There was a familiar black and purple Warp Gate beginning to open in front of the fountain that Thirteen had had installed for aesthetics or something, and as Tenko made his way over, he chuckled under his breath. A familiar, tall form in a long, flowing white coat and face-concealing helmet was making his way out of Kurogiri's Warp Gate. Standing next to him – Sensei guiding her in the way he had since the day he'd taken a scared little nine-year-old girl into their home, granting her a Quirk that allowed her to make herself heard in a way that the extent of her Mutation Quirk had denied to her for so long – was Bombalurina, whiskers spreading out in obvious interest as she looked around what functioned as the main lobby of the USJ.

"Well, All Might's going to be here eventually, but he's busy being the Symbol of Peace," he said, rolling his eyes as he made his way over to Shouta, even as Sensei came up beside him.

"That man is the height of irresponsibility," Shouta said, sounding even more unimpressed than he usually did.

Given the soft chuckle he heard from Sensei, Tenko had the feeling that most of Idiot Toshi's predecessors had done just the same kind of dumb shit as he did.

"So, since All Might isn't going to be joining us until late in the exercise, we'll just get started," Thirteen said, stepping forward and gesturing to Bombalurina. "Bombalurina-chan has offered to help; she'll be hidden deep within one of the environments that I've constructed, and once you've managed to find her and bring her back to the lobby, Kurogiri-san will move her to the next one."

Everyone agreed to that, but the sight of that cheery little fangirl making her way over to where Kurogiri was standing made him raise an eyebrow.

~MHA~

"Hey, Kurogiri, Thirteen said that you need a good line of sight to create your Warp Gates," she said, looking up at the man who'd transported Sensei – she still couldn't quite believe that she and the rest of class 1-A were getting to meet the Symbol of Hope himself, but there he was – to the USJ. "So, I was wondering if you wanted any help with that."

"What manner of help would you be willing to provide, miss?" Kurogiri asked, and Ochako found herself more than a little surprised by how deep and resonant his voice was.

"Well, my Quirk lets me stop gravity from working on whatever I touch with all of the pads on my fingers," she said, holding out her right hand so that Kurogiri, Sensei, and the other girl who was standing alongside them could see it; the girl who had a really long name, and looked like a cute little kitty.

/Wow, your hands look a lot like mine,/ the girl with the cat Quirk said, holding out her right hand to match Ochako's, and Ochako had to force herself not to squee; the other girl was as cute as an actual kitten, but she didn't quite know how she would react to being treated like one. /That's pretty neat./

"Yeah," she said, smiling at the other girl, then turning back to Kurogiri. "Sorry for getting distracted like that, Kurogiri-san," she said, turning back to the man who seemed to be made out of the same kind of black-and-purple mist that he used to make those gates of his.

"Think nothing of it, miss," Kurogiri said, the yellow lights that seemed to be his eyes – if he had any at all; she didn't really know how his Quirk worked, so she couldn't really say what was under all that mist – turning up in a way that felt, strangely enough, as if he was smiling. "Now, what aid were you thinking to offer to me during this exercise?"

"I thought that, with my Quirk , I could give you a better vantage-point to use your Warp Gates," she said, tapping her pointer fingers together as she spoke to the man who'd brought Sensei and the girl with the cat Quirk to the USJ with them. "I mean, you would be able to see a lot farther if you were up in the air, and I could get you there with my Quirk."

~MHA~

Watching as Bambaa-chan and Kurogiri-sensei talked about what Uraraka was suggesting to do with her Quirk, Izuku looked around at all of the varied environments that Thirteen had designed as a part of the USJ training center. The one he was most concerned about, of course, was the Fire Zone that Tenko-nii's former boss had been talking about during their orientation. Bambaa-chan had lived through the Rosaru Massacre, and while she obviously didn't like to talk about that kind of thing, he'd seen the fires consuming the Ward during the attack.

He didn't know how she was going to handle things when she was finally sent into the Fire Zone, but he did at least hope that she was going to be all right, in the end.

Kacchan and Kirishima – a redhead with hair almost spikier than Kacchan's and a Quirk that seemed to make his skin as hard as a rock – were the first pair to be sent out, having drawn lots from the box that Thirteen had brought out for the assignment they were going to be undertaking. Bambaa-chan had already been sent through one of Kurogiri-sensei's Warp Gates, deep into a Zone that seemed to be modeled after a city that had been struck by an earthquake.

Or else a Villain whose Quirk allowed them to generate seismic tremors; he'd heard about a few of those from Dad, when the pair of them would talk about Quirks.

~MHA~

Making his way into the mess of a fake city that Thirteen had designed for them to work in – he'd asked Mophead about it awhile ago, and it seemed like the place was made to be like a city that'd been hit by an earthquake or something – Katsuki smirked slightly. He might not have known just where Misty Warpguy had dropped Bombalurina, when she'd gone through his Warp Gate and ended up in whatever half-destroyed building Misty had set her down in, but he knew that she wouldn't be particularly happy to end up in a place like this.

She had a sensitive nose, so the dust in the air, even if it had probably settled by now unless there was something keeping it in the air somehow, would be irritating that nose of hers.

"So, where do you think we should start looking?" Hedgehog asked, a confused look on his sharp-toothed face.

"Just listen for Bombalurina sneezing, Hedgehog," he said, chuckling as he started forward into the closest of the buildings.

"My name's Ejiro Kirishima," Hedgehog said, hurrying to catch up with him as Katsuki jogged for the broken door of the building in front of him.

"Yeah, whatever."

~MHA~

When Bambaa-chan, Kacchan, and Kirishima came back through Kurogiri-sensei's Warp Gate, Izuku smiled as he turned to watch as Thirteen pulled another slip from the box, then turned back to the rest of Class 1-A. It seemed that there were going to be three people heading off into Kurogiri-sensei's Warp Gate to search for Bambaa-chan in whatever environmental Zone she was going to be sent into once she'd gone through first. Izuku found himself wondering how the teams were ultimately being decided.

He'd at first thought that pairs of names were being drawn out of the box, but the sight of a team made of three people put paid to that assumption; still, he was probably going to end up finding that kind of thing out when he himself was called up to take his own turn.

~MHA~

The sight of the tall, sloping mountain towering in front of them as she, Yaoyorozu, and Kaminari all stepped out of the Warp Gate they'd just come through, Kyoka Jiro paused for a moment to take in the surrounding terrain, before turning back to her partners.

"All right, I know how we can start looking for Midoriya-chan," she said, once she'd gotten the attention of Yaoyorozu and Kaminari.

Once the three of them had come to an agreement about what they were going to be doing, Kyoka plugged one of her Earphone Jacks into the side of the mountain. The sound of a heartbeat, along with what seemed to be a cat purring – a sound she'd heard from Midoriya-chan when she was happy – brought a smile to her face as she turned back to her classmates.

"Found her," she said, smiling.

~MHA~

Watching as Kurogiri-sensei's second Warp Gate opened, letting Bambaa-chan and the trio that had been sent out alongside her step back into the lobby of the USJ, Izuku watched more of his classmates – just two of them, this time – make their way over to where Thirteen was standing. Bambaa-chan was brushing out her fur, and combing out her hair with her retractable claws, as she made her way over to where Kurogiri-sensei was waiting to send her into the next environmental Zone that his fellow classmates were going to need to rescue her from.

He was still wondering what was going to happen when – or even if – Bambaa-chan ended up in the Fire Zone that Thirteen had talked about building when their class was being introduced to the USJ and everything in it.

~MHA~

Once the both of them had landed on the bow of the boat that made up a lot of the Shipwreck Zone – and the very thing that the Zone had been named for, she guessed – Tsu smiled as she looked around. This would be the best time for her to show how good she was in water, or at least in an environment surrounded by water. The sound of someone sighing brought her attention to her assigned partner for this particular exercise.

"What's wrong, Mineta?" she asked, turning to look back at him.

"You know, normally I'd enjoy looking for a catgirl – I mean, I've seen a lot of them – but she's so skinny," he said, sighing again.

Tilting her head as she and Mineta began searching the ship for any signs of Midoriya-chan's sister, Tsu hopped up onto the nearest wall of the ship they were on. There really wasn't anything she could say in response to something like that, so she concentrated on finding Midoriya-chan's sister. As she searched, Tsu also wondered what the story behind her adoption was.

A cat Quirk that advanced wasn't likely to have spontaneously mutated from a family like the Midoriyas, who didn't seem to have any kind of physical mutations at all.

~MHA~

Once Bambaa-chan had come back to the USJ's lobby, Izuku smiled as he saw her talking quietly with Asui, the pair of them smiling about whatever the subject of their conversation was. He'd thought that the pair of them would get along well, after they'd had the chance to get to know each other. Both of them seemed to be really outgoing, and the way their Quirks made it so hard to express themselves in the way that most other people did meant that the pair of them would probably understand each other better than most people could.

Of course, considering the way that Bambaa-chan hadn't even been able to speak before Dad had given her the Quirk Mental Voice to make up for the what her advanced Cat Quirk had done to her vocal chords, Izuku still found himself wondering why she wasn't more talkative now that she actually had a way to make herself understood.

"You look like a parade balloon, Kurogiri," Tenko-nii laughed, drawing Izuku's attention back to everything that was still going on in the USJ's spacious lobby. "Would you like me to tie a ribbon around your foot, so you don't float away?"

Izuku suspected that Kurogiri-sensei would have asked just where Tenko-nii intended to get a ribbon in a place like this, that is, if he himself hadn't seen the long strip of what seemed to be Sero's tape in Tenko-nii's hands; it seemed like he'd folded it in half lengthwise, so it wouldn't stick to his fingers or palms where he gripped it.

"Amusing, Tenko Shimura, but this is hardly the time for levity," Kurogiri-sensei said, looking down at Tenko-nii with an unamused expression that was somehow visible even though the only features visible through the Warp mist that he used to preserve his anonymity were his bright, angular golden eyes.

It was always interesting, seeing the way that people expressed themselves when they couldn't really be read as easily as someone whose Quirk didn't affect their face. The name went for Dad, really, when he was operating as Sensei; the way he could be such a comforting presence with only his filtered voice and body-language. Izuku found himself wondering, more than a few times, how some kinds of people seemed to be able to do that so easily, and he hadn't quite managed to find an answer that satisfied him.

Still, as he watched Bambaa-chan making her way into another of Kurogiri-sensei's Warp Gates, Izuku reflected that a lack of simple answers was no reason to stop asking questions.