It was six in the morning when Amari hauled her ass into the gym in the week after her internship. She still had sleep in her eyes as she moved on auto-pilot. The only reason she was even remotely functioning at such an ungodly hour was the cup of coffee- with plenty of added milk of course because she had fully functioning tastebuds- she had thrown back.
"Morning, sensei." She greeted the equally sleepy Aizawa, leaning back against the wall and chugging his own coffee down. "How was your week without us?"
"Nice and quiet." The man grumbled, gesturing her over. "Before the internship you asked me for advice on your quirk."
Amari perked up, suddenly feeling more awake as she scurried over to her teacher.
"I found a solution." Aizawa continued. "It's not particularly glamorous but there's a butcher not far from campus who will allow you to come over after school to practice on some cows. They will be sedated and butchered after you're done with them."
She pulled a face. It was far from a glamorous option indeed, but at least this would give her some much needed practice time. There were only so many injured students on campus after all. Mostly just Midoriya actually.
"Uh, sensei?" She questioned. "If I can only go after school, why am I here at six in the morning?"
The door to the gym opened and a purple haired boy walked in, bags under his eyes. They both blinked at each other for a moment. She could swear she had seen the boy before at some point. He was a student here, so maybe she passed him in the hallway?
"Uh hi?" Her greeting came out as a question.
"Shinsou Hitoshi." The boy nodded. "From class 1-C."
Ah the boy from the sports festival. He had some kind of brainwashing quirk if she remembered correctly.
"Shuzenji Amari, nice to meet you!"
"Right." Aizawa clapped his hands. "Shinsou here needs a sparring partner."
Amari's head swiveled between the boy and her teacher several time in confusion. So what?
"I wish you the best of luck finding one."
Aizawa dropped his forehead to the palm of his hand.
"You will be the sparring partner."
"I beg your pardon?"
What did Aizawa mean by that. She had the approximate combat skills of a wet noodle. No way that Shinsou would be learning anything useful from beating her up. Not that that was a particular activity Amari wanted to be doing with her precious sleep time.
"It's what you'll be doing in return for allowing you to mutilate cows."
Shinsou raised his brows at that particular sentence.
"Do I even want to know why you're mutilating cows?"
"Uh." Her cheeks burned brightly. "No?"
"Okay then."
Wait a second, they were getting seriously off topic here.
"Sensei, surely there is someone more suitable to function as sparring partner." Amari pressed. "I don't know how to fight at all."
"Correct." Aizawa confirmed in his usual harsh demeanor. "You probably don't even know how to throw a punch."
She winced. He was right but he could be a little more gentle about it.
"Luckily for you," He continued. "Shinsou is also a beginner. There's no point in pitting him against more experienced students and waste their time, which is why you're here."
Both students stared a commiserating glance at the casual beat down of their pride.
"So I need to be here everyday at 6 in the morning for the foreseeable future?"
"Don't worry, I wouldn't harm your sleep schedule like that." Aizawa smirked. "It'll only be on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays."
"Amari, look!" Sero called excitedly as soon as she entered her classroom, muscles sore from being put through whatever the hell Aizawa considered a good training regiment. "Look at Bakugou!"
She craned her neck to look in the direction her classmate was pointing, ignoring the strain it put on her poor overworked muscles. If nothing else, Aizawa was damned thorough in his conditioning. When her eyes landed on the blonde, she had to clasp her hands in front of her mouth to suppress the decidedly unfeminine snort that escaped her.
His usually wild spiky hair was perfectly gelled to the side like he came straight from some high end hair salon. It was a popular hair style, she saw it perhaps fifty times a day at school but it looked so incredibly out of place on Bakugou of all people that it made an amusing sight.
"Are you fucking laughing at me, First Aid?!" The boy angrily stomped towards where she was still standing next to Sero at the door.
"N-no, of course not." Her voice wobbled before she burst out into an uncontrollable bout of giggles, in turn sending Sero into a wheezing laugh.
"Even she thinks it's funny!" He exclaimed as he dissolved into another laugh.
"All of you shut the fuck up!" Bakugou snapped in an effort to appear menacing in front of his classmates, unused to being the one getting laughed at for once. "I told you I can't get it back to normal!"
Unable to control her impulses, she poked out a finger to his hair. "Oh my god it's rock solid."
"Don't fucking touch it!"
"Nice hair, bro." Kirishima grinned as he walked into the class.
Smoke started drifting out of his clenched fist as the blonde grew more and more agitated.
"Shut up before I kill all three of you!"
"I'd to like to see you try, pretty boy." Sero poked the bear.
Bakugou let out a growl as his hair exploded back into its regular wild state.
"What'd you just call me?!" He demanded.
"Oh my god, it went back to normal." Amari giggled furiously, her arms held across her aching stomach muscles.
Bakugou, pride severely wounded, stomped away to his seat, plopping down and glaring at Sero, Kirishima and Amari as they recovered from their bouts of laughter, beginning anew as soon as they locked eyes with each other or the blonde.
"You got to face actual villains?" Mina exclaimed, eyes wide as she smiled at Jirou. "I'm so jealous!"
"Well, I didn't really fight." Jirou amended. "I only helped people evacuate and provided logistical support."
"But that still sounds so cool!" Mina said.
She hadn't even patrolled during her own internship, only being cooped up in an office for long hours of the day.
"I spent most of the time training and cleaning the deck." Tsu cut in. "Though we did catch a smuggler once."
"So cool!" Mina sighed dreamily.
"If you really want to talk about excitement, you should ask those three." Jirou nodded towards where the unlikely trio of Midoriya, Iida and Todoroki were talking in hushed voices at the latter's desk. Since when did Todoroki socialize?
"Oh yeah the hero killer!" Sero chimed in, expertly pretending that Bakugou wasn't still glaring holes into the back of his head.
"Glad you guys made it back alive." Kirishima chucked. "Seriously."
"You're lucky Endeavor showed up in time." Sato said as he walked by.
Todoroki stiffened in his seat, clenching his hands into fists as he looked down at his desk. "Yeah... he saved us."
Amari tilted her head at the bitterness in his tone, but then again, Todoroki had made no secret of his dislike of his father.
"Did you guys hear the news about the Hero Killer?" Ojirou asked. "Everyone's been saying that he was somehow connected to the League of Villains. Can you imagine how frightening it would've been if that creep had been there when they attacked the USJ?"
"He's scary, yeah. But did you see him in that weird video? It's all over the internet." Kaminari pitched in. At this point most of the class was paying attention to the conversation.
"I didn't even know there was a video of him." Ojirou responded.
"Yeah, Stain is a pretty evil villain, but, like, super tenacious. He's almost kinda cool, don't you guys think?"
Amari swiftly kicked Kaminari in the shins, pointedly looking in Iida's direction as she did so.
It took a second, but then the blonde gasped quietly. "Uh— Oh, dude!"
"No, it's okay. You're fine." Iida spoke slowly, looking at his bandaged hand. "It is true that he's quite a tenacious villain. I understand why people might think he was cool. But instead of helping the world, his beliefs led him to cold-blooded murder. No matter his motives, killing cannot be condoned."
Lowering his head, a guilty look was etched onto Kaminari's face.
"To keep everyone else from suffering like me, well, I promise I will strive to be the perfect hero!" Iida finished, chopping his arms robotically through the air.
"Yeah! Let's do it!" Midoriya raised a fist in support.
"It's time for class to begin! Everyone please take your seats!"
"Excuse me, I'm here for the uh cows."
A broad shouldered older man looked down at her quizzically as he wiped his hands on his butcher's apron.
"Most people that come here are."
Amari cringed at the quip, though she supposed she had earned that.
"Of course, yes, I'm here for quirk training. My homeroom teacher, Aizawa-sensei, contacted you about me practicing my quirk on your cows."
The man smiled crookedly at her before motioning her to follow him.
"We kept a cow aside for you today. We'll just sedate it for you and you can get started."
Amari followed behind him like a lost duckling as she gawked at the bloody carcasses they passed, some already skinned but others still looking eerily fresh. The coppery smell of blood clogged her nose.
Finally they came to a halt in a small stable, a brown cow blinking up at them lazily, tail whipping around every now and then to swat away a particularly annoying fly.
"Right, this is the old man." The butcher introduced her to the cow.
It was... quite cute actually. Hesitantly, she reached out a hand, and after being sure she wouldn't get bitten or something, she petted its head.
"Don't get attached now, young lady." The butcher stepped up next to the cow, syringe in hand. Expertly, he stuck the needle into the thick skin and pumped the sedative into the bloodstream.
The cow swung its head towards the man in annoyance at the prickly feeling, but quickly began to sway on its feet until it eventually laid down on the ground, blinking slowly a few more times until it closed its eyes and its body relaxed completely.
"Well, you go do your thing and let me know when you're done." With those parting words, the man left her alone with the unconscious cow.
"Right." Amari, slowly approached the cow, sitting down in the hay next to it. With a grimace, she quickly pressed her lips to the side of the cows belly, setting her hands on the surprisingly soft fur.
The slightly disorienting feeling of sending her quirk through something non-human surged through her as she tried to get a good feel on its anatomy. Its spine curved differently and was much longer than a human one (obviously).
No matter the spine. First she was going to have to learn how to accurately induce injuries instead of heal them. But where to start? Muscles would be an easy target, large and relatively soft as they were but she was pretty sure the butcher wouldn't be too pleased with that.
A tendon then? They were a bit harder to cut through but they were still a fairly large target in cows.
Mind made up, she moved her hands to the cow's left hindleg. Moving down the limb until she hovered right above its flexor tendon. Okay so now she just had to...sever it. Right. She could do that.
Taking in a deep breath, she closed her eyes tightly and channeled her quirk through the hand resting on the cow. Breathing out, she willed the tendon to be cut. She swayed on her knees at the sudden rush of energy leaving her body in combination with the out of place sensation of the tendon (and the underlying blood vessels) completely ripping in half.
"Shit shit shit."
She quickly knit the torn mess of blood vessels back together. It wouldn't do for the cow to die before she was done practicing.
Control. She needed more control or she would end up killing someone would she ever try to use her quirk like this on a human.
She moved her shaky hand to the cow's extensor tendon. This time she would need to go slower. Think smaller.