Chapter Five: Tactical Maneuvers
Shoji slipped on his outfit for Tuesday's Heroics lesson with a long, relaxed sigh: while he had no idea what lay in store for him after the last two completely unrelated lessons, at least he'd gotten here without Scythe tagging him. It'd taken extensive maintenance of his Quirk, eyes and ears sweeping in all directions at all times to prevent any sneak attacks, but if it left him unscathed, it all was worth it.
At the very least, all the injuries caused as a result of that game had healed by now (save Izuku's finger, still wrapped just as a precaution), meaning they could give this Heroics lesson their best effort without any impediments.
After everyone got outside, the next five minutes or so were spent following Scythe, Eraserhead, and All Might in a conga line to one of U.A.'s training grounds, leaving Shoji with a sinking feeling in his stomach. He still didn't know what this lesson would bring, but it wasn't just going to be self-defense today.
Before they arrived at their training ground of choice for the day, All Might clued in on where this was going and began pressing Scythe on it. "Are you sure this is a good idea? The last practical assessment you conducted didn't go so well, and this one promises to involve a lot more activity than Thursday's…"
"It'll be fine, I know what I'm doing," Scythe said. "Don't worry about it."
If she'd wanted to reassure Class 1-A that everything would be all right this time, it didn't work on Shoji for a second. His nerves heightened well before they reached their destination.
Soon they arrived at the appropriate training ground, this one a different building from the last time but a building nonetheless. The instant they stopped moving, Scythe wasted no time getting started. "Today's exercise will have you split into two groups. If I tagged you during my last game, come stand by me. Otherwise, stay where you are."
He and the rest of his classmates complied with her request, which split them into two relatively even groups: Scythe's group had eleven members, while his had nine. Most of his team made perfect sense: Iida could outrun just about any threat, Hagakure's Quirk made her excellent at hiding, Shouto and Bakugo both had incredible perception on their side. A few oddities manifested on both sides, such as Tokoyami having been tagged while both Satou and Mineta had dodged that bullet, but he'd have time to figure out why later. At the moment, he needed to determine what these teams were for.
"This upcoming Heroics exercise will be another practical scenario, and one you will likely face during your career, should you succeed in becoming heroes," Scythe said. "Those standing by me will be hostages I have captured. Everyone else will take the role of heroes trying to rescue them. While I'm sure the goal of this exercise explains itself, I'll go into more detail on some of the specifics before we get started."
Shoji remained unsure if something could be called routine after such a short time, but Scythe made an excellent case for why it could as her explanation began in earnest. The heroes would be working against her, as well as a handful of lower-level robots serving as her henchmen. The hostages could not use their Quirks to assist the heroes in any way, although anything they could do without their Quirks, such as call for help or direct operations, was still allowed. The heroes would be allowed to use walkie-talkies to communicate and be given a rudimentary blueprint of the building to study before they attempted their rescue.
"I'll be preparing the hostages for a little while," Scythe said. "Heroes, you have fifteen minutes to plan."
As Scythe led her group away, Iida beckoned to everyone else to huddle, and huddle they did. With the number of people lowered and each one of them having experience with this since Thursday, this planning session promised to accomplish more than the last one, but there were no guarantees in life, and this was no different.
Iida spoke first, as expected. "This is going to be difficult. While we know a lot about the location we're entering, there remain quite a few unknowns. I'd say there are three important ones we need to figure out as soon as possible: what the robots Scythe is using are capable of, how the hostages are being held where they are, and whether we're working under a time limit other than the one posed by the length of class."
"I'd say our goal is to evacuate the hostages as quickly as possible, regardless of if there's a time limit," Shouto said. "In a real hostage crisis, they may need medical help we can't provide on the scene."
"There's also no reason we should split up, ribbit," Tsuyu added. "The last exercise split us up on purpose so we couldn't all gang up on Scythe and Eraserhead right away. Nothing's stopping us from doing that this time, and without Eraserhead in the mix, it'll be much more difficult for Scythe to pick us off that way."
This conversation continued for a while, ideas being shared and expanded upon and given form. Each of them volunteered ideas on how to take out the robots both with and without their Quirks. The most direct route to the hostages was mapped out and memorized, with alternates considered in case Scythe tried to collapse some of the hallways or something along those lines. Hagakure volunteered to keep her clothes off just in case the hostage situation became a crisis and someone needed to be covertly disarmed. How to best shield the hostages from any retaliatory attacks after freeing them was covered.
Eventually, they'd exhausted everything they could talk about regarding the exercise. Yaoyorozu was the first to speak up about that. "While I'm unsure if anyone else has any other specific ideas, I can't think of anything that we haven't yet covered."
About ten seconds of silence indicated that better than Yaoyorozu ever could through words.
"Let's do this, then," Iida said. "Even if we don't succeed in this exercise, I want everyone who sees it to know that we did everything we could for it. Let's make our teachers proud."
Everyone else, including Shoji, agreed with that: there was even a bit of cheering involved. Right on cue, Scythe's timer expired, and they heard an announcement coming from the building they needed to infiltrate. "Heroes, you may now enter the building. If you dare…"
All of them dared. Effective heroes weren't known for their cowardice, and Class 1-A was no exception. With nothing keeping them out, all nine of them shuffled around for a few seconds to make an effective formation, and then they marched into the building's front entrance as one, the unknown waiting patiently for them inside.
Satou had gotten here for one reason alone: he'd been in the middle of baking something when Scythe had attempted to sneak up on him, meaning all his ingredients remained within easy reach. While there existed worse substances to get in your eyes, Scythe found out in a hurry that sugar and flour still packed a nasty punch, one almost as bad as his fists. She hadn't gone blind, but she stopped chasing him after a minute or two so she could flush out her eyes, netting him an easy victory.
Perhaps weaponizing sugar in other ways was something to consider for later; he could pitch Power Loader the idea after school and see if the Support classes could help him with that. However, here all the sugar he had with him was reserved for eating: if Scythe got close enough for him to get it in her eyes, a physical punch promised to cover that distance just as well.
The first hallway, save for the occasional robot, was quite empty. Whenever a stray patrol unit spotted them, the nine of them took it out without much effort and moved on. After one robot snuck up on them from behind after they'd thought it was already out of the way, they spent extra effort making sure that any robots that went down stayed there, but other than that, nothing much changed.
This journey continued for a while: on occasion, a handful of robots would charge them from an arbitrary direction, all of whom were dealt with accordingly before they could cause trouble. All the top scorers from the entry exam pitched in there, but everyone had a role: Mineta glued them in place, Tsuyu knocked them down with her tongue, Shoji either entangled them with his extra limbs or just knocked them down. Satou wanted to help, but with his classmates keeping things under control, he decided to save his sugar for unexpected circumstances to make the most of his time limit.
Before long, they'd reached the room marked on the map as containing all the hostages. With Scythe having remained unseen the entire way here, she had to be in this room; Satou couldn't think of any other explanation.
He did his best to try and pump them all up. "We can do this. Let's go in there together, and let's save some hostages."
Iida nodded. "Together, we shall prevail. Let's be heroes."
While Satou expected the door to be locked or barricaded or otherwise obstructed, nothing of the sort seemed to have happened: they all could push their way inside with no resistance whatsoever. Doing so gave them a good first impression of the site which was sure to be the location of the day's final battle.
The room was barren of any furnishings and even any cover, save for four cement beams that seemed to be the only thing holding the ceiling up. All of Scythe's hostages had been tied up in various locations around the room with rope, although thankfully she hadn't taken the extra step to gag them. Scythe herself was facing the door, and she didn't waste any time monologuing or preparing: as soon as she saw them she charged.
Satou whipped out several packets of sugar and downed them in an instant, preparing for a nasty brawl. However, even with her robots, Scythe didn't put up too much of a fight this time, although perhaps she was scared of causing another severe Quirk-related injury like she had with Kaminari. In particular, Iida dodged her blows effortlessly while connecting a few of his own, culminating with him knocking her down at high speed and sending her sprawling.
After she'd stopped tumbling from that hit and jumped back to her feet, Scythe gave them a hateful look that fit much better on a serial killer. She looked like she could keep fighting, but for whatever reason, she decided to throw in the towel right there. "Well, it looks like I'll have to cut my losses, heroes. You may have bested me, but I will not let this insult stand."
With that, she pressed her hand against something on her hip that Satou had assumed was just part of her outfit. However, that swiftly proved not to be the case, as a loud noise reminding Satou of a police siren began echoing through the room, and a monotone voice began speaking through the intercom system. "This building will self-destruct in three hundred, two ninety-nine, two ninety-eight…"
"I'd best get going," Scythe said. "I hope the reaper looks kindly on you."
Scythe rushed out of the room without saying another word, but with everything threatening to crumble around them Satou knew that Class 1-A had bigger worries at the moment.
Ashido's first thought upon hearing the start of the countdown was to use her slime. However, she course-corrected upon realizing two major problems with that idea. One, it did break the rules of the exercise, and she did want to play fair for now. And two, while she could control plenty of things about her slime, she didn't know how to create slime with properties allowing it to eat through the rope while leaving whoever was bound in said rope untouched. She stored that question in her brain for later: maybe a faculty member or Yaoyorozu knew of a chemical compound with those properties.
Iida's expression had turned quite pinched. "You heard the announcement, we're under a strict time limit now. We need to get out of here, and fast!"
Satou downed several more packets of sugar to keep his strength boost working. "I've got the ropes!"
"Do our legs first, our primary objective is to get out of here," Izuku said. "Everything else comes second."
Satou complied, unbinding everyone's legs as fast as he could. Shouto initially made an effort to burn off the ropes, but when he accidentally started a fire that caught the edge of Ojiro's pant leg, after putting it out with a massive chunk of ice he left that job to Satou and focused on fending off the robots.
Once everyone's legs were free, Bakugo shouted a command. "Everyone who can fight the robots, form a circle. Everyone who can't, get inside that circle."
Ashido entered the circle, and everyone else who still had their arms bound or wasn't supposed to use their Quirks joined her. Then, all of them began to move in something resembling unison, the circle turning into more of an amorphous blob as they exited the room they'd been held captive in. Ashido was one of the last people to leave the room, but that didn't prevent her from witnessing the horrifying scene along with everyone else.
The corridor, which had been almost empty when Scythe led everyone in here, was now positively swarming with robots: robots on the ground, robots in the air, and even a few crawling on the walls like overlarge insects.
Bakugo had gone such a deep shade of red for a second Ashido worried he might start breathing fire. "This whole thing was a fucking trap. No wonder we had such an easy time getting in here, the bitch wanted us in her so she could blow us all up at the same time!"
"And apparently, her henchmen have no self-preservation, ribbit," Tsuyu added. "You'd think they'd realize that they're about to get blown up too."
Ashido would have taken the time to ponder that scenario if she had any time to ponder anything at the moment. Unfortunately for her, right now, there wasn't much time to do anything but prepare to fend off the robots however she could.
None of the robots were particularly smart; even discounting them not trying to escape none of them did much more than come straight at Class 1-A with malice in their programming and metal on their fists. However, the sheer number of them began to overwhelm the nine of her classmates who could use Quirks, even with them working together as best they could. Progress toward an exit slowed, then stopped, then all of them were sandwiched between two massive groups of killer robots with no obvious way out whatsoever.
Before the next round of combat started, Tsuyu made sure to voice her opinion. "If a villain truly had this many henchmen, I feel like there'd be a lot more heroes involved in an operation than just the nine of us, ribbit."
"Perhaps they're just hired thugs or something," Shouto said. "If a villainous organization knows a raid is coming, if they can't flee they might resort to reinforcing their numbers with expendable fighters."
No one else responded to that, although perhaps they were just still in shock about the scenario to come. Sure, the entrance exam hadn't been that much different from this, but at least in that case the robots had been spread out enough so that fleeing an encounter that clearly wasn't going to work out favorably was an option. Here, the only choices they had were to fight or succumb, and that didn't leave them with much of a choice at all.
How the next three minutes or so went, Ashido didn't remember quite clearly. The robots closed in, then her classmates pushed back, and that cycle began repeating itself over and over again even as more and different enemies entered the fray. The hostage group in the center had even started having to knock robots off of them with an elbow or a fist for one of their rescuers to handle by the time the countdown occurring in the background took on a more urgent tone. "Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight…"
Just like that, all of the robots stopped fighting them at once, even the ones in the middle of some kind of combat move. Within a split second, they'd all started charging down the hall in the same direction. It took several precious seconds for Ashido to make the connection, but Kaminari of all people beat her to the punch. "They're looking for the exits! Follow them!"
The entirety of Class 1-A ran, the faster students helping the slower ones along the best they could, the robots moving fast but still slow enough that Iida kept shouting directions whenever they turned. On occasion, some suicidal robot charged them, but they were dealt with in a hurry, either being shoved aside, blown away, or knocked out of the sky. The countdown kept going, its intensity only seeming to increase with every word
"Three, two, one, zero."
In other circumstances, Ashido might have expected a sad beeping noise to indicate that they'd failed the exercise, or perhaps just some sound effects implying an explosion. However, she once again appeared to underestimate the exercise's danger factor, as right then the first explosions went off, distant for now but getting closer by the instant.
Several of her classmates with more breath than her shouted some variant of "Keep running!" The explosions got louder and louder, their noise nearing deafening levels as they approached the exit. All of them were sprinting down the hallway at this point, nothing else would be enough.
She could see the light pouring through the entrance, almost there, almost there, almost there—
Ashido cleared the entrance just as the final blast went off, but the force behind it was still enough to launch both her and her escorts forward and send them all tumbling. She didn't see much of what happened to the people behind her, but whatever it was couldn't be pretty based on how much it impacted her.
Once she stopped moving, she managed to get to her feet and figure out how everyone else had fared. At the very least, she counted twenty people including herself and all of them were moving: they hadn't left anyone behind. However, some of them still hadn't gotten up, particularly those who had brought up the rear in their formation. Several of them had gotten some nasty cuts as well: based on the amount of blood coming out of some of them Ashido wasn't sure bandages would be enough to patch them up.
"Nothing too severe has happened to me, I'm still quite mobile," Iida said, and sure enough, he looked relatively uninjured. "I'll fetch Recovery Girl. Everyone else, tend to whomever you can while I'm gone. I should be back in what feels like no time at all."
Iida sped off, leaving the rest of Class 1-A to nurse their injuries and help everyone else that they could. Ashido, her outfit singed, her ears ringing, and her hair smelling faintly of smoke, but otherwise unharmed save for some bumps and bruises, was no exception to this rule. She didn't have any medical supplies on her and didn't know much about healing others outside of some basic first aid, but these were her classmates and her friends, she couldn't just sit still and do nothing while they suffered.
After all, she wanted to be a hero. And above all else, a hero's goal was to help everyone they could.
Eraserhead took the scene unfolding before him as a good sign; not only were each of his students mobile enough to help others or at the very least get to their feet, but all of them maintained impeccable conduct in the face of such a disaster. On the job, heroes needed to keep a tight leash on their emotions, and none of his students seemed to be failing in that regard. Perhaps their previous villain encounters had hardened them further than he'd initially thought.
All Might, however, didn't seem to be taking this the same way. In fact, he looked somewhat ill. "I need to have a conversation with Scythe. I'm not sure where she got these ideas for her lessons, but they need to change. They're just too risky."
It took longer than Eraserhead would have liked to get around to accomplishing that: Scythe appeared to be deep in conversation with Recovery Girl. Fortunately, the only person who still seemed to need her at the moment was Hagakure, her cuts unseen thanks to her Quirk but her blood still quite visible, thankfully. Once Hagakure was dealt with, Scythe dismissed his students to change and take lunch a little earlier than usual, Recovery Girl departing soon after.
Perhaps All Might exuded a stronger aura than even Eraserhead noticed at the moment: Scythe turned around well before they got within range of her. "I presume you have something you'd like to tell me?"
"Yes, I do," All Might said. "I know you likely have your own strategy for how to maximize the effectiveness of your lessons, and I don't want to impugn on that too harshly. However, your first few exercises, particularly the last one, have made me deeply uncomfortable for a variety of reasons, mostly regarding student safety. I'd appreciate it if you could err more on the side of caution for any future lessons."
"I don't see what your problem is," Scythe said. "All of them made it out of the building, and even though some of them sustained injuries in the process, none of them came even close to life-threatening. I'd consider that a success in my book."
"If my beliefs are correct, you're lucky no life-threatening injuries occurred during your lesson," All Might said. "That's not something I'd consider a success."
Scythe didn't seem to get the point. "So you're saying this is the first time a student's ever suffered an injury during your heroics lessons? That doesn't seem to make much sense, now, does it?"
"That's not what I'm trying to say, and you know it," All Might responded. "Any action has the potential to cause an injury, that's a simple fact of life. However, one of the primary goals for your lesson should be to keep our students safe, and so far, that hasn't seemed to be the case."
"The world isn't safe, All Might," Scythe said. "I hate to say this, but even during your reign as the Symbol of Peace, bad things still happened, and those things are only going to get worse until the gap you left behind is filled. Pretending that anything else is true is doing your students a massive disservice, and you don't want that, right?"
That statement created a lull in the conversation that lasted for a few precious seconds, Eraserhead trying to figure out something to say before things were said and done that could never be erased. Unfortunately, All Might beat him to the punch once more. "I'm sure neither of us do. However, we are still a school; all of our students still have a lot to learn. What would you have done if they didn't get out of the building in time?"
Scythe's smile went icy and her fists clenched. "If that happened, perhaps they weren't cut out to be heroes after all."
Eraserhead saw All Might stiffen and decided he'd be better off culling this conversation before it got any more inflammatory. "I'd like to believe that were that the case, they wouldn't still be here. This class has been through more than any Class 1-A I can remember, and yet none of them have transferred out, or even requested being switched to another track. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about them, I don't know what does."
Things might have continued to escalate from there had the bell signaling the next period not rung. With the lesson now over, Scythe turned away from them and began to hurry toward the main building, probably to get something to eat based on what time of day it was. Eraserhead could have used a bite as well, but as soon as Scythe was out of earshot, All Might made it clear that he had words for Eraserhead as well. He knew All Might took things a little harder than he did, seeing every situation as something he had the chance to improve, so that made sense, although he still didn't exactly anticipate the conversation that was to come.
"I can't believe that woman was the top choice to be our new educator," All Might said. "Unless I'm grievously misinterpreting what she just said, she didn't seem to care one iota whether our students lived or died during that exercise!"
This time around Eraserhead at least understood where All Might was coming from, even if he thought that was indeed an overdramatic interpretation of Scythe's words. "Even if she's not the best educator, she is still an educator. I'd like to believe that at the very least she isn't trying to kill anyone."
All Might didn't take that well. "That doesn't make the exercise any more safe. Is giving them a chance to adjust to her style too much to ask?"
That covered a topic Eraserhead had been harboring strong feelings about ever since Scythe took over their Heroics lessons, and he tried to state his opinion as clearly as possible. "As much as I don't care for her, I at least understand to a degree about her not holding back. We haven't held anything back either, or at least I think we haven't. Did you hold back at all during Izuku and Bakugo's term exam?"
All Might shook his head. "I'm not against introducing them to some potentially dangerous scenarios in a controlled setting. Unfortunately, Scythe is right on that front: implying that they'll never face any high-risk situations after becoming heroes just isn't practical. However, there needs to be failsafes in place at all times, and I didn't see any for this exercise. If they'd been slower getting out of that building, what would have happened?"
And there was the other side of the argument. Eraserhead couldn't bring himself to disagree. "Let's be grateful they did."
"Believe me, I am," All Might said. "I'm not sure what I might have done afterward if they hadn't."
Eraserhead could agree with that if nothing else. Not only would a major incident during a lesson as routine as this one have brought serious negative attention to both him and U.A. as a whole, but it could easily create something the League of Villains, or even a single person with societal influence and negative intentions, could exploit to sway public opinion against heroes as a whole, quite like what Stain had attempted with his reign of terror.
His dislike of Scythe had been for purely personal reasons before this; she'd impeded his comfortable routine for reasons beyond his control, and her ever-present cheer grated more and more with each passing day. Today represented his tipping point: before now, he might have attempted to at least mend their relationship following its shaky start, but that ship had officially sailed.
Eraserhead's phone dinged in his pocket, and with no students around, he pulled it out right away to determine the cause. "Looks like we'll have an opportunity to bring up these incidents with Nedzu soon enough. Present Mic just sent me a text; Nedzu's called another all-faculty meeting for tonight regarding updates about the Kurogiri situation. Hopefully, he can make time for us afterward, and if not, we'll make time for him."
"I'm sure he'll listen to you if nothing else," All Might said. "We'll just have to see what happens when we get there."
Eraserhead nodded. Despite him butting heads with All Might about various things, he agreed with him about one thing: not much good could be said about this whole situation. However, with this incident fresh in everyone's memory, he felt poised to do something about it.
This chapter wound up being unusually long because I couldn't find a good place to split it for the life of me. The next chapter should be back to something resembling normal length once more.
Also, while I can't influence your feelings about someone that much except by how I write them, I meant this as the point where, even if you don't lose all sympathy for Scythe, you're supposed to acknowledge that this is the point where she officially crosses the line. Hopefully I achieved that, although I'm sure that point will come eventually even if it isn't here.
That's all I have to say this time around. Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you on the 10th for Chapter Six!