, I'm just see-through. And I don't control it either, I've just been like this since I was three."

Something about what she said felt off to me, but before I could think on it more, we had arrived at our classroom, and I braced myself for the endless barrage of questions. At least Hagakure was considerate enough to mention the attack once and then continue on as usual. I couldn't say that about the rest of my classmates. They would likely ask multiple questions. What was it like? How many villains did I fight? How did I get my injuries? What zone was I in?

I was certain most of the class — especially the more talkative ones — would ask at least one of those questions. I mean, even Kaiji asked some of them, and he had one, not been there, and two, knew that I hated being asked that sort of thing.

I walked into the classroom and was immediately assaulted by noise.

~X~

How could they ask so many dumb questions? Seriously, despite only a third of the class being present, and most of them being the ones I would expect more intelligence from, they managed to surpass all the questions I had come up with in stupidity. Seriously, who asks if having your nose broken and being stabbed in the arm hurts? Iida apparently.

I could kind of understand why they were so worried. They had no way of knowing my condition, and some of them might not have even seen me, just heard from the others about my injuries. If it wasn't for the fact that I really didn't want to, I'd have given them my phone number to avoid such irritating questions.

Luckily, there were a few who didn't come up to check on me, knowing I valued being left alone. After about half an hour, Aizawa-sensei entered the classroom, still confined to crutches. Recovery Girl was extremely effective, but the teacher's bones were more dust than a solid structure. He would be stuck with only one arm and one leg functional for at least a few weeks.

"Good to see you've all settled down already," he said. "I hope you enjoyed your day off, because you won't be getting a moment's rest from now on. The sports festival is fast approaching."

The class erupted in chaos, some asking if it's really going on — obviously they hadn't seen the press release — others cheering at their chance to show off.

"All right, quiet down the lot of you. The sports festival will be in two weeks, and the first-years will be doing their events on Saturday morning. Heroic's classes will be focused on theory until then, and you are expected to spend some time after school preparing for whatever you may face."

I could already feel the excitement building up within me. My memories of fighting at the USJ were a bit blurry after using my quirk, but one detail I could clearly remember was how fun it was to properly fight. I had to wonder if it was a bad sign that I found competing in such a way so enjoyable.

The sports festival was split up in three stages, the first two of which were random each year. They did have general patterns, though. The first round was usually an individual task that the participants had to finish as quickly as possible. Students would be competing against each other, but not directly. They all had the same goal, and it was just a question of who did it best.

The second round was almost always a team based event, where four groups of four would be able to go to the next round. The exact manner of the event varied much more than the first event, ranging from a sumo competition where all team members were tied together, to capture the flag.

And lastly, the final round was always a 16 person tournament. The top four teams from the second round would all pass on to the final round of one on one battles. That was the event I was looking forward to the most. The first two would still be enjoyable, being more alike a puzzle, but they couldn't compare to the joy that came with fighting. It was a perfect mix of a puzzle on how to win combined with the stress relief of violence.

~X~

The classroom was practically buzzing with excitement all morning, and whenever there was a gap between classes the sports festival was all they would talk about. The news had to have come at the best possible time, because suddenly everyone was focused on the upcoming event and the questions directed towards me had all but disappeared.

"Man, I've really got to step up my training," Hagakure said as we ate lunch.

I grunted in response, thinking of ways to train myself. "What sort of training do you do anyways? If your quirk is always on, you can't exactly train that."

"Yeah, I just do general exercise. You know, stuff like building muscle and improving flexibility."

I suppose that made sense. When you had complete invisibility at all times, the main thing you needed to capitalise on the natural stealth is the strength to take out your enemies in an ambush as quickly as possible.

"I assume you also practice general fighting skills as well?" I asked.

She just shrugged. "Not really. I mean fighting is basically just hitting the other guy as hard as possible, right?"

There were so many things wrong with that. So many that I was stunned for a few seconds at the sheer stupidity of that sentence.

"Please don't tell me you just said that," a voice groaned from behind me. Ojiro sat down at our table, food tray in hand.

That's right, he was some form of martial artist, wasn't he? "Glad to see someone else agrees," I said. "Fighting isn't just about hitting hard. It's a game of strategy, trying to capitalise on the mistakes of your opponent and attacking in a way they don't expect!"

Now it was my turn to get stared at.

"That's… certainly one way of putting it," Ojiro eventually said. "Personally, I don't see it that way, but there were a lot of differing opinions on fighting in my dojo. I can't say I've ever heard someone call it 'just hitting the other guy as hard as possible,'" he pointedly looked at Hagakure, who awkwardly chuckled. "You do know there's a reason it's called martial arts, right?"

"Eheheh… you guys are really ganging up on me here."

We both sighed in unison. Ojiro turned to look at me. "What about you? Have you got any formal training?"

I shook my head. "Nah, I just go with whatever comes to mind at the time. I did try judo once or twice, but I kept accidentally punching my friend in the face." Kaiji was really pissy for the next week after that incident.

"I kind of guessed after the other day. Maybe we could spar from time to time to prepare for the festival."

I hummed in response, going back to eating. It would be useful to train against someone who actually knew how to fight. Not to toot my own horn, but I believe myself to pretty good at imitation, so I could probably use some of Ojiro's moves after being on the receiving end a few times.

I was brought out of my thoughts by clacking on the table. Hagakure had dropped her chopsticks. I closed my eyes for a moment and sighed, running a finger along my palm. A tentacle shot out to her sleeved forearm, wrapping around it and yanking towards me.

"Wha— hey!" she protested.

I ignored her complaints and began touching her hand, feeling the surprisingly soft skin. "You've winced five times while eating today." I started applying pressure to each knuckle, waiting for a reaction.

"What does that have to — ow!" she yelped.

As I thought. She had injured the base of her thumb somehow, and the pain made it so she couldn't use chopsticks properly. I let out an exasperated sigh, before standing up, still with a firm grip on her arm, before dragging her out of the cafeteria.

"Wait! What about my lunch?" she tried to argue.

"Don't care," I replied.

Ojiro gave a look that was a mix between bemusement and concern as I forcibly dragged Hagakure away from her food. After about a minute of struggling she eventually gave up and let herself be taken away.

"If I let you go, are you going to try and run back to your lunch?" I asked.

Hagakure grumbled a bit. "No."

"Good."

We walked in silence down the halls towards the infirmary. The invisible girl next to me had her shoulders hunched, and was gripping her wrist.

"USJ?" I eventually asked.

"…Yeah," she confirmed. "Me and Sato were in the mountain zone, and it was pretty much a straight up brawl. Nothing like the fights you and Ojiro were talking about. I punched a guy in the face at one point and my hand's been hurting ever since."

I smiled a bit at that. "I'm guessing you never learnt how to throw a punch? Here," I raised my fist, "your thumb should be over the first two fingers, and you should lock your wrist tight so that your entire arm from the elbow down is a single straight line."

"Huh, never knew that, it just felt natural to punch like this," she held up a hand.

We arrived at the entrance of the infirmary. "I'm not sure how you keep forgetting I can't see you."

We entered the room, where Recovery Girl was sat eating her own lunch.

"What? Didn't I see you just yesterday. If you keep getting injured like this, I'm going to stop healing you," she groused.

"Not me this time. Give it a few weeks and I'll be back," I retorted. "This idiot here didn't know how to throw a punch and hurt her hand." I pushed Hagakure forward, but not before she punched me in the arm with her good hand for the idiot comment.

I left the infirmary and waited outside for the treatment to be done. After a minute or two, Hagakure came out, shoulders sagging a bit.

"I got scolded," she said.

"I thought you would. That woman honestly has terrible bedside manners. Why did you wait so long to get your hand checked out anyway?"

"I meant to!" she whined. "I thought it was just bruised at first, and then the school was closed, and then I meant to go this morning but I got distracted talking to you, so I was going to go after school!"

I just sighed and continued walking.