Sasaki let her gaze run across her classmates. There were only 4 left at this point. Aizawa had expelled the rest. Most had been expelled because of things that happened during the internship almost two months ago. They had caused trouble or put others in danger. She'd expected them to be expelled.

The remainder of the class was waiting to start their last training exercise before the final exams. It was a short tournament with two teams made up of two people each fighting against each other. Support items were forbidden.
Because they were an odd number Mr. Aizawa would participate. He handicapped himself with weights and by not using his quirk.

Sasaki was paired with Tsukomo Hana. She was one of the girls with the Telekenisis quirks. Tuskomo could attract objects that were lighter than her and repel objects heavier than her. In this case her weight didn't mean her body weight but the weight of everything she was wearing or holding as well.

Sasaki appreciated Tsukomo's ability to remain calm under pressure and her willingness to cooperate.

It had helped them win their first fight against Kobayashi and Suzuki.

Her occasional dry comments were also quite funny. And there came a certain solidarity with being the only two girls left in a class full of guys. They became close by default.

In the chalk circle in front of them Mikan and Aizawa were fighting against Suzuki and Kobayashi.

"Mr. Aizawa and Mikan will win," she predicted.
Tsukomo turned to her.
"You think? Kobayashi is pretty strong too and you shouldn't underestimate Suzuki."
"But Mikan is better," she begrudgingly admitted.

Sasaki didn't like Mikan much. He was impulsive and loud. He tended to question everyone and everything but he was the best fighter of the students.
His quirk, which allowed him to summon oranges in any size and of any density sounded stupid but he made good use of it.
She didn't like admitting it but the boy had grown on her.

Sasaki winced as she watched Suzuki get hit in the stomach with one.

His barriers made from perssurized air needed some work.
While his quirk was very useful he wasn't very creative in the usage of it.
Evenso Sasaki could tolerate him. He was smart in the academic sense and he was fiercely loyal. Once you were part of his group he became extremely protective.
Over the last few weeks in which she had shared her morning commute with him she also learned that he was much less serious than he led on.

Kobayashi made up everything Suzuki lacked in creativity with his unpredictability.

She watched one of his fossilized hair strands punch through the ground, almost lobotomizing Mr. Aizawa.

Kobayashi was just as loud as Mikan but he was more friendly. Still Sasaki didn't like him much. His unpredictable and chaotic behavior made it hard to work with him and his shouting gave her headaches.

She had to admit that the way he always egged on any and all fights was funny when you weren't the target. He was also rather bold and his out of pocket comments made for great situational comedy.

While the sides should have been balanced it was clear from the start that Mikan's team would win. Him and Mr. Aizawa just worked together too well.

"How are you always able to tell who's going to win?" Tsukomo complained.
"Bow down before my superior instinct, you peasant," she answered with a bored look on her face.
Tsukomo snorted.
"I can never tell when you're serious."
Sasaki joined her in her laughter.

"So we'll be fighting Mikan and Mr. Aizawa first. Any ideas?"
Tsukomo lightly shoved her, before throwing an arm around her shoulder.

"Mikan is a long range fighter so we have to get him close. Mr. Aizawa prefers to fight short range when he doesn't have his capture weapon, so we have to keep him away from us."

"Mikan is heavier than me and we don't have any projectiles," Tsukomo commented ",I could use Mikan's oranges as projectiles. They're mostly lighter than me, but if I can get one of them to intercept the flight path of an orange, I can knock them out."

"So you try to keep Mr. Aizawa at bay with that. He's definitely heavier than you so you can keep pushing him away too. If you could propel me at Mikan right at the beginning of the fight he wouldn't be able to perpare for close range combat and I can take him out at the beginning of the fight," Sasaki suggested.

"Sounds like a plan," Tsukomo grinned, "Go beyond-"
"No, just no."

Tsukomo broke out into laughter after a few seconds of serious staring.
"I will get you to say it at least once."
"You won't."
"I have two years left so I don't think your odds are great."

But Tsukomo didn't have two years left. She only had mere hours before Sasaki would leave. Mere hours before she would be dead to them.

They would be devastated Sasaki knew. In the two months since her talk with she had really tried to intergrate herself into the class. It had worked for the most part. Even the people she didn't like she got along with fine. And the people she liked had become genuine friends.

Sasaki still remembered the way Tsukomo has laughed at her when she saw Sasaki failing at arcade games.
She'd said that for being the second best fighter she knew Sasaki was the worst dancer she had ever seen.
Sasaki had only taken offense to the secon best fighter part. She truly was a bad dancer.

Tsukomo would probably cry for days when she got the news. She would think about thousands and thousands of ways she could have prevented Sasaki's "death" from happening. She'd work herself to exhaustion.

"Hey! I can't beat you fairly if you're sleeping," Mikan shouted at her from across the field.
"I can beat you even while I'm sleeping," Sasaki shot back.
Still she could feel the concerned eyes of Aizawa on her. He knew her well enough to notice her little slip up.

The timer reached zero, the start signal sounded.

As soon has Tsukomo heard the signal she locked onto Sasaki and hurled her towards Mikan.
In flight Sasaki angled her legs towards him.

Mikan dodged. But Sasaki rolled past him. She landed in a low crouch behind him. Her leg swept out towards the back of his knees.

Mikan jumped over it and summoned an orange to his hand. It was promptly ripped from his hand by Tsukomo's quirk.

Mr. Aizawa only barely dodged the fruit aimed at the back of his head as it zoomed towards Tsukomo.

"Oi, that's mine," Mikan shouted.

Sasaki hooked her leg through his. He noticed too late. With a twist he fell to the ground. But he was used to this move. Sasaki liked to use it often.

So he went with the momentum of the fall and landed on top of her.
She kneed him in the groin.

"Fuck! That's a low blow even for you."
His hands clenched in front of his nether region Sasaki had the perfect opportunity to slam her head into his nose.
She heard the crack of his nose breaking clearly.

While he was preoccupied with cradleling his hurt body parts Sasaki got out from under him.

She prepared to kick him in the face when her instincts screamed at her to dodge.

Mr. Aizawa's boot slammed through the air where her head had been seconds before.

Sasaki put distance between herself and her opponents.
"Sorry!" Tsukomo called from outside the bounds.
"I couldn't keep him away, he's too fast to properly lock onto."

Sasaki waved her concerns away. She could win even two against one, besides winning wasn't really the goal here. It was a training exercise. Mr. Aizawa had made it very clear that training exercises were meant for learning. As long as you learned something you had "won".

The fight was harder without Tsukomo keeping Mr. Aizawa occupied. The biggest challenge was hiding her abilities though.

She was used to it by now though. And she was used to her classmates not being good enough to pose a real danger to her.

So when Mikan's fist hit her in the face at full force she wasn't prepared for it.
For a few seconds Sasaki's world went dark.

Then the glaring sun pierced through the shadows revealing two figures standing over her.

She barely heard the smug shouting over the blood pumping through her head. Her heart beat echoched in her ears and her breaths sounded impossibly loud.

The figures blocked out the sun above her and obscured their features. Their stances were relaxed. They thought they had beaten her.

That would be their mistake.

Sasaki jumped up. Lying on your back is dangerous.

She twisted on her heel. Her heel connected with the temple of the taller one.

She ignored the other one's shouts of surprise. Attack when they're not expecting you to.

Something was thrown at her.

Sasaki dodged in what looked like a drunken stumble.
The momentum carried her into her next kick.

He ducked and tried to grab her leg from below.

Sasaki let him.

She relaxed all her muscles and let herself fall backwards.

Instead of landing flat on her back she rolled.
He landed under her.

Sasaki scrambled to get up and readied another kick.

Her foot connected with diaphragm. She heard a choked sound. Then retching.

It didn't reach in her mind.

Instead she languidly walked over to him. She picked him up by the collar and turned him around so that he was lying on his front.
Then she positioned her heel right above his second cervical. Almost softly she rested her foot there. Before raising it again and-

"Wooh!"
Tsukomo. What was Tsukomo doing in here?

"We won!"
Sasaki looked down. Mikan's bright orange hair was mussed under her boots.

She stepped away. She'd been about to kill him. She'd have broken his jaw and then his neck. A port mafia execution without the gunshots.

"Sorry," she wishpered.

Mikan stood up, rubbing his neck.

"Sorry, I didn't mean that. I forgot-"
"Why are you apologizing? You won," Mikan was staring at her like she was stupid.

"That last kick was so cool, you have to teach me," Kobayashi budded in.

"Yeah sure," she answered absentmindedly.

"Before you do that we should propably take Mr. Aizawa to Recovery Girl. You knocked him out cold," Suzuki spoke up acting as the voice of reason.

While Mikan and him started dragging their teacher away and Kobayashi bugged them Tsukomo walked over to Sasaki.

"Are you alright? You seem pretty shaken."
"No, no I'm fine I just sort of zoned out for a bit there."

Tsukomo grimaced with simpathy.
"You took a hit to the head, it looked pretty nasty. No wonder you were confused. Sorry that I wasn't there."
She looked down in shame. Tsukomo felt guilty for Sasaki's episode.

"Don't be. We're all fine, aren't we? No we better catch up to the others. I don't trust them with Mr. Aizawa."

Recovery Girl had confinded Aizawa to the infirmary for the rest of the day. Meaning that their school day ended 30 minutes earlier than it normally did.

The five of them walked out the gates of UA together. Tsukomo would walk to her father's work and wait there to drive home with him. Kobayashi and Mikan would take a bus to Musutafu's central station. They lived a few cities away.

Only Suzuki and her lived in Musutafu. They lived rather close together too. Suzuki had started waiting for Sasaki every morning.

How long would it take for him to stop looking for her every morning? How long would it take to sink in that she wasn't coming? How long until the habit disapeared?

Behind her UA's walls reached up high into the sky. She turned around to look at the four towers. Over the last few months they had become home. She felt safe there. She could laugh freely, she could make mistakes and she could act like a stupid and immature teenager.

In front of her her classmates were squabbeling over something. Mikan was shouting at Tsukomo while she looked down at him with a smug little smirk. Kobayashi grabbed Mikan in a headlock and messed up his hair again. Suzuki was watching them with an annoyed look hiding fondness.

Sasaki didn't want to leave. She didn't want to leave.

She'd come to UA hating heroes and being alone. Now she would leave. In the process abandoning all her little hero friends.

In just three months she had changed so much. She realized that not all heroes were naive dumbasses, she learned that love meant caring for someone just because they were someone and she had made friends.

"Hey, are you alright? You're crying," Suzuki asked.

"Oh," she mumbled ",No, I'm okay. I just realized that you're the first friends I ever had."

"Aww," Kobayashi cooed.
"Don't make up things. We're not friends, we're rivals!" Mikan protested.
"And we have plenty of time to become best friends too," Tsukomo added.
"We'll stick together, the five of us."
Sasaki hated the certainty in Suzuki's voice.

Their pained and crying faces appeared in her mind's eye.
"Yeah, we'll stick together," she choked out. The words tasted like ashes in her mouth.

Behind her UA was getting smaller. Her desire to stay only grew.