A/N: Here's a giant-sized update for you all to make up for the fact that I probably won't be able to write much for a day or two. Haven't checked it thoroughly yet, so let me know if you spot any errors!
"Onii~chan, onii~chan!" As I walked in the door, tired from a long day of physical exams and a long bike ride home, my little sister Komachi came bounding up to me as full of energy as always. Seriously, though, it's like she's got a nuclear power plant in her belly.
I reached down and tousled her hair. "You only need to say it once, you know. Or do you want me calling you 'imouto-chan, imouto-chan' right back?" I said in my gooiest, most saccharine voice.
Komachi shuddered exaggeratedly. "Bleugh. No! You can't! Too creepy!"
I laughed and flopped down on the couch, letting my body sink contentedly into the cushions. "Oi, bring me a MAX Coffee while you're up, would you?"
"Lazy!" Komachi scolded, but then she went ahead and grabbed it for me anyways. "So? So? How was your first day at hero school?"
"Eh, it was fine," I said, taking the can from her with a nod of thanks and gratefully drinking about a third of it all at once. I smirked. "How was your first day of middle school?"
"Grrrr!" Komachi growled, stamping her foot in exasperation and only rattling the floorboards a little. "Onii-chan! No changing the subject! 'It was fine' is not enough information! Did you get to meet any pro heroes? Did you get to meet All Might? What's hero school like? Telllll meeeee!"
"All right, all right already." Heh. Too easy. "Let's see… well, first off, the only pro hero I got to meet was my homeroom teacher." I took another sip of coffee to try and drag things out. "Apparently we were supposed to meet the rest of the faculty today too and listen to a speech by the principal and stuff, but our teacher didn't want to, so he had us do track and field exercises instead."
"Eeehh?! He can just do that?" Komachi asked, her eyes wide in astonishment. Now that I was telling her about it properly, she took a seat on the couch next to me, her legs tucked up tight in a seiza-like position so that she could get a little extra height to look me in the eyes.
I shrugged. "Apparently pro heroes get to do whatever they like at U.A.. He even showed up to class still in a sleeping bag!"
"EEHHH?!" Komachi shouted, and I put one hand over my ear to ward off the noise. "What kind of weirdo is he?"
"Pro Hero Eraserhead, apparently," I said. "He's got some sort of quirk-nullification power, I guess? I dunno, I was going to look him up more later. He's less of a weirdo when he actually teaches, at least."
"Well that's a relief," Komachi said sarcastically. I'm pretty sure she learned that from me! No longer quite as excited as before, she sat back a bit, letting her feet come out from underneath her and relaxing a bit into the couch. "What about your classmates? Did you make any friends? Oh! Are there any cute girls?"
"Hmm…" I looked up towards the ceiling in thought as a few images flashed in front of my mind's eye. The trim, flawless skin of Yaoyorozu's belly. Yuigahama, happily stretching her hand out to me to share her quirk with me. Yukinoshita, cool and aloof, her long hair fluttering behind her as snowflakes fell all around her. Asui, bending over on the starting block, her muscular legs filling out the gym uniform. Hagakure's sweaty T-shirt clinging to her invisible skin as she got undressed to use her quirk. Miura's ringlets, falling to the side as she tilted her head. Mina's -
"Oi, onii-chan, if you keep making creepy faces like that you'll never be popular, you know," Komachi said with a flat voice as she rudely disturbed me from my reverie. "Honestly…"
"Ahem, hem, hem." I coughed, a little red in the face. "No, no, I was just thinking!"
"Uh huh." Komachi said dryly. "I'll bet."
"Not about that!" I lied, "I was just trying to figure out if a few people counted as friends or not! Both of the guys who were with me in the Villain incident, and the girl whose dog I saved, are all in my class! It's weird!"
"That is weird!" Komachi said, sitting up straighter. "And? Are they all nice?"
I snorted derisively at the thought. "One of the guys is a jerk. The other two..." are All Might's secret lovechild, and a girl who keeps accidentally giving me the wrong impression, "well, the other two seem pretty okay. What about you? How was your first day, for real this time?"
"Oh! Well my teacher is Mr. Sagimura, and he remembers you, and he said he was happy that it didn't seem like I would be quite as much trouble, but then he remembered that you got into U.A. so he kind of backtracked a little bit and said he was happy you had grown up a bit since, so that was kind of funny, and my friend Kairi, you remember Kairi? She's in my class this year which is great because I was afraid I wouldn't know anybody since there's so many elementary schools that everybody comes from and also I met Ami and she's really nice and has kind of a computer quirk, which is like whoa, super useful, and then we went to the assembly and the student council president gave a speech and she seemed like a pretty cool like onee-san type you know and I think I might try to be on the student council this year and after that we had to…" I just sat back and relaxed, letting Komachi's chattering fill the silent house for a while. Every once in a while I made 'uh huh' or 'mmm' sounds to let her know I was still listening, but when Komachi really gets going, it can be tough to get a word in edgewise.
I was tired. My legs ached. My parents had volunteered to pay for an apartment closer to U.A., but I turned them down; I was already feeling a little guilty at how much later I was going to be getting home in the afternoons now that I was in the Hero Course, which mandatorily took up not just a normal slate of afternoon courses but all of the time that students would normally have for after-school clubs as well. If I had left Komachi all alone in this too-big house I don't know if she would have forgiven me. As it was, I was just lucky that she was finally in Junior High and could find clubs to keep her busy, so I'd only really be leaving her alone for the duration of my bike ride home. At a natural pause in the conversation slash monologue, I cleared my throat. "Hey, do we have ingredients for curry?"
"Ah! Yes yes yes! You're the best onii-san ever! If we don't I'll get them from the store!" Such is life when you have a little sister with quirk-enhanced senses and a copied Bloodhound Nose transformation quirk that lets you almost keep up with her - every so often you have to cook something that hits her enhanced palate just right.
Who knew when I'd have even this much time and energy again?
Dinner came and went. We cleaned up and did the dishes together, then spent about an hour or so watching some lame comedy show on television. Our parents got home, just soon enough to ask us about our days for ten minutes and then wish us goodnight as we headed off to bed. And then I started Stockpiling quirks.
With my legs folded underneath me in a lotus position on my bed, my hands on my knees, I brought up my Ooze quirk. With one end, I touched Gigantism, with the other I copied Stockpile, and then I focused very hard on not using either of them! It helped that I was inside - Gigantism couldn't activate if there wasn't enough empty space around me, so it was a little easier to focus on putting energy in to the stockpile instead of taking it out. Ever so slowly, I could feel the sensation of energy being stored, of Gigantism storing growth quirkiness into Ooze while Stockpile kept creating more and more space in Ooze for Gigantism to fill. Once I stopped copying either Gigantism or Stockpile, the growth quirk in Ooze would be trapped, unable to escape until the specific combination of quirks was copied again, allowing all of the stored energy to escape into my body and allowing me to deplete the 'stockpiled' quirk.
But storing that quirk in the first place was an exercise in tedium. I couldn't watch TV, read, or do anything physical but sit there with my legs crossed. Even my posture had to be calculated - if I slipped and channeled the strength portion of Stockpile for a second, my feet were trapped under my legs so it was more likely that I would tip myself over instead of sending myself flying into the ceiling. I used to do it lying supine, but it was such a freaking boring process that I tended to fall asleep if I was any way at all comfortable, so instead I was doing warrior monk nonsense out of some terrible anime. I mean, the only reason to show someone meditating is to save budget frames on animation! It's literally just sitting! Dammit, I need to get better at this before my life is reduced to static image shots rendered over a mediocre soundtrack! At least let me get it routine enough that I can read or watch TV or something, please!
It didn't help that the process was so slow. It took about an hour to save up a 10% charge in a quirk. Getting from 10% to 20% took an extra two hours, 20% to 30% took an additional three, 30% to 40% took an additional five, and so on. It was like the more power I saved, the more power was required to create additional storage space and the less was available to fill it. I hadn't found a limit, yet, and I had confirmed that it was possible to go over 100%, but for practical purposes it was a lot more efficient to charge a lot of quirks up to 10% than it was to charge one up to 20 or 25%. I managed to get Gigantism, Yuki-Onna, Float, and Death Arms all to 10% before I was finally too tired to continue.
So after biking 20 km to school, enduring a fitness test, enduring a whole host of uncomfortable revelations, biking home, cooking dinner, and practicing with my quirks for a few hours, I finally fell asleep at around one in the morning. With great relief, I finally switched to pulling from Stockpile instead of storing into it and activated Deep Sleep: Stockpile Version.
And then at roughly five a.m., I woke up, spent an hour or so meditating to fill Deep Sleep back up to 10%, and then actually got up to start my day. Thank God and/or Buddha for… what was her name? Nanisaki-san? For whoever, because otherwise I had no idea how I would keep up with all of this pro-hero nonsense.
Inwardly, I prayed that today would be a less trying day than the day before.
It wasn't.
The morning was calm enough; it was just a mix of normal classes (albeit classes taught by bizarrely famous people), but in the afternoon All Might himself "Came Through The Door… Like A Normal Person!" … Or so he said, anyways. Personally, when I walked through doors I didn't make it an entrance-worthy production, but maybe that was just me. Still, despite the anxiety and guilt I felt over copying his quirk, even I felt a surge of wonder and excitement as All Might marched to the front of the room. Even though I knew that heroes' public reputations were often carefully massaged and managed by teams of professionals, even though I suspected that he was only at U.A. to take care of his illegitimate child, All Might was an undeniable presence. These days, All Might was just another fact of life, like the weather; you generally assumed he was happening to someone somewhere, and only his biggest dust-ups were worthy of more than an outside mention. When we were growing up? In the bad old days, when we had monthly evacuation drills in our kindergarten classes, and our parents tried really hard to avoid letting us watch the news? Well, there was a reason that he was called the Symbol Of Peace, because before his debut, today's current peace hadn't existed.
He was a man who had forged an era with his two fists, and he was going to teach us how to be heroes.
I wonder if I should send Midoriya's mom a gift basket.
"No Time To Dally," All Might proclaimed. "Today's activity is this! Battle Training!" And with that, he held out… some kind of card? With the word 'BATTLE' on it? In case one of us couldn't hear his booming voice? Were all pro-heroes this weird? "And for that, you need these!" With a beep, All Might pressed a remote. One after another, high-tech storage lockers started sliding out of the classroom walls, because why waste time walking to a gym locker when you could build everything into the actual classroom? "In accordance with the 'quirk registry' and the special request forms you filled out before being admitted," All Might continued, the sound of the storage lockers coming to a stop one after another punctuating his speech, "These Are... Your Hero Costumes!"
Ergh. Receiving the Hero Costume Request paperwork had brought up a lot of old, dark memories that I would have preferred never to have seen the light of day. Memories of… cosplay. Deeply, deeply embarrassing cosplay. The Wizard Hero who could reduce all villains to ash with a single wave of his wand, Dark Magician! (Actually just me in my dad's too-large-for-me coat, holding a plastic toy.) The Samurai Hero who could cleave his enemies in twain without letting a speck of blood dirty his robes, Samurai-Man! (Actually just me in a festival yukata with a scarf wrapped around my face, holding a broomstick.) The Muscle Hero, master of 108 different fighting styles, any of which could cave in an opponent's chest with a single blow, GUTS! (Actually just me with my shirt off and lines and numbers drawn on my chest, making embarrassing poses into a mirror.) How old was I when I performed these cosplays, you ask? For the sake of the tattered remains of my dignity, that question will remain unanswered.
Needless to say, all of my old cosplay ideas were totally useless for hero costume ideas. And as my sister frequently enjoyed pointing out, I had no fashion sense, so in the end I just decided to list my practical requirements and let the support company decide. It couldn't be too loose, because Mt. Lady's quirk was a core element of my combat style and anything too far away from my skin would just get shredded. It couldn't constrict my hands or forearms, because it would get in the way of transforming my hands into water cannons with stockpiled Backdraft. I needed sturdy and shock-absorbing shoes, if possible, since I spent so much time with super strength, and ideally some way of carrying items with me, if they could figure out a way to do it that wouldn't get ripped up if I changed size. Other than that, I had left it blank, so in short? I had no idea what my costume was going to look like until I changed into it.
The changing rooms themselves were adjoining the classroom, something that would be a massive waste of space compared to having a communal locker room in a normal school, but which here allowed us to 'deploy quickly', or at least to not waste time going all the way down to the gym to get changed. This also meant that we had to walk through the halls in our hero costumes in order to get anywhere, so I deeply hoped that my costume wasn't too embarrassing. Crossing my fingers, I opened my package from the support company… and was pleasantly surprised.
The core of the costume was a black bodysuit that reached to my elbows and my knees; as requested, my forearms were left bare, while at the knees the bodysuit switched to white in order to create the appearance of boots. Thick white stripes ran up the outside of my legs until hitting a thin grey band around my waist, and then further up the sides of my body the number 108 was printed in large white numerals, tall enough that you could just see the tops of the numerals from my front and the bottoms of the numerals from my back. The 1 was aligned at about mid-chest, the 0 at about the bottom of my ribcage, and the 8 around the middle of my abs, which were visible due to the tightness of the fabric. White lines also ran up from my elbows to a wide grey collar at my shoulders, which continued upwards to cover my mouth and nose almost like I was wearing a grey scarf. Finally, to complete the ensemble, I had a wide, detachable grey cloak, one that would stretch to a shorter cape with a 'normal' Mt. Lady growth, to an even shorter mantle if I had to go bigger, and would just pop off if I went too big. The attached note from the support company noted that it was heat, cold, and stab resistant, which would help with protecting my body when I was at a normal size, and it included pockets in the inner lining to help me carry support tools since I couldn't wear a belt.
It all looked really good, but there was just one problem. As I picked up the cape, an envelope fell to the floor, spilling out a trio of chillingly familiar pictures. With a trembling hand, I reached down, picking up the pictures and examining the message that had been included with them. "We received a letter from your parents saying that you had forgotten to include these pictures into the sealed envelope, so they helpfully included them in a separate letter. Please thank them for us, but we prefer that candidates send materials on the proper forms in order to facilitate information storage, and we would hate to deprive anyone of original family photos."
My eyebrow twitched. Why hadn't I put those away? My cheeks a furious red, I yanked up my scarf-like facemask and looked around the room in a panic, hoping against hope that nobody had noticed the pictures. Most of my classmates were busy getting their own hero gear on, but at the locker next to me stood the six-armed Shoji Mezo, his hands temporarily shapeshifted into eyes in order to see what everyone's costumes looked like. One of his hand-eyes melted like wax and shifted into a hand-mouth, which curved upwards at the ends like it was trying to suppress a laugh. "Don't worry, Hikigaya-san," it whispered. "We were all kids once, I understand."
"A-ah." I stammered in mortification, and I shoved the pictures into one of the 'magician's pockets' on the inner lining of my cape. "See you down there," I said, and I rushed out of the room before my cheeks could spontaneously combust. Look on bright side, I said to myself. Maybe there'd be a deadly accident in battle training, and my opponent would put me out of my misery.
The walk to Training Ground Beta wasn't a long one, and as I passed through the hallways I realized that they looked a little familiar. Sure enough, All Might had sent us to one of the ruined cityscapes used for the Entrance Exams. The majority of Class 1-A was already there, everyone chatting with each other and checking out each other's costumes. The guys' costumes ranged from the elaborate, like Iida Tenya's knightly armor or Tobe Kakeru's 'walking weapons rack', to the simple, like Kaminari Denki's near-street clothes or Hayama Hayato's leather bomber jacket, yellow scarf, and brown aviator helmet, but didn't have much in the way of unifying themes or features. On the distaff side, the girls seemed to have a bit more in common with each other. Roughly a third of the girls had chosen a bodysuit - Uraraka, Asui, and Yuigahama were wearing skintight outfits in pink astronaut, green frogman, and cherry-red motorcycle gear varieties respectively. Another third were wearing something evocative of an era - Ashido was bringing disco back with a tie-dye leotard, Yukinoshita wore a pale blue kimono with a slightly darker blue obi that was straight out of the Edo era, and Miura had a stylized take on a hunter from Medieval Europe with a green forester outfit under an orange cloak. The rest just chose something that worked well with their quirk and had organized their costumes around it; Jiro with her speaker boots, Yaoyorozu with a copious amount of bare skin, and Hagakure without any clothing at all.
"Yahello, Hikki!" Yuigahama called out to me with an enthusiastic wave. "Your costume looks great! Did you design it?"
Sort of, but I'd rather not mention that ever again. "Ah, well, it was mostly the support company." I said, scratching at my cheek underneath the facemask. "Yours is," a little tight around your chest, "very distinctive. Is it what you were hoping for?"
"Mmm-hmm!" Her helmet had a clear faceplate in the front, making it easy to see her wide smile. "If I wanted to use my quirk to protect my head, I'd have to cut my hair super short to make sure the fabric would be close enough to my skin, so I decided on a helmet instead. And since my quirk works best the closer the fabric is to me, that meant that the safest I could be was to go skin-tight for the bodysuit. All I had to do for the rest was pick a theme. " Up close, I could see that her chest was emblazoned with a crossed needle design, the center of the X emphasizing her endowments, while spools on her hips and on her shoulders carried long reams of high-strength thread. There was something interesting about her white boots and gloves, too - her calves and forearms looked like they were covered with tightly wrapped bandages rather than solid fabric.
"Do you sew a lot?" I asked Yuigahama out of curiosity.
Shamefacedly, she put a hand behind her head. "Eh heh heh not really actually, I just cheat and make the fabric do things with my quirk, but if you count that as sewing then yeah I guess I sort of do a bit."
As we chatted, the stragglers slowly settled in. Last to arrive was Midoriya, who was wearing a pretty goofy-looking homemade rabbit outfit. He made a beeline towards me, seemingly excited about something, but before he could talk to me he got interrupted by Uraraka, and then All Might started the lesson. "Alright, since we're all here, let's get started!"
"Sensei, this appears to be the cityscape area we used for the entrance exam. Are we going to be performing urban maneuvers?" Iida's voice sounded a little tinny coming from inside the helmet he was wearing, yet somehow that pompousness of his carried through just fine.
All Might shook his head slowly. "No, today we're moving on to step two. Indoor Anti-Personnel Battle Training! While statistically, you're more likely to encounter a Villain outdoors, the most dastardly, heinous villains are most often found indoors. Often they're under house arrest, or were incarcerated and are trying to break free; those that go unnoticed by heroes for some time frequently have places of illicit business away from prying eyes, or lairs that they've fortified against discovery and invasion. Make no mistake! Fighting villains indoors is dangerous, but sometimes you have no choice!" Ergh. Again, a reminder that we were all theoretically preparing to risk our lives for a living. Thankfully, my mask hid any faces of disgust that I might have made. "And now, you will be split into Villain teams and Hero teams, and you'll face off in two-on-two indoor battles!"
People asked all sorts of questions - why are we doing this without training, how do we win, how do we split up - but I barely heard any of them, or any of the answers. I was too busy thinking 'Please not with Bakugo, please not against Bakugo, please no Bakugo, please no Bakugo…' to myself to pay attention.
When the teams were chosen by lots and I wound up on team J with Kirishima, I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "Awright, man, I'm getting pumped up!" he shouted as he walked over to me. How do you even respond to someone like that? Should I try and be energetic back at him? Say something? Without any better ideas, I just gave him a silent nod, which he seemed to take well. "You too, huh? Man, this is gonna be sweet!" There. Nailed it. Now all I had to worry about was who we were going to be fighting.
Team A didn't seem too bad; if Uraraka floated me I would probably still be able to fly myself into a wall or something that I could push off of, and Midoriya seemed like too much of a nice kid to want to splatter me all over every flat surface with that monster strength of his, so he was probably safe to fight too. Team B had Todoroki and Mezo, one of whom was paranoid about me copying his quirk and the other of whom knew about my dark past. No thanks, if I could avoid it. Tobe and Yaoyorozu were together on team C, and I wished whoever got that nightmarish combination as their enemies good freaking luck. Bakugo, who I most wanted to avoid, was in D with Iida - they'd be another tough team to fight. Ashido and Miura in E could put together a pretty nasty combo too, with one acting as area defense and the other able to attack from behind it; hopefully if Kirishima and I went up against them we'd be the Villains, rather than the Heroes.
And so it went. One by one I considered every team, and concluded that I… really didn't want to fight any of them, if at all possible. Yuigahama & Yukinoshita with their combined strength, Kaminari & Jiro with area blasts, Asui & Tokoyami as super-strong and mobile grapplers, Hagakure & Hayama whose maneuverability and unpredictability were top-notch, they all had things about them that would make them really tough teams to face. Really, the only one that looked like an easy fight was Team A.
So naturally, they were the first ones to be eliminated from the pool of our potential opponents. The first battle was Team A vs. Team D, Uraraka and Midoriya as heroes against Iida and Bakugo as villains. The villains were given fifteen minutes of setup time to start, which Iida and Bakugo used to scout out the site and to find a good place for the bomb, while the heroes were given fifteen minutes to talk to each other and strategize. In the command deck, we could see our classmates but not hear them, so we had to hypothesize about what our classmates might do and the strategies they might take without any input from them. With that said, none of us were feeling terribly confident about Team A's chances. Midoriya's unreliable quirk was a huge liability, and as useful as Uraraka's perk seemed to be, she would have trouble against either Bakugo or Iida on their own, let alone both. The general consensus was that Team D would win, and nobody really disagreed.
And then Midoriya countered Bakugo's ambush by throwing him into the ground without even using his quirk, shouted something inaudible to us, and then started glowing with green sparks. "Midoriya-shonen!" shouted All Might. "Your quirk is too powerful to be used directly against Bakugo-shonen!" All Might paused for a second as we all saw Midoriya's mouth move on camera. "Very well, then, if it's only five percent, then I'll allow it, but be careful not to strike at vulnerable areas!"
Having to stay up every night Stockpiling quirks was boring, but it gave me a lot of time to think about things. Things like the misdeeds I had committed, the trusts I had betrayed, and all the lies I was going to tell. And there were no lies so effective as the ones that you told unprompted, before anybody had the chance to put you on the spot. "He figured it out," I said, an only half-faked note of surprised satisfaction in my voice. "I wondered if he would."
Predictably, more than a few pairs eyes turned to me, flickering back and forth between me and the scene of Bakugo pushing himself back up to his feet with a wary look in his eyes. The first to say anything was surprisingly Yukinoshita, who I didn't think I had spoken with since that brief moment at the entrance exam. "You sound like you know something, Hikigaya-san. Were you able to give him advice because you copied his quirk yesterday?"
"No," I lied, "I was able to give him advice because I copied his quirk ten months ago, and my quirk told me he was quirkless." On the monitors, Midoriya launched himself towards Bakugo at preposterous speeds, looking like he might perhaps have intended to throw a punch but too uncoordinated with his superpowers to do anything but turn it into a tackle. The two of them flew through midair in a clinch that only ended when Bakugo landed a palm strike into Midoriya's ribs, blasting them apart into opposite walls of the corridor. I wasn't watching the screens, though - I was watching All Might's shoulders, which imperceptibly tensed as I potentially got too close to secrets better off not spoken out loud. "Clearly, I was wrong," I said as All Might opened his mouth, cutting off what I was sure would have been an instruction to keep quiet and focus on the monitors.
"Clearly," said Yukinoshita. Bakugo and Midoriya pulled themselves to their feet, both seemingly battered and bruised from their previous collision. Midoriya had a large burn mark on his chest, while Bakugo's nose was bleeding. "So how does that translate into you being able to help Midoriya-san?"
Midoriya's technique had dropped as his concentration lapsed, but as he frantically scrambled back away from Bakugo he finally managed to get enough distance to buy time to start glowing green again, at which point he reversed course, lunging back towards his friend. "Basically, the only thing I could think of was that - picture Midoriya as a pot of water, and his quirk as the fire on the stove." As they came back into contact, Midoriya started bouncing off of the walls and ceiling to avoid Bakugo's explosive blasts, while Bakugo used his explosions to create smokescreens and maneuver out of the way of Midoriya's straight-line charges. "From room temperature to ninety-nine degrees, the water is just water, and doesn't do anything special. Then all of a sudden, the water boils, the pot lid starts rattling, water splashes all over the stove. Midoriya breaks some bones." It was, I knew, an explanation that was completely wrong in every detail. But All Might was known to have an 'uncopyable' quirk, and if I said that my opinion of his son's quirk was that it was copyable-but-useless, then my bet was that he would probably be content to let that mistaken impression lie. "I figured I just got the impression that he was quirkless because I was trying to boil a pot of water with a match."
Sure enough, All Might stayed quiet, focused on the fight between Midoriya and Bakugo. Finally, the aggressive blonde made a mistake, repeating the same right haymaker that had gotten him tossed on his back at the start of the fight. This time, rather than grabbing him for a throw, Midoriya dodged and let Bakugo stick his arm through a strip of capture tape, and then using the super-speed and strength that Stockpile granted, managed to get it looped around the rest of Bakugo's body before he could react. "THE VILLAIN IS CAPTURED!" shouted All Might into the microphone, apparently not concerned about potentially revealing tactical information to Iida or Uraraka. "Stand down, Bakugo-shonen!"
Bakugo snarled up at the camera, struggling slightly against the tape, before finally sitting down in the corridor in a slump. On camera, we could see Midoriya pause to say a few words to Bakugo, though of course none of us could hear what they were, before finally limping off down the hallway, heading for the top of the building where Uraraka had apparently managed to locate the bomb. Next to me, Kirishima let out a low whistle. "Damn, Hikigaya-kun! What kind of advice did you give Midoriya? He took out Bakugo just like that! And do you have any advice like that for me?"
"Isn't it obvious?" I said, faking nonchalance. "If you're boiling water and the lid is rattling… all you need to do is crack the lid just a little to let the pressure off. Say… five percent, right All Might-sensei?"
"Ah Hah Hah!" All Might laughed, seemingly very pleased with the whole situation. "I don't believe that even Midoriya-shonen knows how his own quirk works yet, but that's certainly a very interesting analysis, Hikigaya-shonen! Regardless, whatever you said to him certainly seems to have helped!"
I suppose I should have felt proud at myself for successfully deceiving All Might yet again, for coming up with a plausible explanation for Midoriya's quirk, but mostly I just felt sick to my stomach. Well, as much as I owed to All Might for saving my life and for the benefits his stolen quirk bought me, the least I could do was to help him cover for his illegitimate son. Suddenly, I noticed everyone else standing around looking at me in admiration and envy, and the feeling of wrongness doubled. I needed to do something, to make it so that the conversation wasn't about Midoriya or myself. For lack of anything better to do, I poked Kirishima. Skin Hardening, huh? I was prepared to say that I couldn't do anything for him, to try to take some attention off of me, but actually… "Your quirk gets stronger the more you use it, right?"
"Yeah man! Dude, you just knew right away, huh? That's so cool!" Kirishima said, his eyes … sparkling? No, burning with manly vigor.
I shrugged. "Part of what your quirk does is it leaves behind deposits in your skin to reactivate later. It doesn't do it evenly, though, so that's why you get all bumpy. I don't know if it'd work, but… maybe you could try body hardening exercises while your skin's all untransformed to get them spread out more?"
"Like in martial arts movies, where people hit you with sticks until you get used to it?" Kirishima asked. "That's manly as hell! I'm sogoing to try that."
"Ahem!" All Might coughed. "I appreciate your enthusiasm, young men, but perhaps that is a conversation better reserved for another time!" The two of us stopped talking. On the monitors, Midoriya had finally caught up with Uraraka, and the two of them were now facing off against Iida Tenya. His speed was even faster than Midoriya's, but Midoriya could use the threat of touching the bomb to pressure him, and Uraraka could serve as yet another distraction. Tenya physically carried the bomb away from the 'Heroes' once or twice, but eventually Midoriya was able to get him into a corner, forcing him to meet Midoriya in melee. Uraraka soared through the air over the heads of the two of them, securing the Heroes' victory. "HEROES, WIIIIN!" All Might exclaimed, and turned to us all. "I'm going to go retrieve our competitors and bring them back here for grading," All Might said with a swirl of his cape as he dramatically turned towards the door. With a last cry of "Wait right here!" He darted out the door.
After All Might left, there was a generalized chatter, everyone discussing the match, until Yaoyorozu posed a question that got everyone's attention. "Rather than a pot of water - not that Hikigaya-san's metaphor wasn't a good one, but as powerful as Midoriya's quirk is, it reminds me more of a nuclear reactor than a pot of water."
I raised an eyebrow. "How so? Just in power level, or is there something else special about nuclear reactors?"
"Critical Mass." Yaoyorozu said. "A fire raises temperatures evenly, but the body is made up of cells, just like fissile material is made of atoms. If Midoriya had a mutation quirk that only worked one cell at a time, but which increased the speed at which nearby cells mutated, then it could be a situation where until the haruspex indemnified enough phlogiston, well, that's a bit imprecise, but you get what I'm saying -" I boggled at the idea that Yaoyorozu thought this was comprehensible as she continued 'explaining' for several minutes "- so don't you see, the cells in his body would be like a markov chain, switching to a different monte carlo attractor and then suddenly converting all of the cells in his body at once!" The rest of us mostly looked at Yaoyorozu in a combination of incomprehension and stupefaction, though Yukinoshita and Todoroki almost looked like they understood. As we all stared at her, Yaoyorozu blushed. "It's really nothing special," she said, wrapping her arms around herself uncomfortably. "It's just that once my parents realized that my quirk could create fissile materials, they took it upon themselves to make sure I understood enough nuclear physics to know why I shouldn't do so."
Happily, All Might returned with Uraraka and Iida just in time to distract us all from the fact that Yaoyorozu was potentially a walking tactical nuclear device. Midoriya and Bakugo had both been sent to the nurse's office, although this time it was Bakugo with the broken bones (just a rib, All Might assured us.) Privately, I felt relieved - I really wasn't in the mood to deal with Midoriya's gratitude or Bakugo's resentment. Naturally, Midoriya was judged the MVP of the match, though Iida was praised for his commitment to keeping the objective safe even after his teammate abandoned him and Uraraka was praised for trusting her teammate and continuing ahead to scout out their target. Even Bakugo wasn't judged too harshly; as All Might said, "take this as a cautionary example - many villains have unexpected uses for their abilities that they do not release to the general public! The biggest mistake that Bakugo-shonen made here was that he assumed that he knew what Midoriya-shonen could do, while not realizing that Midoriya-shonen knew his capabilities very well indeed! INFORMATION! Is sometimes the most powerful tool a hero can possess!"
There was a thoughtful silence at that, and then Kirishima elbowed me jocularly in the side. "Hey Hikigaya. Don't you know, like, everybody's quirk?"
I looked off to the side, uncomfortably aware that people were looking at me all over again. "... Not really."
"OKAY!" All Might shouted. "Let's head to the next area, where team… E as heroes will be fighting team C as villains!
Ouch. Inwardly, I said a quiet prayer for Ashido and Miura, who were going up against Yaoyorozu and Tobe after they had been given fifteen minutes to booby trap a location. To no-one's surprise, team C won handily due to their ability to ambush the 'heroes' with hidden flashbangs and Capture Tape bolas. The next fight, Team G vs. Team B, was similarly one-sided; Todoroki could throw up walls of ice to delay the heroes faster than Jiro could vibrate them down with her ear-spikes, and Shoji could form enough ears and eyes at the ends of his tentacle-arms to be able to pinpoint exactly where Todoroki should focus his efforts. Kaminari wasn't completely useless, but since he couldn't electrocute anything without being close enough to touch it, and because ice was a pretty bad conductor, he just couldn't find a way to contribute.
Finally, our number was up. Team J was set to act as heroes against team F as villains. As we got to the staging site, I looked over at Yukinoshita and Yuigahama, the latter of whom looked legitimately distressed to be facing off against me. Haaah. With a sigh, I headed over towards Yuigahama, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Oi, Yuigahama-san."
"Yes?" She said, turning around to face me. Through the clear faceplate of her helmet, I could see the complicated expression that she was wearing, though it quickly cleared into a false-looking smile.
"Listen. I didn't -" For a second, I stopped, not sure of what to say, and then I just sighed. I wanted to shove my hands into my pants pockets, but I didn't have any, so I just jammed them into my cloak instead, pulling it around me a little closer. "Honestly, Yuigahama-san, I'm not really comfortable with having anybody owe me for something that I would have done anyways," I said, and her eyebrows lifted in surprise. Oi, Yuigahama, look less shocked will you? It's not exactly hard to figure out what you're worried about, you know. "As far as I'm concerned, since you spoke up for me to the teachers at the entrance exam, you don't owe me anything," I continued. "Can we just - can we just forget about it? Get to know each other as classmates who never met before yesterday?"
Slowly, I watched as Yuigahama's smile shifted from fake to genuine. "Okay, Hikigaya-san. Let's do that." She extended her hand for a handshake, American-style. "Nice to meet you! I'm Yuigahama Yui, and you're going down, hero!"
"Hikigaya Hachiman," I said, and took her hand for a brief handshake. "Now get going, you've got fifteen minutes before I bring you to justice."
She stuck her tongue out at me, and then she ran into the building, passing Yukinoshita as she did so. For a second, it almost looked like the kimono-clad girl was going to come up to the two of us to say something as well, but the moment passed and Yukinoshita sped into the building after Yuigahama.
"Dude," Kirishima half-said, half-whispered reverentially. "You have got to teach me how you do that."
My eyebrow twitched. "Whatever you're thinking, whatever you're implying, I assure you that you're wrong."
With a wide, sharp-toothed grin, Kirishima put his hands behind his head. "Whatever you say, Hikigaya. So, what's the play?"
It didn't take a lot of thought. "I think we should split up," I said, searching out the edifice ahead of us for potential clues and entry points. "I'm faster than both you and Yuigahama, so if I come across the two of them together I can withdraw to get Yukinoshita alone, while you're tough enough that if you get double-teamed you can probably hold out for a little while against them both. And one versus one, I think it's more or less fair fights all around, none of our quirks are particularly strong against any of the rest of us."
"Yeah, that makes sense!" Kirishima said, smacking his right fist into the palm of his left hand. "You have a copy of Hayama's flight quirk, right?" I nodded. "Do you think you can get up to the roof?" Kirishima asked.
"Not with the flying," I said looking at the exterior of the building, "But yeah, I can probably manage. Good thinking, I'll probably be able to get down to you faster and safer than you'd be able to get down to me if I hoisted you up and took the bottom floor myself."
"I could probably stick the landing with a full-body Harden if I really tried, but I might be a little messed up after, yeah," Kirishima agreed. "Anything I should know about their quirks?"
I thought about it for a second. "Once Yukinoshita sucks all of the heat out of the area, she gets less powerful, but that area's likely to get really cold and icy so I don't know if you should aim for that. Still, if you feel the area suddenly get colder, harden up. Yuigahama can control the fabric of your clothes if she gets within grabbing distance; you're mostly shirtless, so that's less of a problem for you, but maybe watch your legs around her so they don't get sewn together."
"Got it," he said with a nod. "What about…" Things continued on in that vein, mostly the two of us hashing out potential issues or problems, until finally the bell rang. Kirishima and I gave each other a nod, and both started off towards our chosen destinations. As he used his Hardened limbs to punch his way through the front door, I shot up to five meters in height, squatted down next to the building, and turned on Vulture Glide. With a mighty leap, I managed to hook one hand on the sill of a fourth floor window, and as soon as my fingers got a hold I promptly shrank back down to my normal height. My arm reeled me in to the windowsill as I shrunk, and the acceleration gave me enough lift that I could quickly scramble up onto the ledge. Looking down I felt a little dizzy from the height, but the fact that I basically had a parachute quirk made my nerves a lot easier to swallow. Turning away from the ground, I tried the window. It was locked. "Shit." I muttered to myself, and was surprised when Kirishima's voice came through the earbud in response.
"Everything alright, Hikigaya?" He asked. "No sign of them down here so far, if we need to we can regroup."
"No, no problem, I just need a minute." The 'magician's pockets' of my cloak hadn't come with any support items in them, but I had brought a few things from home that I thought might play well with my copied quirks. Reaching into a pocket, I pulled out a thin piece of string, and called on Yuigahama's Cloth Armor. Her quirk could control fabric up to a maximum of fifteen centimeters away, while I could barely manage four, but given that the window was only about two centimeters thick, four was all I needed. Placing my hand on the outside of the window opposite the lock, I used my telekinetic control of the thread to work it through the crack between the windows and to loop it around the latch. At first I tried to use the telekinetic thread to just move the latch itself, but my weakened quirk wasn't strong enough, so I just tied it in a loop around the latch and pulled it open with my hand on the other end of the string. "I'm in," I said over the radio, matching declaration to action as I slid open the window and crawled inside.
"First floor's clear," said Kirishima. "I'm headed your way."
"Copy," I said for the hell of it. Okay, the whole 'risking my life' thing was a terrible idea, but for now? Playing hide-and-seek in an abandoned building, messing around with my quirks, pretending to be a badass over the radio? I was actually sort of having fun. As I got to the stairwell leading to the fifth floor, though, that sense of excitement was replaced by trepidation. Yukinoshita was standing guard in the center of the corridor, her pale blue samurai-esque kimono standing out vividly against the dull grey of the walls. Between the paleness of her robes and her fair skin, Yukinoshita almost seemed to glow - no, that was her actually glowing, as she started sucking in heat from the environment and the air grew chill with frost. "Contact," I muttered to Kirishima. "Fourth floor, guarding the way upstairs. Yukinoshita only. Check the third just in case this is a decoy, but get up here quick." He said something in response, but I didn't really catch anything but the fact that he had agreed - right then, all of my focus was on Yukinoshita.
Yukinoshita started walking towards me slowly, her feet almost gliding across the polished cement floors of the corridor. "So, you split up as well? Hmph. As expected."
I tapped into Stockpile, feeling my limbs begin to fill with energy. "It only makes sense for the more mobile person to scout ahead, since they can retreat if it gets too rough. Speaking of which, are sure you want to do this here and now? Instead of running away and leading me straight back to your base?" Pasting a grin on my face, I put my hands up in a boxing-ish position, doing my best to remind myself that it was actually okay for me to hit a woman under the circumstances.
"Ara, Hikigaya-san," Yukinoshita said, raising one hand to her mouth in mock amusement. "How bold of you - to assume that I would need to retreat!" And with that, she started drawing heat in from the environment in earnest. The water in the air quickly condensed into ice, covering the walls and floor with frost and coalescing snowflakes out of thin air; Yukinoshita used that ice like a skating rink as she shot toward me.
In panic, I plugged the other end of Ooze into Yuki-onna and started drawing on the quirk that I had stored just last night, ripping the heat around me out of the air before she could get to it. I charged forward to meet her momentum, clumsily trying to jab at her as she got within range. As she blocked my first few strikes, I sighed in relief. My augmented strength, plus the little extra bit I got from her quirk, was enough to send her flying back a few dozen centimeters with every blow, only not knocking her off her feet because she was able to slide back far enough to keep her feet under her. Not that it was easy - Yukinoshita darted in and out of my reach like a boxer, taking the measure of my movement speed and my form, patiently getting used to my overwhelming physical superiority. That was okay, though, because I could be patient too. As we fought, the temperature of the air around us continued to drop, from wintry, to frigid, to arctic. Eventually, I was starting to have trouble pulling heat out of the air - which meant that Yukinoshita probably was too.
The whole corridor was like a meat locker, and I was slowly gaining the upper hand in our clashes. After one, Yukinoshita backpedaled a little further than average, leaving two or three meters between us. "It's not too late to surrender or to run, Yukinoshita-san," I said, adrenaline still singing in my veins. I crouched just a little, getting ready to chase and capture her if she did turn to run. "Either works for me."
"Do you know, Hikigaya-san?" Yukinoshita said, getting down into a combat stance once again. "You remind me a little bit of Bakugo-san. A strong quirk, excellent natural instincts -" She rushed forward. Once again I jabbed at her to fend her off, but all of a sudden she spun, bursts of snow-white energy coming from her feet that slid her around my left side like a dancer. Abruptly, her hands snaked around my outstretched punch, and a sudden kick to the back of my knee folded my leg down to the ground as she twisted my arm up behind me in a painful hold. "And zero combat training," she finished. I tried to rip my arm free of her grip, but she had all of the leverage, and all I wound up doing was nearly popping my shoulder out. "I'm afraid, Hikigaya-san, that all of the quirks in the world will do you no good if you don't know how to fight."
My face burned. How dare she take me down that easily? And with a quip about Bakugo, no less? Dammit, I was nothing like him! I looked over my shoulder at her, looking up the length of my arm toward her beautiful, impassive face, and grit my teeth in determination. "I know how to fight all right!" I shouted, "Dirty!" With the last dregs of my stockpiled Yuki-Onna quirk, I attempted to blast my arm free of her grip. She countered it easily, spending more of her limited reserves to keep me from getting free - but that was okay, because I actually wanted my arm right where it was. I abandoned the Yuki-Onna quirk, and almost immediately regretted it - my breath felt like knives in my lungs, and I could feel burning cold in my arm where Yukinoshita's hands were holding on to me. Despite the pain, I forcefully tapped into another stockpile, one with more than a ten percent charge, one that I hadn't used at all during the quirk assessment test yesterday.
All of a sudden, Yukinoshita wasn't holding on to an arm at all, but rather a water cannon, one that was pointed directly at her. "Eeek!" She screamed as the firehose blast smashed into her chest, pushing her away from me and thoroughly drenching her with water. Water that Yukinoshita's quirk promptly sucked all of the heat out of.
Grimacing in pain, I quickly switched back to copying the Yuki-Onna perk, suddenly seeming to breathe a little easier as the air seemed to warm. Knowing that that blast could only have pushed her off of me for a second, I spun in place to continue the battle, and then as I saw her I froze. Yukinoshita's kimono was a marvel of Support Company engineering. It was stylish, made of a fabric that could allow heat to flow through it effortlessly, and durable. It was also nearly white, fairly sheer, soaking wet, and plastered to the curves of Yukinoshita's body, where it had frozen in place. "Erk!" I made a guttural noise at the back of my throat, torn between looking away to grant her some modesty and keeping my eye on her in advance of her inevitable retaliation. Over my earpiece, I could hear All Might coughing as well in what I sincerely hoped was a super-speed motion to turn off our particular monitor.
For her part, Yukinoshita was beet red in the face, doubtless out of some combination of rage, embarrassment, and exertion as she struggled to free herself from the frozen wet robes. Blasts of white energy erupted from one of her arms, giving her enough range of motion to draw one arm in front of her gorgeous body "Hikigaya-san," she said, doing her best to keep her voice steady. "I suggest you divert those lecherous eyes, or I will remove them for you."
Thinking quickly, I dashed past Yukinoshita, getting behind her faster than she could finish breaking out of her frozen clothing. With one hand, I reached into a cloak pocket, pulled out the roll of capture tape, and wrapped it around her, after which I removed my cloak entirely and wrapped that around her as well. "Sorry about that," I muttered to Yukinoshita, my face burning almost as bright as red as hers. "You gonna be alright here, or do I need to help get you out of there before you get frostbite?"
Slightly mollified now that she was covered, Yukinoshita shook her head, not meeting my eyes. "My Quirk protects me from the effects of the cold. I'll be fine."
"Hikigaya! I've found Yuigahama, you were right, they were on the third floor! Oh, shit, she's fast!" "Villain Yukinoshita has been captured!" Voices overlapped in my earbud - first Kirishima's, then All Might's.
"Gotta go," I shouted, and giving Yukinoshita no more thought - well, that was a lie, but pushing the sight of her into a corner of my brain to consider later - I dashed off towards the stairway down. "Hang in there, Kirishima!" I shouted into the mic. "I'm on my way!"
"I'm trying, but - shit! She keeps throwing me around, and my hits keep just bouncing off of her!" My footsteps echoed down the long hallway as I charged towards the stairs down, bouncing off the walls as I took corners to avoid slowing down. "Dammit, take this!" Kirishima shouted. "Riot… STRAImmmph!"
"In a stunning reversal, Hero Kirishima has been immobilized!" All Might's voice rang into my ear just as I finally reached the stairway down. Dammit, Kirishima, couldn't you have held on for thirty more seconds?
As I reached the ground floor, I finally saw what Kirishima meant about Yuigahama being fast. The white bandages around her legs and her left arm had unwrapped themselves from around her limbs, coiling in the air to create something almost like giant springs made of fabric. Yuigahama pogoed up and down on those springs in the middle of the room, where my partner had been blindfolded and hogtied with what had to have been the bandages now absent from her right arm. The bomb that I had to reach for victory was in the corner of the room, as far away from both staircases as possible, and debris had been piled up around one side so that it was only approachable from the front. Unfortunately for me, Yuigahama was guarding the approaches to the bomb quite thoroughly, and was bright enough not to come charging after me in the stairwell where I could get her out of position.
I spent a few seconds trying to figure out the best way to approach, but looking at the bomb I realized that I was running out of time - there were only fifty-nine seconds left on the clock! Well, if those cloth-springs made Yuigahama that much more dangerous in close range, I decided, I'll just have to avoid getting too close. I reached for a pocket to grab the wooden stick I used for Kamui Woods' power, only to realize that I had left it behind with Yukinoshita. Luckily, there were some bits of wood lying around in the debris of the third floor, and as I finally charged into the room I scooped it up and started it growing. It was just brittle pine, not nearly as good as the hickory I had left in my cloak, but I didn't really need it to stay sturdy for long, just long enough for me to hammer Yuigahama out of the way and get to the bomb. Yuigahama seemed to realize that as well, because she pogoed towards me in great bounding steps, occasionally bouncing between the wall and the ceiling in order to move faster.
Just as I had done to the robots in the entrance exam, as she got close enough I switched to Death Arms and swung the pinewood stick like it was a glaive, hitting her right over her kidneys and knocking her sideways. As I had expected, it shattered immediately on impact.
What I hadn't expected was that Yuigahama's bodysuit would shatter as well. Apparently, Kirishima had put enough punches into her armor that it had been hanging on by a literal and figurative thread. As Yuigahama fell to the floor I got an eyeful of pale skin and white lace, which then proceeded to become more than an eyeful as Yuigahama started to get up, realized her situation, and then screamed in embarrassment, squatting back down where she had fallen. My libido surged. Dammit, why was this bodysuit so tight?
In order to keep from giving Yuigahama - and for that matter, anybody watching from the monitors, dammit - an eyeful as well, I dashed past her to the bomb, tagging it and ending the exercise with sixteen seconds to spare. After doing so, I hunched over forwards to 'catch my breath' for a few seconds before I finally turned back around. Yuigahama had used the time to fashion herself a crude one-piece dress out of the remaining strips of bandages that she had been moving around with, so I headed over towards Kirishima and removed his blindfold and restraints. "Dude, we won?" he said as All Might announced our victory over the radio. "Awesome! Sorry I wasn't more help, though."
"No, uh…" I said, thinking fast. "You actually did a lot of damage to Yuigahama's armor. I don't think I would have been able to beat her if you hadn't gotten all those hits in." Dammit, if I'm going down, you're going down with me!
Kirishima looked at Yuigahama in her makeshift dress, back to me, over to Yukinoshita as All Might carried her over, still wrapped up in my cloak for modesty, back to me… and just gave me a thumbs-up. I didn't do it on purpose, dammit!
The after-action report was exactly as awkward as you would expect after events like those happened. Yuigahama and Yukinoshita had been given leave to go change into their gym uniforms; the rest of the girls looked at me with suspicion and distrust as we discussed the results of the exercise, while the guys looked at me with a combination of admiration and envy. All Might, thankfully, was a little more reasonable. "Before we discuss the battle, we should probably discuss a facet of the pro-hero life that would have come up later in the curriculum! Embarrassment! Frankly, you kids, there are a lot of ways that fabrics can rip or tear when you're fighting Villains with super-strength, or acid sprays, or razor claws. Pros put it all on the line, whether it's our lives, or our modesties! This is the sort of thing that Midnight teaches in more detail in her classes, but to summarize it for the moment, I'm afraid that the occasional costume malfunction is unavoidable in our line of work! Now, I'm sure that none of you will look down on Yukinoshita-shojo nor Yuigahama-shojo for the mishaps they suffered, correct?" There was a generalized mutter of agreement from everyone in the class. "And Hikigaya-shonen, your role in causing those mishaps was completely accidental, correct?"
"Of course!" I shouted hotly, my face burning with embarrassment.
"There you have it," All Might pronounced. "Please, assign no blame to Hikigaya-shonen for his role in this as well. Again, Midnight will cover things like this in more detail, but manufactured media scandals and twisted interpretations of innocent facts are also, sadly, an unavoidable part of a pro's life." … Said the guy teaching at U.A. to look after his secret love child.
Still, All Might's pronouncements seemed to clear the air. They made me reconsider the whole 'pro hero' thing yet again, but at least the atmosphere was less awkward afterwards. Even when Yukinoshita and Yuigahama returned to the class, while there was a moment when Yukinoshita returned my cloak in which none of us could meet each other's eyes, we were all able to finish class peacefully and normally.
It wasn't until I was putting my costume away at the end of the day that I realized that the pictures my parents had oh-so-helpfully included in the design specifications for my costume… were in a different pocket than I had originally put them in.